Realtime Relationships

LGBTQ marriage...and divorce

While LGBTQ marriage is on the rise, unfortunately so are the divorce rates. It can get complicated: multiple partners or parents, varying divorce and child custody rules and processes, and the surrounding political and cultural environment. Here, Maryanne has a fun, freewheeling, practical conversation with Prof. Abbie Goldberg, author of LGBTQ Divorce and Relationship Dissolution: Psychological and Legal Perspectives and Implications for Practice. She'll share concrete tips as well as stories from those who have gone through this...as well as their children. An awesome community resource!

Loving through your differences

Couples fight. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Sometimes these fights provide comic relief, or they can threaten the very survival of the relationship. Psychologist and relationship consultant James Creighton wrote Loving through Your Differences: Building Strong Relationships from Separate Realities to help bridge our different perceptions or experiences of reality. He shares some of his eleven ways to express feelings with minimal blame and accusation, listen with empathy, stop behaviors that make fights escalate before they spin out of control, and much more. We can live happily and productively together and find excitement and fulfillment, rather than disappointment and frustration, in our differences! “Trying all the approaches discussed in this book may take weeks, months, or even longer. Some of us who started down this path are still on it years later. But it has been worth it,” writes Creighton. “To understand and gain control over the meanings you attach to life is a constantly fulfilling process. It begins with understanding and accepting responsibility for creating your own reality.”

Are you a soulful leader?

Most of us know a thing or two about leadership. We have led and been led, whether being a parent, partner, an employee, boss or a citizen. Leading is part of daily life. What we seem to know less about are the unconscious influences of leadership; how cultural and inherited archetypes shape and move us. Being aware of these shadowy influences has never been more crucial; we can see what is at stake when we do not inquire into what moves us to lead. I have the privilege of sharing my interview with my mentor and colleague Dr. Arthur Ciaramicoli, Harvard Med. School psychologist, whose latest book is The Soulful Leader: Success with Authenticity, Integrity and Empathy. He shares his own personal stories of discovering how to shift away from a power-based model using divine feminine principles of empathy, interiority, vulnerability, and soul. He makes you not only want to be a better leader, but shows you how.

Is everything going to be OK? Creating peaceful relationships with yourself and everybody else

Pharmacist turned inspirational speaker Dr. Dravon James says that we are all asking that question most of the time. How do we move from that anxiety to a feeling of reliable peace? She and Maryanne discuss the importance of being internally referenced, and how this interior cultivation impacts all your relationships. You’ll hear cool ways to get to know yourself with love and devotion. You can put boundaries on learned behaviors of fear and come out powerful…nothing missing, nothing broken! Cultivating peace just may be the answer ....

The stranger you know: How to create safer relationships in a date rape culture!

It’s clearly not festive to talk about date rape, but I would rather you be safe and educated this holiday season, given the relentless current cultural and political swirl. This month alone I have been witness to an unprecedented number of people breaking the cultural trance of female sexual objectification and abuse, divulging their debilitating traumatic stories of rape and beyond. You might also find yourself in the position of being another's confidant, witness to one or more of the droves of victims finally coming forward to share the burden of sexual assault and worse. Today we will address the young people on college campuses struggling to cope. The latest research reports 1 in 5 females will experience sexual assault, attempted or completed rape. The definition of rape being “sex you don’t agree to, including forcing a body part or object into your vagina, rectum (bottom), or mouth. Date rape is when you are raped by someone you know.” Given there are currently 19.9 million students enrolled in colleges today, this means just this year more than 2.4 million students have been assaulted. Title 9, the federal civil rights law passed in 1972, was created to ensure that male and female students and employees in educational settings are treated equally and fairly, yet here we are situated within a culture that has normalized rape. This month's newsletter is dedicated to a deeper inquiry hoping to help finding solutions for addressing and healing this pandemic social atrocity for all concerned. Please tune in here to my podcast interviewing two young people living on campus who courageously share their experience about what it is like for them navigating relationships in this rape culture.