Mother's Day Thoughts

It's Mother's Day. My kids gave me their poems, bookmarks, drawings and handprints they made at school as soon as I got up (they actually let me sleep in). Soon we'll be headed out for some brunch. Then it's over to my mother's room in a skilled nursing facility - called SNF (pronounced "sniff") for short. They have a cat there named "Mr. SNF" and my kids play with him while they wait for me to take care of their grandma.

This may be my mom's last Mother's Day. She's back on hospice care. I say, "back" because I had to take her off of it so that when she fell and broke her leg three weeks ago. That way it could be surgically repaired so that her insurance would pay for most of the hospital stay and surgery. You can't be "fixed" when you have something broken and still be on hospice care at the same time - the ins and outs of the last chapter of life for some.

At this point, there are many things on the table that never were: mortuary arrangements, dispersing of most of my mom's belongings from her assisted living unit room, middle stage Alzheimer's, and wearing a bib to eat. It's all so undignified at times, though I try my best to surround her with a semblance of decorum.

Sex is not on the table for her, though it's clear to me that she loves to be touched still. She is pleasantly affectionate with the CNAs who help her, holding their hands and stroking their forearms when they assist her. For the last five years, I've sent the same massage therapist into my mom's room each week. They've developed a wonderful friendship that comes with spending such regular time together. With each massage come flowers picked fresh from her garden - even when her own son, barely an adult, died last year.

At this point, it's about physical comfort for my mom coupled with the avoidance of pain. Later on, we'll go to my mother-in-law's three-month old grave. My youngest wants to put flowers there. He likes to raise his water glass and offer a toast of "nostrovia" to his living grandma, his dead grandma, and to the uncle who died last week. Close friends had to put their dog down two weeks ago and left their son with us while they transported their dog to vet. My kids created sympathy cards for their friend and then each gave him one of their stuffed dogs to help him with his sad feelings.

Yep, 2008 has been filled with aspects of death and dying. We keep reading books like When Dinosaurs Die and I Miss You to help the kids (and ourselves) with all these endings.

And, ironically, today I've been thinking quite a bit about a comment one of my clients made recently. He's in the computer and software business and was attending a seminar about accessibility - how to make their computer technology work for people with all sorts of abilities and disabilities. One of the presenters at the seminar who was disabled in some way said that while it was true that he had a disability, the rest of the room was only "temporarily enabled." Today, I'm keenly aware of that fact.

Related Topics:

• WebMD Video: End of Life Options
• WebMD Video: Helping Through Hospice

Technorati Tags: hospice, Mothers Day, death and dying, touch

The Steve Wilkos Show: Multiple Tragedies for the Sake of Ratings

I saw a tragedy on TV a few nights ago. It wasn't in Darfur, Tibet or New Orleans. It took place in a Chicago television studio for The Steve Wilkos Show.

I don't watch much TV. No time - with two young kids, a husband, an ailing mother, my therapy practice and this blog. I happened to be mending a hem and flipped on the TV to pass the time. What I watched really upset me.

Apparently about a week before this show was taped, a four-year old girl told her mother that the boyfriend of her aunt (the mother's sister) had pulled down his pants and put his penis in the little girl's mouth. This man was the father of several children with this aunt though they had apparently not gotten legally married. Then, the little girl told this same story to her aunt when questioned during a drive they went on in the car. The aunt, without questioning her common-law husband about this allegation, took her children and left their home for an unknown destination.

On the TV show, Wilkos (a former Marine, police officer, professional wrestler and director of security for The Jerry Springer Show) badgered each of his guests about their decisions and actions building to a crescendo involving the suspect results of a lie detector test administered by someone affiliated with the show. The "results" did not indicate conclusively that the accused had lied about the contact he'd had with the girl, but there was some question about whether he was telling the truth.

I had some major issues with the show.

During the lie detector interview, questions had apparently been asked about whether the accused had ever had sex with males. It turned out that he had. And, based on the few things he said about it, he was probably more attracted to males than females. But in his Latino culture this taboo was so large he had desperately tried to fit in as a heterosexual by fathering a few children to seal the deal.

The revelation that the accused had these sexual experiences with men somehow made it all the more plausible to Wilkos that he was lying in his denial about the four-year old girl. Wilkos may fancy himself some sort of expert on questioning suspects from his 11-year service in law enforcement, but he is not an expert in the area of sexual offenses. It's a very rare occurrence for a bisexual or gay adult male to be interested in sexual contact with young female children. But, that didn't really matter to Wilkos. In his mind, once you're off the heterosexual path anything's possible.

At one point, Wilkos wondered out loud, "How could a four-year old make this up?!" And rather than have his staff do a little research, he ran full tilt at his target, a man in his twenties at least a foot shorter and probably a hundred pounds lighter - jamming his finger inches from the face of the diminutive accused and yelling into his face with one inch between the tips of their noses.

"How could a kid make this stuff up?" That is exactly what a Los Angeles community wondered when it tried the teachers of the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, CA in 1983. Yet, when it all came out in the wash, there was no corroboration of the statements made by 46 preschool children that included murders, underground tunnels, ritual abuse, dogs, trap doors, drinking blood, Santa Claus, clown suits and burials right on the preschool property.

It turned out that these children were led by unlicensed social workers (one Kee MacFarlane, in particular) in their interviews. It lasted six years - the longest US criminal trial in history. At a cost to the state of $15 million, it was also the most expensive. No convictions were obtained. Here are two good links about this topic:

• Learning From the McMartin Hoax
• "McMartin" Ritual Abuse Cases in Manhattan Beach, CA

This story filled national newspapers for six years. OK, Wilkos was in the Marines and perhaps wasn't in this country, but wasn't anyone on his staff reading the newspaper then? (Silly me, for wondering that. Most TV talk shows have scruples-free producers half my age. They were still running around in diapers then.)

But for one instance, which I'll explore in a moment, the accused man insisted throughout the show that he never did this or anything like it. Of course, many times when an accused perpetrator denies the action of sexual contact, she or he is lying. It isn't something that is always easily admitted.

The one instance was this: After a particularly prolonged session of badgering, the accused said to Wilkos, "Whatever you say, man. Whatever you say." Wilkos leapt upon this and berated him for joking about such a serious matter.

What dawned on me at this point was that this accused man was going through this show and enduring it in the same way that some men sit in the chair of a dunking booth at a carnival. He just stayed on stage and endured one verbal "dunking" after another. Why? There had to be money involved somehow. And, while I don't have the answer to this right now, my intuition still leads me in that direction.

So, how much money will allow a man to be branded (probably for life) as a child molester? How much will compensate him for the likely loss of contact with his own children?

Was it part of "the deal" that he had to stay on stage the entire time in order to receive his fee for participating? He knew why he was coming onto the show. He knew that his sister-in-law would be making these allegations. He knew that her very brawny husband would be right there ready to throttle him.

Did he hope that criminal investigators would see this show for its folly? (Up to the point of taping the show, charges apparently had not been filed.) I don't know. How much could be enough for the loss of his reputation, self-respect, and possibly his children?

I felt for this man. I don't know if he did it or not. Only two people really know what happened - him and the little girl. But even children who are interrogated in particular leading styles by adults who think they already know the answer can get to the point of believing that something that never happened really did.

Wilkos kept circling back to the lie detector test whenever the drama on his stage dropped even slightly. He never minded that lie detectors are not admissible to prove culpability in criminal proceedings (Cal.Evid. Code 351.1). The lie detector test proved everything to Wilkos.

As the show was coming to its close, Wilkos went up to the mother of the little girl and said with pseudo-endearing pathos, "Take care of that baby growing inside you." Yep, she was visibly pregnant. I thought to myself, "How could you? You've just put this woman through the ringer on this stage. No, that wasn't stressful to her or to the baby. How does an hour of non-stop adrenaline affect a fetus?" It was the height of smarminess - and it was tragic for everyone on that set, except Wilkos, his ratings were probably through the roof.

Related Topics:

• Protecting Your Child From Sex Abuse
• Parents - Fear Predators, Not Safety

Technorati Tags: Steve Wilkos, reality TV, sexual abuse, child abuse, homophobia

Sex After Arguing

I've often been asked about why and how people have "make up sex" - sex after arguing. While reading Esther Perel's Mating in Captivity, I found one of the better explanations I've heard.

She was discussing a couple she had been seeing in her therapy office. James was a man who was overly accommodating to Stella. While James' mother had led him to feel burdened with responsibility and guilt, in contrast, Stella was a graceful, vibrant and independent woman.

Summarizing here with a very large stroke of the brush, Stella had become the keeper of their sex life. She wanted it. James didn't. She wanted to talk about it. He didn't. Stella had reached the point of hating being the one who made it happen, but she did not dare stop doing so for fear that he would do nothing to keep their sexual relationship alive.

As it turned out, James' only experiences anxiety-free sex was when he masturbated where he attended to himself without what he perceived as the pressure of another's demands. His fantasy women were not vulnerable and they could not be hurt by his sexual selfishness. When he had sex with Stella, he couldn't allow this side of himself out because deep down he feared that he would hurt her emotionally. During sex, he reenacted (without needing to) a nonsexual aspect of his relationship with his mother: choosing between attending to himself and having closeness.

This couple was stumped. They had written off their relationship as "bad chemistry." But Perel worked on James' issue of overly attending to Stella - in particular, straightening out the difference between healthy separateness and indifference. If you want all the details of this part, get the book.

This couple did get their sex life jump-started. As it turned out, each time they had sex, it was after they argued. James reported that he was bothered by this.

Here's what Perel said:

"Anger and excitement have a complicated relationship. Physiologically, anger and arousal have a lot in common. Psychologically, too. In your case, I think
the anger emboldens you. It relieves you of compliance, and leaves you feeling
more entitled. Anger highlights separateness and is a counterpoint to
dependence; this is why it can so powerfully stoke desire. It gives you the
distance you need. As a habit it can be problematic, but there's no denying that
it's a powerful stimulant."

I have seen a similar pattern among some clients in my therapy practice: internal conflict related to caring for self over others, a preference for masturbation over partnered sex, unexpressed (or seldom expressed) frustration and anger, and a sexual connection that comes to life after the "negative" emotions are expressed - right after they are expressed, say during an argument.

I have seen caricatured portrayals of "make up sex" in TV and movie dramas. And I do think that most people imagine such a scenario where hateful expression transforms into impassioned loving expression.

But a more sophisticated look at this is warranted. I do think that the physiologic similarities are relevant. When arguments occur, there is a deeply felt self-centered set of emotions experienced by both. Contrast that type of focus and energy with a somewhat tentative sexual style that some couples fall into. For these couples, their best sex may be "make up sex" because during an argument they've just been engaged in the type of self-centered jockeying that can make for sexual thrills. The arguments become a solution to a problem of tepid sex. For some couples, they never progress past this dynamic. But, others begin to understand that their sexual style needs an injection of energy and that it need not be from an argument.

Related Topics:

• WebMD Video: How Gender Differences Affect Relationships
• Make Over Your Sex Life!
• 31 Ways to Say "Yes" to Sex

Technorati Tags: make up sex, Mating in Captivity, sex matters