Here are the rules for separating from the affair partner:
1. Allow your spouse to participate in the severance. By allowing your spouse to have a say in how it is done will help your spouse find closure as well. Also, because the affair involved so much secrecy, this moment of truth is refreshing for them. Remember you and your spouse are a team.
2. Make it a clear, absolute, severance. There are a number of ways to separate from the affair partner that we will talk about but, however it is done, don’t let there be any question whatsoever that there is a glimmer of hope in the world that there could be anything between you again...
The Affair Trap
Did you know that most affairs are not actually about sex? Surprised? You may also find it interesting that most people who have had an affair believed it would never happen to them. It doesn’t matter if you are religious, a good person, or a smart person. Affairs have very little, if at all, to do with the type of person you are.
So you may be asking, “what are affairs about anyways, if it's not just sexual addiction, and what types of people have them?” We will tell you. Affairs are about many different things. Reasons can vary based on circumstances and what is going on inside the heart and mind of the person who has the affair. Let’s look at a few different ways a person falls into the affair trap:
How the Internet Affair Virus is Spreading
The painful feelings are still very similar whether your spouse is having sex with someone or they are just having an “internet fling”. We often hear from people that say even though their spouse hasn’t slept with anyone it still feels like they have cheated. Your heart still feels ripped out. Yet many can’t fully understand why. That is what this series of blog posts aims to sort out for you.
5 Keys to Beating the Back to School Blues
Sending your kids back to school can be a tough thing to do especially when they are young. My sister-in-law has 3 young kids and this year two of them will be in school full time. When talking about sending her two oldest to school she says, “adjusting to 2 kids in school and 1 left at home...this feels weird! There is a lot of separation anxiety and mixed emotions. I have felt excitement knowing they will experience new things but guilt at the same time because they don’t always want to go. I know they need to go to school but I think about their social and academic knowledge and I hope it is adequate.”
There is a little fear and anxiety about leaving home for the students too. When your child has spent so much time with you everyday it is hard to leave mom and dad and go off on this new adventure....
7 Keys to Fighting Fair
Have you caught yourself saying this or something like this to your spouse:
“You never clean up after yourself! I am always picking your dishes up off the table! What makes it worse is you always leave a mess and never consider my feelings and that makes me so $%!@* angry! You always act like such a baby and you always expect me to act like your mother!”
It’s only natural that we become very comfortable with our spouse. But as we unload our thoughts and feelings we need to think about how we are effecting our relationship long term.
Establishing Your Identity As A Couple In The First Year of Marriage
The task of the first year of marriage is to establish yourselves as a married couple - to become comfortable with your identity as a married pair and to adapt to dealing with others as married partners. That challenge is often complicated, however, by relatives who, well meaning though they may be, want to make certain that they still play a central role in your lives...
Changes Newlywed Couples Face
The Risk Involved with Having a New Baby
What Researchers Say about New Parents
Parenting that is compromised by fighting, irritability, and hostility lead to poor parent-child interaction. This creates a dangerous emotional climate for babies. This atmosphere will interfere with an infant’s ability to self-regulate and to stay calm. Both parents are working harder, but they both feel unappreciated. During the first year after babies arrive, the frequency and intensity of relationship conflicts increase 9 times what it was before the baby. It is normal for a mom’s sexual desire to drop precipitously after birth and even stay low for the first year, especially if she is nursing. Consequently, sex declines dramatically...
1st Steps to Healing After an Affair
Knowing the true story behind a trauma is the only way the victim can stop obsessing and begin to heal.
Because affairs are secret, betrayed partners can’t resolve their grief over their loss of innocence until they know what really happened. Unfaithful partners who lie about the details cause more harm than good because the only way to restore a betrayed partner’s sanity is to be honest about what has, up to now, been concealed.
A key question that must be answered for the betrayed partner is, “How do I know you won’t betray me again?” They can answer this by knowing what led to the infidelity and what kept it going.
Secret #7 How To Create Rituals, Goals, and Roles for A Happy Marriage
The 7th and final step to creating the marriage you want is to have a "Sense of Shared Meaning." By this I mean you need to have "rituals, goals and roles" that you share.
Marriage isn't just about raising kids, splitting chores, and making love. It can also have a spiritual dimension that has to do with creating an inner life together. Developing a culture together doesn't mean a couple sees eye to eye on every aspect of their life's philosophy....
Helping Your Spouse Win
Successful couples realize they must help their partner realize important life dreams and become effective at making each others life dreams and aspirations come true.
In short: Help each other win.
A good way to handle conflict in your marriage is working together as a team to achieve each other's life dreams. Many conflicts in marriage are caused because life dreams are in conflict. You need to...
Secret #5 Keeping Interactions Soft
Secret #4 The Trick of Accepting Influence & Sharing Control
Successful couples accept influence from each other.
Meaning they listen to, and seek out each other's opinions before making a decision. This is particularly hard for most men and some women. So men please don't feel like I am picking on you in this blog post. I am a man myself; I know how difficult it is to do what I am saying here.
But it is extremely important to...
Secret #3 Turning Towards Your Partner In Times Of Need
How Fondness & Admiration Leads To Success In Marriage
This means they retain some fundamental sense that their partner is worthy of being respected and even liked. Fondness and admiration are two of the most crucial elements in a rewarding and long-lasting romance.
Although happily married couples may feel driven to distraction at times by their partner's personality flaws, they feel that the person they married is worthy of honor and respect. When this sense is completely missing from a marriage, the relationship has a very....
Creating Space for Your Spouse (It's not what you think)
Something that successful couples do that separates themselves from non successful couples is they create "Cognitive Room" for each other. Meaning they know what is going on in their partner's day to day world; they know what stresses they face, what their goals are, who they like and dislike at work, names of childhood friends etc....
4th Sign that Divorce is Near!
The fourth and final sign that the end is near in your marriage is STONEWALLING.
Note: The end is only near if there is no intervention like marriage counseling.
This simply means the listener withdraws from the interaction while staying in the room. Basically this means not giving cues that he or she is listening i.e. by looking at the side and not maintaining eye contact or crossing one's arms. This is very common in men.
Solution? Use PHYSIOLOGICAL SELF-SOOTHING, meaning learn to calm yourself down. Usually when someone is stonewalling their heart beat is close to 100 beats per minute. When your heart beat gets that high your adrenaline is pumping and you are in survival mode because you are being verbally beat up.
The key to self-soothing is to use relaxation techniques like deep breathing or tightening and relaxing muscles in your body. Marriage counseling can help your marriage.
Do You Have The 3rd Sign that Divorce is Near In Your Relationship?
This is sign to end all signs, this warning sign is so bad that marriage researchers just by spotting this warning sign can predict divorce with 94% accuracy. The end is only near if there is no intervention like marriage counseling.
The sign is CONTEMPT.
To be contemptuous is to put someone down, and to take a higher plan i.e. taking a higher moral ground. It's a position that says, "I am better, smarter, kinder/etc than you are." It can be accompanied by a belligerent attitude. When contempt is present in a relationship it is accompanied by a negative habit of mind where the wife scans the environment for her husbands mistakes rather than for what is positive or what she can appreciate. Now there is a cross-cultural universal facial expression of contempt: a lateral pull of the left lip corner to the side creating a dimple on the left side.
Solution?
Create a CULTURE OF APPRECIATION! Be thankful!
Key ways to do this is to communicate to your partner what you like and love about them on a regular basis. It is more meaningful when it is done unexpectedly and in small ways, but done everyday. Let them know you are thankful for: being with them, knowing them, and what they do for you. Remember marriage counseling can help you avoid divorcing and help you rebuild your marriage.
2nd Sign that Divorce is Near!
The next sign that you maybe in a troubled marriage is DEFENSIVENESS. The end is only near if there is no intervention like marriage counseling.
Defensiveness follows criticism in the dysfunctional pattern of marital communication. What causes someone to feel defensive in a marital discussion is being criticized by their partner. When someone is criticized they are not thinking about what role they had in creating a problem but they are naturally thinking about how they are right and the criticizer is wrong. So defensiveness actually results in the defensive partner to criticize to show how "right" they are. It creates more criticism and causes nothing to be resolved in your marriage.
Solution?
When you are criticized accepted responsibility for your part in the situation, even if it is a minor role. If you don't the cycle of criticism and defensiveness will play out in your marriage and cause you to grow apart. Marriage counseling can help your marriage.