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Browse published articles attributed to Barry and Joyce Vissell, with full-archive search.
In our book, Meant To Be, thirty-three year old Kat Trueblood describes herself as tired of dating. It was the spring of 1989, and while visiting a friend near where she was living in Colorado, she picked up and started reading a copy of our first book, The Shared Heart. Unable to put it down, ...
(An excerpt from the Vissell’s new book, To Really Love a Man) TO REALLY LOVE A MAN IS TO CHOOSE HIM OVER AND OVER AGAIN. It’s not enough to say marriage vows one time, though that is certainly important. The relationship is deepened if you let him know often that you would choose him all over again if given the choice.
Do you ever feel unworthy to receive good things in your life? It’s not an easy question to answer. Some of you are in touch with your feelings of not deserving. Some of you are not. I dare say that feelings of unworthiness are present in most of us, although we might not be aware of them. The first step in overcoming these feelings is to become aware of them. This can’t only be a mental process. Feelings of unworthiness need to be recognized and felt, before healing can happen.
For a relationship to be healthy, both partners need to be willing to take responsibility for their own part in an argument. This is sometimes very difficult to do. It is always easier to see your partner’s fault than your own. If you’re angry or defensive in a situation, look deeper and you will find your part. Joyce and I sometimes tell the following very humbling story in our workshops to illustrate mutual responsibility:
rn(Excerpt from the Vissell’s not-yet published book, To Really Love a Woman)
I have to admit. I have a hard time asking for help. I have that “false pride” thing about being able to do it myself, that if I have to ask for help, it means I’m helpless. It makes me think about the two year old who proclaims, “I can do it myself!” And now that I’m on the other side of the life spectrum, at age seventy, it means even more to me to be able to still do things by myself. A recent weekend brought all of this into the light.
“Our minds map out a neat, perfect little road for life and we hate to have it changed in any way. Yet that perfect little road may completely by-pass our goal of God-realization.” –Barry and Joyce Vissell, The Shared Heart
The first three steps of the twelve step program for recovery from addiction have to do with asking for help, knowing that we are powerless without help from a higher power, and trusting that this higher power can restore our lives greater than we could even imagine. I have seen these twelve steps work miracles in the lives of many people. What about people who are not struggling with addiction? I feel the twelve steps, especially the first three, can help all people.
When I think of a spiritual retreat, I imagine a lot of meditation, quiet walks, no computers or media, listening to gentle music, and withdrawing from the busyness of the world. Several weeks ago, Barry left for eight days to raft the Owyhee River in very remote Southeast Oregon. He had wanted to raft this river for a long time, and had just found out that this year the abundance of rain provided enough water for a spontaneous late spring trip. Typically, every year, Barry leaves for a week doing some kind of an adventure by himself.
Barry: If we only knew how many times we are rescued by divine intervention, we would completely trust this higher power. There would then be nothing to worry about – ever! Joyce and I had yet another powerful reminder of this truth – and divine miracle – last week.
Miracles happen all the time. You probably know someone who has had a miracle happen to them, or maybe a miracle has happened to you. I know a woman whose cancer tumor disappeared ove ight after she and several others stayed up all night praying. The doctors said there was no medical explanation for this. I feel it is a miracle how I met Barry at the very young age of 18, and that we have been able to be deeply in love with each other for 53 years now.
(An excerpt from the Vissell’s new book, To Really Love a Woman) TO BE VULNERABLE WITH A WOMAN IS TO ALLOW YOURSELF TO BE SEEN AND KNOWN IN YOUR ENTIRETY, not just your powerful, independent, secure, loving and capable self. Yes, you love a woman by being powerful, by protecting her from all harm, by fathering the little girl inside her, and by gently taking the lead. But without vulnerability your loving is incomplete.
To really love a woman is to give her your complete trust. I love the line in Bryan Adams’ song, “… and when you find yourself lying helpless in her arms, you know you really love a woman.” To lay helpless in her arms, you need to give up control and be vulnerable. You need to trust that she will not intentionally hurt you, that she is looking out for your well-being, fully on your side, and watching your back. Even more importantly, you can trust in a higher power expressing through your beloved, an abundance of love and caring that can come through her.
Several days ago we attended the Cultural Awareness Program at Mt. Madonna School where our grandson is in first grade. His grade of ten adorable students reenacted a Buddhist story from Cambodia. In this story a single mother has three grown sons. She is very conce ed that her sons do not help her or anyone else, and care only about money. She confides this conce to her beloved sister and together they come up with a plan. The mother draws her three sons together, shows them a treasure chest, and says, “When I die, you can open this chest.
I love being outside and physical activity to balance the counseling, workshops and writing, which I also love. I enjoy walking the dogs with Joyce, mowing the lawn, fixing things, gardening, doing anything to be outside. Some folks like to sit around when they are on vacation. Not me. Multiday river trips are my favorite vacations, as well as backpacking in the wilde ess. Of course I value stillness. Each morning, Joyce and I sit for 10-20 minutes, trying to meditate, sometimes successfully. We know it’s important work, even when our minds seem too active.
“The amount we receive back within our hearts from helping is much more than the time or money that we give.”
There are popular feelings: joy, happiness, love and affection, to name a few. And then there are unpopular feelings: anger, sadness, grief, hurt, and fear, among others. Most of us tend to hide the unpopular feelings and, instead, only feel and show the popular ones. If we want integrity and wholeness in our lives, we must embrace all our feelings. Picking and choosing simply won’t work. Believe me, I’ve tried it plenty, and in a bit I’ll tell you what happened to me.
A few weeks ago, Joyce and I got to experience the total eclipse high in the mountains of Idaho, in the exact center of the “zone of totality.” It was, for us, the experience of a lifetime. In our seventy-one years of living, there have been other major eclipses, but we have never been in their direct paths. And not since the year 1257 has there been a total eclipse that has passed across the whole of what is now the United States.
Those nine words by Ted Geisel (Dr.Seuss), one of our country’s favorite storytellers, contain so much wisdom. They apply to many different aspects of life, but I would like to focus on the area of relationships. Most of us are going to have relationships end at some point in our lives, whether they are marriages, partners, friends, relatives or any other type of relationship. People leave, or die, and it hurts. What to do with the hurt?
[We are excerpting one last time from our new book, A Mother’s Final Gift: How One Woman’s Courageous Dying Transformed Her Family]
Our son got married a few days ago to Isaiah, the man of his dreams. Hardly ever in our work with couples have we seen such depth in love, respect and commitment. Whoever feels that only a man and a woman can truly love each other, has not witnessed the kind of deep love that Isaiah and our son, John-Nuri, have had for each other for the past four years. Love truly can take on many forms.
January 21 will long be remembered as the day of the women’s marches. It is so inspiring that women from each continent participated, even Antarctica. We just watched a women’s march that took place in Israel in which Jewish and Arab women marched together. We could not read their signs but I could only imagine that they all wanted peace. There seems to have been such a feeling of joy within these marches.
Okay, it’s a cute word. But what does it mean to have a real relationship, a relationship with substance? What does it take to have a relationship that not only lasts, but also thrives with loving connection? From growing with my beloved of 52 years, Joyce, and from our work with couples for 42 years, here are our 7 primary ingredients for REALationship. Every one of our couple’s retreats includes these elements. Of course there are many more ingredients but, if you sincerely understand these basic 7, the others will come along quite naturally.
A practical article connected into the broader SelfGrowth topic graph.
Last week, Barry and I found ourselves at 10pm sitting at a special reserved table at “The Stud,” the 50-year-old first gay bar in San Francisco. First of all, there are a few things you should know about us. We are quiet country people who like to go to bed early. We never drive the ninety minutes to San Francisco unless it is to go to the airport for work travel. For the most part we do not drink alcohol or listen to loud music. Our idea of a good time is rafting a wilde ess river and camping all by ourselves in a beautiful spot along the river with our two golden retriever dogs.
In 1960, I was fourteen years old and my mother was the first civil rights activist that I knew. She did not march the streets. She lived her beliefs. She had Blacks, Muslims, Gays and other minorities over to our house for dinner almost every Sunday. She treated them all with the greatest respect and honor like they were part of her family. She also spoke up loudly if anyone said anything against one of these minorities. She often coached me, “Joyce, remember every person is a child of God. It does not matter what color their skin or their religion.
What does it mean to be fully committed in a monogamous relationship? The traditional meaning has to do with focusing your romantic energies only upon your partner. You are not committed if you have “one foot outside the door,” meaning you are still available for romantic relationship with another person. I use the term “roman-tic” to include sexual relationships as well. You are committed if you are sure you are with the right person, or feel there is no one else out there who can better fulfil your needs. Most people understand this definition of commitment.
Sometimes our perceptions can get us into trouble. What appears so clearly to be our reality may not be real at all. Or it may be partially correct, but not the whole picture. We humans have a tendency to interpret our partial experiences as the whole truth and ignore other people's partial experiences. How brave of us to actually consider that we may be partially right and may have partial information.
A successful relationship has two very important components: learning to love yourself first, and then learning to love another person. Too many people ignore the first part, then wonder why it’s so hard to love another. It’s like expecting to water a plant with an empty water pitcher. Or trying to put on your child’s oxygen mask when the airplane cabin pressure drops, but passing out from lack of oxygen before you can get it on.
What if Joyce dies before me? This is one of my greatest vulnerabilities. Sure, I could die first. Statistically, women live longer than men. But this is not my vulnerability. My dying first brings up other feelings, like abandoning my true love, not being there to help her when she needs me. Of course I know I’ll always be there for her, just without a body. I have full faith that, in the realm of soul, I’ll be even more present for her without the distractions that are here on earth.
Sometimes we get what we ask for without knowing it. And sometimes we don’t like what we get, even though we asked for it. This is what happened to me a few days ago…
Sharing your life with a loving partner is very rewarding and meaningful. Barry and I met at the age of eighteen during our first year of college. Many people our age met someone in college or in their home town during a social event and got married by the time they were twenty-two years old. That was often the norm for the sixties and early seventies. But now that is far from the norm. There are many people of all ages wishing and hoping they could meet their life partner. And hardly anyone gets married now at age twenty-two.
December 21, 2018 is our 50th wedding anniversary. We got married during a snow storm in Buffalo, New York at 7pm in the evening. The church was filled with candlelight and poinsettias. My uncle played the organ, my sister-in-law sang and the minister learned Hebrew prayers for our combined Jewish and Christian ceremony. We spoke our own vows, which at that time was unprecedented. It was the happiest day for me, after four years of loving Barry and having people tell us that a Jewish/Christian marriage just cannot work, we were actually doing it.
At our recent retreat in Assisi, Italy, besides visiting powerful spiritual places, our group entered into an atmosphere of deep healing. Sometimes Joyce and I have the opportunity not only to lead the retreat, but also to participate in some of the exercises for our own continual healing, which is an ongoing lifetime adventure. One morning, all of us in the group revisited our childhoods to more closely examine those things that still have power over us. We did this in small groups of four persons and, when it was my turn, I revisited some physical violence from my parents.
“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” --Rabindranath Tagore
For too many people, separation is a prelude to divorce. Taking time apart from a loved one is often thought of as the end of the relationship. But after 53 years together, and helping to guide thousands of couples, Joyce and I view separation as a sometimes vital necessity in a relationship that could very well end without separation.
In a couple’s counseling session, Dolores accused her husband, Perry, of workaholism. His immediate response was, “Yes, I’m a workaholic.” Joyce and I were surprised at the actual pride revealed in his voice. He continued, “I’m a creative man, an entrepreneur. I thrive on juggling many projects.”
Joyce and I love watching our two-year-old grandson, Owen, just as much as we love spending time with our first grandson, almost eight-year-old Skye. When they were new babies, their dependence was obvious. Because Owen is younger, I will use him as an example. He would not have survived for long without the nurturing and protection of our daughter, Mira, and her now-husband, Ryan. (They got married here in our home last month!)
Rejection can hurt. Perhaps a person can be rejected by a friend, partner, boss, sibling, parent, co-worker, someone you work out with at the gym, or even your grown child. Scientists are discovering that the hurt of rejection can be actually recorded within your body.