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“We’re just friends.” “We don’t talk about anything personal.” “What’s wrong with my wanting to have friends of the opposite sex?” “No matter what you think, it’s not sexual, so stop hassling me.” “What am I supposed to do? Stop talking to him? I work with him.” “I can’t fire her. She hasn’t doesn’t anything wrong.” “You’re too suspicious.” Does any of this sound familiar? Are you thinking that your spouse or partner has a relationship with someone that makes you feel uncomfo

Pamela White’s article “ Defending Divorce ” is filled with erroneous assumptions and information, which I would like to debunk. To consider it to be “meddling” that a proposed law requiring couples with children to take a class about the impact of divorce and to have a “cooling off” period prior to divorcing, demonstrates no appreciation for the havoc divorce leaves in its wake. Children have no veto power in a decision that will forever alter their lives. Minimally, parent

When your marriage is on the rocks, you start to wonder how relationship goals that require two people’s active participation apply to you. You read articles about setting goals for the new year and you feel downtrodden and left out. In fact, even thinking about the new year can be emotional for you. After all, this is the time we think about starting new things, not ending them. But don’t despair. Here at the Divorce Busting Center, I’ve developed a method that truly helps

If you practice these 10 steps with regularity, your marriage will become stronger than ever. Bookmark these steps, post them on the fridge, write them on your hand, get a tattoo! Just do what you can to familiarize yourself and your marriage will reap the benefits. 10 Steps to avoiding divorce 1) Spend time together The number one cause for the breakdown in marriage today is that couples aren’t spending enough time together or making the relationship a priority. Everything

I can’t tell you the number of people who tell themselves early in marriage, “If my spouse ever has an affair, I’m outta here.” And then in happens. Their spouse was unfaithful. That’s when reality sets in. It’s easy to think you will leave if your spouse betrays you, but when confronted with the reality of divorce and dissolving your marriage, the stakes are really high. It’s not that overcoming the devastation of infidelity is easy, it isn’t. But it can be done. In fact, be

Question: Michele, I really love my husband. We are on the brink of divorce. For about 4 years now he has told me that he doesn’t love me 10 times, 4 times just the last year. I am really hurt by this and can’t get past the fact that he does this. He says he says it when he is mad, but I feel if that were true then he would show me he loves me when he isn’t being mean. Most of the time it happens when he is TDY or deployed. But it happened again last weekend. I told hi

Question: My husband says he wants to come back for the kids but not me. I believe it’s a midlife crisis but it’s been 9 months since he’s been gone and I’ve come too far to accept him without change. I’m a stronger person than I was before. I just filed for divorce April 13 and took my half of the marital assets. He still doesn’t think he did anything wrong. He’s a liar, he wants the money I got, not the kids. Trust was broken and then he moved in with the other woman and he

Question: How long do affairs last? What do you do when your spouse gets involved in a romantic affair, and says they’re going to break it off with the affair partner, but doesn’t? What is the timeline for a romantic affair to “end?” It was exposed to the light of day, but they’re “in love.” MLC Bystander Michele’s answer: By virtue of the fact that your alias is “MLC Bystander” – (midlife crisis), it shows that you understand that your spouse’s mind and body have been tempor

Having finished reading fellow (gal) blogger, Sharon Wolf’s stunningly honest post entitled, “Do as I Say, Not As I Do,” I must say that I have great respect for her courage. It takes guts to admit defeat when one is supposed to have all the answers. As a marriage therapist and best-selling author, I, too, have been fortunate to have had far more than my share of 15 minutes of fame. I brush shoulders with the best and brightest in the field. I am not surprised by her confessi

While it is true that some people do experience immediate changes in their relationships, it’s also true that, in most marriages, change takes much longer . How much longer? It depends on many factors: the severity of the problems, personalities of the spouses, length of time people have been experiencing difficulties, each spouse’s level of motivation to do what it takes to make a marriage work, outside influences from extended family and friends, and the level of both par

I've covered many different approaches to doing something different when confronted with challenges in your marriage. You’ve learned how to act as if , you’ve learned that it’s easier done than said , that the medium is in the message , and you’ve learned that sometimes that the most effective strategy is to just do nothing . Well today I want to introduce you to a new strategy which takes the above approaches to next level: Do a 180 . Just as its name implied, if what yo

Some people are fix-it addicts. Fixing their marriages becomes the main focus of their lives. The problem with this is that relationships are like see-saws: the more one person does of something, the less the other one will do. If one person takes out the garbage all the time, the other partner won’t even think about garbage day. If one person remembers family members’ birthdays all the time, the other partner doesn’t have to think about birthdays. If one partner is the

One question I’m asked as much as any other is: “ what is the average amount of sex in marriage “ Clearly, the question is asked not with the intent of gathering facts for the sake of fact gathering. Either the lower or higher sex-drive spouse wants to tell the other spouse that they’re asking for too much or too little sex. Although there is a national average for the amount of sex married couples have (approximately 1.5 times per week), this statistic should not be the d

I’ve discussed a lot of different methods recently suggesting how to approach your spouse. Whether you try doing something different , altering the medium of your message , or rely on actions instead of words , sometimes nothing is quite as effective as the self-fulfilling prophecy to “Act As If”. Below I outline exactly how you can implement this in your marriage. How to Approach Your Spouse – Act As If Problems often arise in relationships because people think they can pr

Easier Done Than Said Sometimes, trying to solve marital problems by discussing them doesn't work. Here is an idea that suggests that stop using words entirely to get your messages across. No talking on the phone, no letter writing, no e-mails, you just take action! Women really benefit from using this technique because we now know that men are less verbally-oriented and more action-oriented than women. Men sometimes get overloaded with words and they stop listening. Wh