November 7, 2007
by Rod Smith
“I am in an extra-marital affair and want to end it. I never ceased to loving or being intimate with my husband although my relations with another man have shattered some parts of our marital intimacy at times. I told my husband I also love another man and am sexually attracted to the other man. My husband does not find it wrong.. I think I crossed the border because there appeared dark corners and secrets. Could you share your thoughts about ending the affair?” (Minimally edited the portion presented. But a small portion of a much longer letter.)
I am not going to pretend to know what you should do or suggest you cut all ties and go “cold turkey” from your affair. Men aside, you have to decide what you want. Some emotional space from both men (sexual space, too) might be necessary for you to clear the atmosphere and allow you to see (think, feel, assess, process, clarify) more clearly than you are able to do right now.
While I might be legitimately accused of going against my own advice offered in previous columns, your dilemma portrays the complexity and power of human sexuality.
Sexual behavior is ALWAYS complex and this (its complexities) ought never be downplayed.
Your husband, I’d suggest, finds this (your love and attraction and sexual activities for and with another man) not wrong for deeper reasons than meet the eye.
Face your own dark night of the soul. Decide what kind of woman you want to be. This is what is in the balance.
Posted in Affairs, Anger, Attraction, Betrayal, Boundaries, Triggers, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice |
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November 3, 2007
by Rod Smith
I am listening....
1. Neither client nor therapist exaggerates therapist’s abilities or the client’s condition.
2. Therapist sees role as helping client steer toward a more productive, healthy future.
3. Client sees the “big picture” over the “long haul” rather than immediate relief in the “here and now.” (Patience, patience, patience).
4. Client and therapist maintain a sense of humor (a sure indication of health) while facing life’s inevitable challenges. Not everything can or will be better no matter how much therapy you throw at it!
5. Client and therapist call forth the client’s strengths and the innate human desire for adventure, rather than engage in the seemingly endless pursuit to understand a client’s pathological history, weaknesses, parents’ weaknesses, and debilitating reasonable, and unreasonable fears.
6. Therapist and client understand the limited benefits of empathy in exchange for the overwhelming benefits of challenge and adventure.
7. Client realizes that psychological insight without action (acting upon the insight) is a waste of money, time and useful therapeutic process. Sometimes a person has to actually DO something rather than be filled with insight about what needs to be done.
8. Client is willing to increase the ability to tolerate necessary pain (both within self and within others) and resist the understandable pressure to alleviate the very pain essential for growth to occur.
9. Therapist challenges the client repeatedly toward self-definition (to grow up!) in the face of life’s natural obstacles.
Conditions under which counseling or therapy will be of little or no value…
Time and again I hear “If I could just get him/her to see a counselor” as if a counselor can work magic to heal and solve all personal and relationship problems. Few trained counselors would see themselves as possessing such unrealistic powers. Here are some conditions (there are others) under which even counseling will be of little or no value:
1. When a person is forced, or cornered, or manipulated into seeing a counselor.
2. When a person has no motivation for change.
3. When a person agrees to see a counselor because he/she believes counseling will “fix” someone else in the family.
4. When the person’s mind is already made up over and issue (a pending divorce, continued involvement in an affair) and goes to counseling so he/she can say he/she tried it and it was no help.
5. When a person is resistant to getting help (doesn’t see the need for help) and offers counselors little or no respect in the first place.
6. When the person is combative from the outset and sees the therapeutic hour as time to show how clever (or funny, or morose, or argumentative, or stubborn, or intellectual) he/she can be.
7. When the person has already made up his/her mind that there’s no hope (”we’ve tried it all before”) or that counseling is a waste of time and money.
Posted in Anger, Attraction, Blended families, Boundaries, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Domination, Education, Family, Forgiveness, Friendship, High maintenance relationships, Love, Manipulation, Marriage, Re-marriage, Recovery, Responsive people, Sexual compatibility, Step parenting, Teenagers, Therapeutic Process, Victims, Voice, Young Love |
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October 31, 2007
by Rod Smith
“I met a guy and fell in love. I moved in with him and got pregnant and started planning the wedding but then he was physically abusive so I moved home. He moved back once the baby was born when he realized what he was missing. For 8 years, he continued to waiver back and forth between ‘Nice’ Mark and ‘Mean’ Mark. I finally kicked him out but we were still having sex. I really wanted him to get counseling and come home because I do love him. But he met someone else and is now seriously dating her. He sends texts to her with ‘XOXO,’ which makes me sick. He says he still loves me and is more attracted to me than her. What must I do?”
Attraction is strongest between people of similar emotional health (and un-health). You are at least as confused as he is. Until you take responsibility for your own life, and confront the fact that this man is not good for you, your treadmill of pain and disappointment will continue.
I continue, even as a therapist myself, to be awed by the overwhelming pervasive belief people place in the power of counseling. This man doesn’t need counseling. He needs women who refuse to play his cruel, hurtful games.
Posted in Affairs, Anger, Attraction, Betrayal, Boundaries, Communication, Triggers, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice |
2 Comments »
October 24, 2007
by Rod Smith
“My wife is having an ‘emotional affair’ with a best friend who spends more time with her than I do. He hears more about her life than I do, and is closer to her than I am. I watch this happening and over time it gets more and more intense and I am supposed to be calm because it is a close friendship. We have children, a house, and careers: a lot to give up for this ‘friendship’ that carries none of the responsibilities of the marriage. Am I supposed to stand by patiently or blow it all out of the water? Please help.” (Condensed, with permission, from a conversation)
AIr your views, please...
While it might be a tall order, I’d suggest you get to know him, offer also to be a friend to this apparently lonely man. Push the friendship to the limit. It will expose motives, and either re-unite you with your wife, or have you picking up after a divorce. To push, to question, and to join them (especially unexpectedly) when they are together (since she is your wife and they are “just friends” you do not need an invitation to or permission to join them), is your only way to escape the anguished limbo you are currently feeling – and it will offer you the potential to regain emotional intimacy with your wife.
Posted in Affairs, Anger, Attraction, Betrayal, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Family, Triggers, Trust, Victims |
12 Comments »
October 17, 2007
by Rod Smith
“I have been married for 25 years. When I met him he was drinking and I never thought much of it as we were socializing. On our wedding day he was drunk. When our first child was born he was in the car drinking whilst I was in labour and I needed him. It has not stopped there lately he does not stop drinking until he consumes almost a bottle of spirits. He admits he is an alcoholic but he is not interested in help or doing anything about it. He verbally abuses me when he is in this state, yet when he is sober at home, which is seldom, he tries to be so sweet. I find it difficult to submit sexually and show love to this man as he is destroying what is left of our relationship. He suffers from erectile dysfunction and blames me for his problems and accuses me of being cold and not interested in sex.”
Rod Replies: Look at your behavior! Get your focus off his actions and onto your own actions. Why would you put up with such nonsense for even a week, let alone 25 years? Ice cold is appropriate! Move on. You have but one life to live – why would you spend it engaging in such nonsense?
Posted in Anger, Betrayal |
4 Comments »
October 16, 2007
by Rod Smith
Dear Stuck:
Note I have broken my own rules about keeping every entry to fewer than 250 words! But Stuck – I wanted you to hear from me, even if you might not like what I have to say.
Your letter appears below with my comments in BOLD and italics. I am sorry it took me so long to get to your letter:
“My best friend and I have known each other for 8 yrs. I have been in love with him for 5 years. He knows how I feel, but when I realized how much I cared, he was in a relationship. They even had a child together. They ended the relationship about 18 months ago and she is dating someone new yet continually professes her love for him still. He doesn’t want to have anything to do with her in that way.
I understand “in that way” but what is he doing about parenting and supporting the child they share? If he is not supporting his child – you have not said where the child is – I would move on no matter how much love you feel.
“He also began working with me and even relocated to living with me to get out of a bad family living situation.
I trust he is paying his way while living in your home?
“His ex has actually moved with his family since she lost her job. So he is living hours away with me while she is down there living with his sisters. He says he loves me but he is not ready for a relationship.
I’d suggest this is true. He is not ready for a relationship when he has a child from whom he is separated. I must assume he is busy being a dad (driving back and forth to see his child) while also trying to earn a living.
“We are not intimate (good – this would not be good for your long-term health and friendship) but we are together basically 24/7.
“Occasionally he will try to get me to go out on dates (how valiant of him) since he says he is not ready yet and doesn’t know when he will be. He doesn’t want me to wait for him. I feel really stuck.
The feeling is appropriate – you are stuck and it is not about him or your love for him but about you who seems to refuse to move on from a man who has declared he doesn’t want an intimate relationship with you.
“I have tried to tell him that while I have feelings for him I cannot remain friends with him if we never go anywhere simply because as long as he is in my life I feel as though I will never fall in love with someone else.
You got it. You don’t need me to tell you these things. You already know the answers. So have him move out. Today.
“His ex really broke his heart. He honestly felt that it was forever and he gave himself completely to her. However she cheated and lied and destroyed him. Now I am the only woman he trusts and talks to. He hasn’t even been with anyone since her. My dilemma is this. Do I try to wait to see what develops? Do I walk away? What do I do?? I am so confused. And every time people see us together they always think we are married. It doesn’t help that he is very affectionate with me, arms around me, flirting with me, wrestling with me and so forth. But that’s how its been for 7 yrs. what do i do? Please help.
Stuck”
Wow – this guy’s got you eating out of the palms of his hands and he has you believing he is so hurt and such a victim to his ex! Move on….. He doesn’t have what you are looking for. Send him on a journey to fend for his child.
From Stuck – sometime later…..
“So I haven’t seen any reply from you regarding my situation. Did I do something wrong? Am I not doing this correctly? I see others leave comments and you respond. I leave one and get nothing. Am I supposed to leave money somewhere or something to get you to respond? Or is my situation not valid enough for your response… confused… and still…STUCK.”
I am pleased to respond to you but I do not OWE you a reply. Yes your issue is VALID but you already know what you need to do and I am not sure you will hear anything from me anyway! You will continue to be STUCK until you change directions and meet some new people and move in the circles of people who make wiser choices than the man with whom you are currently involved.
Posted in Affairs, Anger, Attraction, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice |
4 Comments »
October 14, 2007
by Rod Smith
“I have been married 15 years (second marriage) and already had five children. I met my husband after I had an injury from a car accident, which left me disabled. I’m paralyzed from neck down. I got a settlement from the accident. He has no time for me and gives no financial help. So I am broke. He earns lots of money while I keep getting into debt. If he is upset he withholds money. I feel hatred from him. He works all the time. We are an inconvenience. He can’t hurt me more. He won’t leave and our house is the house I had before I met him. I am afraid of him. He has hit kids and said, ‘You should be the one I am hitting.’ I feel like nothing I do will please him. I do not know what to do.” (Edited)
Nothing will change until you emerge from being a victim and DO something. Where is the biological father? What is he doing? If your husband is working all the time why are you not working the phone to recruit the help you need to get out of this horrible trap? Recruit your community and family. All of you, including your husband, sound so miserable and the sooner you do something radical about it, the better it will be for you all.
Posted in Anger, Attraction, Betrayal, Blended families |
2 Comments »
October 10, 2007
by Rod Smith
Take up your life....
Are you emotionally out of shape? Psychologically exhausted? Tramped on? Feel trapped? Just as a person can be physically run down, so also can one become emotionally depleted. Here are simple, not easy, steps to getting your internal life into shape. Each will do your internal life as much good as frequent exercise does for a person who is physically out of shape:
1. Speak up where you might previously have remained silent.
2. Realize that not everything you think and feel has to be said or reported.
3. Focus on your own behavior and not the behavior of others. (This might be the most difficult of the 11 suggestions).
4. Rid your life of all blame.
5. Realize you are where you are as a result of your own choices.
6. Set small, secret goals involving no one but you.
7. Refuse to compromise when it comes to telling the truth no matter how much love may be involved.
8. Forgive where you might have previously have been resentful.
9. Do not function in roles not legally yours (don’t play wife if your are not, or dad if you are not).
10. Grasp the fact that emotional health is an individual journey and no one can be held responsible for your journey toward greater emotional health but you.
11. Clarify, for yourself, where you end and others begin. (This IS me, my issue, my responsibility: this is NOT me, my issue, my responsibility).
Posted in Anger, Betrayal, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Domination, Family, Forgiveness, Friendship, High maintenance relationships, Listening, Living together, Long distance relationships, Marriage, Meditation, Parenting/Children, Past relationships, Pornography, Re-marriage, Reactivity, Recovery, Sexual abuse, Sexual compatibility, Victims, Violence, Voice |
12 Comments »
October 8, 2007
by Rod Smith
Three questions to ask to establish the presence of an addiction:
1. Are there physical symptoms related to the behavior or to the absence of the behavior (cravings, ideation, longing, preoccupation)?
2. Is there loss, or threatened loss, of close relationships (breakups of marriage or friendships) as a direct result of the behavior?
3. Has there been a loss of face or position in a community (job loss, police intervention, credit issues, repossession of a car) as a result of the behavior?
While the three as above are a guide, there are other symptoms?
1. Lying (covering) about the behavior through excuses or downright lies.
2. Expecting others to lie and cover the behavior (for instance a spouse and children are drawn into the behavior and the behavior becomes a family secret – even if “don’t tell” is not used).
3. Expecting others to show their love by expressing understanding and tolerance for the behavior.
It is important to see the subtle pull the (growing) addiction has on ALL of the members of the family or community. People assume roles according to the call of the addiction (gambling, alcohol, sex, drugs, porn) and non-addicts start (often unaware of their behavior) to align themselves with the addict in ways that perpetrate the behavior. For instance, a wife who rejects the abuse of alcohol, and who is generally a truthful person, will call the husband in sick and say he has a fever when in fact he is too drunk to work.
Addictions are often family issues revealed in the person who is “acting out.”
Posted in Anger, Betrayal, Reactivity, Recovery, Victims, Violence, Voice |
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October 1, 2007
by Rod Smith
“My husband’s venting has gotten out of control and I’m considering a divorce. Talking about it yet it ends up in a fight. When I first met him, there were times I had to put down the phone and take a walk. It drained me. I married him, only to find out this venting was a regular thing and I became a target. It’s not what he says but the delivery, the energy behind the words. It’s gotten so bad that I can’t sleep, or concentrate, and I have a hard time being around him. Do I divorce or separate from him?” (Edited)
Get your attention off you husband’s behavior and onto your own. Like many people, you observe the finer details of a partner’s behavior while ignoring your complicity that helped fuel the very behavior you now reject. Why would you marry a man when his pre-marriage behavior was already draining you? Things would be different if you’d made a radical stand the very first time he was inappropriate.
Divorce? Separation? I have no idea. I do know nothing will change – actually they will deteriorate – until you do something radical. You are a target but you have legs! Use them. When he sees you will no longer tolerate his hurtful outrage he might do what it takes to grow up.
Posted in Anger, Betrayal, Differentiation, Sex matters, Trust, Violence, Voice |
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