May 2025
When Kids Say “No”
By: Justin Rivas. In Marriage and Family Therapy, we often encounter parents grappling with a common challenge: a child's resistance to therapy. It's understandable to feel frustrated, annoyed, or worried when your child refuses help, but how we respond can significantly impact their willingness to engage in the process. Firstly, acknowledging the child’s feelings promotes participation. Children, like adults, have the right to express discomfort. Instead of dismissing their resistance, try to understand the root cause. Fear, shame, and anger often arise as emotional barriers to therapy. Open, non-judgmental communication can set the stage for a meaningful discussion to begin.
January 2025
Accountability Relationships for Compulsive Sexual Behavior
In my therapy practice, I often hear about personal experiences of accountability. Usually, though, it’s a description of failed accountability, especially when the accountability issue is compulsive sexual behavior. Let’s explore accountability from the perspective of being set up for success. Accountability can be defined as “an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions” (Webster), and as “acknowledgment and assumption of responsibility for actions, . . . (Wikipedia). Further, accountability for husbands in a marriage is set up for success by considering the following elements: Intentional/voluntary – Husbands, enter an accountability relationship by your own
November 2024
Privacy, Secrecy, Transparency, and Authenticity: What does all this have to do with Good Faith?
By Tim White Disclaimer! I am writing this blog from the perspective that the partners in this scenario are working toward connecting, resolving, rebuilding trust, and healing/forgiving and that the person who has gone outside of the agreed boundaries in sex or communication* is genuinely showing up in good faith to work through the process. I am in no way proclaiming that a betrayed partner should stay in a relationship that is continuing to be deceitful, manipulative, coercive, or abusive. Further, let’s address * the really long but kinder way to say betrayer, cheater, liar, or two-faced %@*&^%#$!!@#$! So, please
February 2023
From Discovery Through Recovery
There are many circumstances in life in which it is intuitive to determine what actions to take to resolve a problem. Discovering that a trusted life partner is emotionally or sexually involved with another person or that they are involved in a sexually compulsive behavior like pornography use isn’t one of those circumstances. As individuals and couples, we are designed for intimate connections, with life commitment and marriage being the most intimate. I like to explain it using the concept of power. We have in us an inborn, God-given, DNA-structured design and desire to be the most powerful intimate connection
Making Sense of the Senseless
This is a continuation of my blog series titled From Discovery Through Recovery. I will begin with a deeper explanation of the power of connection because, upon discovery, a life partner is typically trying to make sense of a circumstance that seems senseless. As individuals and couples, we are designed for intimate connections, with life commitment and marriage being the most intimate of those connections. I like to explain it using the concept of power. We have in us an inborn, God-given, DNA-structured design and desire to be the most powerful intimate connection in our partners’ life. Discovering that someone
April 2020
What Effect is the Quarantine Having on My Relationship with My Partner?
Well like a lot of things in life the answer is that it depends, and I would like to put my thoughts and opinions out for those interested. I’ll start with being quarantined together. I know for some this has been an enhancement for their relationship and for some it has caused significant strife. In the case of the enhancement, it is due to lessened stress at work (furlough) for one person in the couple and therefore more attention being able to be given to the partner still working and that partner’s emotions. In the case of the increase in
March 2020
A Few Things to Know About Premarital Counseling
At its most basic, premarital counseling or education is a chance to sit down with a trained professional to discuss life after the wedding day. Most of the premarital couples I have worked with have numerous questions about roles, responsibilities, sex, money, work, kids, extended family, video games, social media, conflict, fighting fair…and the list could go on. It is important to note that these are couples who on the cusp of marriage, very much in love, and coming from a place of great commitment, yet they still have these questions. Let me assure you, it is okay to have the questions!
Struggling with Sexual Temptation as a Married Man? Part 5
Previously, I presented Proverbs 5 as God’s design for husbands to make sense of sexual temptation in marriage, and to further discover effective antidotes to prevent empowering the sexual temptation experience. God’s design is to empower a man’s experience of his wife, thereby disempowering the experience of sexual temptation. A husband needs to choose to rejoice in, be satisfied by, and be captivated by his wife, exclusively. Wives are designed to thrive in a context of knowing their husbands are making these choices. A fourth design parameter to consider comes from 1 Peter 3:7 where we find a verse stating
