Chapter 8: God and You; Chapter 10: Love, Sex, and Marriage
Embracing the Relationship that Transcends ALL Others; Working Out Our Most
Intimate Relationship
Unlocking the Secrets to Loving and Lasting Relationships
Psychology of Relationships
Professor Logan – Thursday Feb 2, 2017, Tuesday Feb 7, 2017, Thursday Feb 9, 2017, &
Tuesday Feb 14, 2017
1. Attaching to God
a. What is God?
i. He is?
1. Seeking and Maintaining
a. A proximity to God
2. God is a safe haven
3. God is a secure base
4. Feelings of loss or perceived abandonment by God
a. Separation Anxiety
b. Influences?
i. What Influences your Current Relationship with God?
1. Compensation Hypothesis:
a. The relationship to God can compensate for deficient
caregiver and/or adult romantic bonds
2. Correspondence Hypothesis:
a. The attachment style an individual has will be consistent
across types of bonds; caregivers, lovers, and God
3. What is YOUR STORY?
2. Fundamental Question:
a. How do you SEE your world?
i. Glasses
ii. Experiences
iii. Beliefs
iv. Relationship styles
b. This is our lives
c. Normal Highs and Lows
i. What describes you?
1. I…
a. Am not an emotional person
b. Am more emotional than my peers
c. Am less emotional than my peers
d. Tend to allow logic to influence my emotional responses
e. Allow my emotions to influence my decisions.
d. Primary and Secondary Emotions
i. Primary:
1. Reacting emotionally to a situation in real time is a
primary emotional experience
ii. Secondary:
1. Usually involve trying to deny or repress emotions
3. An Issue of Control:
a. You Control
i. Desire
1. However, when desire is suppressed it turns into jealousy
a. Jealousy controls you
ii. Grief
1. However, when grief is suppressed it turns into depression
a. Depression controls you
iii. Anger
1. However, when anger is suppressed it turns into rage
a. Rage controls you
4. Transcrisis State
a. James and Gilliard
i. 2013, pg. 11
1. “Although the original crisis event may be submerged below
awareness and the individual may believe the problem has been
resolved, appearance of new stressors may bring the individual to
the crisis state again…” - cont. below
2. Cont. – “This emotional roller-coaster is called a transcrisis
state, and may occur frequently and for extended periods of time,
ranging from months to years”
5. Relationship Styles
a. How Do You “DO” Emotions?
i. Avoidant
1. Tend to keep people at a distant
2. Avoid true intimacy
3. Keeping feelings at a distance
4. Prone to feeling empty
5. Denies any negative emotions
6. Can use addictive behaviors as a substitute for true intimacy
7. Overregulates emotions
ii. Ambivalent
1. “In intense situations, emotions do not respond to a half-prepared
conscience”
2. Become entangled in relationships
3. On an emotional roller coaster
4. Excessive concerns about rejection
5. Under-regulates emotions
6. Allows normal, healthy emotions to turn into intense self-
defeating outburst
iii. Disorganized
1. Bounces between Avoidant and Ambivalent
2. May be overwhelmed with feelings from the past
3. Traumatic experiences can become part of their current
world (flashbacks)
iv. Secure
1. Not afraid to feel powerful emotions like fear and anger
2. Emotions help guide decision making
3. Emotions motivated behavior
4. Not controlled by their emotions
6. Six Steps to Calming your Emotional Storms
a. How to Handle What You Have
i. Regardless of Attachment Style, to DEAL with Storms…
1. Identify the Primary Emotion
2. Connect the Primary Emotion to the Triggering Situation
3. Target Negative Thinking
4. Behave Differently
5. Use Solving Problem Techniques
6. Develop Healthy Relationships
7. Talk to Jesus
7. Forgiveness of Divine Serenity:
•There are Experiences in Life
o Enjoy life with your wife, who you love, all the days of this meaningless life
that God has given you under the sun – all your meaningless days; for this is
your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun
•Love on the Rocks
a. Introduction
i. Dilemma:
1. An issue of two rights
ii. Danger:
1. Action resented techniques
iii. Duty:
1. Emphasize hour without accusations
oMovement is toward and relational collaboration
oStepping back vs. stepping out
b. Awareness:
i. Seeing Differently
1. Every Pressures that Tear at Love
a. Stress
b. Satanic Assault
c. Scripts from our Past
d. “Supposed to Be’s”
e. Sin
f. Speed
2. The Path of Disaffection
a. Distancing
i. Gottman’s 4 Horses
1. Criticism
2. Contempt
3. Defensiveness
4. Stonewalling
ii. Creation of a Vacuum
iii. Self-Medication
3. The Cycle of Disaffection
a. Empty, exhausted, and expecting
b. Raise the bar
c. Increase the negative interactions and emotions
d. Greater self-preservation and distancing
e. Increased disaffection
4. Safety
a. Judicious editing
i. Reducing the Negative
b. Encourage soft love
c. Facilitate positive communication and problem solving
d. Challenge personal growth and develop
8. The Fork in the Road:
a. What We Face
i. Everybody will come to a crossroad that will present them with some hard
choices
1. Continue as before, or make changes that are sometimes painful
and always frightening
2. The major choice people face is whether to walk the pathway of
healing or the pathway of continuing pain
3. Discontent versus the death of desire
b. Losing Heart
i. Attacked
ii. Angry/Anxious
iii. Aloneness
iv. Alienated/Arrogant
v. Adulteries of the Heart
vi. Addiction
c. Recovery of the Heart
i. Affection of God
ii. Assessment
iii. Awareness
iv. Attachment
v. Action
vi. Accountability
vii. Alive Again
