Fixing relationships in a flash
I'm assigned to the girlfriend beat and spend a good portion of my days deciphering male-female angst, the latest self-help books routinely make their way to my mailbox.
Just this week, I got a copy of "The Denzel Principle: Why Black Women Can't Find Good Black Men," by Jimi Izrael and "Maybe . . . It's You: Stop Wondering Why You're Single, Girlfriend, and Read this Book," by Nikki Nokes. I'm still hanging onto my copy of "Why Black Men Love White Women: Going Beyond Sexual Politics to the Heart of the Matter," by Rajen Persaud.
A lot of the books wind up on our newsroom giveaway pile because their authors blame women for being single, irking me. But it's useless to rant about that since these kinds of books will continue to be published since women just keep gobbling this stuff up. Message to women: Don't buy books that blame us for all the ills of a relationship.
A pitch I got recently about Nancy Dreyfus' book caught my attention, partly because she's a local psychotherapist but also because it offers a simple approach to relationship repair. And given how much we've been hearing about high-profile unions that have been crumbling - yesterday's big news was that former presidential hopeful John Edwards and his long-suffering wife, Elizabeth, finally have split - I'm a firm believer that relationship Rx is always a subject worth exploring.
The genesis of Dreyfus' book came amid a draining session with a tongue-tied husband who was being verbally assaulted by his wife. She was demeaning the poor guy and berating him for an "asinine" business decision he'd made when Dreyfus got the idea to scribble something on a piece of paper, which she handed to the husband and told him to hold up to his wife. The paper said, "Talk with me like I'm someone you love!"
When the wife saw the note, she visibly softened and immediately stopped castigating her husband. The husband sat up straighter, their argument was defused and the two began speaking civilly to one another in normal tones.
"I watched a miracle before my eyes," Dreyfus told me. "I just watched the power of a written message to someone."
Encouraged, Dreyfus went on to try the same thing with other couples when she found them getting so caught up in arguing that they failed to really hear what their partners were saying. Her new book, "Talk With Me Like I'm Someone You Love: Relationship Repair in a Flash," contains "flashcards" that can be ripped out and held up mid-argument. My favorites are: "I feel like a complete and total idiot" and "Right now, I'd do anything for you to know how much I love you." And, no, there's no "Can you just shut already and let me go to sleep?"
They're all about helping partners feel heard and understood, which is a good thing. Many of us don't get what we need from childhood and wind up hauling tons of old hurts around with us. And that's what so many fights are really about anyway.
"The whole act of giving the cards and receiving [the message] changes the entire tone between two people who are fighting to two people who are giving and receiving," Dreyfus said.
Would any of these flashcard messages have been helpful to Edwards and his wife, perhaps before Edwards' extramarital dalliance that produced his 2-year-old daughter with former campaign worker Rielle Hunter? Dreyfus thinks they might have. I can't get past the fact that the baby was conceived after Elizabeth announced her breast cancer had returned.
"If over and over, I felt seen and heard, it's much less likely I'll have an affair," Dreyfus explained. "What I would criticize Edwards for is . . . I suspect this is a needy, immature, narcissistic guy."
"Sometimes when you have a partner with a serious illness, you have to say, 'this sucks,' " Dreyfus added. "If you've been raised that you can't say things like this, it decreases the intimacy . . . My guess is on the surface he was dutiful, but on the inside he was pissed and didn't get to express his feelings so he acted out."
Now, the cards are in Elizabeth's court.
