affairs – Page 11

The Balance Of Power: How Sex And Money Affect Your Relationships

Ever wondered what it would be like to make a career out of sex? Showtime’s new show “Secret Diary of a Call Girl” plays to just such curiosity.

It is based on the book which was based on the blog of an English call girl who sells her body to strangers because she loves sex and money.

As Entertainment Weekly reports:

"Call Girl" is a blatant attempt to re-create the friction and success of "Sex and the City" down to the knowing-girlfriend voice-over. Indeed, as Hannah by day, Belle by night, Piper gives us a sassy cross between Carrie and Samantha. If either of those characters had been British. Or hookers.

The series seems to make the case that you CAN be happy and be a prostitute, yet arguing that this is an enjoyable alternate career choice seems difficult to do. And the women who claim to have successfully done this are seemingly few and far between.

Sex and Money

Sex and money seem to be common themes nowadays, as sex scandals abound, and the money that comes along with it is obscene! As our culture becomes more engrossed in the pairing of these two subjects, they are also the two topics causing the most problems in marriage.

Sex is tied into money and that’s all wrapped up in power. The power struggle between men and women, in our relationships and marriages is familiar territory, if only recently glorified by bawdy TV shows.

The Balance of Money, Sex, and Power

As I discuss in my book, Financial Infidelity, the balance of money, sex, and power can make or break a relationship, and often times, financial infidelities can take just as heavy a toll on a relationship as a a sexual infidelity.

Couples often fall into financial infidelity when they are not honest about how they spend money, or don’t discuss the strain that finances can put on a relationship.

One person may be overspending and going behind the other’s back by getting cash back at the grocery store and using it for personal items, operating bank accounts that the other person doesn’t know about, or any one of a number of things, some of which may seem inconsequential.

Often, the issue isn’t that one partner is withdrawing, say $20 without the other’s knowledge, it’s the spirit of deceit in which it’s done.

The Blowback

The blowback from this can be financial: when the “deceived” partner finds out what’s going on, they may feel entitled to make purchases of their own, further eroding the confines of a budget, not to mention trust.

It can also be relational as financial infidelity involves going behind someone’s back, covering your tracks, and not being honest with your partner, just like sexual infidelity.

Knowing how to deal with these struggles and understanding the differences between you and your partner when it comes to these things is crucial to a healthy, respectful relationship. Of course, this is easier said than done, especially if you haven’t pried into your financial history before.

A good place to start is by discussing your personal money habits, then taking a look at how money was dealt with in your past and in your family. You might be able to start drawing some conclusions about current behavior from examining your past.

3 Common Signs Your Partner May Be Cheating On You

By jimwalthby

An unfaithful husband, cheating wife, any kind of disloyal partner, is an ugly prospect. And that feeling of being betrayed by someone we thought we could trust more than anyone else is one of the worst.

People who discover their partners have been unfaithful to them go through a hurricane of different emotions – anger, sadness, shame, dejection, sometimes even relief. It’s a grieving process, not of a person that’s died, but of a relationship and level of trust that’s instantly disintegrated. In short, it sucks.

But before you can begin “grieve” that loss of trust, or simply throw caution to the wind and ditch your partner for good, you need to make absolutely sure your reaction will be 100% warranted. You need to know without doubt whether your lover has, in fact, double-crossed you by looking for, finding, and partaking in, an affair.

The only guaranteed way of knowing this, aside from finding damning physical evidence or seeing the affair with your own eyes (both pretty rare), is by hearing a confession straight from the horse’s mouth, by communicating your suspicions with your partner and listening to what they have to say however heartbreaking or relieving their response might be.

But before you take that big step, there are a few simpler and smaller steps you can take to make the whole process, the whole “investigation” and confrontation of your partner, easier and more factually accurate.

The first thing you should do is look for some of the most common signs/groups of signs people produce when they cheat. I’ve listed 3 of them below. Read over and think about each and carefully consider if they apply to you, your partner and your relationship.

1. Changes in sex drive and sexual behavior

Sex is almost always an integral part of a happy and healthy relationship between two people. So when one of the two, regardless of whether it’s the guy or the girl, begins to cheat, it doesn’t come as any surprise that changes in the way they feel about having sex with their partner can be brought about. There are two main ways these changes can manifest themselves.

When the cheater initially begins their affair they may, out of guilt and in an effort to avoid the newly formed affair being rumbled, actually increase the amount of attention they pay their real partners in bed. Conversely, and usually a little while after the affair has begun, the cheater may appear to have a loss of sex drive.

They, for some reason, seem to not want to be intimate with you as much as they used to. Once again, this can be attributed to guilt, but more often it’s to do with a fear they’ll reveal their infidelity through they way they behave before, during and after having sex with you.

2. Peculiar changes in habits & schedule

When people cheat, they invariably change their behavior and/or habits in some way, small or large. The reason they cannot avoid these alterations is because, no matter how infrequently or secretly they see the person they’re having an affair with, they MUST, at some point or another, go out of their way to do so (and thereby break or change habits and behavior).

So, look for recent and pronounced modifications in the times they come home/leave the house (and whether the changed times ‘repeat’ weekly), increased usage of the phone or computer for no obvious/innocent reason, and other differences in the way your partner acts and behaves.

You know your partner’s old habits and ways of living better than anyone, so draw from that knowledge to compare how they might have changed them and to decide if the changes are to be taken as possible indications of betrayal.

3. Miscellaneous indicators of infidelity

Lastly, there’s the group of infidelity indicators that don’t fit in any other box or under any other title. They’re the things you notice, question and cannot innocently explain away.

They’re the things you spot but almost choose to forget because you’re so unsure of what they may or may not mean and whether, ultimately, they are true signs that your partner is cheating on you with someone else. Here are just a couple of miscellaneous indications of infidelity:

Your partner no longer seems to get angry with you when in the past they always seemed to be picking a fight or getting worked up over any tiny issue. Cheaters often ‘let their partners off’ because they want as little confrontation (which could lead to a discovery on your part) as possible.
She or he frequently shifts the focus onto you. Cheaters often asks their partners more questions about how their day went, how they’re feeling, etc, again, to shift the attention away from them and their guilt.

Remember, when you suspect your partner may be cheating, always take the smaller steps, by looking for the kinds of subtle signs listed above, before taking the biggest step of all: confronting them. Doing so will give you the very best chance of a happy, or at least a more manageable, final outcome.

How to Tell If Someone’s Lying Just By Looking At Their Hands…

By simoncruise

It’s a fact: other people’s lies make our lives more difficult. They distort and twist the truth, con us into believing things never happened, or took place when they shouldn’t have.

There are literally thousands and thousands of ways people’s untruths and falsehoods taint and make living our daily lives more of an effort than it really should be.

So what can we do about it?

Putting a Stop to the Lies

How can we put a stop to lies the second we hear them and reveal the real truth, the actual facts, the exact situation?

The answer is natural lie detection – techniques, strategies and knowledge that give a person the rare and invaluable ability to separate the real from the fake and always know what to believe and what to question.

So, what does it consist of? Well, natural lie detection uses no machines, test papers, no video or audio recordings. It is, as the name suggests, a science based on human perception and skill.

The Three Main Components

It has 3 main components. They are the interpretation and analysis of: body language, psychology, and verbal communication. By having a deep and expert knowledge of all three, you can become capable of spotting 99 out of 100 lies, whether they’re spoken over the phone, in person or even over the internet or via text message.

Although learning these special techniques isn’t difficult when you have the time and proper reading material, it does require more space to explain than this short article allows. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t go over one way many liars give themselves away.

This collection of principles falls under the body language category of natural lie detection and focuses solely on how a dishonest person uses, or avoids using, their hands when they’re being deceitful.

Hand-Related Signals

There are 3 main hand-related signals of deceptiveness.

Signal #1: Hand Gesture Frequency

People use their hands to visually illustrate and emphasize their statements. It’s a way of painting an abstract picture in the air to better help the person or people they’re talking to understand the concepts being covered. When someone lies, however, their mind works differently to how it normally operates. Their thought process is dominated by the act of being dishonest convincingly and they therefore tend to change how they use their hands.

The first change you should look for is in how often they gesticulate with their hands while talking. The majority of people, when they lie, lessen the amount of movements they make with their hands because they subconsciously want to restrict the volume of information being given to the person they’re lying to out of fear of saying too much, either verbally or physically, and getting caught out or questioned.

The More Proficient the Liar, The More Hand Gestures They Use

More proficient liars, or people who have rehearsed or planned a lie before telling it, actually tend to increase the frequency of their hand gestures. They’ll slice the air more with the blade of their hand or point their finger and clench their fists more frequently to illustrate and back-up what they’re saying.

So, in short, look for a marked difference between the amount of hand gesticulations a person uses when in normal, day-to-day, obviously truthful conversation and when you suspect they may be lying to you or have a good reason to twist or otherwise alter the truth.

Signal #2: Hand-To-Face Actions

The second signal you should look out for is an increase in the number of hand-to-face actions a person makes when you think they could be lying. The main reason they touch their faces more often when lying than when telling the truth is because of the internal social pressure they’re feeling, which leaks out in the form of hand-to-face actions.

Look for moments when the person momentarily covers their mouth with their hand or fingers. This is a subconscious attempt to stifle themselves and physically block the lie from leaving their lips. They do this to futilely try to block their falsehood from reaching you and thereby decrease the chance of getting caught and lessen their feeling of guilt.

However, many people are on some level aware of how mouth covers may be interpreted (as a sign that they’re lying) so instead try to camouflage the action by instead lightly touching their nose (which indirectly covers their mouth with their hand).

Another reason many liars touch their noses is because of the increased blood-flow that occurs in its deep tissues, which creates an almost imperceptible tingle that, although not consciously felt and reacted to, causes the liar to unwittingly touch their nose for a moment.

So, always keep an eye out for increased hand-to-face actions, especially those that cover a person’s mouth in some way or another.

Signal #3: The Hand Shrug

When people don’t know the answer to something or want to convey the messages: “I’m not sure,” or “I don’t care,” they often lift and quickly drop their shoulders in a shrugging motion. A variation of shoulder shrugging is the hand shrug: a quick lifting and dropping of one or both upturned hands.

What It Means

Like shrugging with the shoulders, it’s a way of expressing a type of diminished responsibility in regards to an issue or topic, and that’s why liars tend to overuse the hand shrug while being dishonest.

Instead of using it only to accompany words that express a feeling of uncertainty or ambivalence, the way people do when being honest, liars use the hand shrug alongside verbal statements that don’t relate to “not knowing” or “not caring.” They do this subconsciously to distance themselves from the lie they’re telling.

Look for these 3 signs of potential dishonesty whenever you suspect someone might be lying and you’ll be a step closer to becoming a true master of deceit detection – a human lie detector.

4 Tips To Keep His Eyes From Wandering

By cynthiaperkins

Although most men enjoy looking at other women, assuming we’re dealing with at least a semi-emotionally healthy man, who doesn’t have ego, sex addiction or Don Juan issues, most men are not going to act on their biological urges as long as certain needs are met for them in their primary relationship.

The most empowering step a woman can take to preserve her relationship and reduce the risk he will wander is to be aware of these needs and provide them for her partner to the best of her ability.

Yes, it is a two way street and her needs are just as important as his and he too should make the same effort to provide for her, however at this time we’re focusing on the needs of the man.

1. Make Him Feel Appreciated, Wanted, Desired and Important

We all want to feel appreciated and desired, but research tells us that one of the main reasons a man strays is because of the way the other woman makes him feel. She makes him feel special, important, desired and appreciated. If he gets this at home, there will be no need for him to look for it elsewhere.

After a couple has been in a relationship for a while, the novelty wears off and both partners begin to take each other for granted. We forget about simple things like showing appreciation and expressing desire.

Again, men are just as guilty as women at falling into this rut, but for now we’re talking about helping the woman understand her man.

We’re not just talking about sex here. Just like women, the man wants to feel appreciated outside the bedroom as well. Acknowledge to him that you appreciate how he provides for your family, or how much you enjoyed the family vacation or outing you went on last week.

When he does a great job in the yard, fixes the window that’s been falling down for a year or stops the faucet from dripping let him know you appreciate it by saying thank you.

He wants to feel important in the household. Thank him for being a great father and let him know how lucky you are to have him as a husband. If he does something special for you, acknowledge it and express gratitude. Make a big deal out of the little things. Compliment him on his skills and knowledge.

2. Use Words and Actions to Show Your Love

Give him verbal appreciation, but also express it with your actions. Be thoughtful and caring by making him his favorite desert, buying him a small gift, giving him a massage or surprising him with some unexpected afternoon delights.

On the sex side of things, he wants to be appreciated and desired here too. Make him feel like he’s irresistible and you can’t keep your hands off him. Tell him how attractive he is to you, how much you desire him and what a great lover he is.

Take pleasure in giving him pleasure. Tell him how much you love his penis and how much you enjoy how it feels and tastes. Compliment his physique, his skill and his equipment. Shower him and his equipment with affection and adoration.

Now, I’m not saying you go overboard here or ignore problems that exist in the relationship, but there should be balance. If a couple only focuses on what’s wrong with the relationship and not on what’s good, then the good often gets lost in the shuffle.

Additionally, I’m not suggesting you lie or exaggerate. If you do that, he’ll feel patronized and you’ll grow resentful. Be honest and sincere.

3. Have Sex Frequently

Another one of the most common reasons for wandering eyes is that he’s not getting sex at home. It’s as simple as that. Many women are never even aware that he strays, because he’s very good at keeping it a secret. Yes, some men will feel ashamed for this behavior, but they also feel justified. They believe they have a need that is not being fulfilled and they must do something about it.

When a woman repeatedly rejects the sexual advances of her man, he feels rejected, neglected, undesirable and unimportant, which leaves a very big void in his life. Men need to have sex to feel close emotionally to their partner. It doesn’t even have to be great, mind blowing or earth shattering sex; it’s more about the frequency. As long as you’re making an attempt to have sex and not continuously turning him down, he’ll feel satisfied.

The other side of this coin is that he also has a great need for oral sex. Many men go outside the primary relationship for oral sex. A man’s identity is intimately connected to his penis and when his woman refuses him in this way, he feels rejected and devalued as a person.

4. Give Him Variety and Sexual Adventure at Home

Sexual boredom is another leading culprit for wandering eyes. Remain open to exploring new territory and unafraid to fly outside your comfort zone. Present your lover with novel sexual activities that are bold, daring and adventurous.

Keep a sense of mystery and surprise in your sexual relationship and your lover will be continuously intrigued with you.

Create an ever-changing menu of sexcapades that are unpredictable and keeps your partner guessing.

Discouraging wandering eyes is the responsibility of both partners. It is the quality of the relationship that will safeguard it from outside forces.

Building a relationship that makes both partners feel appreciated, desired, and valued is the foundation for a strong, long lasting bond that keeps all eyes where they belong.

Digital Betrayal: How Cheating Husbands And Wives Use Technology To Cover Their Tracks

By jimwalthby

These days it’s easier than ever to communicate with people. We’ve got high-speed internet connections (wireless & otherwise), mobile phones, pagers, fax machines.

We can talk at the touch of a button, across cities, countries, the entire world. Furthermore, communication through these digital protocols is almost instant, fairly cheap and,if you want it to be,completely private and hidden.

While advancements in digital communication are, on the whole, a great thing, they do have their down sides. One disadvantage is that cheating husbands, wives (or, for that matter, girlfriends or boyfriends) can communicate with their private lovers away from the prying eyes and ears of their trusting partners.

It happens every day: thousands upon thousands of text messages are sent by disloyal men and women to those they’re sleeping with behind their real partners’ backs.

Back in the day, the only way a guy or girl could arrange a clandestine meeting would be over a hard-line (either a house phone or a pay phone). That meant the cheater would either have to make risky calls from the home of their unsuspecting spouses, or secretly take a trip to a local call box and do it from there.

Both of these methods of communication could often be spotted by the betrayed party quite easily.

But that’s now a thing of the past. It’s now a cinch for a cheater to send messages to their secret lovers from work, a locked bathroom, even from under the bed covers while their current, faithful partner sleeps quietly and 100% unaware of what’s going on just 6 inches away from them.

It’s true; things are easier for cheaters these days, but not that easy. Just as all others kinds of cheats, be it a card shark, a conman or a computer hacker, leave signs of their dishonesty behind, so do disloyal partners. And looking for the right signs, in the right places, is the absolute best way of knowing for sure if you can trust your partner.

Okay, you know now how easy it is for cheaters to communicate with their secret partners using digital communication. But what are the signs, the indications, the clues of this kind of activity? Let’s take a look:

1. Computers and Internet

Computers offer cheaters a multitude of communication methods including: email, instant messenger programs, chat rooms and forums. Although it can be difficult to tell what your partner’s doing online without actually looking over their shoulder (tricky!), there are indications you can look for more easily.

One is an increased amount of time spent at the computer for no apparent reason, perhaps when you’re in bed or before you get up. Another is your partner quickly turning off the computer monitor or turning it away from you when you enter the room.

Also, try checking the internet browsing history of the computer your partner uses most often. Sometimes there are web pages, chat room locations or other signs that your partner has been taking part in internet infidelity to be found there. Other times, you’ll find that the browser history has been freshly deleted. This, as you can imagine, could be equally suspicious.

2. Cell Phones

As mentioned earlier, mobile/cellular phones make quick and private communication easy. If you feel comfortable doing so, checking your partner’s phone’s call history, address book and text message archive can provide you with a wealth of telling information.

Bear in mind, though, that cheating partners, in an effort to remain uncaught, often keep their phones on their person most of the time. If your partner used to leave their phone lying around, but now never seems to do so, you must ask yourself why.

3. Old School

Last but not least, don’t forget or ignore the “old” style methods of cheater communication. Many cheaters still use house phones to call their secret lovers. Check your itemized phone bill for calls to local numbers you don’t recognize and that aren’t in your phone book.

Also, pay attention to how your partner reacts when you walk into the room when they’re on the phone. It’s difficult to mask panic and surprise when the partner you’re cheating on walks into the room while you’re chatting to your secret significant other. Quick hang-ups could be a sign your partner’s being disloyal over the phone and, perhaps, elsewhere.

By keeping your eyes peeled and ears open, you can sidestep the advantages new methods of communication offer cheaters and, hopefully, discover what’s really going on.

Jim Walthby is the author of Beating Cheating. For more ways to catch a cheating spouse, go to the Beating Cheating website.