Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 at
6:00 am
They are addictions and they have nothing to do with love. I don’t care if your spouse says that the OP (Other Person) is their “soul mate” and that they didn’t know what “love” truly was until they meet the OP, this is NOT love! All this is, are chemicals going bonkers in your spouse’s brain making them think they are in “love”. These chemicals are what makes the affair an addiction.
I get letters all the time from betrayed spouse’s saying that their spouse is sitting on the fence, that they are sure who they want. I get letters about those who spouse’s swear up and down that they have ended the affair and will never see them again but end up right back in the affair even thought they KNOW it could cost them everything. They are an addict and we need to treat them as such.
Have you seen the show “Intervention” on A&E? I love that show! If you have a spouse that is sitting on the fence torn between you and the OP then what needs to be done is an Intervention. If you don’t then your spouse will never have an consequences for their actions.
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Sunday, July 11th, 2010 at
6:00 am
Question:
“My husband had an affair with a woman he works with. He has decided to stay with me and the children but he sees her every day at work and has to call her and email her about work related things. How do I get him to see that this MUST stop if we are ever going to move forward? I am in so much pain, please help!”
I’m going to tell you that your marriage can’t even start to heal while your husband is in contact with the other woman. I will say that getting him to cut all ties with the other woman can be very difficult. You must do this at the right time and in the right way. First, you need to get as much perspective as possible and then give your husband an ultimatum in the form of a letter.
I know that my husband thought they could be “just friends” but I put my foot down and even insisted that we move. We moved over 1,000 miles away for over 2 years and this help tremendously. I had a list of musts that he had to do or else he could move out. If I didn’t set these boundaries, I believe we would be divorced today.
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Thursday, July 8th, 2010 at
6:00 am
Controlled Separation, is it for you?
Sometimes, even though you know you don’t want to divorce and you know you love your spouse, you just can’t take living with them, seeing them, and being with them every day because the pain is just too much to bear. A controlled separation is not for those who want to divorce, it’s for those who want to save their marriages and they do so by working with a counselor or coach by putting together a separation agreement with very specific guidelines.
Controlled separation will allow you and your spouse to live separately and at the very same time be about to negotiate and work together to find solutions to the marital problems. Not having the spouse who betrayed you, in your face all the time will help and not fighting and being in a state of emotional crisis all the time helps the marriage heal.
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Monday, July 5th, 2010 at
6:00 am
Are you struggling with obsessive thoughts, depression, pain, and lack of intimacy with your spouse? Maybe you’re thinking, “Gosh, it’s been over a year, or two or three, and I’m still not totally healed. What’s wrong with me?” This happened to me and I couldn’t figure out why my marriage wasn’t what I wanted it to be and I still wasn’t truly happy inside. I felt like we were roommates that really didn’t like each other very much. I wanted us to have this wonderful intimate relationship but how come it wasn’t happening?
I have since learned that if I don’t change the way I think I may never heal and have that loving relationship with my husband. Because of this I have learned that the passing of time does very little to help in recovering. I always heard that time heals all wounds, well that is false. Yes, it helps but if you truly want to heal and have that happy healthy relationship you have always wanted then time alone will not make this happen. In fact, it can make it worse if all your doing is obsessively thinking about all the pain your in and why your in it. You need to really work on what is going through your mind. Are they mostly negative thoughts about yourself, your marriage, and your spouse? Your going to have to put in the effort and try to understand and gain perspective on the situation rather than just going over and over all the negativity around the situation.
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Friday, July 2nd, 2010 at
6:00 am
Question:
What can you do when you’re spouse is involved in an emotional affair? I feel like I can’t fight it. With a sexual affair, at least your fighting something concrete but if they aren’t having sex and are so emotionally attached to each other that the flatly refuse to give them up, no matter the costs, what do I do?
It’s sad, but usually all the focus is on the actual sex that is involved in the relationships that are outside of the marriage, but emotional affairs are still just as detrimental to the marriage. Emotional affairs actually can cause more of a threat to the marriage than just a sexual relationship. Of course, combination’s of both sexual and emotional affairs are the most difficult ones to address.
With the question, “What can I do?” it will help if you understand all that is involved in growing and sustaining an emotional attachment. The key ingredient in the emotional bond is the degree in which the two people are honest with each other. Sometimes people feel safer being more honest with someone other than their spouse because this other person has no real personal investment in these feelings like a spouse would have. They also won’t respond the same way as a spouse would because they don’t have the same kind of judgment on those feelings that a spouse would have. A way to understand this is to think of how often you share information with a stranger that you wouldn’t share with friends or family. This is because the stranger really doesn’t know you so telling them really has no impact on your life.
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Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at
6:00 am
Question:
#1
I have been having an affair with a married man over the Internet. I never plan to actually meet him but we do talk on the phone. Is this wrong? Would you actually consider this having an affair? I believe it’s all innocent, but I do sometimes have feelings of guilt for talking to him.
#2
I would love your advice if I should go after this relationship I have online. We are both married but I am really starting to fall deeply in love with this other woman. We are both married but she talks so sweetly to me. I am thinking about meeting her, what should I do?
#3
I met this wonderful man online and he only lives minutes from me. We have been talking for quite a while now and just recently he told me that he loves me. He claims that he no longer loves his wife and says he only stays with her because of their son. I too am married, sometimes happily and sometimes not. We plan to meet next week and I am a little nervous because of the intense sexual attraction we have to each other. He says he doesn’t care whether we have sex or not because he respects me, unlike my husband. He sounds and acts like he truly does love me and I am confused at what to do. What do you think?
Online affairs are rapidly spreading and becoming more and more popular. I hear about them all the time and even saw an episode on Dr. Phil about affairs coming out of Facebook. These are VERY dangerous and should never even be played with.
Even if you never meet, online affairs still contain the same thinking patterns and emotions as physical affairs. Online affairs will have a sense of newness and excitement and they will have secrecy and deception.
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Saturday, June 26th, 2010 at
6:00 am
Ever since the big Tiger Woods scandal, many people around the world have had a sense of insecurity when it comes to wondering if they would know if their spouse was cheating on them. There are many quizzes and tests out there to give you some help in seeing if your spouse is one of the ones cheating.
Use these basic 4 ways to find out if maybe you should be looking into your spouse’s activity a little more closely.
#1 The “Gut” Test
Is your gut telling you that something is up? Do you just feel it in your gut but your not quite sure why you feel it? You feel it because you can unconsciously add up things that just aren’t quite right. Little things are off but you just can’t seem to put your finger on what. Always trust your gut! If your gut is telling you something is off, then something is off! You need to find out exactly what and asking your spouse is useless because if they are cheating they WILL lie to you!
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Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 at
9:15 am
When I first found out about my husbands affair I was so lost and I felt so totally alone. It wasn’t till about a year and a half after D-Day that I finally turned to God. I wasn’t getting any better and my marriage wasn’t getting any better either. I wanted a daily devotional to help me through what I was struggling with. I search the internet for hours but couldn’t find a single daily devotional for those suffering from their spouse’s affair.
I mean really, if this effects close to 60% or more of marriages wouldn’t you think there would be a daily devotional on it? It’s such a devastating event in ones life but nothing. There are ones for grief, divorce, for couples, for marriage, but nothing specifically for infidelity!
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Sunday, June 20th, 2010 at
10:15 am
This is a post by Joseph, a member of BAN Support Group. He wrote to this letter to his wife to explain why he asked for details of her affair.
To Whomever,
I know you are feeling the pain of guilt and confusion. I understand that you wish all this never happened and that you wish it would just go away. I can even believe that you truly love me and that your indiscretion hurts you emotionally much the same way it hurts me. I understand your apprehension to me discovering little by little, everything that led up to your indiscretion, everything that happened that night, and everything that happened afterwords. I understand. No one wants to have a mistake or misjudgment thrown in their face repeatedly.
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Thursday, June 17th, 2010 at
10:06 am
To heal the pain in both of you after an affair takes the participation of both of you. It also takes talking about the affair at great length so that both parties can absorb all the pain so that true healing can happen. The offender really needs to listen to the hurt and pain of the injured party. Not get defensive, but to really hear and feel the other persons hurt and pain. The more they pay attention to your pain, the less likely you are to pay attention to it.
Most wayward spouses probably want to run away from the pain they see in you because it causes them pain too. They don’t want to accept that it’s because of them that this pain is even there. They may think, what good can come of me “always” talking about our pain and grief except to hurt and punish me? But, having them really listen and really feel the pain and hurt makes you feel closer to them and the pain less intense.
You need to be able to go to them as often as you need to with your pain and to really be heard. No more, “Let’s not talk about the affair anymore.” No more, “Let the past stay in the past.” You should be able to talk about the affair whenever you need to and have them willing be there for you with support and not anger or defensiveness.
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