1. Are clear and “up front” as possible about your expectations when facing new or changing circumstances.
2. Rehearse difficult conversations with a trusted friend before you have to engage in them.
3. Engage at deeper and more meaningful levels of conversation with people in your immediate family.
4. Work hard at ridding your self of debt.
5. Meet regularly with a small group of men and women who share your interests, your passions, and your burdens.
6. Forgive others for real or imagined grievances against you.
7. Creatively imagine ways to enhance and empower those whom you think may not have your best interests at heart.
8. Give handsomely to your house of faith, your former school, and to a charity you respect.
9. Write a brief history of your life, going into detail even over the most difficult issues you have ever faced.
10. Simplify your life by ridding yourself of unnecessary possessions.
11. Resist doing things for people they are fully capable of doing for themselves.
12. Resist expecting others to do for you the things you are fully capable of doing for yourself.
To reduce your anxiety….. be sure you….
I left my husband for another man…
“I have left my husband for another man and I worked so very hard to start a new life with him. It is not easy at all. I ended up more alone than before and was fueled with anxiety and had to take medication. I lost interest in everything just about because I loved this man so much. He is now drifting away from me and I am alone. My marriage is over and I am about to lose my children because of what I have done. I loved this ‘other’ man much more then he loved me and now I feel the effects. It’s the worst feeling in the world to love some one so much when you cannot fully have them.” (Minimal edits)
Your heart has deceived you and resulted in enormous consequences for you and your family. I repeat: extramarital affairs are seductive – seducing participants from the real issues within the marriage and resulting in a new relationship destined to be flawed. The impulse for an affair (need this be said?) is a strong signal that the marriage, not the third party, requires attention.
Violation of sacred trust….
I frequently get letters from women who cannot seem to forgive a husband or partner’s unfaithfulness. “Even though it was 10 years ago and I have said I forgive him, it still haunts me,” writes one person. “He expects me to just get over it as if it is no real issue at all,” writes another. “He rolls his eyes at me, he sighs, as if it is my issue – and HE was the one who cheated!”
Infidelity violates sacred trust, and, while most relationships are resilient, and can survive much stress and trauma, infidelity often serves the deathblow to all vibrancy in the marriage (even if a couple stays married for years after the ending of an affair) for it undercuts the very humanity of the partner who has offered her mind, her soul, her spirit and her body in loving and appropriate abandon.
You were heavy-handed…..
“You write, to a woman asking for help with her son that if she gets her attitude right she might see a shift in her son’s attitude. Just because she has a ‘right attitude’ it doesn’t mean her son will. It seems to me you were a little heavy handed with someone asking for your advice. I am a single mother and two of my three children are boys. My boys are very respectful of women because they have been taught by me to be that way from a very early age. My feelings for their father have nothing to do with it. At the age of 11 it will be difficult to change the attitude of a son but can still be done. Let him know that his attitude and behavior toward women is uncalled for and will not be tolerated. It can be difficult for a woman to raise a son alone especially when the father is not much help but it can be done.” (Edited for clarity)
As I said, attitudes are contagious. It seems your no-nonsense approach has paid off for you and for your children. Congratulations on your success. I am sure your children have thrived, at least partly, as a result of your forthrightness.
My son is ungrateful……
My son (11) is quite ungrateful for all I do for him. I don’t want him to go around being unkind to women and he’s not getting any good lessons from his father who is a miserable woman-hater who I am glad I divorced. What can I do to make him appreciate all I do and honor and respect me. I am a single mother. Please help.
Taking care of some of your anger might be a good place to start. The tone of your letter hardly suggests you are roaming around life with your arms and voice lifted in praise and thankfulness.
May I remind you the father of your son is the man you once loved enough to marry?
Attitudes are quite contagious. Get yours right and you might see a little shift in the manner in which your son sees life.
At the beginning of the week…
Good questions to ask yourself…
1. Am I a truthful person?
2. How will my children describe their childhoods?
3. Is this (my career) what I want to do with my life?
4. Am I regularly using all of my God-given talents?
5. Do other people trust me?
6. Who do I still need to forgive?
7. Am I predominantly a giver, or a taker, or do I have a healthy balance of each?
8. Whom do I need to affirm for his or her good work (attitude, behavior, results)?
9. What could I do today to give my spouse great joy?
10. Am I a healthy member of my immediate community (family, church, synagogue, mosque, team)?
He can’t handle his drink…
“I have been with a man I adore for two years. I love him completely and I would do anything for him. Throughout the relationship there have been problems. It was slow to get started because of a large age gap. I’m 21. He’s 40. He struggled with the idea of holding me back and dumped me countless times in the beginning every time I was settling down and gaining some sense of security and stability. He cannot handle his drink and starts to change beyond the man I know and love. I have been humiliated many times in public places, shouted at, screamed at sworn at, ignored, and left on the street late at night. All the while I have been the most understanding person, I believed I could see the root of his issues as he has had a lot of problems in the past and I thought I could help him- forgive him.” (Excerpt from long letter)
Until you love yourself more than you “adore” him you will a victim. Sadly, you will look to “fixing” him and your desperation to “save” this “relationship” will ruin you before you are able to hear voices of love and reason (family, friends) all around you.
My family is troubled…
My family is troubled. We are facing financial issues, relationship problems, and change (one sister is getting married, one sister is getting divorced). I am 23 and feel as if my parents are looking to me to be the wise one. In the meantime I am trying to build my own life and get an education. I work two jobs and I really don’t feel like I have the time or the energy to be my family’s helper as well. I feel a lot of guilt over this. Please help. (Condensed)
There are no easy answers, no formula to tell you what you should or should not do, but there are broad guidelines: assume no debt you did not incur, go to the source of an issue rather than recruit others through gossip, define clearly what you will and will not do given any requests for help.
You will contribute more to your family’s problems (than you will contribute to the solutions) if you try to be more than a son to your parents and brother to your sisters. It takes great wisdom to avoid taking on what are not legitimately your responsibilities, and perhaps even greater wisdom to take responsibility for what are legitimately your responsibilities.
Married daughter lives with mother and husband visits on the weekend…
“I have a daughter who is married but lives with me. Her husband comes on weekends and takes her out. He does nothing else for her. In four years of marriage she lived with him for only about 3 months. He said he made a mistake. I have tried to stop her going with him but my sisters say she should be allowed to go out with him otherwise she get depressed. She is quiet reserved and has no friends. She waits for Saturdays. She gets happy and bubbly. She loves to be at home and loves to cook. She is not ambitious. I tried telling her in the past that she should divorce him and get on with her life and improve herself. I can’t tell her to leave home because she is not working and is on disability. What can I say or do to give her a wake up call?” (Minimal edits)
Your daughter and her husband have found the perfect accomplice in you. What incentive is there for change to occur? Your mothering days are long-gone and yet you (understandably — I think!) provide a safe place for your daughter. Earlier accommodations on your part have created the way your family functions. Nothing will change until you do.
Sex or intimacy… tough to do both….
“I am seeing a man who, after a very physically intimate time, told me he wants a break. I just wish I knew how two people could be so intimate, so close, and share everything and then just cut himself or herself off totally from that person as if they were never a part of each other’s lives.” (Letter edited)
Sounds like you are dating a person with a propensity toward sexual addictions. Such people will do almost anything for a sexual “fix,” and then, once “satisfied” will move on. Your encounters are not about love or intimacy but lust and conquest. Don’t confuse sex with intimacy. Sex (what you do with your body) is the easy part. Intimacy (what you do with your head, your will, and your heart) is one of the toughest relational challenges humans face – and almost impossible to achieve outside the safety of marriage.
difficultrelationships.com 