Katie's blog

    Most people have had their preferred rhythm of moving through the world messed with. Meanderers got prodded, fidgeters  jerked into line and most of us told to sit still to learn. In our relationships, most partners experience that one person waits, and the other is waited for. When you walk with friends or your mate, how do you find your true pace? And how do you blend your pace with another?

     Relationship conflicts, marriage problems, even hassles with business associates in your life, generally boil down to how much skill you have in taking responsibility. Or not. When we start talking about responsibility in our seminars and media appearances, people often get what I call the “responsibility glaze over,” that blank look and held breath that let’s me know I’ve ventured into the zone of the unknown.

     Lucy has such a clear experience of what she wants and exactly how much she wants. She can be ecstatically purring and the next moment pops up and relocates, still purring. Or I might be petting her in a way I know she likes, and suddenly she squawks, “that’s enough.”

   A paradigm shift has been quietly occurring over the last several years that holds great potential for resolving personal, relationship and cultural conflict. And it’s come from an unlikely place: dance. You might have noticed (as I certainly have, with hands-clapping delight) how many commercials now feature wild dance moves, group movement, and unusual boogying in cars at stoplights, elevators and boardrooms.

     At the beginning of the movie “Romancing the Stone” a western scene unfolds, complete with the damsel in distress, the tobacco-spitting villain and the hero riding in to sweep his woman up onto the saddle (if you see this one-handed wonder, remember the warning to avoid trying such stunts at home).

Appreciation Leapfrog

I’m off in a couple of days to facilitate our Couples Course in Boulder and am brimming with ideas about what will make the time most useful for us all.  Back in the old days I was still pinging around inside the pinball machine of the Old Relationship Story, which goes something like this.

Play Signals

   I was play-challenged coming into relationships—were you?  I took everything pretty seriously, including frown lines on Gay’s face (which of course meant I’d done something wrong) and the “work” of relating. When he would toss a verbal line or image my way I’d pretty much drop the ball or feel it whizzing by before my brain got there to respond.