March 20, 2020,  Fundamental Human Needs  No comments

These fundamental needs tend to form a ladder such that if the lower rung needs are not met, then the higher-rung needs cannot be met...

February 24, 2020,  Counselling, Family, Games People Play, Life, Love, Relationship  No comments

I would like to say something about the title of my book Love, Lies, and the Games Couples Play. Put simply, love, and all that it embodies for us, is what each of us seeks in life above all else. It is the main reason we enter into relationships in the first place because it gives us a place to belong and to feel connected to others.

The “lies” in the title refers to the mistaken attitudes and beliefs that we hold about ourselves and about others. These are most likely based on someone else’s thinking which in the first instance were probably our parent’s. And as these beliefs were presented to us at a time when we were not able to make well-considered decisions for ourselves, they are not necessarily reflective of our current subjective truth.

Those beliefs, and the w...

December 23, 2019,  Counselling, Exercise, Family, Life, Love, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

Love – A Never-Ending Story

While I ended this story with “She lived happily ever after,” in truth, the “ever after” has not come to be yet.

The story is really never ending. Every day offers my partner and me new lessons to learn about ourselves and each other and new challenges, which, as we open ourselves to each other in love, provides us with even greater possibilities for ourselves and our relationship into the future.

This is not to say that we never have arguments or disagreements, but because we love and care deeply for each other, we attempt to find a resolution in a way that demonstrates that love and care and which is good for both of us.

Nor does this mean that disagreements are always solved there and then...

November 25, 2019,  Life, Relationship, Relationship Tips, Script  No comments

A Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, there was a young girl who, wide-eyed and full of dreams, left her hometown by the coast and followed her knight in shining armor to the city.

Their wedding was a spectacular affair befitting a princess and her prince, and they came to live in a castle overlooking the sea.

Years passed, and it seemed that they had everything they could want, including a lavish lifestyle with all the trimmings. They were a young family of standing in their community, with four beautiful children.

But, fourteen years later, this young girl, now grown and much wiser, looked for more from her relationship than it seemed her prince was able to give.

Through much turmoil and heartache, she ended the relationship and created a life as a single mom...

September 26, 2019,  Counselling, Family, Games People Play, Life, Script  No comments

Berne, like many others studying human behaviour at the time, suggests that a childlike stance is more likely to occur in a person’s third or fourth decade of life, after the skills to ensure survival have been fully developed.

By then, you have learned from experience that your subconscious mind will take care of many operations: practicing social niceties are now a matter of habit and you know you’re socially safe. You can now enjoy special moments in life without inhibition or fear.

To maintain the autonomous state, however, requires constant vigilance as you move away from the programmed script that influenced your past behaviour patterns.

If we lived in Utopia, we wouldn’t have to learn social survival skills, but we don’t...

July 10, 2019,  Games People Play, Life  No comments

Spontaneity

Eric Berne, Founder of Transactional Analysis as a model of therapy, defines spontaneity as the capacity to see multiple options from which we choose to act. We can freely choose how we think, feel, and behave in response to an event.

To be Spontaneous means to be free from the compulsion to have only the thoughts and feelings you were taught to have and to play the games you were taught to play (or learned to) to maintain your scripted life position.

Intimacy

Finally, Berne defines Intimacy as the “spontaneous, game-free candidness of an aware person, the liberation of the intuitively perceptive, uncorrupted Child in all its naiveté living in the here and now.”

He adds:

Intimacy is essentially a function of the Natural Child; […] it tends to turn ou...

May 27, 2019,  Life, Love, Relationship  No comments

In The Games People Play, Eric Berne defined the process of becoming autonomous (self-determining) as the manifestation of the “release or recovery of three capacities: awareness, spontaneity, and intimacy.”

Let’s take a closer look at the first of Berne’s three capacities for Autonomous living.

Awareness

For Berne, Awareness is the capacity to observe the world through all five of our physical senses, plus intuition, which might otherwise be defined as coming to understand something unconsciously through the combination of all our senses.

However, it needs to be done in one’s own, unique way, and not in the way someone else once taught us.

Berne offers this example: A child hears a bird’s song, but he doesn’t know it comes from a bird...

March 13, 2019,  Counselling, Exercise, Life, Love, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

I use the acronym TOUCH to remember the five ways of funding my love bank.

T is for Time

Relationships aren’t part-time arrangements. And, if your relationship is fed on left-over time (the time you have after everything else has been done), your love bank will very quickly be depleted.

Your relationship must take priority over everything else (other than yourself). You come first, your partner comes second. Your family is third, your work is next, and finally there are your extended family and other friendships beyond that.

This is not to say that you can’t work because you must always be with your family. It just means that you must always keep your family’s needs in mind if you are doing something of lower priority (like working)...

January 24, 2019,  Life, Love, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

Theoretically, the more money you invest, the greater the return. And if you’re a patient investor, you can even double or triple the return. Similarly, the unconditional love you give to your partner is a very wise investment.

And just as you build a money bank by depositing funds you make deposits into your “love bank” when you help meet your partner’s five fundamental needs—physical, safety, feeling, love and belonging, and spiritual—and also when you use the sexual enhancers discussed earlier.

You also make deposits by speaking your partner’s love language at every opportunity.

However, just like a bank, if you fail to make deposits into your love bank, your account is in danger of being depleted by fees and charges...

December 21, 2018,  Exercise, Love, Relationship, Relationship Tips, Sex  No comments

An Exercise:

To discover your conditions for great sex:

1.  Get a piece of paper and a pen and set aside half an hour or so. Think back to your best-ever sexual experience or experiences. If you have never had a great sexual experience, just imagine one or go find one of your favorite romantic movies.
2. Now write down all the things that made (or would have made) the experience(s) so good. They could be emotional factors (being in love or happy and relaxed), physical factors (feeling fit, well, and sober), relationship factors (feeling safe or in love with your partner), or situational factors, such as privacy or timing.
3. Next, think of your worst (or your imagined worst) sexual experience...