Make Love Better: How to Own Your Story, Connect with Your Partner, and Deepen Your Relationship Practice

By Jan Dworkin

Let's face it, relationships are hard.

If you're like many people, your relationship rsum reads something like a spatter pattern. Confusing experiences lie in your wake, and you can't decipher the learning. Maybe your relationship is littered with messy conflicts or scorched by the ills of the world. Maybe you are lonely—and looking for a partner, or you feel you just aren't any good at relationships—and you want to get better.

Using stories from her own colorful relationship life and from her work with clients from diverse backgrounds around the world, Jan Dworkin, PhD, lays bare her missteps and triumphs both in and out of the bedroom with honesty, humor, and depth. She offers concrete tools to help couples navigate power dynamics and conflicts that arise from differences in gender, class, race, sexual desire, communication styles, dreams and opposing points of view. Through sassy stories, step-by-step exercises, and hard-earned wisdom, Dworkin guides readers to build their very own "relationship practice." Whether you are embarking on a new relationship, striving to improve an existing one, or recouping after a breakup, prepare yourself to laugh, cry, and gain the education of a lifetime. This is the real world of relationships with no holds barred.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Nov 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781733901130

Book preview

Praise for

MAKE LOVE BETTER

Jan Dworkin has written a highly original and very personal guide to navigating and improving relationships. She holds nothing back as she shares brutally honest personal stories to help those struggling with intersectional relationship issues and power dynamics. The result is a distinctive, compelling, and practically useful read.

— CINDY GALLOP, founder and CEO of MakeLoveNotPorn

"Jan Dworkin serves as a wonderful guide through the challenging terrain of intimate relationships. Through her engaging personal stories, vivid bedroom tales, and case studies from her vast cross-cultural experience as a couples’ therapist, she offers us a clear and powerful pathway to happiness in love. Make Love Better is brimming with deep wisdom and practical suggestions that will help your relationships for years to come."

— KATHERINE WOODWARD THOMAS, M.A., MFT, author of the New York Times bestseller Conscious Uncoupling: 5 Steps to Living Happily Even After and the national bestseller Calling in The One: 7 Weeks to Attract the Love of Your Life

"Make Love Better is a radically inclusive, incredibly generous, and totally accessible blueprint for a new age of romance and sex. If you want to improve your relationships, your sex life, and your own self-worth and inner wisdom, get this book."

— JESSICA GRAHAM, author of Good Sex: Getting Off without Checking Out

Dr. Jan Dworkin has written an unusually honest, deep, and comprehensive book about relationships. She demonstrates a profound commitment to following the process of her dreaming. By revealing her own learning, she will inspire others. Dr. Dworkin shows readers that bringing awareness to their relationship interactions is a form of world work and has the potential to change the world.

— ARNOLD MINDELL, PH.D., author of Sitting in the Fire: Large Group Transformation Using Conflict and Diversity and Process Mind: A User’s Guide to Connecting with the Mind of God

"Make Love Better offers us a powerful, practical roadmap for navigating our most intimate relationships. Writing in a clear, compelling style, Jan Dworkin shares hard-won wisdom gleaned from navigating her clients’ relationship challenges as well as her own. She illustrates what is possible for all of us to achieve if we show up to our love lives with compassion, curiosity, and some tenacity. The stories are honest and raw, ordinary as well as extraordinary. A highly recommended book to be re-read many times!"

— SHAKIL CHOUDHURY, author of Deep Diversity: Overcoming Us vs. Them

"Within the first few pages of Jan Dworkin’s book Make Love Better, I felt my heart quicken. Her wit and wisdom gave me hope. I have always been reluctant to read books about relationships, because while they can be useful, there is often the problem that you don’t see your relationship in the pages. And the work to make your relationship life better feels arduous. Depressing even. Like digging through mud. But Make Love Better is not your grandmother’s relationship book. In funny, brutally honest, compassionate, and normalizing tones, Dr. Dworkin breaks down the mysteries of relationship and makes it easy for you—whether you’re 20 or 75—to dare to engage, open yourself up, and make love better.

Using herself as an example—often, a bad example—Dworkin inspires us, teaches us, and encourages us to find our own relationship path, providing practical and useful tools along the way. Her framing is fresh and innovative, and her stories and examples are ones that all of us can relate to, no matter what kind of relationship we have. My one complaint is this: I only wish I’d had this book in my hands throughout my life to help me navigate those treacherous waters of intimacy and trust, to grapple with power dynamics and codependency, and to build the solid foundations for long-term love. This brilliant, funny, and smart book is a bible for anyone looking for help to make relationships work, whatever that means to them."

— JULIE DIAMOND, PH.D., author of Power: A User’s Guide and CEO of Diamond Leadership

With abundant candor and wisdom, Jan Dworkin invites the reader to shed the all-too-pervasive concept of failure in relationships. Through creatively weaving personal stories together with theoretical concepts and a wealth of practical tools, she invites all of us to view the ins and outs of relationships as exciting doorways to greater awareness, learning, and immense growth.

— AMY MINDELL, PH.D., author of Metaskills: The Spiritual Art of Therapy and Your Unique Facilitator Style: Explore Your Special Gifts and Powers as Facilitator, Therapist, Teacher, Coach, and Helper

"Jan Dworkin’s Make Love Better does indeed make relationships better. From the very first page, Dr. Dworkin guides us through a world of possibilities that lie dormant just beneath the surface of even the most challenging relationships. Using her extensive personal and professional experience to illuminate the journey, she leads us in an ever-expanding spiral from the deeply internal to the broadly political aspects of our worlds of relationship, with all their joys and troubles.

At each station along the way, Dr. Dworkin supports her points with just the right amount of theory from the worlds of psychotherapy, cognitive research, and neuroscience. She speaks with the compassion and authority gained over her decades of practicing and teaching therapy and facilitation from the Process Work perspective. The reader comes away feeling loved and cared for, much in the way that Dr. Dworkin has come to care for and support her clients—and ultimately, herself."

— JOSEPH GOODBREAD, PH.D., author of Befriending Conflict: How to Make Conflict Safer, More Productive, and More Fun and Living on the Edge: The Mythical, Spiritual and Philosophical Roots of Social Marginality

"There are so many relationship books out there. Most, I put down within the first 30 pages. Make Love Better is different. It is an adventure of a read. Jan Dworkin’s guidance on exploring relationship is exciting, fresh, and insightful. She investigates everything from family life to power, sex, and even failure. She gives us hope. More importantly, she offers us a map and direction for deepening our path with others and learning to love in a real way."

— DIANE MUSHO HAMILTON, Zen teacher and author of Everything Is Workable

Jan Dworkin not only shares with us her three decades of therapeutic experience and wisdom—she also does something far more rare. Dr. Dworkin shares her most vulnerable and intimate experiences with her own relationships. And not just her successes and what she learned, but the mistakes and missteps she made along the way. Her ability to weave the profoundly personal together with the essence of the wisdom she gleaned from guiding others is what makes this book a must-read for anyone navigating the waters of relationship.

— DAVID BEDRICK, J.D., author of Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology

"Written with unflinching authenticity, Make Love Better is a treasure to find among the scores of relationship books. Author Jan Dworkin’s own compelling story makes a seeming how-to book a page-turner and inspires readers to find pride and value in their unique path. Dr. Dworkin tackles the way in which thorny social issues such as gender, class, and race can create power dynamics between couples, and she illuminates a path of learning and enrichment. Make Love Better is inclusive, celebrating love in all its forms. Offering cutting-edge relationship tools and attitudes with sharp insight, humor, and courage, it will breathe new energy into our relationships and enhance family life."

— DAWN MENKEN, PH.D., author of Raising Parents, Raising Kids: Hands-on Wisdom for the Next Generation and Speak Out! Talking About Love, Sex and Eternity

"Relationships continue to be one of humankind’s biggest challenges. Make Love Better is a fresh approach to relationship issues—juicy, intimate, diverse, and hopeful. Relationship coach Jan Dworkin has spent a lifetime studying herself and her own relationships to better understand and guide others through concrete examples and practices that readers can add to their relationship toolkit. She writes with transparency, authenticity, and humor; she is willing to be vulnerable in order to teach others. This is an important book—one that can change you and your relationships and truly make love better. I couldn’t put it down!"

— Dr. NISHA ZENOFF, author of The Unspeakable Loss: How Do You Live After a Child Dies?

Copyright © 2019 Jan Dworkin

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means except for brief quotations in reviews or for purposes of criticism, commentary, or scholarship without written permission from the publisher.

Make Love Better is factually accurate, except that names, locales, and minor aspects of some chapters have been altered to preserve coherence while protecting privacy.

Published by:

Belly Song Press

518 Old Santa Fe Trail

Suite 1 #626

Santa Fe, NM 87505

www.bellysongpress.com

Managing Editor: Lisa Blair

Editor: Kristin Barendsen

Book cover design: Amber Witzke and Randee Levine

Interior design and book production: David Moratto

Printed in the United States of America on recycled paper.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dworkin, Jan, author.

Make love better : how to own your story, connect with your partner, and deepen your relationship practice / by Jan Dworkin.

Santa Fe, New Mexico : Belly Song Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN: 978-1-7339011-0-9 (paperback) | 978-1-7339011-1-6 (PDF) | 978-1-7339011-2-3 (Kindle/Mobipocket) | 978-1-7339011-3-0 (ePub) | LCCN: 2019937947

LCSH: Interpersonal relations. | Couples--Psychology. | Man-woman relationships. | Gay couples. | Non-monogamous relationships. | Intimacy (Psychology) | Sex. | Sexual intercourse. | Couples therapy. | Marital psychotherapy. | Communication--Psychological aspects. | Interpersonal communication. | Self-realization. | Psychotherapy--Case studies. | BISAC: FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Love & Romance, | PSYCHOLOGY / Psychotherapy / Couples & Family. | SELF-HELP / Personal Growth / General.

LCC: HQ801 .D86 2019 | DDC: 306.7--dc23

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

To mom & dad,

who provided the exact right mix

of love and trouble.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

— FROM KINDNESS BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE¹

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I: OWN IT—THE WORLD INSIDE

1. Stories That Shape You

2. Your Power Puzzle

3. Wood to Burn

4. What’s Not You

5. Eternal Love Dreams

Part II: CONNECT—THE WORLD BETWEEN

6. Unintended Communication

7. Conflict: Whose Real Is Real?

8. Partners in Power

9. About Sex

10. Not About Sex

Part III: DEEPEN—THE WORLD AROUND

11. Who Are We?

12. What Are We?

Postscript: My Radical Relationship

Workbook 1: Owning Practices

Workbook 2: Connecting Practices

Workbook 3: Deepening Practices

Appendix 1: How to Navigate Challenges to Your Use of Power

Appendix 2: Online Dating: Some Thoughts and Tips

Notes

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, thank you, Jerry Grant, my partner and (recently) husband. I vow to try every day to be the woman you see when you look at me. Thank you for inciting me to stretch beyond my limits, while celebrating me just as I am. Without your steady hand and heart, without your grilled salmon and sautéed veggies, your laundry loads and tanks of gas; without our regular date nights and bathtub brainstorms, this book could not have come to be. And my deepest dreams of love would have dissolved like Epsom salts.

Mom and Dad, thank you for making me. Thank you for being so unabashed with your love and support for this project. You never once balked at the idea that I would openly share my version of the truth with the world. Thank you for having become the perfect parents. And Ron, my funny and brilliant brother — I admire you as much today as I did in third grade. I am deeply grateful for this time in our lives.

Arny Mindell, your mentorship and teaching set me on a path of no return. Thank you for bringing Process Work into the world. Its multidimensionality — its powerful, usable tools and its devotion to dreaming — provide both scaffold and ground for all that I am and all that I do. Thank you for constantly challenging convention; for speaking about rank, power, and social oppression in a way that made me feel less crazy and inferior; and for reminding me, so many times, that learners can never be losers. Thank you for always nudging me back to my deepest self. Amy Mindell, thank you for celebrating creativity — mine and everyone’s — in whatever form it takes. I honor your multiple and ongoing contributions to Process Work theory and practice.

Over the past three decades, through my friendship and connection with Process Work founders Arny and Amy Mindell, and with a group of international colleagues — starting in Zurich and continuing at the Process Work Institute in Portland — my brain has been sucking in and absorbing a crazy amount of interesting material. I have drawn from many Process Work concepts in this book. Whenever possible, I have cited the works where these concepts first appear. But it would be inaccurate to claim any of my thinking as truly original.

I bow to my friends, without whom I would not have lasted in this fragile human form. Lesli Mones, you rescued me from high school hell and have been my North Star ever since. I cannot conjure me without your influence. Dawn Menken — you are eternal in my heart. Thank you for being there and for saving me at pivotal points during this writing project and through the dramas of the decades. Julie Diamond, thank you for your love and wit, and for always having a point of view. Lord knows I’ve needed your knowledge and opinions, sometimes just as a way of finding my own. Randee Levine — you are my muse. Thank you for co-creating 361ArtWorks and for lending your intelligence, creativity, support, and aesthetic to all my projects and ideas. Without you, life would be dreadfully unattractive. Renata Ackermann, thank you for being a home. You make me feel welcome in the world. Kate Jobe, Joe Goodbread, Sonja Straub, Reini Hauser, Robert King — our early collaborations taught me how to sit in the fires of conflict. With you, I learned that disagreements, competition, and jealousy can serve to deepen friendship and teamwork.

Deep gratitude to the friends, family members, and colleagues who used their precious time to read drafts of this manuscript and lend their insights on everything from concepts and structure to titles and pronouns: Renata Ackermann, Chris Allen, David Bedrick, Lisa Blair, Barbara Burkhardt, Julie Diamond, Dorothy Dworkin, Sam Dworkin, Ellen Goldschmidt, Harry Grant, Lucie Grant, Kate Jobe, Randee Levine, Dawn Menken, Lesli Mones, Lydia Odette, Rebecca Ridenhour, Terri Saul, and Kate Ursu. Your constructive and encouraging feedback helped this book improve with every draft.

Special thanks to RK, for our profound decade together, and for your crazy brand of wisdom. To Carl, Stevie, Z, and the guy whose hat I cut into a zillion pieces — I’m a slow learner, but I couldn’t have gotten here without you. I pray that each of you, in your own way, has bloomed through our connection. I owe my growth in part to you.

To my editors: Katie Woods, thank you for your skillful guidance, research, and poetic touch during the initial phases of my writing. Kristin Barendsen, your enthusiasm for this project carried me through the difficult end stages, and your nick-of-time advice and expert editing added just the needed polish. To my book cover team: Jerry Grant, Randee Levine, Amber Witzke — thanks for listening, for following, and for being so creative and collaborative. Thank you David Moratto for the interior design. Lisa Blair and David Bedrick, you are the kindest, most relationally intelligent business people I could hope to work with. Thank you for creating Belly Song Press and for being midwives of this project.

Finally, to my students and clients, to the individuals and couples who have shared their stories with me and bared their souls — thank you for entrusting me to facilitate your journey. Thank you for forcing me to grow and stretch beyond the edges of my knowledge, skill set, and comfort zone. You have enriched my life beyond measure and made my professional path an endlessly awe-filled adventure. With reverence and respect — to each of you.

INTRODUCTION

From the time Stevie put his penis inside me under a star-filled sky in rural Pennsylvania until the time I was 50, I’d had a wide variety of intimate encounters. To be more precise, I’d had a lot of sex — with many people. And I don’t mean the sort of number you can remember and put faces with. I’d also had two marriages, lived with three partners, and showed up for many dreary drinks with people from the Internet. I loved and lusted hard; I endured heartbreak and upheaval, celebrating my adventures and chastising myself for my stunning mistakes.

All this while counseling thousands of individuals and couples, teaching courses, leading training seminars, and supporting others to find meaning and satisfaction in their own challenging, unconventional, messy, or ordinary relationship lives.

I’m an expert in relationships, in the theories and the lived experience. But it wasn’t easy to get here.

I know what it is to feel that your relationship has failed — that you are a failure. Whether you’re single, in the midst of a breakup, in a partnership that feels increasingly strained or untenable, or in a relationship with the standard array of conflicts and unresolved issues, you might feel like you’ve done something wrong — again. How do you keep ending up here? Is it that you’ve chosen poorly? Or that you’re just not relationship material? Is it that you’re destined to truly bond only with four-leggeds?

Are you just unlucky in love?

Most of us know someone who married a high school or college sweetheart and has been with them ever since. Some of these couples live happily ever after — for real. Maybe they sensed, intuited, or miraculously fell into the right relationship (for them). Maybe their relationship is uncomplicated, healing, inspiring, sexually connected, deeply loving, or friendship-based. Maybe they learned to negotiate differences, grow together, and stay in love. Whatever it is, these folks chose something that worked — the first time.

On the other hand, there are the high school sweethearts who come to see me — after the first or second affair. They complain that they feel less whole than their peers — that they missed out on experimenting, sowing their wild oats, and discovering what they did and didn’t like based on a variety of experiences. Some want and need to get a little crazy later in life. Some figure out how to spread their wings —in whatever way is meaningful for them — while remaining married. Despite the challenges, some find a way to stay together and make it work — even if it really doesn’t.

Not my story. Maybe not your story either. And that’s okay.

If you’ve been through multiple breakups, you’re certainly not alone. Over the past decade, divorce rates in the United States have hovered somewhere between 40–50 percent for first marriages — and even higher for seconds and thirds. However, if you’ve had multiple long-term partnerships by mid-life, rather than seeing your breakups as statistically ordinary — or even positive — chances are good you believe this indicates some kind of shameful personal flaw. Anticipating that you will not be celebrated for another unsuccessful (a.k.a., not forever) relationship, you might choose to duck judgment and hide the truth of your pain from the world. But rest assured — all those cleverly curated lives and cheery status updates reveal next to nothing about what really goes on at the kitchen table and behind bedroom doors.

And so, we return to that concept — failure. Your relationships have failed, and you’ve failed at relationships. Or so the world says.

Where did we come up with this crazy idea that people should be able to get relationship right the first or second or even the third time around? Why do we think a marriage should be judged for its durability rather than rated for awareness gained or growth achieved?

I’d like to suggest we lean away from the impractical, rarely attainable, idealized notion of happily ever after, and into the idea of relationship as a learning dojo — a place to practice now, today, and always.

Relationship Practice

Research shows that experts are made, not born.¹ It takes motivation and practice to get really good at anything. But it’s not just that we need 10,000 hours of practice, as Malcolm Gladwell originally put forth.² According to the new science of expertise, to achieve mastery requires deliberate practice.³ It requires us to push past the boundaries of what we already know and to find the grit to keep going when the going gets tough. Plus, having access to teachers, mentors, and community support helps immensely.

If we believe we are bad at relationships or unlucky in love, we give ourselves a pass — there is no reason to stretch beyond our comfort zone, practice new skills, and reach for greater competence. If we believe that satisfying relationships are the preserve of soulmates or natural relationship geniuses, we cheat ourselves of the chance to develop the expertise we need to build truly satisfying relationships.

My 30-plus years of experience working with individuals and couples has shown me that developing relationship expertise can be as challenging as developing mastery at any sport or form of art. But with deliberate practice, it’s attainable. And here in these pages, I would like to show you how. I will offer you a set of skills and attitudes that can help you build a truly sustainable and satisfying relationship practice.

Before you begin, know this: Developing a relationship practice is not for the faint of heart. It requires you to dive deep within. To recognize the mind-bending influences of your personal history, cultural traumas, and the normative conventions of society. To study your powers and privileges and learn to use them well, both on your own behalf and on behalf of your partner. To stay awake in the heat of conflict. It takes a special attitude and concerted and sustained focus to practice in the places where you are activated or triggered, where it hurts and humbles you the most. And, argh … you will have to give up the intoxicating altered state that comes with yelling, name-calling, throwing things, blaming, giving the silent treatment, sulking, storming out, or acting righteous and superior. Well, most of the time, anyway.

If you are ready to put in the effort and the time to develop new self-awareness and relationship muscles, this book offers the tools to help.

Learning from Failure

In creative fields and entrepreneurship, it’s in vogue to fail and iterate. Luminaries of design thinking urge us to embrace our failures, own them, and use this learning to light our path toward doing great and original things.⁴ Stanford engineering students are encouraged to write failure resumes.⁵ Some companies even boast anti-portfolios to brag about their screw-ups.⁶

Even so, it is natural to feel regret when looking at the past. It’s natural to view certain moves as mistakes, especially when you’ve been hurt or hurtful. However, if you can harness the redemptive power of your so-called mistakes, and leverage your most difficult experiences to provide meaning and fuel change, you may feel less preoccupied with the errors of your past. When your behavior changes in the here and now, regret naturally recedes.

I’d like to help you use the lessons of your past so you can move on with clarity and confidence. I’d like to help you identify and celebrate the learning you’ve gained from your creative, rich, and diverse relationship life. I’d like to help prepare you for a more fulfilling future.

As you embark on this journey and begin to build your relationship practice in earnest, keep the following suggestions in mind. I will remind you of their importance throughout the book.⁷

Cultivate self-compassion. Appreciate yourself and what you have been through. Only then can you create an inner atmosphere conducive to learning. Each of you will have your own way of gaining detachment from your self-critical viewpoint. Methods range from meditation to prayer, to sports, to forms of inner work. Use whatever works for you. (And read on for additional ideas.)

Own your experience. In order