I have been a marriage and family counselor for more than fifty years. It was more than embarrassing to be helping others but finding my own love life in constant crisis.  When people visit me at MenAlive you will see my welcome video, “Confessions of a Twice-Divorced Marriage Counselor.”

                It took me a long time to take my own advice and get help. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I finally found a good therapist and found the right life partner. Carlin and I have been joyfully married for 46 years and more in love now than ever. The even better news is that I can help you if would like to find your right partner and stop looking for love in all the wrong places, the title of one of my most popular and best-selling books.

                If you are interested in working with me on these issues, drop me a note ([email protected]).

               Continue reading, if you’d like to learn more about why we get hooked on relationships that are bad for us. 

                The truth is that things have changed a great deal from the time when I was looking for love. With the advent of social media and an on-line world of endless possibilities along with a real-life world of broken promises, dating has become more difficult than ever. More people are acting like porcupines in the snow that are hungry for love and affection. Yet as soon as they get close their prickly spines wound each other and they distance themselves.

                According to a recent article in Forbes magazine article by Emily Phares,

               “Most single men and women between the ages of 18 and 34 (53% and 68%, respectively) say they want a romantic relationship, according to a 2024 study commissioned by dating platform Tinder, which surveyed 8,000 heterosexual participants in the U.S., U.K., Australia and Canada. However, nearly all respondents — including 91% of men and 94% of women — say they think the current dating environment is more difficult than ever.”

                There are unique challenges that people face, regardless of age, but I have found that we never stop wanting love and often the dating difficulties faced by men and women in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond can even more stressful.

                In my book, The Enlightened Marriage: The 5 Transformative Stages of Relationships and Why the Best is Still to Come, I share what Carlin and I have learned. Iyanla Vanzant author and former host of Iyanla Fix My Life on the Oprah Winfred Network (OWN) had this to say after reading my book:

               “There are some skills you must have, some ways you must be, and some things you must learn or unlearn if you want to have a healthy, fulfilling, and loving relationship. Jed Diamond’s work in The Enlightened Marriage covers all of the ‘musts’ and then some. What a blessing!”

Are You Looking For Love in All the Wrong Places?

                Here are some questions I had to address in my own life and which I help my clients explore in their lives:

1. Am I truly satisfied with my love life?
2. Do I find that the people I am attracted to turn out later to be wrong for me?
3. Even when tell myself, “I won’t make that mistake again,” do I find myself in another bad situation?
4. If I look at my dating history and look honestly at those I’ve been drawn to, is there a pattern?
5. What role models did I have growing up? What kind of marriage did my parents have and how might that have influenced my love life?
6. Did I experience “adverse childhood experiences” growing up that included physical, emotional, or sexual abuse or neglect?
7. Was my father physically or emotionally absent when I was growing up?
8. Was my relationship with my father too distant or inappropriately close?
9. Was my mother physically or emotionally absent when I was growing up?
10.  Was my relationship with my mother too distant or inappropriately close?
11. Deep down how safe do I feel being vulnerable and intimate with a mate?
12. How loving do I feel toward myself? How comfortable do I feel with my physical, emotional, and sexual self?

A Few Important Things I Have Learned Over the Years

1. It is never too early or too late to improve your mental, emotional, and relational love life.
2. At the end of our lives, people rarely feel regret because they didn’t make enough money or achieved great success in their work lives. Most people wish they had learned to love more deeply and well.
3. Even those of us who were raised with a healthy family with parents who loved us and loved each other, we all suffer wounds to our love lives.
4. Since much of the wounding comes when we are young and impacts all of us to some degree, we often block out the painful memories which slip into our subconscious.
5. What remains unconscious tends to rule our lives since we continue to repeat old patterns without recognizing their subconscious origins.
6. Each dysfunctional date, love affair, or marriage adds a little bit to our addictive behavior of repeating old patterns.
7. The opposite of addiction is healthy connection.
8. We are not stupid or crazy, though at times our behavior makes us feel we have lost our minds. There is actually a positive desire underlying our dysfunctional love lives.
9. I believe that unconsciously we are hoping that by re-creating the dysfunctional relationships from our past, we believe that this time things will be different. This time I will fix things and get the love I have been missing all my life.
10. Sometimes we can do the healing ourselves and fix things on our own. Most times we can benefit from working with a therapist, counselor, or guide who knows the territory, has been there themselves, and has helped themselves and others to heal.
11. It is never too late to heal old wounds and have a relationship of your dreams.

               I hope you find my articles helpful. Drop me a note ([email protected]) and let me know. I read every personal email I receive from people. If I can help you, I would be pleased to connect.