Is it Emotional Infidelity? These 15 Blogs Will Help You Discover the Truth
People don’t often realize it, but emotional infidelity can be just as destructive as affairs that progress into physical infidelity. If you’ve slipped into emotional adultery or are concerned that your partner has, it’s natural to feel adrift and alone. A quick online search reveals, however, that emotional affairs are common. As depressing as that may be, here’s a silver lining for you: Blogs and articles about coping with emotional affairs abound online. Wading through them all is easier said than done, of course. Fortunately, we’ve done the work for you by hand-picking the 15 best blogs for dealing with this potential relationship killer. Chances are at least a few of them contain advice that’s relevant to your situation! Start Dealing with Emotional Infidelity by Checking Out These 15 Terrific Blogs “A Mini Guide to Emotional Infidelity” In this eye-opening and incredibly comprehensive blog, the folks over at GoodinBed.com delve into the concept of the emotional affair. Over the course of two dozen different sections, the author guides you through everything from defining the concept of emotional affairs to providing easy-to-follow advice concerning a variety of specific topics. If you only read one blog about emotional infidelity, this is a
17 Steps for Coping with an Abusive (or Cheating) Spouse
How much do you tolerate with an abusive spouse? What have you put up with? In this blog I list 17 steps for coping with a spouse that exhibits addictive behaviors. Frequently, addictive behaviors increasingly over time lead to abuse thrown in your direction. 17 Steps for Coping with an Abusive (or Cheating) Spouse 1. Put an end to your “enabling” behavior using the following guidelines: -No more making excuses for his/her behavior. -No more protecting him/her from consequences of his/her behavior. -No more scolding or criticizing. -No more begging to stop. -No more helping him/her recover from the consequences. -No more avoiding or “pretending not to notice” his/her destructive behavior. -No more quick “I forgive yous.” -No more temper tantrums to get him/her to stop. 2. List the top 5 standards that guide your behavior in terms of your marriage or relationship. 3. Live with the realization that his/her destructive behavior may get worse – and there is nothing YOU can do about it. 4. Dedicate to learning as much as you can about addictive behaviors. 5. Get support. Check out SA, AA or other local groups. Find a fit for you. Do a google search for online forums
Help for Troubled Relationships
Warning: in this article I’m taking a very critical look at conventional self help and professional counseling for troubled relationships. I saw what I perceived to be the demise of the therapeutic community’s capacity to be effective back in the 90’s when I served on the State Board for Marriage and Family Therapy. It was there where we spent the majority of our time strategizing and hiring a lobbyist to persuade insurance companies to reimburse therapists. (I seldom worked with insurance companies and the underlying reasons for that are grounded in the damage it does, IMO, to the healing process. Working with insurance companies promotes dependency, subtly implies that you are defective and places the therapist in an untenable triangle – his/her fee, you and demanded diagnosis.) If your relationship is broken and you are in pain, please know you are not alone. You have “fallen out of love:” both of you. Your marriage or relationship is stuck. You are stuck. Each day a bit of your heart and psyche is destroyed. Maybe the emotional distance widens the hole of emptiness you feel in the middle of your torso. Maybe the frustration simmers and clinching your teeth and holding the
Why “Working on Your Marriage” Will Actually KILL Your Marriage
The First Radical Unconventional Mind Twisting Step to EASY LOVE …Stop Trying to Fix Your Marriage Don’t dive in! If your marriage is in shambles, broken and and you are emotionally falling apart, don’t… please don’t… jump in and try to fix it. No date nights. No plans for a romantic getaway. No plea for counseling. No, “Let’s sit down and talk about this.” No trying to meet your other’s needs. No ultimatums. No becoming a chameleon to what you think your other wants. No outbursts. No drama. No attempts at calm rational persuasion. No stone silence. No guilt trips. No new trick you just learned online to get “more” from your other. None of that. Your best laid plans and most conventional strategies won’t work! As a matter of fact, they will backfire and make your situation worse. Why? What you are Taught about Fixing a Marriage is All Wrong Because you are too tense. Your anxiety controls. And, when you are tense, your best intentions, backed perhaps by seemingly solid and traditional advice, will blow up in your face. You don’t get this. You are not taught this. You are taught and encouraged to jump in and fix
Stop Pursuing Your Spouse
Hello. Dr. Huizenga here. 80% of Couples Struggle with This My experience as a Marriage and Family Therapist over the past 3 decades tells me that 80% of couples struggle with the Pursuer-Distancer Merry-Go-Round. (The 20% struggle with other patterns. I go into detail describing the Red, Yellow and Green Marriages in the Advanced Module of the Marriage Intensive Modules in my Online Course.) One pursues. This person wants more, tries to initiate conversations or activities or takes the lead in connecting. The other distances: refuses to respond actively or passively, stonewalls or reacts to create distance. The Merry-Go-Round And the result is exceedingly common: once the pursuer stops pursuing (and becomes the distancer) the one who distanced becomes frightened and often becomes the pursuer.) The now pursuer eventually runs into an impasse and again becomes the distancer as the other again initiates the pursuing. And the Merry-Go-Round continues. Remember, this happens in 80% of marriages or relationships of emotional investment. And, the switch from pursuer to distancer to pursuer may happen weekly, daily and sometimes almost hourly, depending on the level of tension and reactivity. How do you get off the Merry-Go-Round? I offer you two resources to begin
Distant Spouse and Saving your Marriage
Can Your Marriage be Saved? This question is a tough one to face for most facing the demise of their marriage: Can this marriage be saved? Is it too painful or disturbing for you to entertain this question? The thought of your marriage ending is often terrifying: -My dreams and hopes for a good life are shattered. -My lifestyle will be turned upside down. -I can’t stand the thought of my children being “parented” by someone else. -I can’t stand the thought of my spouse being intimate with someone else. -I don’t want to “start over.” –Will I ever trust again and have a deep satisfying relationship, or is that just a pipe dream? And, so you, day and night, live in perpetual tension, fear and dread. What WILL happen? Furthermore, most living with the fear of a dying marriage, throw themselves into saving the relationship. You drip with neediness and desperation and you hate it. THIS IS NOT YOU! But, you can’t seem to help it. You march ahead, determined to give it your best shot. You intuitively and instinctively employ “marriage saving strategies” that an unknowing world around you suggests: -You increase the frequency of the “I Love
14 Common Marriage Killers
I’ve hired a researcher and writer to provide you with typical information related to marriage and relationships. These posts will not go into as much depth as I do, for obvious reasons. This post, 14 Common Marriage Killers, hopefully will stimulate your thinking about what conditions or situations in your marriage trigger the upset and crisis. Please read them over. Give some thought to your situation, which areas you might strongly disagree or agree and leave your comment at the bottom. 1. Exhaustion Even if you do everything right in your relationship, a problem can arise if it leaves you too exhausted to enjoy it. School, work, children and the seemingly endless commitments of family life can leave you so tired that your relationship becomes simply no fun. When you plan your day, always leave yourself time for rest and rejuvenation. 2. Money Relationship experts tell us that of all the forms of marital strife, none is more common than those caused by finances. There are no problems like money problems, so put careful financial planning at the top of your to-do list. The chances of family friction will decrease dramatically if your finances are in order. 3. Self-centered We
1 EASY Way to Get a Drastically Different Response from your Cheating Spouse
I had a reader and someone I had coached email me the other day with an interesting result to a shift in communication she tried with her husband. Her husband was having an “I don’t want to say no” type of affair. This type of affair often is grounded in a sense of entitlement, a dose of narcissism, and an inherent incapability to be empathetic. Here’s what she says: What I tried one day- I said, “I can put myself in your shoes, and I can understand why you yelled at me and called me filthy names after you were caught having an affair with —-. If I had been sleeping around for 30 years, I would be really be pissed if you wanted to talk about it.” “I probably would have screamed at you too, and called you all sorts of filthy names.” “I would have been in enough pain already- from sleeping around, and would want you to just drop it and move on.” “So, I can totally relate to your doing that.” He went silent. And when he finally opened his mouth he said, “So, are you trying to tell me that you have been sleeping around?”
“I Love You but am Not ‘In Love’ With You”: What Does That REALLY Mean?!
“I Love You but am Not ‘In Love’ With You”: What Does That REALLY Mean?! Here are a few possible underlying meanings or distinctions for the “I Love You but am Not In Love with You” outburst. 1. An ongoing or possible affair relationship. Your spouse may have a strong attraction to another person, and lacks the knowledge or insight on how to handle such an attraction. S/he may lack the self-awareness it takes to place such an attraction into its proper context or his/her personal neediness may dominate and control his/her actions. Your spouse may equate an affair with “falling in love.” And, s/he may equate the eventual demise of romance in a marriage as “falling out of love.” Please visit: http://www.break-free-from-the-affair.com is you think this fits your situation. 2. You are not mirroring your spouse as s/he is accustomed. Some equate love with significant others mirroring back to him/her what s/he believes s/he needs. This is the essence of romance, in which two people mirror back to each other what s/he believes the other wants to hear. Such reciprocity perpetuates those great feelings (s/he adores, loves, cherishes me, thinks I’m special, great, knows me, knows what I’m going
Love is EASY When You Use the 3 Easy Love Laws
The Shift to EASY LOVE Your old world, the world of relationship fear, anxiety and tension is the world in which you believe you can “fix” your relationship or “make” or force love to happen. You insidiously begin to feel like a victim giving your personal power to your spouse, a therapist or a new idea in hopes that they will make you and your relationship better. Or you sink into a deepening sense of despair believing something is wrong with you or the marriage. Or, you embrace every idea and suggestion of self improvement hoping that your new found performance will make a difference. Your old world is the “Force it/Fix it” model and your marriage slides down the slope of emotional distance, frustration or conflict. The 3 EASY LOVE Laws enable you to shift to a new and EASY way of tapping into the love that is already there. I provided the steps and keys you need to make the shift from the “fix-it, force-it” mentality to EASY LOVE. 8 keys to incorporating the 3 Love Laws came to focus as I worked with literally hundreds of couples and thousands of individuals over the years. These 8 keys