Save Your Marriage Infidelity Doesn’t Have To Mean The End

July 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Of all the things that can tear apart a marriage, infidelity is one of the biggest reasons. Extramarital affairs are a betrayal of all the things that marriage is supposed to be about. A marriage is supposed to be a union of two lives, two people bonded together for a lifetime, and breaking that bond is one of the most difficult things to over come.

In a marriage, infidelity isn’t just what happens when somebody begins a physical relationship outside of the marriage. Infidelity can also be emotional, when one of the partners in a marriage begins to share their life with someone outside the marriage.

This is known as emotional infidelity, and it has become an even more serious problem in the last few decades. One of the reasons for this is because workplaces, one of our prime social engagements in modern times, have become increasingly more mixed.

In addition to that it is even easier to communicate with people on the sly. Email and instant messaging and texting have all made it easier to bond with people that you shouldn’t be bonding with. While this isn’t the cause of emotional infidelity, it is a factor.

At the same time, physical infidelity has also become easier. We spend more time apart than we once did, and it is not at all uncommon to spend the majority of time at work, which gives us a very handy excuse when we make the decision to cheat in our marriage. Infidelity is a choice, make no mistake about that.

But the thing to remember is that all of these things are excuses and opportunities, not reasons. Changing the excuses won’t change the marriage, won’t solve anything. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t overcome cheating in marriage. Infidelity is a big problem, but it is not an insurmountable one.

The very first thing you need to do is to figure out what went wrong in your marriage. Infidelity isn’t something that happens in a vacuum; there is always a reason when things like that happen. Something has broken in your relationship and it needs to be fixed in order to get past the cheating.

You need to make sure that you don’t blame the other person. Yes, they cheated on you. No, it wasn’t your fault. But you need to move past it, because playing the blame game will only delay the kind of emotional healing that needs to take place. You need to, as best you can, put it all behind you.

Once you’ve found out why and began work on it, you need to reestablish the trust in the marriage. Infidelity destroys trust, and it’s going to be difficult to repair what was been broken. You need to work on rebuilding the trust. Don’t expect it to happen right away, and don’t expect it to be easy.

But if you can follow these steps, you can save your marriage. Infidelity is terrible, but every relationship can be repaired. You just need to be willing to find the advice and the help you need to repair your relationship.

Posted by Brahem | Filed Under Marriage Infidelity 

Signs Of Infidelity: My Marriage Made Me Do It

March 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Infidelity has different faces…and different signs and patterns.

Yes, infidelity is complex. You probably know that or perhaps feel the overwhelm and confusion.

Most I work with find tremendous relief, a sense of control, confidence and power once they pinpoint the situational signs of infidelity.

Understanding IS the beginning of healing.

Yes, there are general signs of infidelity that indicate that your husband or wife may be cheating. After you finish reading this page you will find a link for those general signs of infidelity.

But, to accelerate breaking free you need to dig into and nail down the signs and patterns of infidelity.

Did you know there are 7 different kinds of affairs? Well, there may be more, but after a couple decades of clinical work and research, I’ve identified 7.

And, if you look carefully, you will find that each form of infidelity carries different signs and markers. Know those specific signs of infidelity and you can save yourself much grief.

Let’s begin here.

One kind of affair I write about in my e-book is called, “My Marriage Made Me Do It.”

Here are some signs and patterns you can expect in this kind of affair:

1. Expect that your spouse will have a very powerful attachment to the other person. The other person will consistently be on her mind. Your spouse will shift energy away from you, the children, the household and her career to her affair relationship. She will be focused, but not on you. Your spouse will attempt to push you away by avoiding you, ignoring you, closing off communication or walking away.

2. The affair will most likely be a long-term affair. It will be very difficult for your spouse to walk away from the other person. He may try on a number of occasions but will continue to gravitate back to the other person. He will hold on tenaciously. This is probably the first or only affair for your spouse. Your spouse is not interested in playing or fooling around but powerfully attaching to the other person. The other person is the savior!

3. Don’t believe that the affair was planned before hand because of a bad marriage. These affairs usually just happen. They usually happen with someone in close proximity: co-worker, neighbor, friend (frequently of friends with whom you socialize), etc. The other person is usually the aggressor, your spouse lacking the confidence to seek out the affair. The rationale that it happened because of a lousy marriage comes after the affair is in bloom.

4. The more you try to persuade, convince or pursue, the more strongly he will attach to the other person. He will perceive your efforts as weakness and will want to attach more intently to the other person whom he (at perhaps an unconscious level) deems to be the powerful and loving answer-to-all.

5. Efforts to use moral or religious arguments to call a halt to the affair will be strongly resisted. Your spouse is not guided by rightness or wrongness. These standards have not been internalized and do not carry much weight, especially when it comes to the important chunks of her life. The actions and thoughts of your spouse primarily originate from her need to attach to another person. Any behavior or concept that serves the purpose of maintaining the attachment will be valued. Others are discarded.

6. Expect you will spend a significant amount of time and emotional energy in the next 2 to 4 years (especially if there are children) attempting to resolve the relationship. By resolve, I mean, coming to a point where each of you are fairly free of the emotional entanglement that holds you together and generates the pain and fear. It will be important for you to resolve the relationship whether you continue to be married or separate and divorce.

Does this fit your situation?

Do you see the importance of understanding in-depth the signs of infidelity. Once you do, you will have many more options available that will help you break free.

About the Author: Dr. Robert Huizenga, The Infidelity Coach, has helped hundreds of couples over the past two decades heal from the agony of extramarital affairs and survive infidelity. Visit his website at: http://www.break-free-from-the-affair.com.

Posted by Brahem | Filed Under Marriage Infidelity 

Infidelity: How “My Marriage Made Me Do It” Is A Cop-Out

March 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Ask someone why they had, or are having an affair and you may hear something like this: “I have a lousy marriage. My marriage is dead. There is no intimacy, no sex, and no excitement. The love is gone. We’ve grown apart. I can’t stand the marriage. There was nothing happening in the marriage and the affair just happened.”

These statements are rationalizations and fail to “get at” the underlying issues.

Key points:

1. It’s as if a marriage is an animal gone bad. A marriage does not have a life of it’s own. In reality, there is no such thing as a “marriage.” One is “married” as a result of making some promises and signing a paper at one point. After the paper is signed, two people continue communicating and acting toward one another in particular ways that they hope will help them get what they individually want. Just as there is no “marriage,” there is no such thing as a “relationship.” There are, however, ways of relating for which each person is responsible. Remember the comedian Flip Wilson (that dates me) and his “The devil made me do it” skit?

2. We idealize “marriage” or “romantic relationships” with the expectation we will get what we want, without much effort to boot. The movies, popular public press and romance novels/stories don’t help much here. A “marriage” is behind the eight ball from the word go. “IT” can’t win.

3. From day one most of us don’t have a clue about how to get, build, nurture and maintain healthy and intimate ways of relating. We need ‘love 101’ and it’s not there. We rely upon experimentation or bad models.

4. If the “marriage” is dead, why in the world would one choose to have an affair? Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. It really is stupid. You add a whole layer of deceit and shame that eventually will result in consequences more dire than approaching your spouse and saying, “I’m really unhappy. What I’m doing with you obviously is not working. I want out.” Oh well, maybe some people need more problems and suffering.

5. If the “marriage” is bad, obviously, I don’t have to look at me. I can blame “it” or the other. Some of us find it difficult to look at me. Some of us don’t know how to look at me. Some of us never think of looking at me.

Tip: If your partner/spouse is having and affair and blames it on the “marriage,” don’t buy into it. The “marriage” is not the problem. You are not the problem. Your spouse/partner chose the affair out of ignorance, fear or inadequacy.

The “My Marriage Made Me Do It” is just one of 7 affairs outlined in my E-book, “Break Free From the Affair.” For more information on the issues behind the other kinds of affairs and tips for dealing with them, go to: http://www.break-free-from-the-affair.com.

Posted by Brahem | Filed Under Marriage Infidelity 

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