Today our expert guest is Thomas G. Fiffer, the Senior Editor of Ethics at The Good Men Project, where his articles have received more than five million views (and articles he’s edited have received more than 15 million views). He is a professional writer, speaker, and storyteller with a focus on diagnosing and healing dysfunctional relationships.
Thomas is also a frequent contributor to Weston Magazine, a professional book editor and ghostwriter, and the author of two books on relationships – Why It Can't Work: Detaching From Dysfunctional Relationships to Make Room for True Love and What Is Love? A Guide for the Perplexed to Matters of the Heart.
Thomas has an impressive writing career, pursuing his dream to create works as impactful as the literature he voraciously consumed as a child. However, there was also a time when Thomas put his dreams on hold.
He got a job in publishing out of college, fearing that he would not be able to make a career out of writing but still wanting to remain close to it – and, for Thomas, this was a frustrating business.
Thomas transitioned to a database publishing company responsible for creating directories of contact information for leaders. He planned to do it for a few years, learn the business side of the industry, make some money, and then get out… but he ended up working there for 20 years.
And after 20 years, as the whole publishing industry started to decline, he was let go. This was the perfect opportunity to pursue his dreams of writing, and it just so happened that an editorial position at The Good Men Project opened up, where he had been contributing for about a year.
This is also when Thomas started finding his niche in the relationship space, mining his own experiences in a dysfunctional relationship to help others. He started to solidify his voice with a blog post titled “Situational Dysfunction,” in which he touches on the nagging, subconscious feeling that something is just “off” in a relationship.
So what makes a relationship dysfunctional?
Dysfunctional relationships are characterized by fighting, dismissal, emotional withholding, abuse, or other unhealthy dynamics. Things like this happen occasionally in many relationships, and that’s fine – but when there is a consistent pattern of dysfunction, that is a problem.
And what can you do when you become aware of a dysfunctional relationship?
The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway
“Make conscious choices.”
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