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Some time ago I received an email from a woman questioning her husband’s continuing infidelity despite the fact that they have been married for more than twenty years. The simple question was why he would continue doing this?
The answer of course is never quite as simple as the question as there may be a number of reasons that he might continue to be unfaithful. In this article I’ll describe a few and what this woman might be able to do about it.
The first thought I had when reading this question was that this man has not yet grown up. It feels like he may be stuck in adolescence still trying to figure out who he is and how he wants to be as a man.
The other thought I had that may be an extension of the one above is that this man is trying to prolong his youth by acting as a young man still unable to control his biological urges, which makes me wonder how this might present in other areas of his life such as in his work or as a parent himself.
And then it could be that he’s just trying to prove that he still has “it”, whatever “it” is. It may be something to do with a low self-esteem that he feels he needs to prove to himself or even to his wife, that he is still attractive to others and be attractive enough to be sexually desirable.
But then it could be that his wife, she who wrote the email, is a very powerful character in her own right, or maybe is simply a “nag”, and the affairs are his way of escaping, if only for a moment, her abuses.
And then it could be that this is what was modelled for him as a child by his parents, or other significant people in his life, as being the way to behave as an adult thereby having the husband believing that this is what all married couples do.
And of course it may be that the women he is having the affairs with are having their own issues and are manipulating him into believing that he is more than a conquest by their seductive advances which, because of his low self-esteem he is unable to resist.
Nonetheless, whatever the reason, the continuing affairs are certainly representative of something critically amiss in this relationship that needs to be addressed.
The way to do this is firstly is for the wife to challenge him on what he is doing. In this case she needs to ensure that he understands that the behaviour is inappropriate and will not be tolerated any further. It might be that for the sake of the relationship, or for the children of the relationship, never a good reason, that she has turned a blind eye to the behaviour and pretended that it just didn’t happen.
The wife might have to take a good hard look at herself as well in terms of what she might be doing or saying that encourages him to continue the behaviour.
This may be too big an ask for anyone to address between themselves so this might be best done with the assistance of a couples counsellor. The counsellor will ask both of the couple lots of questions that might not have otherwise been asked to help both people in the couple to understand exactly what these recurrent affairs mean to them and what they can do to bring their relationship back on track.
So until next time – Relate with Love
We all know when we are “in love” that our common sense seems to fail us as all we think about is the subject of our love and the delight there will be next time we meet. Even just thinking about them can result in that flurry in our stomachs as if they were with us in real life.
Well it can all be blamed on a little hormone that is produced in the pituitary gland called oxytocin. Sometimes oxytocin is referred to as the “love hormone” because it is when we are “in love” that oxytocin is most rapidly produced. It is also the hormone present in the body that marks the commencement of labour in a pregnant mother as well as being the active hormone that triggers the commencement of the flow of milk in the breastfeeding mum.
It is such a powerful hormone that for many mothers who are breastfeeding the experience can be akin to an orgasm and for some actually produces a real orgasm.
But back to the topic: It is when we are contemplating making love, or are actually making love, and are about to orgasm that we experience the full force of the delivery of oxytocin into our systems. And because it creates such a wonderful feeling in our bodies, as well as in our minds, the desire for oxytocin can become addictive.
So here’s how so often the story goes. You meet someone; you feel an attraction and want to spend time with that person. As you become more and more aroused oxytocin is released into your body and your want to be sexual with that person increases until it finds release some way.
Then as time goes by, and you are now in a full-time relationship, the attraction begins to wane somewhat as once a conquest has been made it no longer holds quite the same desirability. This is simply because it is no longer new and exciting as it was in the beginning.
This is especially so when you have known each other for some time and your availability to each other is no longer constrained. You are now able to spend more and more time together which also takes away the emergency of being sexual whenever you are given an opportunity.
So for those with an oxytocin addiction it may be that this relationship can no longer hold your interest and rather than going on to discover what else this relationship has for you the temptation is to let this go and find another person to fall in love with. Sometimes you can even convince yourself that this relationship wasn’t right for you anyway as you continue to seek your one and only “soul mate”.
And now even more than in past decades this seems to be happening. And not just in western countries and cultures but it many Asian and Middle Eastern Countries as well.
Maybe it is that we are all seeking a quick thrill as we want more and more “buzz” from our lives and once we’ve achieved that we want to move on to the next new and exciting thing there is to experience.
Maybe it is as simple as this. That when the oxytocin production settles down and you find yourself facing “forever” then it’s time to look a little deeper for what might sustain the relationship for the long haul. Simply put that is real love not a selfishly sought after high for the moment but something that is based on a deep-seated care and commitment of one to another.
This is certainly not to say that there is now no room for romance and great sex. What this does mean is that you need to focus on creating the opportunities for great sex while ensuring you add lots of romance to your relationship.
Don’t be lazy and don’t be content with just making do as you get busy with life. Keep the fun alive, flirt with each other; make time for play and to explore your sexuality to ensure that the oxytocin keeps flowing.
So until next time – Relate with Love
I loved receiving this question as it’s something that we may expect that we all understand but in truth maybe we actually don’t.
So I started my research into answering this question by scrambling to the Macquarie Dictionary which defines marriage as “the legal union of a man and a woman for life including a legal or religious ceremony.”
This definition really doesn’t give us very much at all as marriage today in so many cultures, legally and through the various churches, is open to being dissolved on the wish of one or other of the parties. In most countries these divorces are even permitted without even having to prove that one party is in some way more at fault than the other.
So I thought that I should proceed in this article to discuss my thoughts on what marriage is and would welcome you to add your thoughts on the topic as well.
While marriage may relate to a legal process for me marriage is more about the commitment two people make to be there for each other come what may. I would also expand on the dictionary definition to include not just the communion of a man to a woman but also of either a man or a woman to another man or woman. In my view they are as much a marriage as any marriage could be.
The sad thing here is that too many people enter into a marriage without really knowing what they are getting themselves into or without going through any preparation to ensure that their marriage will go the distance.
When I work with couples contemplating marriage the first thing I get them to consider and discuss with each other is this very question: what is marriage to each of them? How do they define it and are they ok with how their partner defines it or does it need some tweaking to make it something that both of the couple can live with.
As most of you might know I am in a relationship and have been for more than 20 years. My partner and I are not married nevertheless I describe him as my husband and wear his ring. He also describes me as his wife. It actually took us some time to acknowledge each other in this way as we were assessing our future together especially as I had four young children already as part of the package.
One of the first things we discussed in terms of our marriage was about whether we would live together and where that would be. We then had many conversations about how we would manage my children and whether we would have any more children. We then had to decide on the division of responsibilities both in terms of household chores and financial contributions. Finally we had some conversations about ownership of property and what would happen in the event that either of us predeceased the other.
And while this was not an issue for us as we are both of the same religious beliefs, for many couples there is also the question of what their particular religious beliefs are and how they might impact on their relationship and/or to any children of the relationship.
So while some of these issues are still conversations in progress for my partner and myself, the underlying promise is that we will be there exclusively for each other for the rest of our lives. In this we committed to never walk out on the other and to always raise it whenever we had an issue that affected us both and/or our future together.
This is how I define my marriage for me. It is a safe place to collapse into at the end of each busy day where I can feel safe and not be judged negatively no matter what I do or think. It is a place where I feel loved unconditionally and love in the same way.
So until next time – Relate with Love
What a great question this is to get me going for the week
The short answer is this: NO! Someone cannot truly love you and hurt you over and over with lies and deceit. But it may be a little more complicated than that.
Lying and deceitfulness can be a natural response to being constantly tormented, fear of being found out, or from the modelling we get from the most important people around us, generally our parents.
There are also gradients of lies. There are the lies of omission when we don’t tell someone that what they are wearing doesn’t go with whatever, their body shape, the occasion etc.
On the other end of the continuum are the really big lies that have a huge impact on people’s lives, individuals or whole countries, which can and do change the course of history.
My curiosity is pricked when I hear that someone is being deceitful in their relationship. Is this a cold-hearted act of cruelty with no regard for the impact the lie has on another or is it something much more than that?
My belief is that lying is a complex issue that really needs to be viewed not just in the context of the current event but in the context of a whole lifetime of experience.
When we are very young we learn to tell lies as part of socialising us to the norms of society. So we are taught to hold our tongues when we get crushed under the hug of our big, fat aunties and respectfully say ‘thank you’ for the gift that we really didn’t want. We also learn in the process that lying can protect us from being punished, sometimes in very, even too harsh ways. Lying can even become habitual as a way of avoiding the anger of someone in a position of authority over us as well as a means of avoiding the feelings of fear that can go with that.
As an adult we normally grow out of this behaviour as we meet with other adults face to face, in truth and in good will, to manage our conflicts in an adult way no longer needing to resort to old patterns of behaviour. Sometimes however old behaviours are so entrenched that the habit has become hard to shift. Alternatively the person is triggered to feel the same sort of fear they experienced as a child and respond from an internal child part of themselves rather than an external adult part.
In these situations the lies and deceit are not intended to hurt but become the habitual response of someone who doesn’t yet have the skills to manage themselves in a more mature way.
Love is a mature adult feeling that is pure and clean with no unresolved issues attached to it. So to truly love another implies that you are fully there with this person in the most vulnerable way possible. This means that your heart, soul and body are open and exposed without any defences. So to put it more simply, love and lying simply cannot be present in the same moment.
While we are humans, and we will slip up, for us to be truly in love with another requires us also to be truly honest. If we cannot be truly honest then we can’t possibly truly love because instead of being there fully in the present we are being held back by something from our past that will need resolution.
So if you are being lied to and hurt constantly by your partner and they are unable, or unwilling, to do what it takes to change then you really do need to think about the long-term viability of your relationship.
So until next time – Relate with Love
This email came through to my desk last week and it left me feeling very concerned for the young person who sent it. It said:
“I’ve been in a relationship with my boyfriend for two and a half months. We are engaged to be married early next year however I’ve some doubts about him. This is because everybody thinks he loves me except for myself. He has never said “i love you” throughout this period; not even once! I don’t feel loved enough and yet am scared to walk away. Do you think our marriage will work?”
In answering this email I will presume that this person actually has a choice in the matter as to who she marries as this email came from a non-western country. And as I have only a small part of the story I will answer it on the basis that I may be making a few assumptions.
There are a couple of issues being raised in this email. Firstly is the fact that this person has never heard her boyfriend say he loves her. Does this actually mean that he does not love you or that he doesn’t know how to say “I love you!”?
If he has never had it said to him by a parent or significant other as he was growing up then he might not be able to say it. Alternatively if he has grown up without love then he may not know what it feels like to be loved or to love someone else. In this regard he may not know that it could actually be safe to love someone and not be let down or disappointed by that person to whom he may have bared a very vulnerable part of himself.
Of course it may simply be that he does not love you and if that is the case then you should think very carefully about committing yourself to this man on a long-term basis. And as for everyone else thinking that he loves you; what do they base this opinion on? Has he said something to them that he is not willing to share with you? Or are they basing this conclusion on his behaviour and how he treats you?
The other issue that this email raises is whether such a relationship, where people don’t, or can’t speak their truth about love, can actually work. My thought on this is that no marriage can work if both parties aren’t willing to trust the other with their love and with their soul which involves the deepest and most profound parts of themselves.
Despite all of this the most telling part of this email is reflected in the statement “i don’t feel loved enough and yet am scared to walk away.” My only response to this is; if you don’t feel loved enough at the beginning of your relationship don’t expect to be loved enough later on. I’d like to qualify this by saying that as a relationship continues, and as you come to know each other better, the love generally becomes deeper and more heartfelt.
But this doesn’t just happen. It is the consequence of an open and expressed love that comes from the care a couple shows to each other over time. It could even seem that if that person were to go away that it would feel like having a limb removed as they are such a fundamental part of your own being.
I would also like to ask this person what it is you fear that prevents you from walking away. If you feel that there may not be someone else for you, there is. In actual fact there are probably millions of people around the world that you could be compatible with and with whom you could make a great relationship. If you fear your friends or families judgement remind them that this is your life to live and that you must make your own choices. If it is that you fear him or his retribution then you need to remove yourself immediately from this toxic environment.
Finally let me add one more point. You have only known this person for such a short time before making your marriage plans. Take the time to get to know each other. I don’t have a belief that there is a particular time frame you should be together before getting married but two months, especially when there are doubts, may not really be long enough to come to know anyone well enough to commit to them for the rest of your life.
So until next time – Relate with Love
Betrayed By A Fiancé/Fiancée?
I receive many emails asking about the meaning of affairs and what to do when you catch someone out. This question is one that comes up regularly both in my rooms as well as via email. In this post I will try and put my thoughts down about what I understand about affairs when they happen and what you can do about them.
Let me first define what an affair is and what an affair is not. For me, and you may agree or not, an affair is when someone creates a relationship with another person, with or without sex, in which that other person becomes the centre of their attention at the expense of their partner.
An affair is not a “one-night stand” where someone gets carried away in the moment and has a sexual encounter with someone outside of the marriage/relationship. Both, however, may be considered equally a betrayal and unforgivable to the other party in the relationship.
When someone has been caught out in any kind of unfaithfulness some of you have simply decided to walk away and others have decided to forgive and move on. There is no right or wrong way to respond to this. It is up to each of you to decide how significant the indiscretion is to you and decide on how you yourself should best react.
Often the actual decision made is more likely based on your personal value system. For some of you, when someone betrays you, it feels like the worst thing that they can do and there is no room for stepping away from the hurt or the loss of trust. For others of you there is such a strong value in your love and commitment that you will find a way to forgive even this most unforgivable of betrayals.
In either situation it seems to come down to which value is the strongest – the value around love and commitment or the value around fidelity.
When someone has been unfaithful it is worth pausing for a moment to take a look at why they may have done it before deciding what the best course of action is.
Reasons for being unfaithful may include:
Once you have ascertained what might be behind the betrayal then you can make the best decision about what to do about it. You may ultimately decide it is totally the responsibility of the wrongdoer or you may decide that you have to take some responsibility for what has happened as well and change some of your own behaviours.
My belief about this is that when two people truly love each other and are totally committed to their partner then unfaithfulness simply does not have a place. Instead when there are issues they will talk them through until they get a resolution.
And a word of advice: if you ever find yourself in a situation where there has been an infidelity, I would really encourage you to seek professional counselling before making any decisions you may come to regret.
So until next time – Relate with Love
When I was young, many years ago now, the dream of most young women was to finish school acquire some training of some sort and get a job. In those days it was somewhat limited to secretarial, shop assistant, teaching, air hostessing, or nursing.
Following that was the challenge of finding someone “really nice”, getting married, “settling down” and having kids. There really wasn’t a whole lot to think about and even more choices were taken from you as once you were married or pregnant most women had to leave their employment. There was no such thing as maternity leave or holding your position for you until your return.
The otherwise natural flow of life was then hugely interrupted by the introduction of the contraceptive pill in the 1960’s. The claim was that couples were now able to make their own decisions about becoming pregnant and starting their family. Then there was a further development in the 1970’s that made it legal for women to have an unwanted pregnancy terminated creating even more choices for couples to make about beginning a family. And then all the other political advances in women’s rights that have elevated women to take positions of seniority have created even more choices in how we live our lives.
And now, so many years later, I believe the decisions that couples have to make, may in actual fact, whilst claiming to liberate them, actually be inhibiting them.
When is the time right?
I’m not saying that we should go back to the old times. What I am saying is that for some couples the number of choices now available to them may actually slow them into indecision.
I’ve had this conversation with several of my own adult children all of whom are in happy relationships and two of whom are married with children. The conversations we have about the time being right for anything happening in their lives, as it is for many who have sent questions into me, tends to revert back to where they are in their career, financially, or in their relationship and concerns they hold about the future of their relationship given the high incidence of relationship breakdown.
I hear so many people experiencing distress over these decisions and the want to have everything perfect or at least as they would wish it to be, before they venture into the next phase of their lives.
But, as I remind my clients so often, life is not an end point. It will never be perfect. The time will never be exactly right. Life is a journey and can only be lived that way.
And as my husband reminds me; the most memorable holidays we’ve had are the ones that were not perfect, where we’d find ourselves in the most amazing of places meeting the most incredible people and having the most bazaar experiences. These are the stories that we like to tell over and over again.
In our naivety of half a century ago we simply made do. We lived in “shoeboxes” furnished with mismatched pieces we could scavenge from family and friends. We passed around babies clothes from one to another as our children grew and spent time on the weekends making whatever fun we could to entertain ourselves and our children.
So here’s the answer to choosing or knowing when is the right time; to live together, to marry, to have children or whatever other decision you are struggling with right now. The answer is there is; no right time. As I have said to my own children – if it feels right just do it and let the future take care of itself. It will anyway!
So until next time – Relate with Love
This week I received an email with a number of questions relating to the good of getting married. Here are my answers as they were asked in the email.
I guess the starting point to getting married is to get the permission of the intended first. If that person agrees then there may be a need to get parents permission.
While in most cultures this request is generally initiated by the man there are times when it might be initiated by the woman. One of these times might be the 29 February. This is the one day that only comes up every four years as, by the Gregorian calendar, it is a leap year. And guess what that happens next in 2016. So girls go for it.
Then once your proposal has been accepted then the opportunities are endless depending on whether you would be married by a minister of your church or by a celebrant.
One thing I always encourage couples who are preparing to marry is to do a marriage preparation course whether this is one conducted by a minister or a counsellor in the community. There is simply no better way to insure your marriage for long-term success.
Well this is an interesting question and really is at the discretion of those who might be contemplating marriage to decide.
In some countries and cultures there could be a requirement that before two people can live together they must be married. In other cultures, such as our western culture, marriage is optional before living together.
The research indicates however that people who actually get married may have a stronger commitment to their partner to make the relationship succeed. In the same way those who choose to live together may be more ready to leave if the relationship begins to falter.
As I said above the merit in marriage is that it is a commitment made to another person in front of witnesses, which, by its very nature, has the psychological impact of being more compelling to work at this relationship through the good times and in bad, through sickness and in health.
The decision to marry requires the couple to really think about where they want their relationship to go. This also hopefully gets them thinking and questioning beyond today, and what they want right now, to considering the future even to the point of ’til death do them part.
But maybe the greatest value in marriage is that it allows couples to feel secure knowing that their partner willingly takes a vow to commit fully to them. And hopefully this also means that before just walking out when things get tough they firstly make every effort to find a way through the difficulty that is presenting itself.
The simple answer? No it’s not necessary to have children. Some believe however that to have children is the reason for marrying and the ultimate reason for being.
My belief is that to have children, or not, is a decision for each couple to make as is appropriate to their own circumstances. Of course there are those couples who for a variety of reasons are unable to, or choose not to, have children. Their relationship is based on connections other than children which is also entirely appropriate.
This is a huge question and worthy of a book in itself. Every cultural group on the planet has its own way of celebrating the joining of two people in marriage through some kind of wedding ceremony.
And each of these ways will have its own customs and traditions. The wedding celebration simply defines the date of commencement of a marriage; one that hopefully will last a lifetime and will provide the couple with ongoing joy and happiness.
So until next time – Relate with Love
You wake up in the morning and look across to the person you say you care for more than any one in the world. What do you really think about this person? Does he/she immediately fill you with love and adoration or are you thinking terrible or maybe even contemptuous thoughts about that person.
You get up and go to the shower in preparation for the work day. You weight yourself and realize that you have put on a few kilos. You say to yourself “Oh, that’s just because of the extras I had at dinner last night. It will be ok”.
You sit down to breakfast and find yourself wishing your partner were different somehow. If only they’d dress differently, act differently, weren’t so selfish, paid better attention to you or whatever it is. You don’t say anything.
You go to the office and find yourself seeking out that one special person who is always so nice to you. You flirt with them and find yourself requesting or agreeing to meet after work for drinks. Over time this leads to more regular meetings until one day this becomes more serious. You convince yourself this is not an affair but just a “bit of fun” that you can control and that no-one is being hurt by it.
And then one day you lose the control and the innocent flirting becomes a one-night-stand, the one-night-stand becomes a fling and the fling becomes a full-blown affair that now seems to have a mind of its own.
You have reached the point of no return and you realize you are now in really deep trouble.
The truth is we all lie sometime and most of us lie most of the time.
We lie to ourselves about what is going on in our life and we lie to ourselves about what is going on in our relationships. And we lie to each other about what is going on in our relationships as well.
The lies are expressed in one of two ways; either by what we actually do say but most often the lies are expressed by what we don’t say.
I often get asked questions about lying. When is it ok? When is it not? What to do when you find someone has lied to you? Should you forgive a lie?
The answer is not as simple as it might appear. You might be thinking that you simply should never lie. But as Allan Pease, in his book “Body Language”, says; to be socialised is to lie.
In other words every day we are confronted with situations, such as the first utterance we make when greeting someone, when we say: “how are you?” (As if we really care). The inevitable reply is: “fine thanks, how are you?”
We say this when what we’d really like to say is something like: “I feel terrible; the kids are mucking up, my husband does nothing to help me, and I’m fed up.” Or for the man who might really want to say; “I’m so over it. I work hard to provide for my family and there’s no thanks when I get home; just nagging to do more around the house and for the kids.”
This response would be heard as complaining and, while it might be the truth, is most often not aired in public.
This is how I advise my clients. If you have done something wrong for which you think you should tell the truth about ask yourself these questions first.
So until next time – Relate with Love
Relationship Remedy 