When You Hurt From A Loss

When You Hurt From A Loss

"Forgetting you is not that hard to do I've done it a thousand times a day"
- lyric from "A Thousand Times A Day", by Patty Loveless

Almost everyone has gone through the pain of loss of a loved one, be it through death, divorce or the other just wanting to be out of the relationship. We all need to learn lessons from our experiences.
First of all, it’s important to realize that the hurt is our own. We impose it on ourselves. We don’t hurt for the other person, whether that person is still alive or not, we hurt for ourselves. It’s a form of self pity. The hurt is real, but no one else imposes it on us.
What if the one we love takes off and leaves us, doesn’t that mean the other person hurts us? No, it means we hurt ourselves because we regret our loss.
The love was unrequited, one-sided, at least at the point the one left the other. While we wanted the relationship to continue, the other person knew it wouldn’t work. We should ask ourselves, those of us in this situation, why we would want to continue to live with someone who knew the relationship was wrong, that it just plain wouldn’t work.
Often we feel, perhaps without admitting it to ourselves, that the loss was our own fault. We acted ourselves and it wasn’t good enough. "If only I had done things differently."
No, acting yourself is the only way you can depend on being comfortable in your own skin. The other person just didn’t want that. It’s much the same as your clearly preferring one car while disliking another. The reason doesn’t have to make sense, it just is.
How sensible is it to want someone who doesn’t want you? Isn’t that just beating yourself up?
The situation may be worse with divorce. As common as divorce is these days, it isn’t just a loss. Divorce is a signal to the world of failure. Or so many perceive it.
It may be a costly failure. That kind of mistake doesn’t come cheap in some cases. Courts and lawyers don’t help. They like records, especially when they stand to gain from record settlements.
In virtually every case of divorce, it was a bad match to start with. Something was wrong and at least one of the couple refused to admit it. "Love will conquer all" works in songs and poetry, but living it through makes for slogging that most people don’t care to endure.
Despite the fact that people living today will live almost twice as long as their recent ancestors, on average, we seem to live by the adage that "Life is short, eat the dessert first." Trouble is, many of us lose our appetite for the main course once dessert is over.
Albert Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. (That idea was around for centuries before Einstein.) Is that not what a couple on their way to eventual divorce do?
Unfortunately, when it comes to primary relationships such as marriage or common law, do-overs seldom work. The success rate for second and third tries is perishingly low. Trying again usually just postpones the inevitable.
As with any major life loss or tragedy, the solution to a broken relationship is usually to find another one that will work better. There is no perfect mate or soul mate for most of us. We need to find someone who is prepared to tolerate us while we accept their faults, follies and failures. Love comes much easier when you can overlook those things in your significant other.
Getting past the death of a loved one, especially an unexpected death, can play hard on some people for many years. What causes the hurt? It’s our loss, not the end of life of a loved one. It’s like stabbing yourself hard.
Why does it hurt so much? Most of us are not emotionally or psychologically prepared for a sudden loss. It’s a personal loss we had no control over. Nothing we could have done might have prevented the death, in most cases. It’s life playing its worst on our heart.
Is there a way to lessen the pain? We can be better prepared. We can understand that we could get a phone call any day to say that anyone in our life has died unexpectedly. We can formulate a plan of what we would do if that happened. We can figure out exactly what procedures we would go through if something tragic happened to someone we love.
Will that lessen the loss? No. But it will make the hurt less severe, maybe having it impact our life for a shorter period of time. That’s the best we can do. Hurt is survivable for most of us. Science has proven that it is possible to die of a "broken heart" but few of us actually do.
We can also remember that our loved one might get a similar phone call to say that we have died suddenly. We can prepare plans for that too.
Death and loss of relationships are part of life. It’s worth remembering that emotions work like a pendulum: the farther they swing one way, the farther they are able to swing the other way. Those who suffer little from downswings in life lack the ability to have great joy when life is at its best for them.
The positive side of tragedy is that life always turns around. Maybe not fast enough to suit us most of the time, but that’s life.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for people who want to learn how to cope with life before they need those coping skills. It’s about learning life lessons before they are needed.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

I Grew, I Learned, I Showed Them All

I Grew, I Learned, I Showed Them All

It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.

- Carl Sagan, American astronomer, astrophysicist, author (1934-1996)

I disappointed my father because I was poor at sports. As a result of brain and nerve damage at birth, doctors had predicted that I would never run and would not likely ever walk without a prosthetic device such as a cane or brace. The fact that I learned to walk and run without a limp did not impress him.

I learned through experience that I could not keep up with my peers in ice hockey (my father's best sport). Only after I quit hockey in my mid teens did I learn about problems at birth that would impair my abilities both physically and mentally. I learned that I never had a chance at equality in sports.

I disappointed my father because I was unable to become an avid fan of sports. It took decades for me to learn that a chemical problem in my brain caused me to endure devastating stress when I became excited while watching a game. He took my cousin (a quarterback on his high school football team, but a young man with a bad attitude) to a Grey Cup game (the Canadian equivalent of the US Superbowl) because he thought I wouldn't be interested. He didn't even ask me when he was given free tickets. My father had died in later years before I learned of my brain chemical problem and tried to learn strategies to combat it. My maternal grandfather had the same problem, but no one took notice.

I disappointed my mother because I was not good at school. I just got by. As many times as she read on my report cards that I was "not working to [my] potential", neither she nor any of my teachers ever twigged to the fact that my poor performance was because I could not read and a brain impairment meant that I had trouble remembering anything for exams. To them I was just "lazy."

I disappointed my mother, an excellent and entertaining pianist, when I studied piano for many years yet was unable to reach her level of competence because I was physically uncoordinated (small motor muscle problems) and could not read music. I learned to be a great appreciator of recorded and live music through my experience with them, but this did not impress. I could have become an orchestra director, except that I could not read music fast enough.

I disappointed my greatest supporter among my high school teachers. As head of the music department he guided me into leads in music activities and musical plays and delighted when I entered the Faculty of Music for my first year at University of Toronto. He would not speak to me when I left the faculty program after one year because I was physically and mentally unable to do the work. I learned that I had a head for directing music, which benefitted and excited many children over the years in choirs and musicals when I was a teacher.

I disappointed most of my immediate superiors in my jobs. They could not understand why I did not pick up on how to do the jobs easily, though none of them made the slightest attempt to show me what I needed to know, not even once. Years later I learned to teach others what I knew because I understood how helpless it felt to be given responsibilities to do something but not the tools to do them with.

I disappointed the principals of the schools where I taught. I directed my teaching attention in different ways from other teachers because I thought it important to raise a whole child--including social and emotional skills and development--rather than to just each to a curriculum. I was often in trouble for being "different" in my methods. As it happened, my methods tended to be five years ahead of their time, as five years after I got into trouble in several cases the school board began to insist on all teachers teaching the way I had--because the "new" methods were in use in California, not because I had succeeded with so many children.

I disappointed my first wife--a very good teacher and a reader--because I never read books. She didn't understand that I was functionally illiterate due to my childhood problems. She was not impressed that I got a master's degree from the University of Toronto although I was functionally illiterate and never read a book the whole way through. While I muddled my way through teaching and she was a resource teacher--a teacher whose sole purpose was to help other teachers--in a different part of the school board, she never offered to give me the slightest assistance. She divorced me because she thought I lacked potential.

I disappointed some of my staff in the small business I ran for several years. They resented my insistence on quality and consistency, while they wanted to do things the easiest way, and they begrudged my coaching them to do their jobs in the best ways possible. Most left my employment to take jobs in places where working conditions were far worse. I learned that quality standards mean a great deal to many people who want to get their money's worth when they buy something. In turn, I learned how to look for quality and durability in my purchases as well.

I disappointed my neighbours for many years before I moved a couple of years ago. One group wanted me to drink and take drugs on weekends, which I would not do. Another wanted me to ignore local and provincial laws to give them favours. I knew that these were wrong for me, so my wife and I researched to learn what we believe is the best community in our country in which to live. We were right. Life has never been better for us since we moved.

Along the way I learned that disappointment is part of life. People will always be disappointed in us when we don't do what they want us to do and when we refuse to do things the wrong way. I have even had my life threatened twice. I learned that I can easily avoid and ignore people who are just plain bad for me.

I learned that to gain the respect of many people you need to be good at something. It doesn't really matter what so long as it can impress them. Everybody can be good at something. If they learn at what they can be good with the help of others who care for and about them, it will come sooner than it did for me. We can all help by teaching that lesson to children.

I began my lifelong learning mission at the age of 15. Until I learned to read better at age 44, I listened a great deal. When I began to read, I read things that made me more knowledgeable. Eventually my "encyclopedic knowledge" frightened some people. I learned that I could teach the ones who cared about what I knew and ignore the ones who refused to learn.

In recent years I have learned that helping others (the Dalai Lama calls it "compassion"--I am not a Buddhist) is the secret to happiness and to finding our purpose in life. May you be blessed with this knowledge as well.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to give children what they need rather than just what the school curriculum offers or what they can learn from television and video games.

Learn more at http://billallin.com/  

How to Cope When Others Hurt You

How to Cope When Others Hurt You
'More hearts pine away in secret anguish for unkindness from those who should be their comforters, than for any other calamity in life.'
- Edward Young, English poet (1681-1765)

We don't think in terms of hearts "pining" away these days. But then, Edward Young lived some time back.
Today people are sad, depressed, withdrawn or just plain "hard to get along with." We take pills, eat too much, go dancing, join clubs, watch endless reruns on TV. Or we just mope (pine away).
Loneliness and poorly developed social skills no doubt play a large part in people pining away. It's easier to pine away and be lonely if you don't know how to make new friends. Edward Young brings our attention to one cause we would all rather not think about. Living with someone who is unkind or who doesn't care enough to make life really worthwhile. In most cases, a person suffering this fate reacts the same to each of the two because they can be the same problem with only slightly different faces.
What is an unkindness? It sounds bland and meaningless, unless you're the victim. An unkindness is an act of behaviour by one person that hurts another. It's not the intent of the doer, but the reaction of the receiver that matters. Neglect can also be an act of unkindness.
Of course you may be tempted to think that something considered an unkindness is personal, that, as some believe of happiness, unkindness is a personal choice. In that case, if a person chooses to see the action of another as an unkindness, it is, but if the person chooses to ignore the act, it's not an unkindness. Choose to see something as unkind or choose to not think anything of it.
It doesn't work that way in real life. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. What one person considers unkindness seems beyond their control. If an act violates the basic life values of a person, that person is incapable of controlling their reaction. If the unkindness is in the form of neglect, that may be outside of their control as well.
What's the choice? The choice is to consider unkindness from someone we care about as not worth time or thought. Just ignore it. But ignoring behaviours that used to hurt stuns the emotions, makes them "cold." No one who is capable of deep feelings for others wants to lose that, to become cold, to maybe lose the ability to love in the process.
Therapist offices fill each day with people who feel others have been unkind, are unkind, continue to be unkind to them. They don't know how to cope with a problem they believe rests with the other person. More lives are ruined by an inability to cope with problems than for any other single reason.
So is living with or being close to a friend, neighbour or workmate who is unkind--who commits unkind acts--hopeless? It is if you believe it is.
If the unkind person is someone you live with and you want to continue that relationship, you need to show the unkind person more love. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to love them more or have sex more often. We humans assess the weight or value of the love that others have for us by touch. The more someone touches us, the more we feel that person shows their love. The touch may be casual, such as touching the other's arm as you pass. It could also be a lingering touch, such as when you watch television sitting next to each other or do something else together. Just don't linger long enough that the touch seems fake or contrived. That's turns people off.
Of course the touch method of assessing love works both ways. But many people don't know that. In fact, some people find touch--even loving touch--in some circumstances almost offensive. That kind of person lacked love and touch as a child. Learning to touch and to be touched may take that person years, but they will come around. Consistency and persistence matters. They can change if they want to and if the other person tries hard enough for long enough.
Friends, workmates and neighbours can also find ways to touch each other casually. Often that involves a hand touching the arm of the other as a means of emphasis in a conversation. That kind of touch is always brief, never more than a second or two. Longer than that could cause alarm or suspicion.
Dealing with a situation of repeated unkindness almost always involves doing something you are not accustomed to doing. If you were doing it already, the unkindness may never have occurred.
Will this method work for everyone? No. Some people are emotionally cold and can't be changed. The choice then is to stay or leave, keep the friendship or find other friends. Staying with an emotionally distant mate does not necessarily mean living a life in the belief that the other person doesn't love you. It means accepting what you can't change and doing something differently yourself.
Join a group or activity where touching is a part of the activity. Take dancing lessons, for example, or join a group where close contact is the norm. Or help others. Many volunteer situations involve circumstances where two people touch in the course of an event. Volunteering can help both the person who needs help and the volunteer. Both benefit.
Often people who need help from others have found themselves in that situation because they could not cope with their life circumstances. Sometimes those life circumstances involve needing loving touch and having no way to get it. Lives can literally dribble away when people need love and touch, don't know it, and waste their life away looking for something they don't understand in places they will never find it.
Any problem you may have with another person may be very hard to cope with. Now you have a choice. You have a way to improve the relationship between you. Or you can leave. The latter choice may not be easy, especially if the other person is a spouse or life mate. It doesn't guarantee eventual happiness either, especially if leaving means finding yourself in a life situation where you need social assistance just to survive.
Learning coping strategies may be the best answer. It isn't easy. Life problems and working through them never are.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for people who need to learn what they missed as children or who want to teach their own children what they need so they won't grow up to be socially or emotionally unbalanced adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/

I Could Have Killed Someone

I Could Have Killed Someone

If you want to know your past, examine your present conditions. 

If you want to know your future, examine your present actions.

- Buddhist saying

I woke up this morning ready for a fight. The slightest provocation might have set me off. More than that may have resulted in such rage that I would not have hesitated to do anything--absolutely anything--to end the irritation. I felt ready with every fibre of my being. I was in control of my emotions, or so I thought, but only because nothing came along to provoke me.

Not long after, I had fed our cats, made coffee and was sitting sipping and chatting with my wife when my strange mood vanished as quickly as it had come.

My life testifies to my devotion to non-violence, even to the extent of allowing myself to be beaten up psychologically and emotionally sometimes because I refused to fight back. I won't even fight back with words because: (a) you can never win an argument with an irrational person; and (b) I will never have a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent. In this case, I didn't have an opponent, to my great relief, after the fact.

Why, I wondered, had I experienced this sudden rage with the potential for violence? As a student of human behaviour, I required some introspection. Does a devil hide within me, as some religions might claim? Did I experience a moment of temporary insanity, a defence argument used in some murder cases in courts in the USA? I didn't care for either explanation. Something else was going on inside me.

Something had made me, in effect, a different person for a short period of time. What could do that? And why? As I pride myself in my ability at mind control (over my own body), why had that ability failed me when I needed it most? I really didn't like that other person. That other person would have been a social pariah. That person was dangerous. That other person was me, but not me. I was, briefly, my own anti-me.

The explanation for my temporary antisocial behaviour revolves around imbalances in brain chemistry. In my case, perhaps in untold others who are behind bars or in psychological confinement facilities today, has to do with my adjustment to a new level of thyroxine supplement for my hypothyroidism. Under the careful watch of an endocrinologist (a specialist in hormones), I hasten to add. (Those inside institutions may not have been so lucky.)

Each of us has a thyroid gland which produces a hormone that somehow affects (gives orders to) almost every organ of the body, even including the skin and the brain. As a thyroid ages, it may produce less hormone than it used to, or it may produce more if it gets out of whack. Producing too much hormone is called hyperthyroidism, which is not pretty, not comfortable, in fact it can be terrifying.

Family doctors have an "average" range of acceptability (as "normal") in results of blood tests of the thyroid stimulating hormone. In general, a patient's TSH level may be brought within range by prescription medication. Low thyroid prescription is nothing more than a supplement of what the thyroid should produce itself.

What I learned the hard way is that a supplement that brings my TSH level into the normal range causes my body to react as if I am hyperthyroid, the opposite of what I am naturally. As I said, that's terrifying because it messes with brain chemistry. My family doctors for years had said "You must test within the normal range, if I give you a supplement that is too low my medical certificate could be at risk."

When I could no longer stand the symptoms of hyperthyroidism (Google it to see what they are, grit your teeth and hang on when you find out) and my doctor refused to back off my prescription, I refused to take any supplement. I quit cold turkey. A few weeks later my doctor became so upset (this guy's going to kill himself this way) that she hurriedly secured me an appointment with the specialist.

The specialist said "It's okay to not be normal." The heavens rumbled, the earth moved, the sun finally dawned. Not being normal is okay? Every doctor I had met before this said that I must be made (with medication) to conform to the norms. Now this expert was telling me it was okay to not be normal, that we are each different in how we react to things such as medications.

The specialist started me on a low dose of thyroxine supplement and raised it each week for a month, then let it level off. It was still well below what a family doctor would have prescribed. Adjusting to a new level of thyroid medication can take from six to eight weeks because so many parts of the body have to agree to not misbehave, to react inappropriately. That includes the brain, which counts on signals from the thyroid before secreting its own proteins which affect many parts of the body.

The brain also controls itself. My "not normal chemically" brain has fought the change in thyroid messages kicking and screaming. In practice that meant the equivalent of waking nightmares or anxiety attacks in the second half of my time in bed each night. By morning my wife might have coffee with the normal sweet husband she knows or she might wish I was still a bachelor in transit to Mars. Neither of us had any way to know what I would be like each morning.

In my bad state I had a hair-trigger temper, flying into a rage over the most insignificant matters. They even included errors or oversights I had made myself. My "stupidity" at something insignificant I had done caused me to be angry with myself (and none too quiet about it either). Sometimes I wished I would not have to live out the rest of my day. That's serious.

I won't bore you (or over-excite you) with details that deserve to be confidential. Let's just say I never became physically aggressive or violent, nor did I become verbally abusive. Loud and nasty, yes. Let's also say that the bad moods never lasted more than a few hours at most. Let's add that I hated myself every second I suffered with the bad mood because I was incapable of acting like the me I knew myself to be. I knew I was out of control, but lacked any ability to change myself.

People with faulty thyroids do not carry around flags advertising the fact so others can see them and recognize a person with a problem. Many with a thyroid problem may know nothing about their problem. What's worse, even a person whose blood tests show their thyroid level to be in the average or normal range may be anything but, in the real world. Medical tests are guides, not laws by which we all must live.

As my endocrinologist said, "We will find the right level for you, for your life." Good. The adjustment was hard. Too bad it didn't come 20 years ago when I was first identified as hypothyroid.

Norms and averages in medicine are for textbooks, not for people. In real flesh-and-blood cases such as you and me and those we know and love, each of us is very different. "Unique" would not be an out-of-place descriptor.

If you believe you are different from the norm from a health standpoint, speak up to your doctor. You don't live in a textbook. You live inside your own skin (your doctor doesn't). You want to continue to do so for as long as possible.

That may mean you have to tell your doctor you believe he is wrong, that you need different diagnosis and treatment. The doctor may need to see the same things, but differently. It may mean seeking other medical opinions. It may make you somewhat unpopular with your doctors, who have their own biases to cherish and dogma to follow. Too bad for them, not you.

Remember, your doctor does not live inside your skin. You do. Try to keep it that way.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who develop socially and emotionally in healthy ways, as schools rarely address those developmental needs.

Learn more at http://billallin.com/  

When You Find Yourself Totally Alone

When You Find Yourself Totally Alone


Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it is dark.
- Ancient Zen saying

Some day you may find yourself totally alone. At least you will feel that way.

Virtually no one wants to find themselves alone in the world. But it happens. It happens to almost every one of us at some time or another in our lives. In our modern world where more people are alive than at any other time in human history, more of us feel totally alone. What's worse, no one is prepared for it. We may be surrounded by people, even family, yet feel alone. As if you are a shadow passing by other living creatures who don't know you are there.

You may not know anyone who feels totally alone today. That is a critical point. People who feel alone disappear into the crowd. You know someone, but you don't know how deeply confused and alone they feel. We may work with them or sit beside them at worship or nod as we pass them when leaving home or in the market, but not realize how alone they feel. For a person who feels totally alone, the world is a very different place from the one most of us live in. Same world, feels alien.

When it happens that we find ourselves alone in the world, most of us reluctantly ask ourselves if we are responsible for our own aloneness. Most of us convince ourselves that others were to blame. Or just one other. Always someone else, for some of us. Those who blame themselves for their total aloneness may be the worst off because they face their accuser every day in the mirror. They don't even want to look.

I'm not going to tell you that your aloneness (or anyone else's) was your own fault. Because it wasn't. Nor am I prepared to let you put the blame on someone else. Because they likely weren't at fault either. And because they no longer matter to you.

When you are alone in the world, the people of your past matter little. Even family members and loved ones seem unimportant. That's alienation, or some call it dissociation.

What matters to a person who feels alone is the people of their future. If it's you, you need a new future, not a repeat of your past. That means you need to learn how to create a new and healthy future. Often that means having to let go of the past, of the people, though not the memories. Much as you wish it to be different, you can't get people you know or knew to care more than they do. They knew the old you, got used to the old you, and you need to create a new you.

Most of us have wondered what it would be like to start our lives over again, especially our adults lives. And especially knowing what we have already learned. Now is the time. This is the big chance. Make a new set of friends, even relatives (by marriage or other association), the way you would like to have friends. The kind of friends you would like to have. The kind of friend who will appreciate you as a true friend. Easier said than done? I'll show you how.

Your future will be entirely your responsibility because you will create it. If you fall back on ways that caused you to be alone in the first place, you will be responsible for that and you will feel worse because you failed yourself and you know it. You need to think out what characteristics you would want of a new friend before you go looking for one.

The first rule about making new friends when you feel alone is that the people who are easiest to befriend are the wrong kinds of friends to have. For example, spend money on them or actively engage in sex with them and they may quickly learn to like you. However, they will also vanish or betray you as quickly as they came, leaving you alone again. False friends. Temporary pals. Business friends that disappear as soon as they have nothing more to gain from associating with you.

False friends always want something from you or they drop you. Real friends--the ones you want to have--need something from you, but it's not much. They want you to care about them. In exchange, they will care about you. To make a real friend you have to care about someone beyond yourself. The life of that friend must be more important than what you care about the cashier in the supermarket or the meter reader who checks your power consumption for the utility.

People with whom you exchange pleasantries, a few drinks, a few laughs are not necessarily real friends. To them you are their means of passing some time in a pleasant way. Make the distinction. Pals and friends are not the same thing. Nor should you, when you make a real friend, forget how to treat them and to think of them differently.

The second rule about making new friends is to analyze what kind of people you had previously as friends. You obviously don't want to make more like them or they would still be your friends. Something was wrong in those previous relationships. Did you buy them with investments of money or energy or time, for example? Friends are made by investing time and energy in them or on their behalf, but if they have nothing to give back you will not have anything on which to cement a friendship.

The hardest lesson many of us have to learn about making friends and cementing relationships is that most people aren't worth trying to make into friends. For you. They may be suitable friends for others, but something doesn't click with you and you likely won't ever be able to make it happen. To be a friend to you, a person must invest emotional energy in you. That will often happen only after you have made the same investment in them. But, like sticking coins in a slot machine, not everyone you invest emotional energy in will become a true friend.

There are many different kinds of friendships, but the worthwhile ones begin and continue with your doing something of value to or for the other person. They will do things for you too, if they want to, if they know how and if they want to be real friends. Making a new friend means putting yourself out there to do something for someone else, with no promise of return. You may do something for many different people before you find one or two with promise for a friendship. Everyone will take from you if you offer, only a friend or potential friend will give back something in return.

We're a social species. When we find ourselves totally alone--or feeling alone, no matter how many others are around us--because no one cares, we feel alienated from the rest of the world. Aloneness is a feeling more than a physical reality. The feeling is real. Many times when someone feels totally alone it's because they have realized that no one cares about them the way they would like someone to care. In a highly social world, no one seeks them out for the pleasure of their company.

Despite our need for social experiences and social relationships, we also need some time to ourselves. Without that time to ourselves, time when we can do what we want and enjoy our own company, we can't be independent people. We can only be part of a collective of two or more people if we can't do things on our own and enjoy both the doing together and the aloneness. People who depend on other close friends or spouses so much they spend all their time together suffer most when the other is taken away, such as by death.

Death is real. We need to consider death. The death of a loved one or friend as well as our own. To survive the death of a close friend or mate, we need to have some measure of independence we can resort to after a tragedy. As we find ourselves alone, we need to have an independent life we can expand rather than no life other than with the one who departed. What happens to the "two who became one" when one dies? We need both the social part of relationships as well as knowledge that we can survive on our own. If we can survive our aloneness, we can build a new "together" with someone else.

Maybe the biggest question you would have about making a new friend or finding a new mate or spouse is whether or not you can trust that person. Ask yourself first, can you be trusted? How totally trustworthy are you? You can't and shouldn't expect a friend or mate to be more trustworthy than you. In one sense, you need to exude trustworthiness to make a friend because a potential new friend will look for that.

You will also need to need to feel you are contributing about 85 percent to the relationship in comparison to the other person's 15 percent. Can you feel comfortable with that? In most relationships that work well, especially with wives and husbands, each feels they contribute about 85 percent to the relationship and can be satisfied with that. It's not true though because neither one realizes how much the other contributes to the relationship. We only know fully what we contribute. Don't be shocked if you seem to be giving more to a good friend than you receive. That's human nature, the way it works.

Even in supposedly monogamous relationships, one of the partners or both will have sex with another person, covertly of course. In the United States a study has shown the 85 percent of married men and 65 percent of married women have at least one sexual experience outside the marriage. If you want a friend or spouse to forgive your mistakes, you must be prepared to forgive theirs. If you can, your relationship has a better chance of surviving than most. Remember, everyone makes mistakes of some kind. Everyone. Real friends forgive.

There will be mistakes. There will be errors. There will be times of neglect, of forgetfulness and of miscalculation of the importance of feelings by both parties. Forgiveness gets you past these problems. Holding a grudge, not forgiving, causes you more pain than it does the other person. It may not be fair, but it's life.

In a world where we each of us expects to have to look out for our own best interests, it's extremely hard to find someone worth investing your time and energy on to create a relationship. Finding one that works is worth the pain and struggle. Finding that special someone as a friend or mate or spouse may require a lot of pain and suffering along the way. It means failures and non-starters. It means being able to recognize a failed or unworthy relationship before you invest to much in it.

Failure to build a new relationship means you can try again. Quitting will ensure you remain alone.

When so many marriages fail within five years, for example, do you not wonder whether the couple jumped into something one or both were not ready for or whether they simply chose the wrong person? Was finding someone, anyone, more important than finding the right one? Did they share the same values? Did they want the same things from a marriage? Was each prepared to give to the other what the other needed? Or did they just want to be married, hoping that it would work out over time, as arranged marriages are supposed to do? Did they just want from a marriage what they wanted and judge the relationship on whether they got it or how completely they got it?

No matter what kind of relationship you want to begin, you must first decide what kind of person would satisfy your need. Not everyone will fit your need and you must understand that before you begin anything. Most people aren't worth your time and emotional investment. The ones who are don't wear signs advertising the fact on their chests.

Another factor to consider is that someone who is looking for a new friend or mate will be more interested in what you have to offer them than in what they can offer you. If you mount a public profile on a web site, for example, you are advertising. You will advertise what the other wants and you can satisfy, not what you are looking for. Tell what kind of person you are, what you enjoy, what you value. If you tell mostly what you are looking for you open yourself to the possibility of being targeted by someone who believes he or she can take advantage of that by pretending to offer just that.

Talking about yourself only works so far. In advertising, the advertiser needs to appear to be more interested in the needs of the buyer than his or her own needs. Be an asker and a listener more than a teller. The world is full of people who want to tell you about themselves but who don't want to hear about you because they don't care about you. To get their attention to start something, you need to listen first. And ask about them.

Whether you look for a new friend or a new mate, look where you expect to find such a person. Many think of joining a religious group or service club, but don't think of volunteering. When you volunteer to help a charity, for example, you meet others who are also offering themselves to help others. If finding someone who will give of themselves to help others is something you are looking for--that's a critical component of every long term relationship--then volunteering costs very little and offers many possible benefits, for everyone. Volunteering is a much overlooked place to find new friends.

To find a "best" anything is a struggle. But life is a struggle. That's the way it works. Anything that comes easy is rarely worth more than was invested to get it. Keep looking. Unlike the elusive pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, finding a friend or soulmate you can treasure will happen if you do what is needed to find the right person. Don't take you time at it, friends don't usually come knocking on your door. Get doing it.

But remember, you must be the right person for the other as much as he or she must be right for you. The "lost love" was not just a missed opportunity. It was more likely a bad fit. Look for a better fit. It will happen if you work at it.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, an easy to read book about how to avoid personal and community problems before they become problems that are impossible to solve.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/

Fault Finding Hurts And Damages

Some people find fault like there is a reward for it.
- Zig Ziglar

Let's first off make a major distinction between finding fault and offering ways and means for correction and improvement. Finding fault is destructive, while offering constructive criticism should be seen as coming from someone who cares.

Some say that fault finders want to raise themselves up by bringing others down, that they want, in effect, to climb over the broken bodies of those they vanquished. I disagree with that analysis. Fault finders have very low opinions of themselves--perhaps hate themselves sometimes--and want to bring others low so that they feel they are not alone at the bottom of the social heap. They may not seem insecure, but they are. So are bullies, who fit as well into this analysis as fault finders.

Fault finders have something missing in their lives, something critical to their wellbeing. It could be described as a feeling of self worth. But lacking a feeling of self worth or self esteem makes it seem as if these people are responsible for their own problems. They are surely responsible for how they deal with their problems, but not how they found themselves in that position in the first place.

The origins of lacking self esteem or self worth lie in childhood. It's often attributed to a lack of love or a lack of time spent by at least one parent with the child. No child understands time not spent by parents on them. Their whole lives revolve around learning about their world. The foundation of that world is their parents. When parents don't spend enough time with their children, they leave the foundation of the lives of their children unsecured.

There is no such thing as "quality time." That's a euphemism, an excuse, an alibi for parents giving something else greater importance than their children. Kids have no concept of "quality time." To them, there's time spent and time not spent. They keep mental notes. Time not spent hurts.

As to the lack of love, that is quite subjective. Many people, especially those who live hectic lives in modern cities, do not have a clear concept of what love is. They may not have grown up with love in their lives, so they have no idea how to look for it in their mates and little concept of how to give it to their children. They try. In my long career as a sociologist and teacher I have rarely met a parent who has not tried to be a good parent, to the best of their abilities.

If they lack ability in parenting, it's because they were not given parenting information and taught parenting skills before they needed them.

The children may also have lacked touch by parents. Loving touch is only now being discovered to contribute to the wellbeing of children, including to their health. When kids lack touch by people who love them, they feel alienated from their world. They create strange worlds for themselves, worlds that often do not correspond well to the world their parents want them to live in.

When they reach adulthood, they continue to treat others with the same lack of love and touch, especially their own families, because they don't know what others need, never having learned the lessons themselves. They often lack self esteem, which they exhibit by criticizing others. Sometimes it takes the form of bullying.

Critics, of the destructive variety, lack love and touch in their lives, at least a sufficient amount of it to give them balance, peace and a healthy measure of self respect.

Those who offer help in the form of constructive criticism may be misunderstood by those who lack sufficient self esteem and self respect (self love) as being critics. That partly explains why so many well meaning people stop trying to help others, because they have been rejected, rebuffed and even attacked by those they tried to help in the past.

By the time someone misinterprets constructive criticism (help) from others as destructive criticism, they have already reached the point of being firmly in the position of lacking self respect and love themselves.

One common characteristic of people who lack love, who lack the ability to sympathize or empathize with others, who don't know how to achieve self respect, self love or self esteem is that they vehemently deny it. Very few people, other than the most humble, will admit that they don't know how to find love, to show love or to give love. Even love of themselves.

These are hard lessons to learn. Just as a person who was once addicted to something is always a recovering addict, someone who once lacked love, loving touch and self respect will always be in the state of recovering from it, even if they learn the skills.

If people don't learn these thing as children, they tend to live the rest of their lives in a state of recovery, even if they have learned and found what they needed. In other words, even the most secure person who has found these treasures as an adult will "fall off the wagon" once in a while, will succumb to self doubt and insecurity. They, too, will usually deny this. However, having once found what they needed, they usually recover.

The only real solution to this deficit in the lives of so many adults is to teach new parents what they should know to give their children what they need. Since so many of today's adults don't have that knowledge or those skills, the fastest way to get them into the right hands is to actively teach them in classes, such as at night school.

Just as Lamaze classes have become immensely popular because young adults want to know how to get through the birthing process properly, classes in parenting would be extremely popular with young adults because they want to be good parents.

They want to be good parents. They need the opportunity to learn.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book for parents and teachers about what they need to learn to give children what they need, when they need it. It's a lifeline, a starter course in book form.
Learn more at http://billalliin.com

Prejudice: Its Deep and Early Causes

"I'm interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice."
- Clint Eastwood

What right does a Hollywood type have to an opinion on such an important subject? As much right as anyone else. Being a man involved with the public in many ways for so many years, Eastwood likely has a better perspective about how people act than most of us because he has been exposed to so many insecure people in filmland. Hollywood is a Mecca for insecure people.

Assume his observation is correct for the purpose of this discussion. What we have are two important parts to his statement: insecure people and those with extreme prejudice.

Why would anyone be insecure? A genetic defect? A nasty mother? Abuse as a child? The number of people who suffer from feelings of insecurity suggests that the cause is more pervasive than any of these. Almost everyone feels insecure about some things, or they should because they cannot know enough about every problem or situation they face to be able to cope with it effectively and efficiently.

The kind of insecurity that Eastwood was speaking about is basic, far deeper than not knowing enough about the kind of flat screen TV to buy. This kind goes back to childhood, specifically to unfulfilled needs.

A baby spends nearly a year in the womb before birth, 40 weeks in constant touch with its mother. After birth, the need for constant touch continues, but the amount of touch time between mother and child decreases dramatically. As the child gets older, the need continues, though not to as great an extent as before birth. The child can look after itself in childhood passtimes. A fair amount of touching is still needed. It continues throughout our lives.

That need for touch in adults is vastly underrated by most people. How it affects single people (unattached to a cohabiting other of any kind), married people who become separated or married people whose spouse dies or becomes alienated in another way is seldom addressed to the extent it deserves. A man whose wife leaves him may be a bomb waiting to explode because he doesn't know how to cope with the loss of touch as well as the loss of a way of life.

Studies have shown that we each need the equivalent of 12 hugs per day to be satisfied with our lives. The ideal would be 18 hugs. But who has time for that?

Most of us do, if we make time because we know how important touch is to our welfare--both emotional and physical health. It doesn't always have to be a hug. It could be a touch while passing in the hall, holding hands while having coffee or walking together and sleeping next to each other. A kiss and huge when leaving each other and when meeting again counts as two each.

An insufficient amount of touch will make anyone insecure to some extent. The degree will vary and it's hard to measure. In general, all unhappy people lack sufficient touch from a loved one to satisfy them. Those who have extreme prejudice have accommodated themselves to insufficient touch for many years. They may even deny their need for touch.

A prejudiced person needs someone to hurt, just as bullies do. The unfulfilled need for touch for far too long has caused them to want to hurt someone else the way they have suffered themselves. They seldom want to talk about how they hurt or about their need.

Prejudice and bullying function at an emotional level, which is where our need for touch comes in. Lack of sufficient touch shows itself in emotional hurt, which may demonstrate itself in inappropriate behaviours. Sometimes the inappropriate behaviours involve touching the other person.

Now you know something about human needs that most people do not. Use your knowledge wisely and productively.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to bring important human needs out of the closet.
Learn more at http://billallin.com