Marriage

Episode 91: Agile Leadership With Jonathan Reams

by amiel · Jan 8, 2019

Agile Leadership.

The word “agility” has many meanings. As kids, we prided ourselves on being physically agile at sports–or disappointed by our lack of agility. In software, agile is a methodology and set of principles for producing products and engaging teams. What about in leadership?

This week’s guest, Jonathan Reams, joins me to explore agile leadership.

Over 15 years ago, Jonathan and I met when matched together to organize “integral gatherings” in San Francisco involving several hundred people. He soon moved east to Norway, and I moved north to Portland. His move was much farther!

Jonathan once drove a dump truck. Now he teaches at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, edits the online journal, Integral Review (which I’ve read for years), and is co-founder of the European Center for Leadership Practice. I’m not sure whether his first career or his current one require more agility, but clearly the forms of agility are very different.

What is agile leadership? How can we use Ken Wilber’s four quadrants, developmental stages, and the Goldilocks Zone to understand it? How is elegantly simple different from simplistic? What happens when great cognitive agility causes harm?

Please share with friends and let me know what you think.

Highlights

As the saying goes, “this space intentionally left blank.”

This week. As an experiment.

Do you wish this included time-stamped topics? Then shoot me an email at amiel@amielhandelsman.com and tell me why. I love feedback!

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Episode 83: Sexual Polarity In Marriage With Keith Witt [The Amiel Show]

by amiel · Sep 17, 2018

I’ve finally done it.

I’ve recorded an interview that should not be played in the workplace.

It’s perfect for the car ride home or a weekend getaway with your partner.

But do not listen to this with your coworkers over lunch or in a leadership team retreat.

This episode is about sex, specifically in the context of a committed long-term relationship.

More specifically, it’s about sexual polarity between partners: what it is, why it matters, why so often it’s missing, and what you can do to restore or sustain it in your relationship.

Our guide is integral psychotherapist Keith Witt, author of the brand new book Loving Completely: A Five Star Practice For Creating Great Relationships. Keith joined me twice before to discuss the marital love affair and men’s sexual shadow at work.

In those earlier interviews, we discussed sex, but just a bit. And if there’s one thing you and I know about sex, a bit just isn’t enough.

So this time we give it our full attention—with candor, sensitivity, and humor.

If you’ve heard Keith discuss Loving Completely elsewhere, you’ll want to listen to this in its entirely. In no other interview does he discuss sexual polarity in as much depth. This Keith has assured me.

I thank you for listening and hope you enjoy the conversation.

Highlights

5:00 You have many marriages with your spouse
16:00 Five questions to ask yourself when selecting a partner
28:00 Polarity creates the spark in a relationship
36:00 Making love as feminine and masculine
40:00 Having conversations about sex with your partner
47:00 When a woman is nursing
57:30 Moral codes affect your sexual relationship
1:09:00 Partners who also work together
1:16:00 Mad Men and why being clueless isn’t cool
1:20:00 Talking with kids about sex
1:25:00 Exit affairs, opportunistic affairs, and “please, can we love again” affairs
1:34:00 Keith is not Ashley Madison

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Episode 81: How Couples Grow Together Into “First Love” With Tom Habib [The Amiel Show]

by amiel · Aug 21, 2018

This episode is for people in relatively healthy relationships who are wondering: what else is possible for us?

Couples go through stages of growth. Over the past several decades, a new stage has broadly emerged that was barely visible before. Its features include:

Balance between giving and receiving
Successful patterns for managing tasks, sharing responsibilities, and practicing reciprocity
A shared narrative about the relationship
Reflection and introspection
Reasonable capacity to regulate nervous systems before and during conflict

Sounds pretty good, huh?

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It is. If your relationship looks like this, it means you’ve grown more as a couple than most couples alive today and 99.99% of couples in human history.

Millions of people are buying books and attending workshops to achieve what you experience.

This week’s guest, Tom Habib, calls this the “Relational Stage.”

It’s quite healthy.

However, once you’ve spent substantial time here, you realize that some important stuff is missing:

Your partner doesn’t fully appreciate what you do or who you are. When you’re honest with yourself, you realize that the inverse is true.
You miss the intensity and frequency of romance in your relationship’s past, and this distracts you from the love and person in front of you
On some level, you fear you have chosen the wrong partner. Otherwise, why aren’t things as great as they used to be?

This is an amazing opportunity: to grow, as a couple, into the next stage of relationship, which Dr. Habib calls “First Love.” It is the first time you are both present with each other to actually love the other person in their entirety. Rather than being distracted by the mirage of an ideal partner, you feel gratitude for the person you are with today.

In our conversation, Dr. Habib briefly walks through the five stages in his integral Couples Line of Development. Then we focus like a laser beam on the transition from the Relational stage to First Love.

Are you up for the challenge?

Highlights

5:00 When Tom viewed marriage as a “bourgeois conspiracy by the Church”
11:00 The five stages of the couples line
13:00 Pre-trans fallacy
26:30 What if you treated your partner like a great neighbor?
39:00 A practice to do at home with your partner
51:00 Most couples in therapy are trying to get to the Relational stage
53:00 “Pixie dust” helps you wake up and grow up
1:05:30 How your kids are affected
1:08:30 Thanksgiving with your parents when you’re at First Love

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Episode 80: White Nationalism And Male Identity with Elizabeth Debold [The Amiel Show]

by amiel · Aug 14, 2018

A year ago Sunday, white nationalists marched on Charlottesville, Virginia carrying torches and chanting “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us.” It was not a pretty sight. Most people I know found it abhorrent. The author Ta-Nehisi Coates did, too, but he wasn’t surprised. In an earlier episode Diane Woods explained why.

The media, for the most part, has highlighted the ethnocentric dimensions of this tale: racial grievance, hatred, and the specious theories underlying them.

Yet an important element has remained beneath the surface: gender. White nationalism is also a story of a certain group of men coming to terms with a world they find unfamiliar and threatening, one where women have economic power, men have lost their traditional identities, and the worlds of work, dating, and marriage have turned upside down. Many of us would call these advances of modernity and postmodernity. White nationalists see them as epic disasters.

This week, Elizabeth Debold, a developmental psychologist and gender futurist, explains why.

It’s a story of some human minds growing into greater degrees of complexity and others’ growth halting at age 12. It’s a story of wage labor, two-income households, and the demands of being a “super mom” and, increasingly, a “super dad.” It’s also a story of men confused about what is expected of them and frustrated that society often criticizes them for doing their “jobs” of working long hours and bringing home the bacon.

Debold also reframes the debate about so-called “social justice warriors” on college campuses. Everyone from Fox News to white nationalists to Jordan Peterson cite this group as the epitome of postmodern excess. Debold says: not so fast. The ideas may be postmodern, but the minds unpacking them are operating from a much earlier stage of development.

We live in a complex age, and it takes wisdom and a multi perspectival approach to even begin to understand it. Debold brings both and more.

In some ways, this interview represents a bridge in this podcast. As my interest turns toward global challenges and the health of our politics, Debold helps connect these concerns with my longstanding series on women in leadership, the newly launched series on the American experience of race, and the ever-present influence of constructivist developmental theory.

Highlights

5:00 White nationalists, incels, and the loss of traditional male identity
12:00 Richard Spencer is developmentally a teenager
25:00 The flaw in pluralists’ views of white nationalists
31:30 The wild card: when goodness appears
48:00 The modern convention of dividing work and home life
59:00 Teaching sophisticated postmodern ideas to 19-year-olds with less complex minds
1:10:00 Step on my head, and I’ll step on yours back!

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New to Podcasts?

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Sign into iTunes using your ID and password
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Give Me a Rating or Review on iTunes (It’s Also Easy!)

Sign into iTunes using your ID and password
Search the iTunes store for “Amiel Show”
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Episode 38: Dr. Keith Witt On Creating A Marital Love Affair [The Amiel Show]

by amiel · Mar 7, 2016

For the past few years, I have identified a “personal hero of the year,” someone who has inspired me to be a wiser, more loving, and more courageous person. In 2015, my personal hero of the year was marriage expert Dr. Keith Witt.

Dr. Keith is an integral psychotherapist, author, big thinker, and “therapist in the wild.”

In this rich and entertaining interview, we talk about about creating marital love affairs, improving sex, and developing the skills of a self-regulating adult in relationship. Get ready for a very valuable hour!

Highlights

5:00 How healthy marriages improve happiness, physical health, longevity, and children’s lives
9:45 Why it’s not surprising that marriage becomes less passionate over time
14:30 Why cheating on your spouse can seem to “appear out of nowhere”
18:30 When commitment shifts to “I’ll do what it takes”
20:00 Why some marriages get better after kids
24:30 White knuckle monogamy
29:00 Defensive states and the role of self-regulation skills
37:30 The role of sex in mending relationships
39:30 Getting in touch with you masculine and feminine core
45:00 How your attachment style as an infant affects your adult relationships
48:30 Using differentiation to improve sex
50:00 Improving sex – different advice from five leading relationship experts
56:00 Dr. Keith’s “two rules for guys” and “two rules for women”
1:00:00 Makeup sex