How to Make an Affair Work for You

May14

Couple talkingOne of the most hurtful events of a relationship is when someone is discovered having an affair.

Generally one of three things happens when someone discovers that their spouse has been cheating on them.

1. The affair is ignored. This may mean that the affair continues but nothing changes in the relationship. This is often because the party being cheated on just doesn’t want to ‘rock the boat’ for fear of what might come of it.

2. Sometimes one or other of the couple decides that they can no longer be in the relationship and so the relationship ends.

3. Ideally the affair stops. The old relationship discontinues and a new relationship begins.

Whether the relationship ends or not, some serious losses will be experienced. Losses can be physical or symbolic and may include:

• Loss of trust

• Loss of security

• Loss of hope/dreams

• Loss of faith

• Loss of intimacy and affection

• Loss of self-esteem

Sometimes it is these losses, over and above the affair, that pulls the couple apart and sounds the death knell for continuing the relationship.

If the third option is the case the challenge then is for the non-offending spouse to overcome these losses and find trust again for the other person. This is probably the biggest hurdle to overcome.

The Way Forward

The way forward then is to take the time with your spouse to talk about all these issues and to realign them with a new way of being.  More than anything for a relationship to make it through there needs to be forgiveness: forgiveness of each spouse of themselves and of each other for the part they played in the affair.

And yes, as hard it sounds, even the non-offending spouse might need to look at their part in causing the affair. In saying this I don’t mean to imply that the offending party should be absolved of what they have done. They must take full responsibility for the hurt they’ve caused but, as I’ve said before, the reason this affair has happened is because there was something amiss in the relationship to start with. For this both spouses need to assume responsibility.

To help you both along the way it might be useful to start a journal. Express all your thoughts and feelings in this journal; the good, the bad and the downright ugly. And besides making the time to talk about what happened there might also need to be some new, if only temporary, rules put into place regarding letting each other know where you are and what you’re doing and how long that will be. This can be the only way forward if trust is going to be re-established.

And by the way the spouse who decides the ultimate outcome of the affair will be the non-offending spouse not the one who cheated. Your role is to just grin and bear it, as this is the consequence of having erred. If there is enough love and a renewed commitment and trust you will find a way to reconnect. For both of you don’t be in a hurry. It will take as long as it takes.

Sometimes all this might seem too hard to do on your own and you might need some professional help. Take that help even if you don’t yet know what you should do now that the affair has been exposed. Counselling will help you find your way through the mess to then be able to make a clear decision to either leave the relationship or to recommit. It’s only as you come to make this decision that you can start to move forward.

So until next time – Relate with Love

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How to Tell If Your Spouse is Cheating – 3 Tell-Tale Signs to Look For

May7

Blatant CheatingCheating happens in so many ways. When we first think about what cheating is we tend to think about spouses having sex outside of the relationship but it happens in many other ways as well. With this in mind be aware also that what is defined as cheating to one person might not be for someone else.

A recent magazine asked readers to define an extra-marital affair, with this result:

· 21% thinking about an involvement
· 21% dinner and drinks
· 24% kissing and petting
· 26% sexual intercourse
· 8% not sure

And some people even define it as chatting on the internet or phone messaging with people of the opposite sex or using porn without the partner’s consent or inclusion.

How do you define cheating? And how do you know if your spouse is doing it?

Here are three tell-tale signs to look out for:

  1. When your spouse suddenly takes extra special care in their dress or personal appearance or suddenly adopts a whole new style in clothing or hair.
  2. When your spouse suddenly starts staying back at work late into the night saying they are doing extra work.
  3. When your spouse spends longer hours on the computer and/or phone and doesn’t want you to ask questions about or see what s/he is doing.

NB Be mindful that there may be perfectly legitimate reasons for all of these behaviors so be careful jumping to conclusions.

And by the way cheating is not necessarily a death knell for the relationship.

There are many reasons people cheat. The most important one though is that something is not working in the relationship that really needs looking at. This does not necessarily mean that you do not love each other anymore. What it means is that someone in the relationship is just not getting some of there needs met. This might be sexually or in friendship or in satisfying a need for some excitement in their lives.

Here is the short answer to overcoming an affair.

If you have caught your partner out there is obviously some decisions to be made regarding whether you should abandon the relationship or whether you can both recover from this error. That will be decided by many things the most important of which is your capacity to forgive your partner, and maybe even yourself, for allowing the affair to happen.

If you are the one having the affair, by the way, it’s sometimes wiser to not tell but to recommit and make amends as best you can. While it is said that honesty must be at the base of all relationships there are some things that may be best left unsaid. On deciding you have made a mistake, the most important thing is to acknowledge that to yourself and to do whatever needs to be done to get this relationship back on track. If you then decide to tell your partner have a good reason for doing so which is not based on your need to free yourself of guilt.

If you are in a relationship where you think there might be cheating talk about it. This may not be best introduced with a question about whether the other person is actually having an affair, but from the perspective of sharing your thoughts and values on the topic so your partner has an opportunity to respond. In this way they are not left with any doubt as to what you think and feel about the possibility of s/he having an affair. It just may give him/her a chance to change their behavior without having to put your whole relationship on the line. Remember s/he may not have the same definition of cheating as you do.

I will address this in more detail in my next blog post.

 

So until next time – Relate with Love

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What To Do When They Love Their Ex More Than You?

Apr30

The ExWhen I was 17 years old I met and fell in love with a man who became my prince. I thought it would last forever. We were soul mates and we shared everything together. This lasted for about eighteen months when we had our first big blow up. This also happened at a time when I needed to make some decisions about my future studies and where I wanted to live. The wants of each of us became devastatingly incompatible and we parted company.

Thoughts of him stayed with me for a long while as I then continued on with my life and fell in love with someone else who ultimately became my husband. Even now, nearly forty years later, I remember my first love with fondness and know that, despite what we had, it could never have been more than a high school fling though a great one at that.

Really there is nothing that will ever be the same as a first love. The feelings in your body and mind are intense coming from a place of innocence and naiveté. It’s like the first time you do anything exciting, like going on a roller coaster ride for the first time. It’s exhilarating and scary and irresistibly draws you into making you want to experience the ride again and again until you’re exhausted.

Of course this feeling cannot last as you must come back to reality. This sometimes happens with a resounding thud as you come to understand that you are actually not well-matched or your wants from life is not the same. Sometimes you just come to realize that you don’t really like this person anyway or they really don’t like you.

Then it’s all over! You are left to pick up the pieces of your life and move on. The reality is though that most often this happens for one or other of you first. The result being that while one of you has decided to move on the other hasn’t got to that stage yet.

This is where the other of you is left with some unanswered questions and consequently what we call in the industry ‘unfinished business’. This most often comprises the need to grieve the loss as well as to get some answers to the most obvious question ‘is this about you or me?’

For anyone going through this distress generally the first reaction is to try to avoid it. And how do you do that? You quickly distract yourselves with a new love. Often the outcome of this is, once the initial attraction has somewhat waned, to feel once again the sadness of the previous loss. This may be recognized by you, or your partner, as a belief that there is still love for that person, the Ex.

So how do you get past this? If you’re the one feeling like you can’t get over a lost love you need to remind yourself of the reality of the situation and focus on what is now possible for your future.

If you’re the one with a partner struggling with this know that this is their struggle and they are the one who needs to do the work. This is not about who you are or what you do. There is consequently not a lot you can do in this case except to be as supportive and as loving as you can be. This will then be his/her reminder of what s/he really does have to be thankful for in his/her life now.

If both of these options seem like too big it might be time to seek some counselling with someone who can work with each of you separately or with the two of you together to find a resolution.

So until next time – Relate with Love

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Friendship – The Foundation Stone For: ‘Till death do you part!’

Apr23
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There’s a scene at the end of the movie, ‘When Harry Met Sally’. You know the one I mean – the one that has all these old couples telling stories about how they met and fell in love and how after so many years they are still together.

These couples are so in synch with each other that they finish each others sentences. They each know the other so well, even down to what the other is going to say, so that without even talking over the top of each other you get the whole story as if it could have all come from one mouth.

This is my definition of true friendship and creates the foundation of every relationship that has lasted longer than the soft skin, the agile body and the great sex. The relationships that exist beyond sickness, beyond the bad times, and will only be severed by the death that will one day separate the couple from each other.

These relationships are ageless: they have stood the test of time. These couples have discovered something that so many of us still struggle with and that is that the love that comes from a true friendship survives all and any adversity that can be thrown at them.

How does this happen? I think there is something happening here that is maybe not present in many current relationships. This is the way these relationships began in the first place. I had a client come in some time ago, an older gentleman who lost his wife six months ago after forty years of marriage. He was grieving for her so badly he didn’t know what to do with himself. There was nothing he needed to understand or learn about this event. My role as his counselor was simply to give him a place to tell his story.

And what he told me was this: He described himself as a bit of a ‘lad’. He enjoyed the company of his mates and they spent Saturday nights out on the town drinking and partying. On occasion they would go to a dance and meet up with girls. This is how my client, let’s call him Peter, (not his real name) met the woman who would become his wife and long-time partner.

Peter was invited to a dance by his mates. There was a promise that there would be girls there and one of Peter’s mates even suggested that there was someone new to the group who Peter might fancy. This is when he first met Pip (not her real name) and instantly hit it off. The months that followed were spent going out with the group and getting to know each other more. ‘They Became Good Friends’. It was from this friendship then that their love grew. They married and made a life together.

Things are different now than they were then and I wonder when I meet people like Peter, and the loving way he speaks of Pip, and see couples like at the end of ‘When Harry Met Sally’ if there is something they knew back then that we might have lost sight of. And that might simply be that before they fell in love they first created a really great friendship.

I believe that friendship must be a precursor to a truly great relationship and become thereby the necessary foundation that will take the relationship into the future.

When I talk to couples now I ask them what they do for fun. These are the things that will create the opportunities for a friendship to flourish. Sometimes things become too serious as people get on with acquiring things in their lives instead of living their lives.

How about you – are you and your partner friends? To ascertain the answer ask yourself this question – Do I really like this person? If the answer is: ‘yes!’ then you probably have what it takes to go the long-term with him or her. If the answer is: ‘no’ then you probably need to rethink whether what you have with this person will be enough to keep you connected till ‘death do you part!’

So until next time – Relate with Love

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So Now That We Are Married – Now What?

Apr16

Married CoupleThis week’s blog could have many titles and hopefully will address many of the questions I get on the topic of ‘…so now that we are married – now what?’

Some of the questions relate to: ‘Keeping Love Alive’, ‘Holding on to the Spark’ or maybe related to the question: ‘How do we Sustain a Marriage after 10, 20 or 30+ Years?’ Sometimes the questions are just about ‘What to do from Becoming Bored’

There is so much I could say about this topic I scarcely know where to begin. The reason you become bored in relationships is that you think there is nothing more to learn about the other person or you lose the want to find out if there’s something still worthwhile knowing. In short, you become bored because you most often just don’t want to be bothered anymore.

When you first meet someone, and you don’t know them well enough yet to see the negative qualities they possess, you just want to get as much of them as you can. You want to be with them 24/7 to feel the good feelings you get just by being near them. You want to know there most personal thoughts, about everything, in your quest to prove to yourself that they really are the right person for you and so much so that they become perfect in your eyes.

And then one day you think you’ve got them figured out! From here then it’s a short step to it becoming all too much trouble.

And by the way this goes both ways – they think they’ve got you figured as well. So as you stop talking to them, they stop talking to you and you get into a stage of relationship that I call ‘Assuming your way into oblivion’.

There’s an old adage that says to ASSUME makes an ASS out of U and ME. From there it’s a downhill slide into second guessing and taking the others needs and wants for granted.

The funny thing about this is that you unconsciously encourage this by your own expectation that if your partner truly understood you then they would know what you are thinking and thereby what you are wanting and/or needing and would somehow then just magically do it.

But guess what you aren’t a mind reader, most of us aren’t anyway, and as well as you think you might know your partner you really have no idea. You have not had his or her life experiences for one thing, you don’t process your thoughts in the same way as he or she does and therefore you will naturally respond to things differently.

So to get back to the topic at hand – if you’re not a mind reader then neither are they. The way forward then is to keep talking, stay curious and always check out what’s new for the other person. Share your thoughts and feelings with them as well and never give up.

I have met with couples that have issues that keep coming up for them. They might even have a brief conversation about it and, for a moment at least, it seems that things might change. But guess what? The issues just keep coming back again and again. And this is why: The real core of the issues were never fully understood in the first place and just as often by the person holding the issue as well as by the other trying to grapple with it.

So if you don’t get it for yourself then what hope has your partner got of getting it and consequently what hope have you got as a couple to really find a satisfactory and long-term resolution?

The answer is none.

You need to be friend to your partner as well as a lover. Never assume that you really do know what they mean when they say ‘… you know.’ The truth is if they don’t, you can’t either. Friends are interested about each others thoughts and feelings. They ask meaningful questions and listen actively to the responses. This consists of more than an ‘I understand’ and may actually require a statement about what you think you are actually hearing so that the other can confirm, or restate or expand, so that you can really get down to the truth about what they are actually saying to you.

In this way you can never get bored as there’ll always be something to talk about. And it won’t matter that you have been married for 30, 40 or even 50 years as there will always be something more to learn about that person that you’ve never known before. And just maybe there will be something to also learn about yourself.

To get you started on this quest check out the page on my website titled ‘quizzes and questionnaires’ and look for: ‘My life in 34 Questions’. Answer the questions for yourself and for your partner before sharing your answers. You might find out something you never knew before.

So until next time – Relate with Love

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How to Forgive the Unforgivable

Apr9

It is more human to forgive

 

Has your partner made an error that has hurt you? Have you made errors that have hurt your partner?

The closer you are to someone, the more likely you are to ‘step on their toes’. And being in a relationship with someone certainly puts you where this is fairly likely to happen. Relationships are a bit like ballroom dancing really! The chances are even pretty high that you and your partner could have pretty sore toes.

The point here is that it’s normal for you and your partner to make mistakes and to inadvertently step on each others toes. And as long as this is not intentional it is repairable. Like ballroom dancing, once you get the steps right the dance will flow naturally all by itself.

And, except in the case of physical abuse, (I addressed that in my blog of a couple of weeks ago) you can move on from anything. In fact, your marriage can end up even better!

I know…you’re probably thinking, ‘Better? How could it be better than before we messed it up?’

It can be better, but you have to do one thing first. You have to forgive.

What does it really mean to forgive?

Many people say, ‘I forgive you’, but continue to hold anger and resentment in their hearts. Some people even say the words, but their actions show that nothing’s changed for them at all.

Other people will say ‘I forgive you’ but what they really mean is, ‘I can’t deal with it. I don’t want to talk about it any more.’ And so the 3 magic words come out and form a wall that shuts out their partner. True, they may not be angry any more, but that’s because they’ve shut down all emotion and refuse to reconnect.

Saying ‘I forgive you!’ is an entirely different ball game from truly forgiving.

Let’s take a closer look at the word and where it comes from. The root of the word ‘forgive’ is the Latin word ‘perdonare’ meaning: ‘to give completely without reservation’. This is also the source of our English ‘pardon’.

When the Latin ‘perdonare’ was adopted into the Germanic ancestor of English, it was translated piece-by-piece: ‘Per’ was replaced by ‘for’, a prefix that in this case means ‘thoroughly’ and ‘donare’ with ‘giefan’ (to give). The result, ‘forgiefan’, appeared in Old English meaning ‘to give up’ or ‘allow’ as well as ‘to give in marriage’.

In modern English, ‘forgive’ has also taken on the meanings of ‘to pardon for an offence’, ‘renounce anger at’ (I truly forgive you for stepping on my toes) and ‘to abandon a claim on’ (as in ‘forgive a debt’).

What then is true forgiveness? It’s when you stand as close to your partner as you stood the day your feet got stepped on. It’s when you give of yourself like you did before you were hurt.

Forgiveness might also need to be of self as well as of the other. That might sound surprising but for your partner to have stepped on your toes your toes needed to have been there to be stepped on. As the old adage says: ‘It takes two to tango!’

And, by the way, forgiveness may not be easy to do. But it is possible. You can forgive each other and move on.

And once you forgive, you’ll see that your marriage can be better than it was before.
You could even be happy that the mistake was made (in a strange way) because it allows you to realize that you might never have achieved the love you finally have without that error as your catalyst.

Did you know that when a broken bone heals it is stronger than it was before it was broken? You too can be stronger than before things broke down between you.

Did you ever make love after a big fight? Did you ever think after you made-up, ‘Hey, this is great? We should fight more often.’ Sometimes, while not an excuse to fight, the highest-highs can follow the lowest-lows. This is because in the forgiving you have come to an even more intimate place with each other.

If you are holding onto old hurts maybe it’s time for you to forgive. Give it a go it can be so liberating for you personally as well as for you as a couple.

And if you need help with this check out the ‘Quizzes and Questionnaires’ page at my site www.acouplesjourney.com .  You will discover an exercise there to help you in finding forgiveness. Alternatively, if you need further assistance in this, please find a good Counselor. The effort will reap the reward.

So until next time – Relate with Love

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