For Mental Health Awareness Day, I’ve picked out five of the most amazingly informative, life-changing mental health books I’ve ever read:

Loneliness; Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection
by John Cacioppo and William Patrick

The Noonday Demon; an Atlas of Depression
by Andrew Solomon

Against Depression
by Peter D. Kramer

Woman; an Intimate Geography
by Natalie Angiers

I HAD to share this amazing comment from Shannon.

She responded to my post about How Loneliness Sabotages Love, and my suggestion that using Gottman’s Love Maps might help.

Seems she does this in her Relationship Gardening project!:

Growing a love map is easy for those who are already doing it.  Might take some coaching for others who have some habits that cut that process off which is what I discover in my relationship gardening business.

Dr. Gottman’s world class research on couples gives us a clue about what comes before Love Maps or even at the same time-and it is keeping a positive stream of responding and accepting each other’s influence hundreds of times daily.

So here’s one of Life’s ironies: Chronic loneliness sabotages love.

The condition of being lonely creates brain changes which result in self-defeating beliefs and negative attitudes, which in turn generate a self-fulfilling loop of relationship failure and further isolation.

So, the very people who need and crave love most, wind up being the folks least likely to be able to accept it.

They say that when the student is ready the teacher arrives. John Gottman’s new book, The Science of Trust, arrived in my mailbox last week, and if you’ve been following my posts since then you can infer that the timing was perfect.

And you’ll also have noticed that I’ve been wondering about romantic relationships among my generation, the baby-boomers.

I did the math, and the oldest of us, born in 1946, started their dating careers 50 years ago.

Younger boomers like me went on their first dates somewhere around 35 years ago.

By now, many of us have been married to our high-school sweethearts for decades. Whereas others of us have had, how shall I say it? “Less stable” love lives.

We’re caught in a trap

I can’t walk out

Because I love you too much, Baby.

-Elvis Presley

So you find this amazing other person…and the love is there…the chemistry is there…even the friendship / genuine liking / mutual enjoyment of one another is there!!!

And yet?…the relationship is a hell hole. Why?

Because romantic relationships also require a deep level of trust.

I’ve been blogging about trust this week, and I’ll be back to talking about trust and romantic relationships next time.

But tomorrow I’m giving  a talk entitled Math Success for All Students, and here’s what I plan on saying about trust as it relates to kids and parents:

Openness, visibility, day-to-day intimacy, fosters TRUST.

Back in 1990 I read Iron John, and Robert Bly’s theory about fathers and sons stuck with me. Bly suggested that throughout most of human history, children could see the work that their parents and other adults did. Hunter-gatherer societies were very public and transparent.

Bly believes that there is a basic developmental need for children to work next to their parents, see what their parents do and how they think and solve problems

You don’t sleep around…and that makes you a loyal partner, right?

In fact, there’s a tad more involved.

In The Science of Trust, John Gottman states, clearly and simply:

A committed romantic relationship is a contract of mutual trust, mutual respect, mutual protection, and mutual nurturance. (p 350)

Yes, sexual betrayal is one way of betraying your partner. But Gottman comes up with twelve more!

Read ‘em and weep (as I did)…and then use them as a checklist towards becoming a better partner (as I am in process of attempting):

I’ve always thought of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) as something only combat veterans and rape victims get.

But now I read John Gottman, in The Science of Trust, referring to the PTSD that results from romantic betrayal:

A contract has been broken in an affair. In heterosexual relationships that subscribe to monogamy and sexual exclusivity, and to the norm of no secrets or betrayals, the affair causes the spouse to question everything – even who this person really is, and what the real marriage contract is. The whole world of the betrayed partner comes crashing down. The betrayed partner goes over the many times they had together where a hidden condition of lying and deception existed. All the symptoms of PTSD are present in the betrayed partner, including disturbed sleep, flashbacks, depression, obsessional intrusive thoughts, emotional numbing, insecurity, self-doubt, and generalized anxiety.

Now, doesn’t this make perfect sense?

Why do some relationships succeed, while others fail?

Why are some people lucky in love?… while others of us (equally warm, wonderful, valuable and lovable human beings!) endure one romantic train wreck after another?

Is it Fate?

Timing?

The random miss-alignment of the planets?

Here comes an example of why learning and science are my life’s passions.

Because wait long enough, and some amazingly smart and dedicated researcher might come up with a break-through that changes your life.

Maybe it’s medical. Maybe technological.

Or, as the field of neuroscience advances, the light bulb that clicks on is more and more often psychological.

OK, soooo…..

Why do relationships fail?