Commentary

Facebook, the space that is meant to promote warm and fuzzy feelings of togetherness is getting buzz for being cited in divorce petitions. One divorce site noted that as many as twenty percent of petitions viewed included the word Facebook. And the number appears to be growing.

Of course Facebook isn’t responsible for making people cheat, or act stupid, but it does apparently provide the needed means. One way that Facebook got into the petitions was due to inappropriate comments left on Facebook, generally in areas viewable by all. Rampant sharing seemed to be a problem too. Some well-intended friends found it necessary to share with the cheated upon things that their partner had shared on Facebook. The whole thing feels like blaming the bar for all the fights that happen in it. But, it’s not necessarily the best publicity for the site.

Key Takeaways:

• A UK-based divorce site found that “Facebook” was seen in over 20 percent of court documents for divorce.
• Many friends will tell their friends if they see a spouse flirting online, causing some relationship woes.
• Many people use Facebook as a, “meat market” in order to publicly degrade their partner in front of others.

“People have yet to learn to make sexual and flirty comments through personal email as opposed to a Facebook wall for all the world (and significant others) to see.”

Read more: https://www.yourtango.com/2012128108/facebook-divorce

All of us have experienced a situation in which a toddler is caught doing something bad, and then proceeds to blame someone else or hide to avoid punishment. It is actually quite common to see these toddler-like behaviors being used by adults as coping mechanisms. Many of us can find ourselves pointing the finger at others and wanting them to take the blame. This is especially true in romantic relationships. It isn’t atypical for us to hide from confrontation either.

Key Takeaways:

• Avoidance in adults is seen in a different manner. We typically overwork or participate in excessive habits such as drinking in order to avoid our reality.
• When someone feels vulnerable, blaming another party is a way to transfer that sense of vulnerability and pain onto someone else.
• Another toddler coping mechanism is to believing that if you make someone else feel like they are unworthy, then they will appreciate you even more.

“Coping mechanisms are generally conscious; we’re aware that we’re blaming, denying responsibility, or avoiding the issue, although we usually begin to do so by habit.”

Read more: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anger-in-the-age-entitlement/201802/love-and-toddler-brain-coping-mechanisms

Going through a divorce may be hard for the two adult parties involved, but it is even more traumatic for children. There are ways you can participate in positive activities so that the trauma is dramatically decreased. It is important to participate in healthy co-parenting, and to never blame or put down the other parent in front of their child. Children should not be burdened with adult issues during or after the divorce process, so try to be as civil and cooperative as possible.

Key Takeaways:

• Be aware of subtle queues that you give your child that could show a sense of favoritism to one particular parent.
• Even if your divorce was chaotic and unjust, do not play the blame game in front of your little ones.
• Do not put a dent in any child-parent relationship by putting down the other parent in the situation.

“January has been tagged as ‘Divorce Month’ in the United States and the United Kingdom, given the unusually high volume of calls to family attorneys inquiring into divorce proceedings after the holidays.”

Read more: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/helping-kids-cope/201801/january-is-divorce-month-guide-parents-help-kids

Sociopaths are not just criminals or those who give you an eerie vibe. Sociopaths can be found in all career paths due to their incredible ability to mask their undesirable qualities from others. They have the skills to gain another person’s confidence by diluting all of their negative qualities, which causes them to gain a person’s trust. They can use this trust as a way to exploit the target due to having a strong hold on how much they trust the person.

Key Takeaways:

• Sociopaths have the ability to gain your confidence by watering down the aspects about them that are seen as red flags.
• Those who suffer from antisocial personality disorder can often try to make others feel sorry for them by describing situations where they were victims.
• A common behavior among male sociopaths is to gain access to younger daughters by marrying their mothers and persuading them to confide in them.

“But sociopaths have one of the most hidden personality disorders (antisocial personality disorder), which is one of the most dangerous.”

Read more: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/5-types-people-who-can-ruin-your-life/201803/are-you-the-target-sociopath-part-i-2

Narcissism can go far beyond arrogance and vanity. A narcissist’s reality is based in part on an assumption that they personally are not accountable for their mistakes. They lack empathy and the ability to truly appreciate that others do not exist to be accessories in their life. Obviously, one wants to avoid being in situation where they must live with one of these people, assuming one isn’t a narcissist themselves. But, what if that narcissist is a relative. What if that narcissist is a parent.

It’s important to know as an adult that may interact with children parented by a narcissist, or as a child that survived such parenting, that children brought up this way often exhibit certain problems, including an ability to feel that they are okay, an ability to form normal emotional connections, a lack of appreciation for inner qualities, over superficial ones, and an inability to trust their own feelings or other people.

Key Takeaways:

• Children raised by narcissistic parents often don’t feel heard or valued for who they are as individuals.
• Often, children of narcissistic parents feel under-nurtured, judged, and manipulated.
• Children of narcissistic parents can experience debilitating emotional effects and are in need of therapy to develop assertiveness skills.

“The cornerstones of the disorder are a lack of empathy and the inability to tune into the emotional world of others.”

Read more: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-legacy-distorted-love/201802/how-does-narcissistic-parenting-affect-children

Divorce is an unusual state to be in. And while many navigate it with a reasonable degree of calm, some do it very badly. It’s not abnormal to regress when it come to divorce. Psychological problems may escalate. A person with a tick can become a full-blown anxious nut. And divorce does not end with the paperwork. The narcissistic, psychotic ex of Hollywood fiction is overblown, but has a basis in fact. No one gets under the skin like an ex. He knows what to say, where to point, and how to manipulate your kids. Your ex might even bear little resemblance to the person you initially married, because divorce changes people. It pushes painful buttons, escalating abandonment issues and feelings of loss and unworthiness of love. To say it’s emotionally discombobulating is to understate. When it comes to exes, remember that there is a trifecta of concerns. Keep it safe, for you, for your partner, and for the kids. Keep your integrity, if at all a possibility. And try to move the relationship to a better plane.

Key Takeaways:

• Intelligent divorce is possible when both parties agree to be civil, reasonable, and get the therapeutic support they need to move on.
• Divorce is stressful and can conjure up worries about money, fears of abandonment, and concerns about the house and children.
• A good acronym for communicating with a difficult ex-spouse is SIR (Safety, Integrity & Relationship), with an emphasis on always putting safety first.

“We must think from our heads and not from our hearts during divorce because feelings are often so muddled and the mistakes that people make are so predictable.”

Read more: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-intelligent-divorce/201803/narcissistic-ex

We all experience emotions and impulses. As adults we learn to deal with them, assign them threat levels and otherwise orchestrate our way through them. Toddlers have no such ability. Nuances are not something they are equipped to understand, so they blame, cry, hide and say no a lot. It can be kind of endearing. It’s not so endearing when it pops up in adults.

Sometimes couples going into therapy seem to be trapped in toddler-brain syndrome. Like toddlers, they are so invested in what they see and have and need that the other’s perspective is completely immaterial. Partners that have fallen into toddler-brain territory exhibit certain commonalities, such as a total unwillingness to accept any responsibility for problems, a complete intolerance towards different perspectives, and a total unwillingness to grasp and deal with the actual issues. One psychiatrist feels that these sorts of couples are a mirror for our political times. Maybe they should be called Trump-Era-Brain couples then.

Key Takeaways:

• Intimate couples experiencing turmoil often exhibit Toddler-brain, where both partners are self-obsessed, emotionally reactive, and resistant to change.
• Toddler Brain in adults often leads to denial of responsibility, non-nuanced thinking, avoidance of concrete issues, and intolerance of differences.
• Unlike the Toddler Brain, the Adult Brain weighs evidence, plans for the future, and let’s their partner know that they matter.

“Without the Adult brain to regulate emotions and impulses, toddlers use the primitive coping mechanisms of blame, denial, and avoidance to numb shame and fear.”

Read more: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anger-in-the-age-entitlement/201803/toddler-brain-politics

Porn has undoubtedly been around since man could doodle. However, with the advent of more, and also more sophisticated, technology and communication systems, it would be hard to argue that porn as an available commodity has reached an all-time high. Not everyone is against the stuff. Some regard it as a diversion, useful in its way. Most would agree that it can be misused too easily, however.

Even removing from consideration criminal and economic factors, there are ways that porn can be distinctly deleterious to the psychological health of individuals and relationships. Pornography promotes loneliness, builds unrealistic expectation, creates dissatisfaction, and even counts among many couples as a form of infidelity.

Key Takeaways:

• Porn can create unrealistic standards of what sex is, causing users to feel dissatisfaction with the real thing.
• Porn is often savored alone and can actually increase a sense of loneliness and isolation.
• There is a form of intimacy in porn that many couples equate with a sort of infidelity when discovered.

“As with other similar behaviors, pornography use may also be stigmatized, responded to with judgment and criticism, rather than from a potentially more constructive, curious, and nonjudgmental point of view.”

Read more: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/experimentations/201803/4-ways-porn-use-causes-problems

Some of it is cultural, some of it is related to family tales, or things we have picked up along our life travels. But, we all have some similar misconceptions about relationships, that we may need to look beyond to make the most of the one we find ourselves in.

For example, there is the truism that opposites attract, which may, or may not be true. Who knows. But, common ground is often what builds a future. Conflict may be painful, but it is not inherently bad, another misconception. Rather, it
can point out differences and lead to a stronger union. Cohabiting before marriage is good, or cohabiting before marriage is bad. Interestingly, this assumption can go either way. In reality, it does not have to be either. It can cause tension, as in ‘ we should hurry up and make this legal,’ but that is an issue on its own. Finally, many point to the divorce rate, which popular knowledge would have us believe strikes down half of all marriages. Those more in the know than most of us say it’s actually less. Numbers of those divorced do not always coincide with those who were married.

Key Takeaways:

• Constructive conflict in a relationship can actually be good and lead to understanding each other better and increased intimacy.
• The notion that opposites attract is false and studies show that people show a preference for potential partners that have traits similar to their own.
• According to researchers Kennedy and Ruggles, divorce actually is not on the rise and has declined to a degree over the past thirty years.

“This is one of the most persistent misconceptions about relationships. Opposites do not attract. Rather, it’s birds of a feather that flock together. Research has shown strong evidence for assortative mating, which involves the nonrandom coupling of individuals who resemble one another on one or more characteristics (Buss, 1984; Watson, Beer, & McDade-Montez, 2013).”

Read more: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-love-the-scientific-take/201802/relationship-misconceptions

The best way to get the kind of intimate partner you want is to focus on cultivating the right traits and values to become the best possible romantic partner yourself. You need to decide on what kinds of traits you want to build, and whether you are willing to prioritize happiness and equality in a relationship over power or dominance. Then you can use this list of traits to generate specific behaviors that will help foster or develop them, in order to translate your values into concrete steps.

Key Takeaways:

• When you are searching for the ideal partner, ask yourself if you want someone completely submissive to you or a partner who is cooperative.
• Keep in mind that you cannot nag, manipulate, criticize, or threaten your partner into valuing you.
• You must create value within your relationship through compassion and care, which will help you to develop a more loving union.

“To get the partner you want to have, be the partner you most want to be.”

Read more: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anger-in-the-age-entitlement/201803/how-get-the-intimate-partner-you-most-want-have