Samantha Rodman PhD, LLC

05/22/2023

A corollary to hatred of need is often hatred of pleasure. When you grow up having to deny your own vulnerable feelings, it can feel sickening to watch anyone directly express their own vulnerability. Saying that you enjoy something is vulnerable, because if people know what you like, they know what they can take away in order to hurt you. If you grew up in a home where your likes or preferences were used against you, you learned to never directly communicate what makes you happy, and then this often leads to suppressing pleasure in order to make it easier not to express it. You can then end up being someone who looks down on others who express pleasure, because you have rendered yourself “above it.”

Many people are secretly disgusted by need, and this is a hallmark of avoidant attachment. In the bedroom, this can also manifest as being scared or disgusted by your partner’s desire, as I discuss here. When you are turned off by need, this stops your relationship from being close and ...

04/04/2022

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‎Health & Fitness · 2022

08/08/2021

*x 👆

For the benefit of people who are currently dating a partner who seems really into s*x, but who fear the s*xual spark will end after marriage (from reading too much Dr. Psych Mom, or from having this happen to them in a prior marriage), I write this post. Here’s a list of things to look for if you want to know if your s*xual connection will last through marriage (or even engagement).

https://www.drpsychmom.com/2017/09/09/how-to-tell-if-your-partner-will-stop-enjoy-s*x-after-marriage-and-kids/

08/02/2021

The one albatross around his neck is his crazy wife, whom we shall call Crazy Wife. She texts him all the time. She thinks he may be having an affair, or that he is a workaholic. She complains about his lack of emotional involvement and that he doesn’t seem to be very interested in what she thinks or feels. She sometimes gets so “crazy” as to cry or scream, just to get a reaction from him. Of course he doesn’t give her one. He is not into that sort of thing. Emotions to him are messy and silly. Of course he loves his Crazy Wife, he married her, didn’t he? And he’s been the same guy all along, what the hell does she want from him now? Candlelight and roses? This is a marriage, not a musical.

I discuss one common type of couple I've seen in counseling.

08/01/2021

This more than anything else I say in session provides nearly instant relief to so many guilt stricken stressed out parents.

07/31/2021

In situations where the wives DO actually do most of the physical housework, they often say they are too tired for s*x because of all the housework they have to do. This is true; I discuss how housework is the death of female libido here. But what if you could kill two birds with one stone: make your husband happy AND get out of doing the housework you dislike? I have not yet encountered a man who yearns for more touch and s*x that would not either personally do all the housework his wife dislikes or hire someone to do it IF this would make her want to love him and touch him more (love = touch for people with this love language).

The majority of men have a love language of physical touch, which includes (but is not limited to) s*x. They feel frustrated, sad, and lonely in their marriages when their wives do not give them this love language, for a surfeit of reasons I cover ceaselessly in this blog like ...

07/30/2021

Dr Psych Mom may be up and running again soon. Don't know if you guys can see it yet. Someone let me know in comments!

'Of course the oldest ended up refusing to eat more than half of his pasta that he begged for and then threw a fit that his sister’s burger was what he really wanted (do you have to ask if she would share? Not if he was starving to death). They begged for dessert so I ordered chocolate cake for both and when I asked for a taste from my son’s plate he whined and said, “You’re gonna eat ALL of it.”'

Reader Mom Of Monsters writes, Just came back from a restaurant with my kids, who are 7 and 6. I am so fed up that I may never go out to eat with them again. When we were pulling into the parking lot, my oldest started asking about dessert and ...

07/29/2021

Many people in the caretaking professions, and I speak from personal experience, were exposed to extreme and constant marital dysfunction, parental depression, and lack of boundaries between parent and child. These kids learn that the world is a terrible place where people are constantly victimized. As kids, they often try to cheer up their parents, but the parents remain stuck in the past, recounting the same tragedies in the same hopeless tones. Later in life, these children choose careers where they can accomplish what they could never do with their parents: actually make people feel happier.

Many of the clients I work with are people-pleasers, nearly phobic about upsetting other people, especially within intimate relationships.  Often, these people experienced childhoods in which one or both parents overwhelmed them with their sadness.  The parents recounted stories in which they figu...

07/28/2021

You may want to try being more honest and vulnerable with your wife, but you wonder how to do this without seeming weak. In reality, expressing your feelings openly is the opposite of weak. Think about it. Who is the weak one, a guy who can tell a hot girl at the bar, “You’re beautiful and I want to get your number” (if this is what he is really thinking at that moment) or the guy who talks to this girl for 45 minutes about some topic he could care less about even though he is thinking the same thing as the first guy? The first guy is literally saying what he feels without caring whether the woman rejects him or not. The second guy is pretending to care about something he doesn’t care about because he is trying to impress a woman by being “cool.”

https://www.drpsychmom.com/2021/07/28/vulnerability-is-another-word-for-confidence-and-women-love-it/

07/27/2021

1. Make the environment comfortable.

Raise or lower the temperature, have a fan in the room to turn on or off, and get blankets. Shut the lights off because many highly sensitive women cannot focus on their pleasure in harsh light (small lamp = harsh light for some HSP women). Don’t question, just do it. Do you want to be having great s*x in the dark under a blanket or no s*x with the light on without a blanket? Exactly.

I have written here about things that women want in bed that they may be too shy to mention outright to their husbands. But the longer I work with couples, the more I see that, particularly for highly sensitive women, there are some really pragmatic steps that men can take ...

07/25/2021

NEW POST!!

When children are raised to ignore their preferences or even their needs, and see parents who endlessly defer their own happiness, they become adults who are extremely uncomfortable with pursuing joy. This sort of upbringing is common in dysfunctional families of all types, especially families where one or both parents are depressed. In these homes, nobody is even trying to be happy. People are surviving rather than thriving. If there are any fantasies of a better life, these fantasies hinge on some mythical unattainable state like “when we have more money” or “when my health gets better.” These idealized futures never come to fruition, so children learn that happiness is never possible in the present, only in the future, which never comes.

Many people defer happiness or fulfillment because they feel they aren’t worthy of it “yet.”  They push off things that would make them happy far into the future, and often never end up doing them at all.  Here are some examples of this sad and self-destructive behavior: A mother who ...

07/24/2021

Something I see in counseling often!

“Problems can arise if one partner feels ‘skin-starved’ and the other feels that they offer enough affection or doesn’t prioritize affection and physical touch as integral to the success of the relationship,” said La’Tesha Sampson, a clinical social worker and the founder of Great Joy Counseling and Consulting Services in Clark, N.J.

For some couples, having different nons*xual intimacy preferences can be a strain on the relationship. Here’s how to meet in the middle.