Come from Your Strength
By Derron Santin on May 17, 2010
What does it take to get your partner to listen to you? (And why won’t they change into what you want them to be?) If you’ve been waiting for them to see things your way, if only s/he would simply stop doing this or start doing that, if only they would fulfill the potential you see or once saw in them…. You know what I’m getting at here: this is a fantasy. While you complain, blame, rage, or quietly simmer with resentment, you’ve put yourself and your relationship on hold. The longer you wait or quietly hope for your partner to do the work, the more you invite feelings of powerlessness, passivity, despair, even rage. Your partner feels this, and you polarize. You are in a loop.
Don’t Take it Personally
By Derron Santin on May 10, 2010
When your spouse or partner presents you with something they’re struggling with, and you happen to be part of that struggle, what do you do? If you are like most of us, it’s easy to become defensive, argue, or cross complain. And then, of course, it’s “on.” Deep feelings become triggered, and no matter how small the initial complaint, things get too hot, too fast. You’ve taken it personally. You’ve let your partner’s complaint stand as a comment against who you are, and why should you tolerate that? You fight back, because this is what our brain is wired to do–it’s a survival mechanism, serving to keep us alive. But in this case it’s overkill. After many of these dramas, it seems as if the two of you can’t stop yourselves from fighting about small stuff; sometimes, you can’t even remember what it was all about. All you know is that it hurt, for both of you, and you feel stuck.
Men’s Group Flyer
By Derron Santin on May 4, 2010
A common dilemma for the modern man is how to balance the tension between dedication to work and achieving true presence in your intimate relationship. Mastering the two without living a dual existence presents an ongoing challenge. This is a group for men in relationships who want to understand more deeply how to fully align themselves in both their work and intimate relationships, and how to live with an increased sense of freedom and power. As a result, you will have the opportunity to access the rich, fruitful connection to the feminine, as well as your masculine drive to achieve a clear and committed focus on work.
Upcoming Men’s Group
By Derron Santin on
Our particular culture of work and frenetic activity in the San Francisco Bay Area makes harsh and often unreasonable demands on today’s man. You need to be solid, a man of your word, keep up at work or even lead the way, and even more challenging, maintain the fire of your intimate relationship. Daily distractions distort what is valuable, knock you off balance, and may keep you that way. In addition to that, you may have your partner asking for or demanding more intimacy. You’re just trying to keep up, make a decent living or even a killing, as you were taught was the minimum requirement, the nature of masculine success. In all of this you may feel something is missing, some piece that could ground you and offer the stability from which you could take on your relationship and the world with more confidence and freedom. What is it? Where did things go off the rails?