“You can give without loving,” says Robert Louis Stevenson, “but you can not love without giving.”  Giving includes touch, a smile, listening, compliments, noticing what someone does right. Saying, “I love you” nurtures the relationship. Gifts come in many forms. Attention to exits and entrances (good-byes and welcome home) can make those we love feel special and cared about.

As children mature they discover that they get more joy from giving than they do from receiving. In the same way as love matures people find that giving brings more pleasure and fun than receiving. Giving does not belong exclusively to Christmas. For love to thrive giving continues all year. It increases the adventure and joy of the relationship. How have you gifted the one you love today? Try increasing those gifts each day in 2012.

No money for Christmas happened often while I was growing up. As a child, I began making presents weeks before Christmas. I turned worn out bed sheets into squares. Hemmed and decorated they became attractive handkerchiefs. At least I thought so. Once my parents dressed two of my dolls alike, glued cheap look alike wigs on their heads, and gave me the “twins” for Christmas. We made games for each other from scraps of cardboard. My dad made spinners for the games he created. My husband says he and his brothers made toys for each other out of sticks and rubber bands. He had some great sling shots and toy airplanes his brother made for him.

One year our family all made cards with gifts of time or service. “Good for 5 days of telling you a bedtime story of your choice”; “Two weeks of doing your chores”; “An hour of my time to do what you want”; “Good for a movie of your choice”. Use your imagination to think of what your recipients might like. If the gift is for your special person, you can give things like a date night every week for the month of January; thirty minutes of talking time every night before we go to bed; read and discuss 2 pages of “Becoming Soul Mates” with you every day for a week.

Creative gifts take thought and planning but they can be more fun and thoughtful than anything money can buy. To give your lover an hour a day of listening time or a night out together benefits you both in ways you cannot measure. There is no limit to what you can think of to gift your lover.

In a time when Christmas sales of electronic gadgets and toys are soaring, how do you show love and generosity to the ones you love when you cannot buy expensive gifts? My first thought is to go back to the simple “Little House on the Prairie” days. To see the children excited over gifts of barrettes and ribbons makes us realize how much commercialism has influenced our way of equating the money value of a gift to the the measure of love we have for each other.

The T.V. commercial, “Every kiss begins with Kay” implies that the cost of the gift tells how much the giver loves the recipient. Some of our best Christmases have been when we had little money. One year each person was to give the person whose name they drew something they owned that they valued. The gifts brought tears and hugs.

Our daughter gave her brother the seven books of Narnia she treasured and had collected one by one. He knew how much she valued those books.  From her rock collection one of our daughters gave me a beautiful green malachite which I knew was her favorite rock. Love filled our living room as we exchanged gifts.

Feel free to click comment and share some of your Christmas stories of love when money was not the measure. I will post them.

Are you dreading writing Christmas cards, wondering when you will find time? We have turned that tradition into one of the best Christmas celebrations of the Christmas season. We began writing the cards on getaways. The first year we wrote our cards at a timeshare at Lake Tahoe. No interruptions and a great incentive to finish them quickly. Unfortunately, we found that snow in December makes traveling to the mountains unpredictable.

Instead we found a condo at Sea Ranch to rent for three days. Winter rates make it a bargain. We sit at the dining room table and watch the surf crashing against the rocks. Sometimes deer feed in the front yard. We take breaks to walk on the ocean trail. At Black Point the ocean roars ferociously as large waves slap the beach and gradually erode the bluffs carving out a little bigger bay each year. Flowers, eager for spring, bloom proudly in the sunshine ignoring the fact that winter has not officially begun. Yellows. reds, purples dot the greenery pushing aside the weeds.

Yesterday Everett spotted a lone crane sitting like a statue on the edge of the cliff. “Maybe if I zoom in on him, I can get him on film,” he said. Captured on film, the crane still looked far away. We have looked forward to our Christmas card writing getaways for at least ten years. It has become one of our favorite Christmas celebrations.

My children and granddaughter having fun.

Last week I was eating lunch with a couple of guys who also write. One of them talked about how glad he felt that his children had grown up and gone. The other one talked about how lucky he felt because he never had children.

I listened in wonder. Investing in relationship with my children has brought the greatest payoff of anything I have ever done. I have learned things I didn’t know I didn’t know.

Once a therapist with whom I worked sought my advice. “My wife and I are trying to decide whether to have another baby. You know we already have boy and a girl.” I didn’t hesitate to encourage him. My husband had said, “We have a boy and a girl. What else is there?” Then we had Carla and we can’t imagine life without her. Next week we will celebrate the birth of our Christmas baby forty plus years ago–the best Christmas gift ever!

Katherine Rosman wrote a column titled, “Lessons Learned From an Epic Marriage.” I read it in the Sacramento Bee dated 11/20/11. Evelyn and Leonard Lauder lived and worked together as they did for Estee’ Lauder, the cosmetic company founded by Mr. Lauder’s mother in 1946. The Lauders had been married 52 years.

“Mr. Lauder sat down with me first,” writes Rosman. “When Mrs. Lauder walked into the den in a pink boat-neck dress, he stopped what he was saying to me, turned to his wife and said, ‘Don’t you look pretty.'”

The Lauders gave some good advice. One rule, never ever threaten divorce in jest or in anger. Another key to a great marriage is to learn each other’s rhythms, and how to read them. Another way of saying, stay open to learning about each other. The Lauders agreed they were hardly ever on the same emotional wave length, but they were smart in taking turns between willfulness and acquiescence.

Mrs. Lauder died at 75 November 12th. Rosman noted, “There is an inherent sadness in the fact that the more epic a marriage, the more devastating the loss must feel.” That is true, but soul mates will have accumulated an abundance of great memories to help them deal with the loneliness.

Dr. Sue Johnson’s third demon dialogue she calls “Freeze and Flee.” It usually happens after the Protest Polka has been going on a very long time. With the couple I described in my last post freeze and flee happened when the wife became more involved in her church. Her husband would have nothing to do with her church. He buried himself in his work often staying longer than necessary. Both of them seemed to have given up any hope of connection. Their daughters were graduating high school.

It was at this point the couple came to me for counseling. The wife was very angry. The husband disliked her intensely and wanted to get away. He had lost his sense of humor and shut down. Counseling became focused on how to get through the hurt and rebuild confidence and hope.

Eight years have passed and neither of them has gotten involved in another serious relationship. Both seem happy to have ended a relationship that kept them feeling alone and deeply disappointed. Could they have learned to communicate differently?

The second of Dr. Sue Johnson’s demon dialogues is what she calls “demand-withdraw” or “criticize-defend”. She also calls it “The Protest Polka”. It is more subtle than the attack-attack pattern of “Find the Bad Guy”. She describes it this way in her book,”Hold Me Tight”. “One partner is demanding, actively protesting the disconnections; the other is withdrawing, quietly protesting the implied criticism.”

The Protest Polka is clearly illustrated in the graphic, “The Male/Female 9 Step Emotional Confrontation Cycle” in my book, “Becoming Soul Mates”. In this case my male client actually created the graphic trying to illustrate what happens between him and his wife. He confessed he often worked late because of his fear of coming home and facing confrontation by his wife for something of which he was unaware.

The wife, unaware of her fear of abandonment and disconnection, did what she knew how to do best. Get him in the bedroom at night and close the door. Then she would angrily confront him about what he had done or not done. The guy, unaware of his fear of her anger and criticism and disconnection, withdrew, spaced out, and responded as little as possible.

As you can see, this behavior does not lead to connection which both people desired. Instead, they both felt frustrated, unloved, and failure. They were unable to get past years of disconnection. They made it official and divorced.

Couples impact each other at a neuropsychological level. They do an emotional dance with each other. I believe the underlying cause of disconnection comes from expectations that there has to be a right and wrong. If I am feeling unloved and unimportant to my mate, it must be his fault. Then I ask in an accusing tone, “Do you love me?”

When he feels blamed, he becomes defensive. “Of course, I do. What’s the matter with you?” It goes downhill from there. People don’t understand love, emotions, needs. They don’t understand how they trigger primal fears in each other. Everyone needs to examine themselves. How do you protect yourself in relationships? Do you withdraw, freeze up, avoid? Do you pursue, yell, blame?

Be willing to tune in, open up, share fears and needs. Be aware of your own early experiences with attachment. Avoid blame and take responsibility for your part in this dance. Stay accessible. Forgive if necessary. Provide safety to each other. Touch. Comfort. Reassure. Be patient, kind, non-judgmental. This is the key to love and feeling loved.

Dr. Sue Johnson in her book, “Hold Me Tight” describes three types of disconnection. The first is what she calls “Find the Bad Guy”. She says this could just as easily be called, “It’s not me, it’s you.” I believe most people grow up learning to blame and defend. This process fuels disconnection and makes understanding impossible. Until you can begin to recognize this pattern in relationship, connection becomes less frequent and love ceases to grow. Only by staying open to listening can understanding and acceptance be achieved and love grow.

Couples get so locked into their grievances and fears they often do not realize their automatic response to disagreements is to blame and defend. If you feel disconnected from your partner, try to increase your awareness of your response to disagreements. For most of us blame and defend worked well when we were children. Many of us often heard adults blame politicians, news reporters, ethnic groups, the weather and many other things for what they perceived to be the unpleasantness in their lives. We have learned well what Dr. Johnson calls “Demon Dialogue”. If you want love to grow, you must learn a new way to respond.