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.

Consistency: Building Trust in Your Relationship

There is plenty of advice being put out there regarding building trust in your relationship. Most of it is true and helpful, but a lot of it won’t do you any good.

Here is one piece of advice that will be beneficial: Be consistent. A lot of people in relationships or marriages say that they want to be surprised, they want spontaneity, and they don’t want to be stuck in a rut. And although this is true enough in most situations, they also don’t want to be shocked or caught by surprise by sudden changes in your behavior all the time as well.

Your partner wants to think that he or she knows you and knows what you will do. Your partner wants you to be consistent in your actions, your feelings, your behavior, your treatment of him or her, and everything else. Your partner wants to be able to expect or predict how you will react or respond to whatever situation that might go your way.

Sudden changes in your behavior – losing weight, dressing differently, acting differently – these things tend to cause suspicions and doubts that lead to your partner suspecting you of things that may or may not be happening, and end up destroying the trust in your relationship.

You may think that being consistent means being predictable, which is something that everyone does not want to be. But consistent doesn’t always have to mean predictable, and predictable doesn’t always have to mean boring. Be spontaneous, be surprising, be impulsive, but be all of that consistently.

It may seem to be one of those “too good to be true, cure all” steps to fixing a marriage that you read everywhere all the time. And yes, it is such a simple answer to a complex issue, but it does work. Being consistent in the way you are when it comes to your husband or wife is one of the simplest ways that you can build and develop the trust in your relationship.