Dear Doctor Loveland,

I’ve had this unique issue going on for a few months, 7, to be exact. I was introduced to someone who worked with the same company as mine but never in my building or city for that matter. I’ve never seen him or meet him before and he doesn’t live near me. It’s a huge company and you don’t know anyone outside of your office but he was there this day. I instantly felt attracted to him and want to get to know him better, but I didn’t want to over step my bondouries if he was married (yes I checked- no ring, but that means nothing anymore)

Since then I can’t stop thinking of him and I’ve even asked co-workers if they know him and some have even offered up the ‘he’s newly single…Wink wink’ before telling me much else. I’ve only heard good things and that he’s really nice. Three months later we had a work event, he was there but I didn’t even say I hi or anything…I felt like an idiot. The next day I felt I’ve lost a chance to talk to him and I saw his name on the way to work, the same way I take DAILY. I thought it was werid and maybe a sign. Since then I have seen his name everywhere his name isn’t common and I have started to keep notes of this because it’s just crazy. I have noticed the name on 16 different occasions. My story is I have been single for ever and I am a mom, I have never actually dated in the last 15plus years. I am a good catch but alittle apprehensive about the dating scene and scared. I don’t work there anymore for other reasons but also feel I needed to leave if this would ever happen. I’m not good at relationships nor have good modeled relationships/marriages. Which is my intent of dating in the first place.

Am i over thinking things and just go for it or should I just leave it be?

V

Dear V,

What can I say but GO FOR IT! Seize the day mama! You can do this. I recommend you find every TV, book, and movie character you admire that is brave and soak those women in. Find a role model for courage and just fake it til you make it. Make this happen. If you don’t explore this further you will continue to be curious and wonder why you had all these signs to move forward and explore something with this man. You honestly have nothing to lose but perhaps a fantasy. Now you are trapped in fantasy and this guy is looking pretty great. If the worst case happens where you are faced with a small amount of rejection, first of all that is about him, NOT YOU, and secondly you are now moving forward knowing he wasn’t all that great anyway because he wasn’t available for you. No more wasting time in fantasy. Just be bold and go for it. I recommend you do this with him and about dating in general. I am sorry you feel you aren’t good at relationships but it sounds like you have been single for quite some time so stop telling yourself that old story that you aren’t good at relationships. You don’t know if that is true anymore. You are older and wiser. Now we just need to get you open and brave. Start living your life and allowing love to come in. You can do this with dating or just getting social and meeting new people. Don’t beat yourself up for not speaking to this man but start to build yourself up so that you can be brave and emulate some of those fierce women you look up to by seizing the moment the next time this may happen with this man or another. I would see all these signs not necessarily pointing in the direction of this one man, but signs your heart is opening and you are ready to be out there again. Start telling yourself the story in your head that you are great at relationships. You are a mother. Being a mother immediately has given you genuine practice in how to have relationships. In parenting we compromise, communicate, and become more than improved at being in relationships. We shine. Now go spread your light! Be bold!

Fiercely,

Doctor Loveland

 

Dear Dr. Loveland,

I have been involved with a guy, K, off and on for the last 15 years. We met in college and dated, moved in together, and then broke up after 5 years as he was irresponsible and never worked in a traditional sense. His money was always tight and when he had it he spent it extravagantly. This always bothered me as I have been working since I was 14, and am very responsible, and have always had a good work ethic. Other than this, we have a very strong connection that has grown stronger over time and has never been the same with anyone else. He has been there for me through some very difficult times in my life and I am afraid not to have him in some capacity. He makes me feel completely comfortable and knows me better than I seem to know myself at times.

We broke up for a few years and dated other people- I think I was always critical of him and not supportive of his lifestyle. I always felt like he cared about himself more than me or anything else, and like I have to push him to do nice things for me. I think we both want the other person to do more for each other. He has since moved to LA to work as an artist, which he is doing, and slowly, very slowly, building a career of sorts. He wants me to move with him but I do not trust that he would be financially dependable, but would again be dependent on me.

I really want to have a family and as I am now 34, I feel pressure to get started. Do I break it off or give it one last try? I don’t want to move to LA, I was hoping he would get his stuff together and prove that he can be responsible as he assures me he wants to, but things remain in perpetual limbo. I can’t move forward and date other people until I resolve this with him, and I am growing tired of waiting for my life to begin.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Thank you,
Restlessly Waiting

Dear Restlessly Waiting,
Thank so much for writing in and reaching out. It is lovely to hear from you. I am probably about to say a lot of conflicting things, but my feeling is one them will fit for you and help you. First of all, 34 is not old. When I turned 30 I felt the same way, like a clock was ticking for me to make this dream come true of having children and someone very close to me said, “My sister is 50 and just got pregnant for the first time, with some medical help but yes pregnant at 50!” This gave me huge relief. I still had 20 years to have children. Thank God for medicine when a woman needs a back-up plan. Years later this woman at age 53 also gave birth to twins, so she wasn’t done at 50 either. SO I would recommend you open your mind and heart to the time you still have. With all the being said, if your goal is children it does not sound like this man is making life choices in line with heading towards co-parenting with you anytime soon. LA is a fabulous place to live, full of life experiences to be had. It also can be a shallow place full of lost people and having lived there myself, in my opinion is not an ideal place to raise children. Since K is not known for being responsible or financially dependable it is very unlikely a life as an artist in expensive LA is going to be a place where he becomes more of those things. People have dreams. Let him have his but not at the expense of yours which is to grow a life and family with someone who knows you and is responsible with the skills to match you. I have come across many women, including myself, who have felt terrified to throw in the towel on a relationship that has taken up 3, 6, or 15 years of your life. It is hard to believe this when one is single, but very often the relationships that can take up some years are soul mates giving us lessons we are meant to learn and grow from. Perhaps it is taking you 15+ years to learn the lessons K has to teach you. Soul mates come into our lives to stretch and change our souls, but are often the types of intense relationships that would be too painful to spend our entire lives in. Of course you are both very attached. That is a lot of time to spend with someone, even if it has been on and off. No one can ever make anyone ready to walk away from someone they love until they are good and ready, when that magical day comes where courage and faith make you take that step towards something different, someone you have not even met yet. Walking away hurts. There are always memories but send K love through your thoughts and then just keep on walking. You will not make room for the next partner in your life if he is still present in yours. You can try to be friends, etc but usually some time apart, perhaps forever is the best choice for getting over someone sooner. Sliding to the other side of your options, you could move to LA (even though I recognize you said here that you do not want to move there). You can give it one last shot. I would put an internal, private timeline on it. “I will give myself one year.” Honestly, it is a lot to ask of yourself. Your home is here, your life, your friends, your career and to walk away from all that for this man who was willing to walk over a 1000 miles away from you for his dream that is not you, that is a lot to ask. But if you feel unfinished, if you feel you need to explore more with him until you can completely embrace him or completely let him go then go after him. You are a capable woman of rebuilding your life in LA and then rebuilding it again if you come back. No regrets! You need to decide if you have the time. Yes, there are medical or adoption back-up plans that open the doors for motherhood for you for many more years but ideally perhaps you have something more traditional and sooner in mind. I also wanted to say one thing about your self-aware comment about how you think you were always critical and not supportive of his lifestyle. Good job for being aware of this and owning up to it. But also, sometimes people just grow apart. I look back in shame of the endless relationships I was in with men I thought I was helping, teaching to grow up or be responsible or find direction but honestly I never respected them. I maybe treated them respectfully but in my mind, I really didn’t have respect for their lifestyles and choices and that had to make them feel bad on some level even though I never said it outloud. Perhaps I did help them and some other woman is benefiting from that now and that makes me happy or maybe I just hurt them because I was trying to make something work for years and years when it was never meant to work. Either way, we all learned and grew and are better off. It is hard to see things this way when still entangled in the love part. I have never left someone or had someone leave me and me still not be in love with them. That is a lot to ask of yourself Restlessly Waiting. Know if you walk away, do it with flair, with faith! I don’t know if this helps you but I was 32 when I walked away from a great love that was absolutely breaking me. Through knowing and loving him I was forced into the best lessons of my life, shaping me undoubtedly. I spent many, many years torturing myself to make us fit. Finally one sacred night, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and took the final leap away. About 7 months later I opened my eyes and heart to a new type of man, and this man turned out to be everything I never knew I always needed. I do not suffer anymore or long for something I don’t have because he gave it all to me, including children I was so fearful I was too old for. Had my first at age 35 which under doctor’s care is considered “advanced maternal age” but have had flawless pregnancies and healthy, happy perfect deliveries and babies. I share this all with you because sometimes all a woman needs to hear is a story of hope. I never, ever thought I could find this so fast when I walked away from my years and years invested in previous relationships but I did. It is cliche and everyone says it only because it is true, when it is right you WILL know. Everything else is us just forcing things to be that aren’t meant to be any longer. I want you to feel you have choices because you do. You probably already have the answer but may just be really struggling to admit it to yourself and everyone all around you. I believe in you. I believe in your future. Miracles happen. Good luck, Restlessly Waiting… now stop waiting and go vibrantly live your life attracting into it all that you have always wanted for yourself and more.

With Hope,

Doctor Loveland

Dear Doctor Loveland,
Hi there! I’m a guy in my 20’s living in Colorado and I was wondering if I could get some help on a situation that’s been bugging me for some time. In the past few months there has been this girl that I’ve been spending more time with. At first it was just a nice casual friendship, but as time went on I developed more serious feelings for her. We did a lot of things together and spent a lot more time together. Being around her was very intoxicating and I adored little moments with her and people even said that we were compatible and would’ve made a cute couple. For a few moments I honestly believed that we might have had a chance, but a couple weeks ago she almost completely stopped talking to me. I made efforts to make plans but she seemed very uninterested and the plans always fell through. I know it wasn’t all in my head, we really did have a lot of fun and had a bond that was there. Frankly I feel a little dumb to think that things were going so well. What do you think happened? Should I pursue her and find out what happened or is it as black and white as it seems and she just lost interest?
Thank you,  From a guy in his 20’s

Dear Guy in his 20’s,
First of all, thank you for being my first male person to write in! Bravo! Secondly, thank you for being an emotionally intelligent male! Double Bravo! It sounds like you have a great deal of self-awareness, thoughtfulness, and sensitivity. I know it can be very difficult to be a man who carries those qualities and not lose them over time because the wrong gals are unappreciative. Most women are very grateful for these qualities, BUT some of us just run in fear because we are terrified of getting what we want. It can be very confusing to all of the sudden be matched by a man and treated with the grace we always longed for, especially if we are used to being treated much the opposite. I am not sure if this is what happened with this running woman. What I can say is, in my very strong opinion, heterosexual men and women can almost never, ever be just friends. It rarely stays just as friends. One of you develops feelings, one of you doesn’t and blammmmo it’s over. Lots of people like to have “practice relationships” with their friends. They pretend. They get attention, get their needs met. But they don’t have “that feeling” for the friend so eventually when one or the other does have “that feeling” the friendship ends. It stinks. It hurts. BUT there is a way to appreciate the experience you had if you just shift your perspective to gratitude for what you shared, experienced, and learned instead of being resentful it didn’t lead to more. Friendships can be practice relationships in a way where we can learn a lot about what we want and what we do not want in a future romantic partner. Even in same-sex hetero friendships you can get some of your romantic needs met and learn a lot about what you would like in a partner someday. Life is all about gaining experience and learning about yourself. Therein lies the adventure! With all that being said, I can’t just pretend what you just went through is easy. Personally if I were you, I would need some closure. I would delicately at first try to get an explanation, even though it sounds like you already feel strongly she lost interest or never had it but used you for romantic play. I would want to hear it. Maybe that makes me a masochist. I just appreciate closure because then you can get angry, grieve, what have you and then move on quicker sometimes than a lingering question mark. That’s just me. There is this lovely series called “Sex and the City”. If you can get past all the sex in it, and follow the entire series, I find it to be one of the most educational and truthful bibles about relationships I have ever been exposed to. They pretty much cover everything in there. One day I was blessed to meet the writer and producer and nearly peed myself with excitement. I have met and seen many celebrities in my life, but never would I react so embarrassingly as I did when I met him. Being the relationship nut/writer/therapist I am, I ran up and told him he changed my life forever with his writing and he said, “You’re fabulous!” Aren’t we all? All the singles are FABULOUS! And it is rough out there but if you can tweak your perspective to see these obstacles as gifts not tortures, your life will brilliantly change for the better. I promise. The other thing that is so hard to do is realize, “it is NOT personal!” This concept is hard to swallow, because when you are courting and putting yourself out there it feels pretty damn personal. But the truth is, so much of it is timing, and the other person’s hang-ups, history, etc, oh and TIMING! Did I mention timing? I spent a good 15 years abusing myself in the relationships and probably mistakenly missing out on a lot of wonderful people like yourself until I was finally sick and tired of being sick and tired, and then a blessing hit me. I finally changed my perspective, opened my mind and heart to allow good near me and that changed everything. It was then I attracted grand and great and I was finally ready to receive it. I would ask myself if I were you, “why am I interested in people who don’t reciprocate?” What is my interest in people who have their face halfway turned away from me? It is the calling of a romantic to chase. Just try to be a little more intentional about who you are chasing. Perhaps at this very moment there is someone facing you, longing for you that you haven’t noticed because you are caught up on someone running away from the great and grandness that is you. I know I said men and women can’t usually lastingly be just friends, but when you do find HER she will be the greatest friend you ever had and there lies the irony. My advice: don’t spend one moment second-guessing the wonderfulness that is you! You had it right. You offered her yourself. You shined. She ran. Those are her issues, not yours. Now it is time to open your radar to someone who matches you, who compliments you, and in the meantime that person is you. Be your person. Trust that you have what it takes. This running woman, her fear, does not define the arsenal of what you offer the world and all your future relationships.
With hope for your kind,
Doctor Loveland

P.S.: All the SINGLES OUT THERE, please write in. The chase, the in and out of relationships, the losses and the gains… those are my specialty.

Dear DL,
I’m so glad I have someone to write to about this topic that has got me turned upside down. I have been married to my husband for three years and dated for three years before we were married. He is a good man. He loves me and takes care of our family. My problem with him is he looks at porn. I have tried becoming okay with porn but deep inside me I have a big problem with it. I strongly feel it is cheating. I am disgusted by it and by the way the women are. I consider myself to be fairly open-minded but I just can’t accept this about him. It hurts me. He has done it since we dated and even though I have threatened to leave several times, he always goes back to it. Sometimes I do a good job trying to forget it happens or turning the other cheek, other times it gets me so angry. I think I am pretty attractive, even after my baby I bounced right back and look good I think but I don’t look like a porn star. I can’t compete with those women. Not to offend anyone reading this but I hate those women who do porn. Why do they exist? Just to make normal women like me feel awful and like I could never reach their level. On any given day I feel my husband would choose those women over me. I guess I should be happy he doesn’t sleep with other women and this is just a porn thing but it hurts me every time. DL, what can I do? I don’t like feeling like this. Thanks for listening and being willing to post about this porn topic that I know a lot of my girlfriends struggle with.
Discouraged Wife from Fort Collins, CO

Dear Discouraged Wife,
Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your story that I am sure many of us can relate to. You can find so many different opinions on the porn topic and I have probably come across most of them in some form. Of course there are couples and women who enjoy porn, who take no offense in it and some who even use it as a means to enhance their sexual lives. To each their own. With that being said, I completely empathize with you dear Discouraged Wife. Your truth is your truth. You don’t like porn. You see it as a betrayal. This is your right to have this opinion. Many, many people feel cheated upon by their partners who engage in porn and begin to feel low self-worth trying to compete with those false, unattainable images. When porn has been studied, it has been proven it stimulates the same parts of the brain that the most addictive illegal drugs do. Basically, compulsive porn watching IS an addiction and once one crosses over into addiction, even if that addiction is sex, it stops becoming sexual and becomes more about an addictive behavior than actually about being sexual at all. Sexuality is about intimacy. I could possibly open my mind to believe in some scenarios porn can be considered intimate, but that is stretching my mind as far as it can. Under most conditions, porn is not intimate and in fact is used to put a huge barrier between a person and their partner resulting in diminishing intimacy. For those of us who have been directly negatively affected by porn, I find no problem with yelling it from the mountaintops that no no NO I am personally not ok with porn in my home, in my relationships. Discouraged Wife, you have said you have threatened to leave because of it. I do not recommend this unless you actually plan on backing up this choice and leaving. I am a behaviorist in that way. Romantic partners are always paying attention, especially in the beginning to what our boundaries are and if we follow through on upholding those boundaries or if they perhaps suave themselves past your boundaries. So ask yourself, do you want your husband as he is today or do you want to leave your husband? Notice how I didn’t say, do you want to stay with your husband as long as he changes? That is not an option. We should never, ever bank on someone changing. What we see is what we get. I mean I am a relationship therapist so of course I believe people can make lasting changes within a relationship if both are committed to some real work, but sadly I have found it quite rare where both are equally committed to personal change to benefit the relationship. Your husband has been clear about who he is and what his behaviors are. If you can accept that he does this and still enjoy being his wife, then continue as is but without the resentment and discouragement you are feeling. Rewind. Let me be clear, by accepting that your partner does something you do not like is not at all saying you now agree with what they are doing or like it. No, no, no. It just means you are a full and vibrant woman that has better things to do with your time than tracking your partner’s habits you find repulsive. I have known couples where one of them absolutely despises the others’ habit like smoking and were still able to share happy lives and children together, married and intimate. I have known women who left their partners due to porn and were discouraged by how many future suitors were also engaged in porn. I have known people I have held in the highest respect in my personal lives come clean about a porn addiction and address it in the most honorable way possible with sponsors and computer software tracking them to keep them accountable. Addictions have been proven none absolutely ever get kicked without support and humility. I have known women I love be tortured and broken by their partner’s porn relapses that left them feeling so empty and lost that they came the closest they ever did to actually leaving. If they could choose again they would never sign up for a partner with a behavior of porn addiction but they still stay and try to either look the other way or accept them as they are. Some of us have been driven mad by porn. I can say for myself personally the lowest I ever felt about myself in my life in any relationship was when I was engaged in a relationship with a person who compulsively needed and hid porn. The sanity I lost, the lows I hit, there was no dignity left. It tore me up. It took me a long time but I was lucky enough to be able to get out and start over and eventually find someone who shares my values. They do exist. So many of us suffer from intimacy issues. We are all so married to our phones. With our technology replacing our human interactions, it makes sense it has replaced our sexual lives too. But like I said before, it is not sexual, it is compulsive. Even actual sex isn’t sexual or intimate for many, but just another compulsion or addiction which is why porn has been known as a potential gateway drug to actual physical, not just spiritual infidelity. I have never in my life seen someone lastingly become clean from any addiction FOR another person. We can plead, manipulate, control, shell out empty consequences but no one ever gets better from an addiction taking hold of them and ruining their relationships until they hit their own personal bottom within themselves and choose to seek help and become free from their addictions with some substantial work. The person I knew who sought the sponsor for porn and got help, his wife didn’t even hate porn but felt compassion for him for suffering from something that depleted his soul. What I am saying is, it wasn’t her threats that lead him down a healing path. We can’t control other people. We can only make our own choices and control our own selves. We don’t have to like every single thing our partner does, but there are some deal breakers. Readers, what are your deal breakers? You should know them like they are your own ten commandments, something one can’t engage in any friendship or romantic relationship without. Discouraged Wife, I see you genuinely love your husband. I see he disappoints you with his shortcomings. I hope you can find the peace you are seeking within a marriage of love and truth, but mostly I hope you can find serenity within you, spending less time focusing on his behaviors and more time focusing on your blessings and all the strengths and beauties you have within you. You have my utmost respect and warm wishes as you navigate this heavy, painful topic. Reach out to others, you are not alone.

Dear Doctor Loveland,
I have been checking your site now for many week trying to get the courage to write in. I keep hoping someone else will write in with a story like mine so I can just see what you tell them so here I am on April 7 finally brave enough to write you. So I love my boyfriend. I really love him but we have both done things to make each other not really trust each other I guess. So my question is about his phone. I feel like when I am with him all I can think about is when he might leave the room for a minute so I can check it. There is never really anything on there but I found something on his phone a real long time ago and ever since I just can’t stop checking. I know he loves me. He makes me feel special a lot. How can I stop checking his phone? What if there is something on there I really need to know about? I swear I am not really this person but this is how it has been like lately. Help!
My Fake Name: Julie

Dear Julie,
Thanks for mustering up the courage to write in. Everyone should know this is a safe, anonymous place to write in for relationship help whether you are crushing or single or in a relationship or breaking up. I am here to answer your dilemmas. Julie, you say here you want to give up checking his phone. If you are committed to that, then you have all my support. Really it comes down to a choice and if you truly choose to stop, it will take some discipline and motivation but you will be able to stop. Maybe you just decide you are going to trust him and then you just will. Also trusting the universe will reveal to you anything you will NEED to know to make informed decisions about staying with him or not. Perhaps you don’t trust him but you want to stay. If you don’t trust him, I recommend that if you are sexual with this man you protect yourself from any possible incident of STI’s. That is your body, your health… not worth putting that at risk. Period. Love is a tricky thing. Sometimes it is very hard to distinguish between actual love and this things that feels a lot like love but is more like obsession- “I can’t see myself living without you” kind of feelings. I often see couples who are just looking for an excuse to leave each other but just don’t have the proof yet. It is too painful to leave without substantial evidence, and confusing and causes lots of repetitive getting back together. I am sure you are aware that if this man wanted to hide anything on his phone or in his life from you, he easily can. Unless you are some kind of tech hack that knows more than the average person who is phone snooping, it would be very possible for anyone to cover their tracks. That may be a reason to justify giving it up. You aren’t going to find hard evidence there anyway so therefore it is a waste of your time and your serenity you are freely giving away. Sometimes we are just looking for a reason to justify leaving. We are not told to go with our guts. We are told to find the proof to back it up, that seeing is believing but when we have this sick “I know I am going to get hurt” feeling we ignore it and so continues the cycle of abuse. Self abuse. Because you have a choice to stay or go, to check the phone or not. Think of all the things you could be doing with your time besides waiting for that small moment to snoop on your boyfriend’s phone like actually connecting with your boyfriend! My suggestion is spend that same time reaching out to others, being a good person serving, and getting out of your own head of hurt. Getting out and seeing the world can give you a clear head to move forward in a more clear-minded way and give you the courage you need to make logical choices for yourself. Love is emotional. But healthy love is also logical. You are writing to me because you know you have jumped past logic and right into what can feel like insanity. Any bad habit, like phone snooping (which most of us are guilty of at some point so no judgement here!), can make anyone question their own sanity. How did I get like this? I went to college? How did I stoop this low? Have I got nothing better to do than check up on some man I could easily live without? The “easily” part may not feel doable now but it will become it. I have never in life met a woman who does not eventually learn how to do a break up with grace and rise up like phoenix above all of her past love stories or tragedies. We gather. We console. We inspire. We get busy living. We comfort others. We find our road less traveled, our own Julie-specific road and on that road we rise so high like that phoenix. Drop the phone. Go outside. Feel the sun on your face. There is hope and grace in it.

To: Doctor Loveland

Been with my boyfriend for almost 6 years, we have a sone together who is 2. Since day 1 we hit it off, havibg the most amazing time together. We have had many trials and tribulations and have had a pretty rocky relationship but completely love one another. He is very outspoken and at times says things he shouldnt. I also feel he does not take me seriously at times and does not listen to my feelings when expressed. Ive explained this to him on multiple occasions and now have become very quite, not expressing how I feel because instead of listening, he always has something to say and it is never positive or encouraging. I feel me expressing this to him does nothing, as I have many times before. I also feel that he takes my “high energy and need to keep things organized” for granted and he has just allowed himself to become lazy. When I express how tired I am due to me practically doing everything from working full time, spending time with our son, cleaning up everyones mess and working out so I have that 30 min a day to myself, he acts like it is a joke and becomes defensive as if it is not true. Help me

From: Stephanie

Dear Stephanie,
I can certainly see why you feel stuck in regards to tolerating behaviors you are not fond of like him saying things he shouldn’t, laziness, and defensiveness. It sounds like you have had some good years together but have also struggled. I am sure there have been moments where either of you could have walked away. The truth is we never, ever walk away truly in our hearts until we are good and ready and nothing anyone, anywhere can say anything to encourage us further. So based on the fact that this man is the father of your son, you still share some happiness, and you have not left him based on these behaviors, I am going to address this blog with some suggestions for you to try on to see if they may make your situation a little more tolerable. Let me start with this. Never bank on people changing. People in their core are who they are. Sometimes behaviors can change here and there but only if they fit along side their core. So for instance I have been very guilty of being super in love with someone but their behaviors pushed me far enough where I easily could have joined the gals on “Orange is the New Black”. Be honest. Isn’t that what the people we love drive us to sometimes? So instead of riding the merry-go-round of round and round trying to change someone, work on what we do have control over. Ourselves (sometimes :P). What I am basically hearing are two things: your partner does not listen to you and your partner is not showing respect for all you contribute to your little family. You have choices, Stephanie. You could just absolutely and totally accept this man for exactly who he is today, no strings attached to things changing. This would be something I would recommend trying for one whole week. Just try changing your mind, flipping a switch even if you have to fake it til you make it that you absolutely accept and love your partner as he is, flaws and all. See if your week goes smoother. For instance, you can choose to clean up after him or not. Check yourself and see if you are tallying what he does and doesn’t do. I have been guilty of this just so I could come out on top. I mean, we are powerful women. We create and birth miracles so of course we come out on top :P. No seriously, try to notice when you are one-uping him in your mind. “I do this, so why doesn’t he do that?” That usually goes no where. Just do things because you want to or have to and that’s it. And if you don’t want to pick up after him. Don’t. He is a grown man. He can figure it out. But if you like having a clean and functioning home then keep doing what you are doing but without the resentment. Resentment only shortens our lives and robs us of our serenity. The things I am suggesting to try here are advanced, difficult tasks. They all involve coaxing your brain to look at things differently so that you can be more happy and less frustrated. Again, I am not saying you don’t have anything to be frustrated about. But because you have chosen to stay and share your time with this man, then spend the time changing and controlling the only thing you do have power over and that is yourself. Also, get busy living. This is something I will say a lot on this blog. I love that you take those 30 minutes for yourself every day to work out. Go Stephanie! You want someone who will give you the encouragement and positive perspective you are seeking, then go find it in a friend. Notice where you do get it and don’t go seeking it from somewhere you’ll never get it. What is the saying? Don’t go looking for a loaf of bread at the hardware store. Your partner is not going to give this to you. Get it somewhere else. A sister. A co-worker. A new friend. Etc. You have a toddler, Stephanie. You know all about absolutely adoring and loving someone, but them sometimes doing behaviors that drive you a little nutty. People are not their behaviors. BUT there are consequences and rewards to all behaviors. The reward to your boyfriend’s behaviors is he still gets to be with you even when he is a little insensitive. That is some reward! The consequence is you are going to go find some extra happiness in some other ways when he is not in a place to offer it. This is the best choice for you. He may not like it, but I am not in the business of making him comfortable. I am in the business of empowering you. Now go get your self-care on! Cheers to your workouts!

To: Doctor Loveland

I have been single for 16 years while raising my son as a 100% single mom. Recently I realized that he will be leaving the nest soon – my dog is getting old, and my mom who has lived with me for those 16 years as well has terminal cancer. I figure I’ll loose them all at once and want to curl up in a ball and die. Anyway. All this made me think I needed to start investing in my future – does that have a companion? Someone to grow old with – travel with – companionship – sounds really nice. But, over the years I think I’ve become jaded. I see relationships constantly that I thought were happy and healthy crumble and leave people in ruins. Is it worth it? Are there TRULY happy people in relationships out there?!

From: Amy

Dear Amy,
First of all congrats to you on your 16 year marriage to the most important person you will ever love, YOU! Singlehood should be applauded. It is brave and beautiful. I hear no loneliness or desperation in your writing here. I just see strength and openness. No matter how you move forward, keep those skills! I mean what 100% single mom does not completely deserve all our admiration. I would vote for YOU for president! It also sounds like you have a lot of loss coming soon. I would be careful not to get too ahead of yourself with preparing for the losses coming and end up missing the here and now where you still have a loving son in your home, your mother (what a wonderful daughter you are!), and your loyal pup still surrounding you. With that being said, it sounds like it might be time to get yourself a team surrounding you with support and JOY. This team may include a therapist since you mentioned wanting to curl up in a ball and die. Most of us certainly can relate to that feeling. How does one live without the ones we treasure so much? Which is why the timing of you writing to me and preparing for what is to come is perfect. Build your team. This may include a group of friends with similar interest to you whether that be through a school, church, job, class, community center, etc. Use those single mom skills here Amy and go build a team for yourself. Team Amy! You will need them and Lord knows they need you even if they haven’t even met you yet. So that is the part of investing in your future that I recommend first for you. Along with it, I would do some sincere journaling about a partner and what that would look like for you. Lists are powerful. Putting it out there into the universe what you are trying to bring forth to potentially curl up with you in that ball when you get down. People need people. Period. You have been more than generous with yourself raising a son and caring for your mother. I believe someone is out there that wants to give you back all your have given and more. I hear your trepidation about relationships. We have all seen exactly what you have seen with watching relationships crumble even when you would have bet on them succeeding. My answer to this is: good job for jumping in to being open to meeting something with this awareness that relationships sometimes end but they never fail, they always, always, ALWAYS bring something to our lives we did not have before. I would not let this fear or this possibly could be considered “realistic” thinking that relationships can end keep you from being brave. Cause remember Amy, brave is what you do. I have found the best way to meet someone is to do your life, get busy living doing the things you love. Get out there to make friends and get involved in activities that feed your spirit, and then somehow people standing right next to you in said activities end up being like-minded, like-hearted and ready to jump in with you! There are websites such as meetup.com that offer opportunities to meet up in groups of people who have similar interests as you without any dating pressure whatsoever. If you want to actually date and meet people, the trend now is online dating. Depending on your generation this can be super intimidating and feel a little inauthentic. I would ask you to push yourself past judgement and at least do a little online research to see if there is a dating site you may feel comfortable trying. If you have hang ups about being online and start meeting people or going on dates and don’t feel like sharing with others you met online, then say you met through a friend. It is no one’s business how you meet people fabulous enough to match you in a date. So I end with answering your final question. “Are there TRULY happy people in relationship out there?!” My answer is YES! People need people. We have those fearful of being on their own with extreme co-dependence and those fearful of connecting with extreme independence. The goal is balance. Put yourself out there. I am not saying go to a bar and get hit on. Amy, you are far past that. I am saying go live your life with an open heart, getting involved in the activities you are passionate about and see who comes knocking. Get yourself surrounded by some other warriors like yourself, single moms, single dads, heroes. You will start to have some very compelling relationships. Lose the “jaded” label. It doesn’t suit you. Work on it every single day. Say, “I choose to see the light. I choose to have hope. I choose to let people into my heart.” Your life will change. Now go hug your mother. Enjoy your time with her. If she is like most moms, more than anything she wants to see you living your life fully surrounding yourself with people who flourish in your presence and appreciate all that you are. Go make her proud!

Dear Dr. Loveland,

First time writing in, and I hope you can help. I’ve been married 11 years to a good man and we have 2 young children. My husband works a full time day job Monday through Friday and I work evenings and some weekends. When we are at home together, there is always something to cook, clean, or do. It feels impossible to connect with each other emotionally and physically. We are exhausted at night and often times one of our kids ends up sleeping in bed with us, which means the time we have alone together is limited. Any advice on how to bring a spark back to our tired marriage? I just want to feel more of a connection with him.

Thanks,
Exhausted Wife

Dear Exhausted Wife,
Bless you and your hardworking family. Balancing everything you are listing is a tall, tall order so first I just want to commend you for writing in at all. Doing so means you think your marriage is important enough to write in about. So often moms get so entrenched in motherhood that wifehood takes an extreme backseat. I think it is beautiful that you care enough to want a connection with your husband. As you know moms can get tapped out, touched out, and have little left for their poor, lonely husbands. Often fathers don’t get those same needs met that women do with all the feels and loves we get from our babes so they still very much long for connection from their wives. The first thing that comes to mind when I read your situation is, we ALWAYS make time for what is most important to us. If we HAVE to have a cheeseburger today, bygone we are going to get ourself to a drive thru and get ourselves a cheeseburger! It sounds like perhaps your young children are getting a tad less younger and it might be time to adjust the priorities a bit on how you spend your time. For instance, maybe there are certain hours of the night where there are no children in your bed. Schedule time to be together then. As lovely as it is that you both get to parent your children with different work schedules accommodating the children, that work schedule does not accommodate your marriage so perhaps the money you are saving on sitting from him covering the kids some evenings and weekends, and you covering them during the day should be spent on some scheduled on-going dates and time together. If there are local sitters or family that you trust to leave the kids there, then go spend time in your home together alone. Make your time together sacred. As sacred as work time. As sacred as kid time. We walk a dangerous line in our marriages if we don’t make our marriage a priority. And personally I happen to believe that one of the best gifts you can give your children is to be in a very happy marriage. Let them see you kiss. Let them see you love one another. It will only do good things for them in molding their values towards relationships as they grow up. Another way to look at it is, small children have a lot of needs but they don’t stay that way. This is just a season of your life where it takes a little extra creative planning to get time together to connect but it won’t always be this way. So in order to keep that marriage going so that it will still be there strong and connected after the young-child years or after the kids move out someday then we MUST make the marriage a high priority. Just like we need to make time for ourselves a priority to refuel and jump back in (Mom: Me time. Huh, what’s that?! :P). Sounds like you are both very capable of balancing a lot, so sit down together and get real creative with coming up with a plan for time together. Not necessarily fancy dates or vacations. Just time to be together and be friends and be connected and have sex. Yes, schedule sex. There is nothing at all wrong with this. You don’t skip breakfast for the kids because you are too busy or tired or something came up, so don’t skip sex either. No matter how tired you are, you will feel better afterwards knowing you made the effort to connect. So I am finishing where I started. You are making your marriage a priority just by writing in, so that means you are one step closer to getting that spark back. It will be a new spark. A now-mother and father spark, a little bit older-now spark, a let’s “schedule” time to snuggle and watch Netflix spark, but it will be a spark if you both can meet each other in the middle of all the madness and say together, “we matter, our marriage matters.” Now go get yourself a cheeseburger, stat!

Dear Doctor Loveland,

I wanted to get some advice on my relationship with my long term boyfriend. He spends most of his time working, working out, and with his friends. There is little time left for us. Whenever I bring this up to him, he shuts down and makes excuses. I know he has lots of commitments but I don’t feel like our relationship is a priority. How do I address this with him and not have him shut down? How can we compromise so both of us are happy? -Jenny

Dear Jenny of Denver, CO

Thanks for writing in. First I want to say you are WORTH spending time with. Period. In long term relationships we can get into ruts and bad habits. It sounds like Bob (I’ll just call your long-term boyfriend Bob) needs a reality check and a shift in priorities. But let’s start with you. What can you be getting from yourself, for yourself to fill some of the spaces that Bob is leaving? Jam pack your life with the stuff that makes you feel amazing and WORTH spending time with. Sometimes we get so run down from our relationship ruts that we stop being fun to be around because we fall into the nag or the “on repeat” girlfriend we absolutely never intended to be. So check your side of the street, go get yourself a big dose of happy and then address this issue with Bob, and here’s how. I would recommend you do not “trick” him by sidestepping a real conversation about this just in hopes that he won’t shut down. Of course you could keep it light and polite, and start with how you have been cleaning your side of the street to get your needs met and feel happy but then just say, “Bob I miss you. Bob I really want to spend more time with you. Bob I feel kind of lonely and it seems like you don’t really have time for me. Do you want to shift things around in your day and your week and your life to make time for me?” And see what he says. If he’s the type of Bob that needs some time to let this marinate or come up with some creative solutions then don’t take that personally and give him the time he requires. Get yourself real busy living while he is creative problem solving for the betterment of your relationship. Maybe even give him a timeline. “Hey, can we re-chat about this in a couple days when we have come up with some creative solutions?” This is where the pressure is off of you and he needs to go figure some things out. If he doesn’t take you seriously and doesn’t get back to you on this topic, walk. Walk away. I know, it sounds intense but here is the thing. What is the point of being in a relationship with someone if you are not spending time together? Seriously? I get we both have to have out separate lives to fill our heart tanks with hobbies and careers and friends etc but if we are gonna put in the work and commitment to be in a long-term relationship then we better damn well be getting something from it and in my opinion that something should be knowing day and night, “this guy thinks the sun shines out of my butt” (to quote “Juno”)…”I am absolutely his favorite person to spend time with” Even if you only see each other once a week, if you know this person is all about you during that time then he does have his priorities straight. Sometimes relationships are not about compromise, they are about starting to drive a new way home from work every day. We get so caught up in our same routine, that same route we go every day that we start to no longer notice colors and life blooming all around us. Take a new route tomorrow and see how your life starts to change. I wish Bob the best, I pray he re-prioritizes like a man who was just given a second chance at life. Because you Jenny, you are life. You are gonna be just fine because just by writing in you know your worth spending time with… and you are!
Hopeful,
Doctor Loveland

I live in a town where people send in their valentines every single year from all over the world to be re-mailed from the Sweetheart City of Loveland, CO. Over 130,000 people from all 50 states and 110 counties send their love through this city at Valentine’s Day each year. It seemed fitting for me to launch doctorloveland.com on Valentine’s Day 2016, the 70th anniversary of Loveland’s Valentine re-mailing program.

Being a relationship expert and skilled therapist who lives in this lovely Loveland town, I figure I can contribute to the “sweetheart” theme of this town by reading and processing your love stories from eventually all 50 states and 110+ countries by offering some guidance and empowerment. This is a town of love and art, passion and family. It is my honor to represent Loveland with the gifts I was given to freely share with you all the wisdom and knowledge I have gained to help anyone I can. I would never recommend writing into an advice column to replace real face-to-face therapy (if desired or needed), but sometimes in life whether in therapy or not, we just get real stuck and need an extra outside perspective from an intuitive, heartfelt therapist. You found your gal. Write in, share with me your story and then check back because I will post your story and my response here on this blog.

Be prepared for your life to change just because you sent your valentine (your love story or question) through the Sweetheart City of Loveland, Colorado to your “love doctor”, Doctor Loveland.