Relationship Advice

Are You Really Staying Together For The Kids?

Is It The Kids, Or Is It Something Else?

I believe that couples can work through just about any difference or circumstance thrown their way and encourage people to make up, not break up. But when it comes to reasons why people DO end up staying together, I don’t think that “the kids” is a valid, or truthful, reason, nor is it a healthy one.

Let’s take the relatively recent example of Sen. John Edwards, whose affair was revealed to the public during this election cycle, but had been made known to his wife soon after it happened.

We at least have to give him SOME credit for being honest with her. She said she was (obviously) upset, but decided to stick it out with her husband “for the kids.”

This is something we hear a lot, and something I see a lot when talking to couples who are contemplating divorce or who have gone through an affair situation. The truth is, people rarely stay together just for the kids.

Wanting To Make It Work

People stay with the cheating spouse/partner because deep down they want to make it work and they believe they CAN get to the bottom of the situation, and work through it. These are valuable sentiments to acknowledge and important in beginning to re-build the relationship, if that’s what the couple chooses to do.

The affair usually comes as a wake-up call to both parties involved. It’s a (rather obvious!) sign that they’re struggling with something else, whether it be a fear of loss, as seems to be the situation in the case of the Edwards’, dealing with stress (also a possible factor), or even a means of revenge for something else going on in the relationship.

Whatever the reason, it’s an obvious turning point and one that can be negotiated around when the couple is willing to get to the bottom of their emotions.

Why We Don’t Surrender To Pain In Romantic Relationships

By sarahelizabethmalinak

In many ways, pain teaches us to surrender. If you sprain your ankle, you have to slow down, attend to it, and adapt to it. It will not allow you to continue walking or running as you were! Until it heals, you must surrender to the healing process.

The people who talk about cancer being a gift are those who surrendered to the reality of the disease and met it on its terms. Even the common cold allows a person to practice the art of surrender!

When it comes to romantic relationships, one type in particular sets a couple up to learn surrender from pain. That would be the sadomasochistic relationship. Humiliation and pain leading to surrender is the basis of that kind of relationship.

The Difference in Romantic Relationships

However, in most romantic relationships, pain doesn’t necessarily teach us to surrender. For many people, pain in their relationships causes them to go to war, to dominate, or to conquer their partner or the situation.

Why is that? When your partner dismisses you, why do you want to take her head off? When he looks at another woman, why do you want to clobber them both? When he or she treats you like a child, why do you want to rebel?

The answer may be found in that last question. Surely, the reason the pain of our relationships leads to war instead of surrender is that our romantic relationships are the number one place we work out our issues with our parents.

The Family Connection

When we are born, our parents (or primary caretakers) are everything to us. Truly, we love them passionately, jealously. They are extensions of us. They answer all our needs, sometimes without our even asking.

They are also the first to put boundaries on us. The first ones with whom we experience power struggles, with us usually on the losing end of those power struggles! Furthermore, parents are not perfect.

Knowing which buttons to push in order to control us with the least amount of effort expended, they will use rudeness, put-downs, dismissals, and disappointment to keep us under their control.

There is the rub. In whatever way your romantic partner, husband or wife, treats you rudely, puts you down, dismisses you, and shows disappointment in you, whether purposefully or by accident, mom and dad did it first.

They did it first and you could not fight back. Now you can. Not only can you dish it out as good as you get it, the impulse to stop the pain by any means necessary rises involuntarily, making dominating and conquering your partner seem absolutely necessary for survival.

What Would Surrender Look Like?

What would surrender in the face of the pain found in romantic relationships look like, anyway? Becoming a doormat? Turning into a masochist? No.

Surrender would look like taking stock and taking responsibility. That is what happens when a person surrenders to the process of the pain of suffering, from the common cold to cancer. He or she takes stock of reality and takes responsibility for what lies ahead. How do we do that in a relationship?

Take Responsibility

The first thing to do, if you haven’t already, it to take 100% responsibility for everything that shows up in your relationship. Your relationship, your partner, is a mirror of you. Wherever there is pain, your mirror is showing you something in yourself that wants to heal.

Let us use dismissal as an example. Being dismissed hurts. Those who practice it seem to be oblivious to its effects. Those who suffer from it are painfully aware when they themselves happen to inflict it on someone else. Being dismissed by someone you love makes you feel small and worthless.

How Dismissal Plays Out

Debra found her feelings hurt too many times by David’s dismissals. The way she would shrink inside when he would cut her off mid-sentence, tell her how to fix whatever she was talking about, then turn his attention elsewhere made her shrink inside.

She was beginning to be nasty in return, which really surprised him and even hurt his feelings. He thought his advice was helpful!

If David and Debra decided to take 100% responsibility for this tension showing up in their relationship, each of them would look deeply inside to see what motivated their behavior. Debra would realize that most of the people nearest to her throughout her life had been dismissive, beginning with her mother.

Chances are, she attracted others like her mother because it was familiar, even comforting in a strange way. In addition, her self-esteem may not have been strong enough for her to believe she deserved better.

David would realize that by dismissing Debra, he was mimicking his father, who had been dismissive of David’s mother. In fact, his father’s father had been the same way! All of the men in his family had married women who talked a lot about what worried them.

The women could talk for hours to each other about their worries but the men just could not handle it. As David would get in touch with the deep sense of inadequacy he felt handling his wife’s worries and concerns, he would realize his paternal ancestors had faced the same hurdles in their marriages.

David and Debra live far from their relatives and that kind of support. Oftentimes, Debra only has David to lean on. That terrifies him.

Take Stock Through Self-Examination

Taking 100% responsibility for the relationship requires this depth of taking stock through self-examination.

The resulting surrender means Debra and David can talk about this particular painful aspect of their relationship in ways that cause neither of them to have to defend themselves, in ways that allow them to grow as individuals and as a couple, and in ways that take the “If only he or she would change” stuff out of the equation!

It is surrender to what each of them created in the relationship, allowing space for deeper love and connection.

How To Ignite A Spark In Your Relationship With Confidence

By sarahelizabethmalinak

Let me just get right to the point. Having said it before, it bears repeating; confidence is the biggest, baddest, best turn on for both men and women. The following quote from Marianne Williamson translates well for men too!

“If you’re single and would like a partner, you’ll only attract one when you’ve mastered the lessons of singleness. Don’t ask how you can ‘get’ a man [or woman]. Ask how you can be the coolest woman [or man] in the world – and when that happens, you’ll enjoy the experience so much it won’t even matter whether men [or women] notice you or not. Which means, of course, that they will.”

The Reality of the Difference Confidence Makes

Now I want to put an exclamation point after every one of her sentences to emphasize the juicy reality of the difference confidence makes whether you are attracting a mate or are presently in a romantic relationship.

Of course, we all want to fall in love or be in love with someone who is so warm and caring that we can drop our defenses and be truly vulnerable with this person. That is a beautiful dream and can be a profound reality.

For the purpose of this article, though, let’s concentrate on the difference it makes when you remind yourself to be in that confident space that raises your sexual stock market value!

Remember When You Were Dating?

When you were loose and free in the dating world, what kind of people grabbed your attention as potential dates? Mostly likely, no matter the hair color, body type, or personality, there was the common thread of confidence, genuine confidence radiating from them. Not arrogance masquerading as confidence.

I am not talking about the man or woman daring you to approach so he or she could jerk you around. I am talking about the ones who were comfortable in their own skin, able to make direct eye contact and conversation that included you. Those people are attractive from the inside out.

If they show up in a body type or hairstyle you never found attractive before but now you can’t get enough of, it’s the confidence that allowed you to look long enough to see them!

Were You Lucky Or Just Needy and Clingy?

When were you luckiest out there in the dating world? When you were needy, clingy, or wanting to be rescued? I doubt it. If you got lucky in that frame of mind, I imagine the results were not very pleasant and that it did not lead to a lifetime of romance.

I bet you were luckiest out there when you were feeling good about yourself and knew you had something awesome to offer to the right person! Sometimes, weren’t you surprised to find connecting with people to be easy and natural even though you hadn’t put much attention on your outfit or getting your hair just right.

You could be unintentional about attracting the opposite sex yet find yourself successful in attracting them anyway! Your unselfconscious, genuine confidence was working for you!

Getting Sloppy in Relationships

Sometimes, in our relationships, we take each other for granted without meaning to and get sloppy. We expect to be forgiven for being human, needy, melancholy, even boring. That’s all right. But if you want to turn up the juice in your relationship, a quick look back to what made you juicy when you were dating can give you just what you need.

Try striking a pose once in awhile! Pay attention to how you walk, stand, and sit around each other.

Ladies, if having a wiggle in your walk got his attention in the first place, bring that thing back around! Gents, you know that stance thing some of you do? You stand there resting on one hip with your opposite hand in the pocket of your jeans with, maybe, your thumb and little finger hanging outside the pocket. Your shoulders are relaxed and your chest is prominent, while your attitude says, “Here I am.”

Bring those confidence indicators into the home place and keep the home fires burning!

Confident People Enjoy Each Other’s Company

Tell each other stories and jokes meant to entertain. Confident people enjoy each other’s company. They trust themselves to behave well and have good intentions. They also have the ego strength to handle it when toes are stepped on by accident.

Be present to one another the way you were in the beginning, when the fact that you held his or her attention stoked the fire of your confidence, building it even more!

Initiate Sex

Spontaneous sex exudes confidence and communicates you are hot for each other! With the differences between men and women on the one hand and simple personality differences on the other, some are resistant to spontaneous sex.

If that’s you, then you hold the ace! Initiating love making or being highly receptive for a change the next time it is offered communicates confidence in yourself and confidence in your love. Both are incredibly attractive!

Plan an Exciting Date Night

Make a date night more than dinner and a movie. Do something special that makes you feel like a pair of VIP’s out in the world to be seen and admired. Show off your love and the sparkle between the two of you.

I know a couple who love to high five each other in public when their conversation takes that groove where they finish each other’s sentences and they are proud to be together. They know it draws attention to them, putting their romance on display. It builds their confidence and the sexual energy between them.

Take an Interest in Others

Confident people take an interest in others, which definitely turns people on and can still turn your partner on! Occasionally, really turn your full attention on your lover as he or she is speaking.

Turn your body towards them, give them plenty of eye contact, and show them genuine interest so that the expressions on your face match where your lover is coming from. Be with him or her the way you were in the beginning.

Be that confident and watch your romance ignite again!

Single Mother Raising Boys, Oh, My!

By elainewilliams

My kids were 11, 18 and 19 when their father died. Many days I felt at a loss as to how to help my boys deal with their grief.

How Death Affects The Kids

My oldest son moved away from home, no doubt attempting to establish his independence. Emotionally, I had a very difficult time with this. He was living in a dumpy apartment and associating with people I didn’t know and appeared to have embraced a partying lifestyle.

Even though my 18 year old remained at home, he became distant, leaving me to wonder what was going on inside. I knew intuitively he was as wounded as I felt, but he refused to acknowledge or share anything.

My youngest would cling to me, emotionally and physically. He once asked what would happen if I died also. I reassured him I expected to live a long time, but reassured him that his aunt would take care of him if something did happen to me. What do you say? I admit that for a short while I feared something would happen to me also.

Dealing With Life

Day-to-day living was sometimes excruciating, but there was no getting away from it, life had to be dealt with. The first two and a half years I would never want to relive, but we all came through it, handling each day not always perfectly, but the best we could at the time.

Hopefully we all learned from the mistakes and moved forward. As a parent, you don’t want to see your kids hurting or making the wrong choices, but ultimately, it’s not up to you.

My kids and I grew through the last several years, and perhaps the best thing learned was that life does go on. No one can ever say life after loss is easy, but that’s just life; sometimes it smacks you when you don’t see it coming. If we’re lucky, we rise to the occasion in the best way we know how.

Life wounds each of us in various ways, it’s how we come out of the wounding that tells the truest sense of who we are, or can be.

As a mother raising boys, I’ve found it’s a work in progress, but if we meet the challenges and do the best we can, that’s all we can ask of ourselves.

Are You Getting What You Need?

By wendystrgar

“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need…”

That Rolling Stones refrain is playing in my head repeatedly of late and it seems clear that this is as true a love song as I have ever known. Although I would never have thought it in my earlier years, what I know of love that has staying power is that it is actually rarely about what you want.

Growing up and cultivating sustainable love is mostly about learning how to accept what you get, turn it into what you want, or at least embrace it as what you need.

I learned this at work the other day, when a customer called to reorder some products. An articulate and well studied cancer survivor, she told me things about my own products that I never knew.

Taking What You Need

When I asked her if she received my newsletters, she said, yes, but there wasn’t much there for her. She had done this work. I like to believe that my messages make a difference for everyone, but the truth is that people take what they need and it might not be what is most important for you.

The song continued repeating as I struggled with finding peace in my relationship with my father. A difficult man, a pain filled childhood, and years of resentment and hatred all come together at every meeting.

In the past the feelings were justified responses to not getting the compassionate witnessing and loving attention that we all crave. This time the pain is about bearing witness to my own struggle to transform my inner relationship to my past and to him.

Hatred and resentment rarely impact the object of our feelings, instead they keep us stuck in the same habitual patterns that we have come to know as relationship for years. I will never get what I want from that relationship, but I am starting to know how to look for what I need.

Seeing the Relationship You Have as the One You Need

This song has been a love song in my marriage for decades. Learning how to see the relationship that we have as the one we need instead of resenting the shortcomings of the one that we wanted is a life time effort.

It is easy to be confused and to want to refuse the love that a partner can give, if it doesn’t look or feel the way that we want it to. This happens most frequently in my marriage when I am deep in my own battles with my own demons.

Accept Your Weaknesses; Recognize Your Strengths

When we are most lost to ourselves and unable to accept our weaknesses or recognize our strengths, all of the places where our closest relationships fall short become unbearable. It is so painful to recognize the moments when we are incapable of loving that blaming the other is a ready survival mechanism.

Often the response is so habitual that we don’t even have the time to choose a different response. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need… They had it right, it is worth trying to get what you need.