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 |
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October 22, 2007
by Rod Smith
“My daughter (26) constantly asks for money. She gets dead-end jobs and we have to pay her accounts (bills). We go without while she has everything. She has to have a car (to get to her job) and a cell phone (in case she gets the offer of a better job) and new clothes (to dress for an interview) and in the meantime her dad and I are forking out every month! Please help.” (Letter consolidated)
While you “fork out” your daughter has no motivation to change! Your niceness assists your mutual destruction. Stop. Today! Stop paying a cent toward anything for her. Turn off the source. I know I’ll be flooded with Emails suggesting I am hard, unkind, and don’t understand. I’ll be told it is clear that I am not a mother! Others will tell me things are different in South Africa and because I live in the USA I am out of touch with what it is like to be young in South Africa. Gosh, your daughter is 26! How much longer will you allow her to live like a dependent child. She is an adult.
Spoilt young adults (believe me America is full of them) are spoilt young adults no matter where they live. While you persist in bailing your daughter out, she will persist in giving you a hole into which you can throw your money. Stop. This is YOUR problem, not hers.
Posted in Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Parenting/Children, Reactivity |
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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 17, 2007
by Rod Smith
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Mind your own business.
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Take care of every aspect of your own job before you give time to noticing what someone else is, or is not, doing.
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Never initiate or perpetuate gossip of any kind.
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Tell the truth.
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Apologize when necessary and try to learn from your mistakes.
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Get “you need” and “you must” and “you should” out of your vocabulary when you are talking to adults.
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Stand up to your boss if he or she is asking you to do something unethical or immoral.
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Thank and affirm people who are doing a good job in a manner that gets the person the greatest amount of positive exposure.
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Don’t use your work time, the phone, the copier, or the Internet for personal matters.
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Realize you are at work to work. You are not there to find a partner, to make friends, or to ease your loneliness. You are there to feed and support your family and to further the goals of the organization that employs you.
Posted in Affairs, Domination, Education |
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October 16, 2007
by Rod Smith
“I married 26 years ago out of a sense of guilt and it has never left. We have had a very difficult marriage and yet we both have a high level of commitment. I want a healthier relationship but I don’t know how to get it. I know a healthier relationship starts with a healthier me, but as I try to get healthier, I feel a wider distance coming between us. I have never felt emotionally bonded to my husband, and for years it was heart breaking. I have talked with him hoping things would get better. He justifies his distance, which makes it harder for me. He compares himself to a cripple in a wheel chair. He knows that I would not insist on a cripple walking. He believes himself to be emotionally crippled and I should not expect something that he is not capable of giving. I am at the place where I feel I want to move on, but my sense of loyalty will not let me. I thought I had moved through the bitter stage but now I am not so sure.”
Repeatedly challenge his dramatic metaphor. It’s possible to remain married while also refusing to share his wheelchair. I’d suggest you do all you can to get healthy and well despite his protestations (the distance you feel, and so forth).
Let’s talk further. Until you leave him (I do not mean divorce him) in the “safety” and the “comfort” of his emotional wheelchair you are also in it! Grow on your own. Your personal development is not contingent on his cooperation.
Posted in Anxiety, Attraction, Betrayal, Boundaries, Divorce, Domination, Victims |
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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 9, 2007
by Rod Smith
Why is gambling such an addiction (drugs I understand!)?
Where a “big win” is presented as real possibility (thus the publicity afforded “big wins”) the “common” gambler is encouraged to believe the day will come when he or she will win the jackpot.
Gambling is self-defeating for the obvious reason: the stakes are high, and so is the almost inevitable accompanying debt. Where else can one hope to get rid of loads of debt in an instant, but by means of gambling?
It is this very belief that leads to further involvement in the very behavior that one is trying to break.
Do not forget co-addictions. Addictions usually come in pairs. Even threes. The sex addict will usually also have troubles with alcohol, or the gambler with illegal sibstances. Few addicts have ONE addictive behavior, but usually face a few undesired and out-of-control behaviors. And each can destabilize the addict’s life and family.
Is there a cure? Few addicts are “cured” if cured means the addict will no longer face some longings for the behavior or its effects. “Cure” and “management” ought to be exchanged here. When an addict learns to manage the behavior, then he or she might say he or she is “being cured.”
Posted in Boundaries, Difficult Relationships, Grace, Living together, Victims, Violence |
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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 4, 2007
by Rod Smith
“I am married and have three teenage sons. We are compatible, except in one area that threatens everything. I don’t drink at all and don’t like social situations where there is too much drinking or being around drunk people. He enjoys a ‘party’ or having a few beers a couple of times a week. Very often a ‘few beers’ ends up being a ‘few beers’ too many. When he has had too much to drink he often becomes argumentative and critical of me, and sometimes verbally abusive. I have tried to reason with him but nothing much changes. People say I should just accept it because there is so much else going for the marriage. He is a good provider and father and he is caring except for those occasions when drink is involved. But I am thinking perhaps I should leave the marriage, as the situation is never going to be amicably resolved. I am also concerned how the breakup of the marriage would affect my sons, but increasingly I feel I am in a trap that I don’t know how to get out of.” (Edited)
Your staying (in the marriage) or going (getting divorced) will impact your teenagers. Finding your voice, whether you stay or go, will have the greatest, lasting impact upon your sons. A voice-less mother, someone who resists challenging what causes herself and her family discomfort, might be more damaging than a father who has too many beers.
Posted in Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Love, Teenagers, Victims, Violence, Voice |
5 Comments »
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