New Year’s Resolution Should Get to the Heart of the Matter

You refuse to drive anywhere on New Year’s Eve and you’re so burned out on holiday cheer by then that you’d rather not invite anyone to your place, so you are settling in for a quiet evening at home.

If you’re like many other New Year’s Eve couch potatoes, you’ll probably end up falling asleep in front of the tube long before the countdown in Times Square reaches your living room. You’ll greet 1991 in the morning, just in time for the first kickoff.

But you might want to consider planning a more stimulating celebration at home that will keep you awake long enough--and put you in the right mood--to collect a midnight kiss (or two . . . ) from your mate. You might try an elegant dinner with candles, champagne and, most important, intimate conversation that sets the tone for a promising New Year.

This is the time to make some resolutions about how you and your partner can work together to improve your relationship with each other and your children--and perhaps other family members--in 1991. If your resolutions in the past have been mostly pragmatic--things like getting your 20-year-old body back, bathing your dog more often or finishing your novel--it may be difficult, at first, to come up with resolutions focusing on the deeper matter of making your loved ones happy.

Fortunately, you are about to get some help from Orange County family therapists, who were asked to identify the New Year’s resolutions they would most like to see couples make. Because therapists work mostly with families in distress, they relished the opportunity to suggest ways to enrich relationships that might help prevent crises. So here goes.

Todd Creager, a Huntington Beach marriage, family and child counselor who specializes in couples therapy, stressed the importance of effective communication. He suggested that couples resolve to: “Be honest with each other. Stop holding back or hiding feelings. Remember you cannot not communicate. If you are not expressing yourself directly, you are doing it indirectly, and that is always worse. We often communicate unexpressed feelings by acting them out in such ways as withdrawing, starting arguments and being defiant.”

In addition to communicating more directly, couples should show respect for each other even when they are angry, negotiate in a way that allows both to feel that their opinions and desires matter, and put aside their own agendas so that they can really listen to each other, Creager added.

He’d also like to see couples make a commitment to “focus on the best in each other.”

“People change behaviors much more quickly if given strokes for their constructive behaviors, even if those behaviors are few and far between,” he explained. “Ongoing criticism about negative behaviors tends to preserve the status quo.”

Helen Greenblatt, a Laguna Hills psychotherapist, encourages people to “let go of old beliefs so they’re free to seek new challenges” in their family relationships.

She explained: “We cling to the old patterns and habits because they’re comfortable, but they’re really not moving us forward.”

Those old beliefs may prevent people from finding peace in difficult relationships, she said. “We stereotype our family members, especially our parents. If we could just step back and look at them objectively without any of the guilt or shame or past hurts, we might see them in a way more acceptable to us. We should be charitable with our families and give them the benefit of the doubt.”

The tendency to resist change in a relationship often leads to major crises, said Gerry Owen of Owen Family Counseling in Brea.

“The way we talk tends to focus on keeping things the same,” he said. “If someone goes off in one direction, we try to pull them back toward the past.”

Couples can tell they’re resisting change if they keep repeating a “stuck conversation” that always leaves them feeling bad but never gets resolved, Owen noted.

If couples don’t face changes in each other and their relationship as they occur, they may eventually be forced to do so by a crisis such as an extramarital affair, and by then it may be too late.

“It’s better to have small shakes than a major quake,” Owen said.

So he urges couples to allow for change and try to resolve their difficulties as they come up rather than carry over bad feelings from one day to the next.

As couples get better at dealing with their conflicts, they need to balance those often-difficult encounters by finding more time for romance, said Owen’s wife, Linda, who is also a family therapist.

Just touching each other more can make a big difference, she said.

She and her husband also offer couples this deceptively simple advice: “When touched, say ‘thank you.’ When angry, walk. When sad, hug. Whenever, laugh.”

Lee Hachey, a marriage and family counselor in Costa Mesa, agrees that couples should be more demonstrative; without open affection, too many end up “being like roommates,” he said.

He and his wife, therapist Jeanne Nelson, share an end-of-the-day ritual that has given an indefinite life span to the honeymoon feeling in their marriage. Whoever gets home first drops whatever he or she is doing when the other arrives and offers an embrace and a far-from-perfunctory kiss at the front door.

“It makes a tremendous difference when you drive up to your house and you know you’re going to be greeted at the door--and not just with a peck on the cheek. You really feel like you’re coming home,” Hachey said.

He said people who don’t greet their partner warmly at the end of the day may be inhibited by a fear of rejection. They may also worry that their affection will be misinterpreted as a sexual advance. Or they may feel pressure because they have misread an embrace from their partner.

“You have to make it clear that this is just a greeting,” Hachey stressed. “If sexual feelings occur, it doesn’t mean it’s a demand. Once that’s out in the open, you feel more free and the fears go down.”

While many therapists stressed the importance of couples forming stronger bonds in the new year, others focused on the needs of children.

Patricia Adams, a Brea psychotherapist, said parents should resolve to set aside time every week for family activities that are sure to generate laughter. And, she added, there should be a daily family meal when the conversation focuses on the day’s events and no negative topics are introduced.

No matter how busy you are, find time each day to give your children undivided attention, advised Marian Blakely, a Placentia marriage, family and child counselor.

“We’re all busy but if we don’t focus on whatever it is we’re doing at the moment, nothing gets done with quality,” she observed. “We’re bathing the kid, but our mind is on the grocery list. If we don’t give our attention to the activity at hand, it loses meaning.”

Ken Rhea, a Huntington Beach psychotherapist, suggested that each parent spend time alone with each child “so the kids don’t get lumped together.” He remembers sitting in the car with his dad at fast-food restaurants when he was a child, sharing talk over a hamburger and fries. “That was a special time because we were away from home, and I knew if I had something to say, this was the time to bring it up and he wouldn’t be distracted.”

Michael Dennis, a Huntington Beach therapist, said parents should not only spend more time with their children, but also show respect for them as individuals and resist the impulse to live through them vicariously. Dennis made a long list of resolutions for parents wanting to strengthen their relationship with their children. Among them:

* “I will let my kids act their age.”

* “When disciplining, I will consider whether I am doing this to teach the child or to express my own anger and frustration, and I will make the consequences appropriate in degree, quantity and quality to the inappropriate behavior.”

* “I will not take the good things for granted. I will notice the positives in my children and praise them more than criticize them.”

* “I will give my children a chance to show they can be trusted.”

Underlying those resolutions is a commitment that Helen Kohn, a Fullerton marriage and family therapist, described when she said the most important thing that families can do “is treat each other kindly and with love.”

She sees many abuse victims who grew up associating love with pain. “Many people grow up thinking love hurts, and they get into relationships where this is fulfilled,” she explained. “Love should be meaningful, gentle and fulfilling, and we need to teach our children that.”

Joan P. LaMontagne, a psychologist who practices in Mission Viejo and Irvine, feels that couples are too quick to break up troubled marriages at the expense of their children. She wants to see more couples try to work out their problems within the context of an “unconditional commitment to marriage.”

“The holy commitment to marriage has been lost in the need for the institution to change, but I think we will come back around to that,” she said.

Although LaMontagne and other therapists are optimistic that New Year’s resolutions such as these can lead to better relationships, they caution couples not to get carried away by good intentions when the champagne starts to flow.

As Gerry Owen pointed out, you’ll only be disappointed if you make resolutions that you can’t back up with actions.

“Decide what you need to do and say to help make your resolutions work,” he advised. “And give yourself credit for small steps you take on the path to big goals.”