Infidelity Pain: Controlling Your Feelings Amidst an Affair Crisis

It’s never easy to control your feelings of infidelity pain when you discover that your partner is, or was, involved in an extramarital affair. Most of the time, you feel out of control and all over the place, and you never really know what you’re going to feel the next minute. This is one of the techniques that could help you in controlling your feelings.

First, get a timer of some kind, a notebook and a pen, and whenever you start having intense feelings or thoughts about your situation, find a quiet place where you can be alone. Next, set the timer for two minutes. In those two minutes, write down everything you are feeling and thinking. Don’t leave anything out. Let it all come out of you. When you feel pain or any kind of emotion, write it down – how painful it is, where it hurts and what triggers the pain. Don’t worry about the things you write. Just write all of it down. It is up to you what you do with what you wrote. You can shred it, burn it or throw it away. You decide.

When the two minutes are done, set aside the pen and notebook and say to yourself, “Alright, its time to set aside any feelings and thoughts for now, and focus on other responsibilities. There will be time for you later.” Whenever you start feeling this way again, repeat the whole process.

Although this technique may not be for you, or if you see that it isn’t something you see yourself doing or you aren’t comfortable doing it, you don’t have to worry. It is perfectly okay and is nothing to fret about. There are plenty of other techniques that you find from different books or other relationship blogs that you can try. Just because this particular exercise doesn’t work well for you like it does for others, it doesn’t mean that every exercise won’t work. Be patient in trying to look for a technique that works, or better yet, you can develop one yourself.

 

Marriage and Relationships: Romance is Not What It Used To Be

One of the biggest factors that causes affairs in marriage and relationships, especially that of the “I fell out of love… and just love being in love” type, is romance. And here are some of the reasons why:

1. People use romance as a way for them to meet their personal needs. They want to be acknowledged, to be cared for, to feel special, to feel like they are important and so on, so they look for someone who will do that. Romance should not be used as a tool to feel somewhat validated. Letting it lead you and the decisions you make will only take you from one person to the next without any satisfaction.

2. Romance has become idealized in movies, books, TV shows and other things like that as the ultimate experience in intimate relationships. It is depicted as the basis of a strong and lasting relationship, the basis in choosing the person you should be with. They show beautiful people in a beautiful relationship, and who wouldn’t want to have that?

3. Romance is a way for people to feel good – about their life, about themselves – and they expect to feel good whenever they pursue romance. They want that high you get when you’re with someone new and they expect it to last, but it never does because their basis for being with that person is for an immediate fix instead of a lifetime goal.

4. And lastly, romance is an excuse that a lot of people use for sex. Having chemistry with someone doesn’t indicate that you two should have sex, it doesn’t even mean that you should be together, but most people would see this chemistry as a “spark” that should be pursued and so they pursue it.

Romance has lost its true meaning mostly because we use it as an excuse to satisfy our immediate wants and desires. If you want true romance, look into yourself and be more aware of the things that bring you real happiness and accept yourself for who and what you are.

Marriage After Infidelity: When Working on the Relationship Is Not Working

Rebuilding a marriage after infidelity is never easy, and couples who are in a “polarized” relationship, where one needs to talk things through and the other just wants to move on, are faced with the added problem of having to deal with this barrier of not being able to communicate. Communication is one of the biggest tools that you need when rebuilding a marriage after infidelity.

The following are some of the other common issues that “polarized” couples have to deal with:

1. Usually, one or even both of the partners feel the need to kind of sacrifice their needs for the other because they want to be able to make their partner happy. This only really works for a little while because having to set aside one’s personal needs for a long period of time eventually causes resentment and anger. You might see it as admirable that you are setting your needs aside for you to be able to cater to your partner, but it is actually cowardly. Having the courage to ask, not demand, for your needs to be met will come a long way in restoring respect and trust in your marriage.

2. Also, the couple sometimes takes for granted the opportunity to really look into their issues, take them apart and try to fix them. They tend to have a let’s-start-over attitude about the whole thing and ignore their problems instead of finding solutions to get through them. Although it is easier to “leave the past in the past” and forget everything that’s happened, there is no guarantee that those issues won’t resurface after some time. In fact, they most definitely will sooner or later. So it is much more beneficial for your relationship to dig into those issues and face them as soon as you are able.

3. And lastly, what occurs in most instances is that after the initial efforts made in working on the relationship, the couple reverts back to their old ways and loses the progress they make. They go back to the way they used to be – how they acted, talked and treated each other in the past becomes the norm once again. This is a crucial part in rebuilding a marriage after infidelity — to maintain the progress and the changes  that you’ve made. And it takes real, conscious effort — at least for a certain time — for you to really be able to make those changes a part of your routine and a part of your life.