PODCAST

Close Enough

For people who are lost on a desert island, wish they could be lost on a desert island or feel like they are and desperately want to get off.

society & culture philosophy

All Episodes

Marriage as nuclear reactor

Close Enough ·

2024/01/10

I recently saw this great video about the partial nuclear meltdown of the reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania that got me thinking about how a nuclear reactor is like a long term relationship. Each is a highly complex system. They both generate energy. They both have fail-safes, self-regulatory properties built in to ensure that the energy stays within manageable parameters. They work off of feedback loops (such as an atomic chain reaction in the reactor, emotional responsiveness in a

en-US

The myth of sexual desire per se

Close Enough ·

2023/12/21

A supervisee recently told me about a couple she had begun seeing. “It's the old story. The man wants more sex and the woman has less desire.”It is an old story; once a relationship gets to a certain point the man desires sex, and the woman doesn't. How useful a story is it?Rosemary Basson writes Women’s sexual motivation is far more complex than simply the presence or absence of sexual desire (defined as thinking or fantasizing about sex and yearning for sex between actual sexual encounters)...At

en-US

Sexual Disaster and the Adventure of Coupled Sex

Close Enough ·

2023/05/04

I have been writing and thinking a lot about how people’s sex lives interact with the rest of their relationship over the course of many years. As a culture, coupled sex is almost always played for a gag or a tragedy. (Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann are hysterical, but they are also gorgeous and super sexy). Very rarely do we see long term coupled sex as sexy. It seems to squeak us out like seeing mom and dad. And yet the vast majority of sex that is being sexed is between people who have been together

en-US

Netflix and chill: Watching together, joint...

Close Enough ·

2023/03/20

When i ask couples about what they do together they will often talk about watching a show together. Sometimes they really enjoy this and sometimes they find it alienating and lonely. I wrote here about the ways in which couples attend jointly to something. The netflix example is a good one; are we watching jointly or are we watching the same show separately, each having our own experience? The two things can look alike. (Streaming services never show people looking disconnected by their experience

en-US

What couples pay attention to

Close Enough ·

2023/03/19

A new parent watches their child’s gaze, waiting for the moment the child sees them. The infant also learns to watch their parent’s gaze and pretty soon they begin to track one another’s gaze; what do you see? What is that thing? Who came into the room? It is one of the earliest games a parent and infant play. There is a powerful satisfaction in attending together with a loved one. This is a developmental process but one that is developed dyadically, in great intimacy. I have written here about how

en-US

“How often can I ask for a blowjob before I am just...

Close Enough ·

2022/06/01

A client wants his female partner to perform oral sex more often. He has asked her many times over the course of their relationship and she has said that she really doesn’t like to do it. She finds it dirty (and not in a good way). It is a big turn off for her. He isn’t willing to leave the relationship over it but it really bothers him. And no, she doesn’t want to go to couples therapy. He asks the therapist, “How often can I ask for a blowjob before I am just being an asshole?” Quick: What is your

en-US

Fun, not toys

Close Enough ·

2022/02/07

Sometimes I hear from couples that they bought a sex toy in the hopes of reinvigorating their sex lives. Many of them find that the toys quickly end up in a nest of of tangled charger cables in the night-table drawer. Once upon a time, vibrators and dildos were called “marital aids” then they got restyled as sex toys in an attempt to connect them with play, enjoyment, fun. Play is a great intention to have for sex. Sex 'toys' may help to achieve that and if they do, that is fantastic, but they may

en-US

"He's now, he's then, he's every f*&king when." Roy...

Close Enough ·

2021/10/17

We have all learned a lot over COVID about 'asynchronous' learning, pre-recorded lessons as part of training or a class as well as mixed, synchronous/asynchronous learning. In the show Ted Lasso, Roy Kent the crusty newly-retired footballer finds his girlfriend Keeley masturbating to a video on her phone. The audience is primed to see an argument, but Roy takes it in fun and doesn't shame her but he is curious. He is surprised to find that what she is wanking to is the press conference where he

en-US

Yesterday's intercourse

Close Enough ·

2021/10/08

I have become very interested in how couples therapists can better integrate sexuality into couples therapy. Sex is sometimes viewed by therapists as very separate from other elements of the relationship or else as a by-product of relationship rather than an important and complex sub-system of peoples relationship. I have been looking for professional writing about integrating sexuality and couples therapy and came across the work of the late researcher Harold Lief. That lead me to this gem. It

en-US

The paradox of the sexy guitar player

Close Enough ·

2021/05/20

Clients often talk about finding their partner sexiest when that person is intensely engaged in something that they love; music, art, intense conversation. It makes sense. They are vital in those moments, they have a kind of intensity that is alluring, particularly if they are good at what they are doing. The musician is a great example. Is there anybody sexier than a rock musician? This presents a problem. Interrupt the flow of the music to try to connect erotically and 1. the thing that made the

en-US

The Freier Problem

Close Enough ·

2021/02/02

Freier is a Yiddish word in common use in Israel. It’s hard to translate. Roughly it means “sucker”, but with a particular connotation; you aren’t a sucker because you are dumb or unlucky but because you follow the rules when everyone else knows that the rules are only for freiers. While a person might be proud to be called upstanding, moral, law-abiding nobody wants to be a freier. (For a great discussion of three possible origins for the word see Balashon’s post). The word captures a complex set

en-US

COVID Coping

Close Enough ·

2020/10/16

Compassion for self and othersSometimes we mistakenly think that the choice is between a bad situation and a better situation if we just kick ass hard/often enough. If you have tried frequent, emphatic asskicking and it hasn't worked, consider that the choice is actually between a bad situation and a bad situation made more unpleasant by a lot of ass-kicking. -> you are hereby forbidden to use any part of this material for self-recrimination.Improving sleepRegular bedtime and wake timeYour bed is

en-US

Doing the same thing but harder

Close Enough ·

2020/06/03

When I was training to be a couple and family therapist, a beloved teacher of mine, the late Darrel Johnson, said that young therapists often go into a first session with the idea that you need to be super deft and subtle because a family or a couple is such a complicated and delicate system. “But after fifteen minutes, you realize that you could set off an atomic bomb and they would still be having the same arguments they have always had.”It is funny how much doing therapy during the apocalypse is

en-US

"The same brain"

Close Enough ·

2020/05/13

A client of mine who is a recovering addict once told me that in 12 step programs they say that the brain that got you into the problem can't get you out. We repeat our patterns even when it becomes ridiculously clear that what we have always done isn't working. The Quebec and Canadian governments have announced spending for mental health programs related to COVID-19. I am glad when society recognizes the importance of mental health but I am sceptical that the brain that got us into this mess will

en-US

"You can't do affect with a still face"

Close Enough ·

2020/05/06

A client recently pointed me in the direction of Diana Fosha and her work on trauma recovery. She comes from a psychoanalytic perspective which is very different than my own training and orientation, and I didn’t know anything about her so I went online and did a little digging. I read a little of her work and I saw that she has her own method called Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP).I really like to hear a therapist talk about their work. It is hard

en-US

The Virtues of Patience

Close Enough ·

2020/04/05

I like goals in therapy. I tend to be more directive than other therapists and I have had plenty of clients who have benefitted from 6, 4, or even 1 session of therapy. And I have seen the opposite; people who continued in therapy after they have had as much benefit as they are likely to get. We are all confronting how much patience we do or do not have and how our just-in-time, efficiency-oriented society has left us collectively and individually under-equipped to meet the medical and psychic

en-US

Face Power

Close Enough ·

2020/02/19

A few times in my life, at moments of great emotional intensity, I have felt that I could not look at a particular person in the face. It was as if looking at them caused my eyes and mind to burn with a weird emotional fire so that I felt compelled, actually forced as though from outside my own self, to look away. It seemed to me in those moments that I was experiencing both my own and the other person’s emotions and hearing their ideas, not as voices, but as an unshakable certainty about how they

en-US

Progressive's Pachinko and the Executive Meeting

Close Enough ·

2019/11/08

In the last few weeks I have seen clients struggling with a lot of internal division. These are people who are pretty self-reflective and for whom examining their actions and their motivations is an important part of their identity. These are good qualities but like all good qualities, they can be carried too far. I get to see from outside how they can end up hamstringing people. We know about the trap of black and white thinking but there is a self-reflection trap that sometimes causes people a lot

en-US

Peak Global Worry

Close Enough ·

2019/06/07

A butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil and I worry about tornados in Texas. One of the consequences of our globalized world and our expanding sense of our interdependence is the globalization of worry. Think globally, act locally is good advice, but is often misconstrued as worry globally and huddle in a corner locally. What can you do about the rise of the alt-right? Climate change? Plastics in the worlds oceans? Do those questions make you feel empowered to go out and make a change or do they make

en-US

Quebec's Broken Family Support System

Close Enough ·

2019/05/30

Premier Legault announced that the government is going to review Quebec’s Youth Protection systems. I have never worked for Youth Protection but I have had plenty of chances to see it’s workings as an involved outsider. I hear patients/clients talk about how grateful they are that Youth Protection fulfilled its mandate and made sure they were safe from an abusive or neglectful parent. I see people who are furious that Youth Protection never became involved in their lives or stepped out too quickly

en-US

86 results

Close Enough

All Episodes

Similar Podcasts

Voices of Life

APG Mannheim

Promo Estereo Podcast

Promo Estereo

Talking Timelines Podcast

Talkingtimelines

גיקונומי

ראם שרמן ודורון ניר

Drømmefanger

Drømmefanger