Dear Dr. Norquist:
I am 27 and my husband is 31 and we are having problems. We have been married for 11 years and have two children. My husband works full-time and I am a stay-at-home mom who has no life. I am a very loving person and my husband is not. He feels I demand too much love and attention from him. I feel he gives me no love or attention. All I ask for is a hug or kiss every once in a while and maybe a comment or two, like I’m doing a good job or I look nice.
Am I being excessive? I’m thinking about having an affair if things don’t get any better, just to get some companionship and some laughter. Could you please let me know if it’s just me, if I am asking too much? I would really appreciate your opinion on this.
Dr. Norquist responds:
One of the ironies of life is that it is those who don’t feel the need for others’ love and attention that seem to most easily draw others to them. Those who feel needy for love can be experienced by others as draining and uninteresting. Certainly, it is reasonable to want to receive love and attention from your marital partner. However, it is not up to your husband to give you a life or fill the emptiness inside you. You need to take responsibility for your own happiness. Apparently, you have been married since age 16. Perhaps the responsibilities of marriage and parenthood at such a young age have, temporarily, deterred you from some aspects of your own personal growth needs. Next time you feel the need for attention and love from your husband, stop and ask yourself what feelings are driving this need for attention. Take the time to sit with these feelings and acknowledge them. Look for ways to enliven your life – friendships, courses, activities you love, etc. Start taking care of yourself. You’ll find you’ll be feeling better about yourself, and that with your new friendships and activities, your inner well will no longer be dry. This will likely eventually lead your husband to be more interested in you and more likely to spontaneously offer you some of the love and attention you currently desire.
Dear Dr. Norquist:
My 16-year-old daughter has suddenly stopped caring about anyone but herself and her friends. She never acted like this before. She recently bought me an inexpensive set of earrings and gave me a gift she had previously received but didn’t like for my 40th birthday. She has a job and spends a large amount of money on herself.
She was involved in an automobile accident three years ago in which her father died and she sustained permanent frontal lobe brain damage. I have recently remarried. I keep wondering if she’s punishing me for being the parent who survived. Do you think her selfish behavior is a reaction to my recent marriage or is this just an adolescent stage? Any thoughts you have would be greatly appreciated.
Dr. Norquist responds:
It sounds like the past few years have been wrought with a tremendous amount of loss and change for both you and your daughter. The resulting stress is bound to find expression in one form or another. Your daughter has had to find a way of coping with the trauma of being in a serious car accident – which is emotionally traumatic in itself – but in her situation, it was coupled with the death of her father and neurological damage. On top of this, she has had to adjust to a new family structure, including a stepfather, which is often, initially, an awkward relationship at best. In your daughter’s case, this change has occurred at a very fragile and vulnerable time of life, adolescence. All of her reactions have to be filtered through the emotional and perceptual lenses characteristic of an adolescent fraught with the usual mood changes, emotional outbursts, and struggles to establish a clearer sense of identity.
It is common and normal for adolescents to be self-centered. In part, this is a consequence of their growing separation from their parents, and the resulting confusion and anxiety they feel as they struggle to establish their own sense of identity. In your daughter’s case, normal adolescent behaviors may be exasperated by the as of yet undigested emotional debris from the traumas and change she has experienced over the past few years. She is likely to need extra understanding and support. If problem behaviors emerge, short-term therapy may be helpful to her as she finds a way to ride the emotional waves in her life and steer her own ship.
(Dr. Sallie Norquist is a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice and is director of Chaitanya Counseling and Stress Management Center, a center for upliftment and enlivenment, in Hoboken.)
Dr. Norquist and the staff of Chaitanya invite you to write them at Chaitanya Counseling and Stress Management Center, 51 Newark St., Suite 205, Hoboken, NJ 07030 or www.chaitanya.com or by e-mail at drnorquist@chaitanya.com, or by fax at (201) 656-4700. Questions can address various topics, including relationships, life’s stresses, difficulties, mysteries and dilemmas, as well as questions related to managing stress or alternative ways of understanding and treating physical symptoms and health-related concerns. Practitioners of the following techniques are available to answer your questions: psychology, acupuncture, therapeutic and neuromuscular massage, yoga, meditation, spiritual & transpersonal psychology, Art Therapy, reflexology, Reiki, Cranial Sacral Therapy, Alexander Technique, and Jin Shin Do. Ó 2000 Chaitanya Counseling and Stress Management Center