“My husband of 28 years retired in 2003. After a trip to help my parents I got back to a vacant eyed alien who wouldn’t let me sleep in my own bed. ‘I love you but I am not in love with you,’ he said. We attended ‘his’ mediation sessions because he didn’t like ‘my’ counselors. He set me up masterfully. Making me think he was working on the relationship while seeing lawyers. Asking me on dates while arranging with his ‘friend’ to move in. Telling me he would always take care of me when he could care less about my health. I gave up my career to follow him around the world. We had 15 moves in 25 years. My son attended 8 different schools. I am used up. I have back problems and bad knees because of course he was never around when it was time to move. I’m 55, too old to sing and dance and he throws me away. He’s a big-shot pundit on TV now but he is just like every other unimaginative man when it comes to dumping his wife. ‘I love you, I’m just not in love with you anymore.’” (Edited to 200 words)
When is it more than just friends?
We are “just friends” is often the defense used by men and woman who are on the verge of an affair, or at least a liaison that will be hurtful to a spouse. We “just work together,” says the woman to her husband about a co-worker who gets all of her attention even on weekends. “She’s just work-friend,” says the man to his wife regarding the woman who sends him text messages every day.
You are not “just friends” if:
1. You spend more time and energy with this person than you do with other friends.
2. You share conversations at a more intimate level with this person than you do with your spouse.
3. You spend more time and energy thinking of this person and his or her problems than you do the issues you face with your own family,
4. You exclude other friends, or cannot invite your spouse to join you to also be “just friends” with this person.
5. Any part of being “just friends” requires secrecy or deception (like hiding sms messages, having secret cell phones or cell phone numbers, hiding letters, the need to delete emails, or needing to leave the room to talk).
Count your blessings if:
1. Your family and friends sit around the dinner table and tell stories you’ve been telling each other for decades.
2. You still talk with your spouse after having raised at least one child together.
3. You are friends with your parents despite their peculiar ways.
4. Your teenage son talks with you, and he wants you to meet his girlfriend.
5. Your teenage daughter brags about you to her friends.
6. You have had the joy of knowing your grandparents and your grandchildren.
7. You are able to have civil conversations with a former spouse.
8. You have learned that deciding to love someone who has hurt you offers you a greater challenge than harboring resentment.
9. You have benefited from the adage “Least said soonest mended.”
10. You know how to speak up for yourself.
A dad writes… about custody and visitation….
A dad writes…
“I am fortunate enough to have shared care of my two children (5 and 7). They are with me half of each week and half of all holidays. As the children are with both parents a good deal of the time, they feel at home in both houses and have friends at both locations. My ex-wife and I live 5 minutes drive from each other. We do not get along.
“I don’t like the arrangements of 'visits' to the dad every second weekend. In every case I have seen the child ends up seeing the fortnightly visit as a boring inconvenience. The visits are nothing more than a visit. The “visit” parent does not get to share and bond with the child as does the “main” caregiver. All the child’s friends are at the other parent’s place. These arrangements also become a trial for the parent who has the child every second weekend and do not promote a healthy loving relationship with both parents and the child often views the other parent as an inconvenience.
“I live 12,000 miles from the rest of my family so my children can have a dad. I am making the most of what I have to work with in regards to location and work opportunities.” (Edited for space)
Neil / Australia
How to tell all is not well with a close friend…
When a friendship is not going well, and a good discussion and reconciliation is necessary, passive-aggressive behavior can seep into a relationship. It is not always easy to identify. Here are some indicators. Find the behavior in yourself before you go looking for it in others…
1. You are spending less time with someone who is important to you without admitting that there is something wrong, or while openly suggesting that everything is all right.
2. You are using double-edged comments to or about this person. On the surface you appear to be giving a compliment while you are really delivering a jab or an insult.
3. You speak ill of this friend to a third party, or you speak only in glowing terms about him or her, in order to give others the impression that nothing has changed.
4. You find yourself over-committing to work or social events to make less time available to see this friend.
5. You are deliberately doing what you know this friend does not like (smoking in his or her company, arriving late, becoming uncharacteristically elusive).
6. You just happen to leave him or her off your invitation list.
7. Your head is full of what you think he or she has done, or not done, to you, and resentment and bitterness creeps into your thinking.
Jealousy does not go away with age or commitment…
“I want to tell people that I married a very jealous person. Jealousy does not get better with age. I thought when I dated him he would get better once we were married because then he’ll know I’m truly committed. It didn’t. I thought it would get better when I had his children because surely he would then understand my commitment to him and the children. It didn’t. I thought if we could see a therapist it would get better. It didn’t. I divorced him 12 years into the marriage. Until a jealous person sees the problem and wants to change, your life will not get better with him in it.”
Thanks for your powerful testimony. Jealousy is NEVER an indication of love. Because feelings of love can be so overwhelming, a victim of another’s jealousy can feel inordinately empowered to live with or to accommodate jealousy within a relationship.
Jealousy is an individual matter, and, until he or she who has the problem is willing to face it (and it is usually a matter of control), neither person in the relationship will be free to give or receive all the potential a loving relationship can offer.
Sleeping dogs? Do I talk to my son about his father?
“My son’s father and I broke up before I found out that I was pregnant. There were minimal monetary contributions for 3 months after my son, now 13, was born. He wanted me to abort but I refused. My son has never asked me about his father and so I have never told him anything. I wonder if I should bring up the subject or let sleeping dogs lie. I’m Email me, I am listening.
Sleeping dogs usually wake up hungry! What you avoid will be more powerful than what you face. Talk to your son. Tell him everything you have told me – but for the suggestion of abortion. He doesn’t need to know this.
How men respond to pregnancy….reader responds to reader….. and I am grateful…
Lizz,
There are a whole range of responses that men have to women being pregnant and giving birth. Difficult though it is for me to understand, I’m aware that a significant number of men find pregnant women to be unusually attractive, even to the point of becoming fantasy objects. Likewise, some men see mothers as more attractive than non-mothers, possibly because of personality traits that seem to come to the forefront in a woman after she has a child.
At the other end of the spectrum are men like your husband, who feel that pregnancy and motherhood somehow diminish a woman’s femininity and sexuality. It’s easy to suggest that his view is wrong or short-sighted, but that doesn’t help anyone in this situation. To me, this sounds like a great time to engage a professional marriage counselor.
While it’s possible that this might cause your husband to see you in a different light, it may also bring to the forefront emotional issues that your husband is dealing with, but unable to talk freely with you about. In my case, seeing the birth of my oldest son caused me to feel a huge sense of responsibility that i was completely unprepared for. This may not be the case with your husband, but such things are always a possibility.
Regardless, if you can sit down with a third party who has professional credentials, he or she may be able to help both of you discover things that have become factors in your change in relationship. If cost is an issue (and when I was a new father, it most definitely was), look into counseling options subsidized (in part or in whole) through a local church or synagogue.
One last thing: Your husband’s response to you may feel like something that defines you as a woman, but it doesn’t. You remain a person of worth and value, regardless of anyone else’s actions. Your husband’s response being strong does not make you “more of a woman,” and his lack of response does not make you less of one. The role of mother need not diminish the role of wife, any more than becoming a father keeps me from being a husband. Yes, your body changes with childbirth, but I would suggest that your husband has changed (and will continue to change) just as much between his ears.
Becoming parents changes us. We can fight this, and refuse to accept it, or we can be the master of our path and define the role instead of allowing it to define us. My best wishes for you, your husband, and your children. – Tim
Living a life with fewer regrets….
1. Speak openly of your love to your spouse, your children, and extended family.
2. Be quick to apologize when you are wrong or inappropriate.
3. Forgive.
4. Affirm the talents and goodness apparent to you in all whom you meet.
5. Live under the influence of wild generosity.
6. Write letters to those who have helped you succeed.
7. Anonymously buy, and have delivered, groceries for a needy family.
8. Resist the innate human urge to gossip.
9. Keep your anxiety in check (tamed, restrained) when faced with tough decisions.
10. Speak well of your spouse and family at every opportunity.
Conflict with friends…
1. Unless all parties are meeting with the goal of reconciliation do not agree to meet. Meeting to hurt and damage each other will serve no helpful ends.
2. Set a date and a time and parameters for your discussion. Agree on limits of time and topic and do not exceed them.
3. Keep to the essential issues without bringing up old or irrelevant material.
4. Listen more than you speak.
5. Don’t draw unrelated people – especially mutual friends – into the conflict.
6. Make notes of what you’d most like to say before you go to the meeting.
7. Leave room for humor.
8. Avoid sarcasm and cruelty.
9. Recall what brought you together as friends in the first place.
10. Be willing to forgive before it is asked of you.
