Human behavior is the most complicated thing on the planet. The only thing more complicated than human behavior is string theory, Leslie Lowe said.

After a full 40-year career in marriage and family counseling and mediation, she is retiring this month.

H&N sat down with Lowe to hear about the journey her life has taken her on, and to glean some of the universal truths shes learned about how people can better relate to each other.

I guess what I will miss most is what drove me into getting licensed the opportunity to help people have better lives and relieve them of some of their personal pain, she said.

Lowe is originally from Los Angeles and San Fernando Valley.

I was raised in a very dysfunctional family. And thats why a lot of people go into counseling is their own personal experience, and wanting to try to understand and cope with it, she said.

I did not grow up with healthy self-esteem. I didnt have healthy conflict management skills. I certainly didnt have control of my emotions, because in my family screaming was the way everybody worked, she said.

Lowe explained that problems in relationships often stem from childhood problems, and one of the most important parts of learning how to get along with other people is to understand where your hang-ups come from.

Before you can talk about how to have a good relationship with somebody, you have to talk about how to manage your own brain and be in control of your own emotional stuff, she said.

If youre not in control of your emotional stuff, you lay that on the other person and that frequently creates conflict, she said.

Lowe began her higher education at UC Santa Barbara in 1964, where she studied psychology, but the program wasnt all she hoped it would be.

They were not doing the kind of psychology I wanted to do, she said.

I switched over to religious studies. The reason I did that is that looking at the structure of religious groups gave me more information about human dynamics. I learned a lot about human dynamics by studying religious studies, she explained.

After a year and a half of religious studies, a divorce caused Lowe to move to Berkeley and drop out of school.

When I decided a year and a half later to go back to school, they didnt have a religious studies department, they only had a theology department, which I didnt want, because Im an atheist, she said.

Lowe recalled with some pride that she was able to negotiate a major that suited her. It was technically an independent study and religious studies major, although she said on paper it was more of a literature degree.

Lowe ended up going back to school a few times, picking up degrees in English, teaching and finally in marriage and family counseling.

Her personal life has been just as interesting and dynamic as her path to becoming a marriage counselor.

Shes had her fair share of romance. Lowe has been married five times, an irony that isnt lost on her. She recalled the tales of her past marriages, sharing a few lessons she learned along the way. The man she is married to now she is very in love with.

Were going to celebrate 31 blessed years, she said with a smile.

100 years ago, people were so focused on just surviving, getting food, having shelter. The whole concept of marriage was completely different back then, she mused.

People, for the most part, in human history did not marry for love. For the most part, they married in order to be able to raise a family, which was the cultural expectation. Thats not whats going on today.

People get together because the other person is supposed to make them feel good. And if the other person stops making them feel good, because those emotional bank accounts have been withdrawn till they leave. So people are ping-ponging in and out of relationships, just like I did, she said frankly.

The emotional bank account is a concept widely used in psychology which Lowe explained.

An emotional bank account is opened whenever you develop a relationship of any kind with anybody. And you each engage in some kind of behaviors that make each other feel good, those are deposits.

And then frequently, relationships get to a point where the honeymoon is sort of over. And then people start showing their true colors. At that point, the withdrawals occur.

When the withdrawals start happening, if they as a couple dont catch those withdrawals and turn them around to the kind of problem-solving that prevents those withdrawals from drawing down the bank account, suddenly someone is bankrupt, there just isnt anything left.

Thats usually the point at which the other person wants credit. Because they wake up and go Oh, give me another chance. But at that point, the other persons kind of drained out. There isnt another chance, she explained.

Lowe reflected on some of the common avoidable mistakes that many make as married people.

What happens to a lot of couples is they wait too long to come to counseling. And so they come in as a last-ditch effort to show that theyve tried everything and its too late, she said. The first time they start having problems that are tough to resolve is when they should come in for therapy.

She said many people dont know the difference between healthy fears and healthy worries in their lives.

Healthy fear is future based. You see something that could potentially be harmful and you problem solve the best you can to take care of yourself. Healthy worry is backward based.

Something has been happening that bothers you. And you have to do some problem solving so that it doesnt pop up in the future, she said.

I think thats the biggest problem that I see today is that people are stuck in their fears.

When youre in the middle of emotional conflict, and it has to do with how your brain works, your brain is in fight or flight mode, youre really in animal survival. Versus your frontal lobe, which has the ability to more calmly look at all the choices available to you evaluate data and make better choices. People spend far too much time in that [survival] part of their brain, she said.

Lowes career in Klamath Falls has been full, and shes been active in many groups, including the League of Women Voters, Klamath Wingwatchers, Klamath Sustainable Communities and more.

She says shell continue her leadership efforts in those other organizations, but her time as a marriage and family counselor is drawing to a close.

I have loved working with people to help them have a better way of feeling about themselves and relating to other people. Ive loved that work, she said.

Im at a point where there are a number of factors that are emerging that tell me its time to stop. I dont hear as well as I used to. I dont process information as fast as I used to. But I think the really big thing is I dont have the patience with people I used to have, she said.

Through the hardship and heartbreak that shes experienced, Lowe said one of the most important things shes learned is to be grateful for the good things.

Life is a gift and too many people dont count their blessings. And I dont mean that in a religious sense. Theres far more good happening to most of us than bad and yet we tend to focus on the horrible stuff.

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End of an era: Leslie Lowe finds truths during a career in marriage therapy - Herald and News