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Continued from Part 2 . Read Part 1 here. Your Spouse is Involved with Someone Else I don’t consider it a marital death sentence if one spouse is having either an emotional or physical affair with someone else. I have seen countless marriages survive infidelity and even become stronger after the healing begins. However, it is also true that positive change in marriage is harder to achieve when one spouse is emotionally or physically interested or attached to someone else

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

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

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

The Medium is in the Message When you are trying to get through to your partner, there are many ways to do it. You can have a face-to-face discussion, write a heartfelt letter, e-mail or text message, talk about things over the phone, or send a greeting card. Many couples (including Jim and me) admit to having some of their most productive conversations over the phone. I often encourage couples to call each other, even if they’re in the same house! The point is, just bec

Do Something Different Human beings are creatures of habit. Most of the time, we’re on automatic pilot. We sleep on the same side of the bed every night. We sit in the same chair at our dining room table. We take the same route to work each day. Being on automatic pilot is not necessarily a bad thing. Habitual responses are economical. They allow us to go through our lives without having to concentrate on what we’re doing. But being on automatic pilot is a problem when

I know what you’re thinking , “Of course I have to complain, my spouse never listens.” If that sounds familiar, you may have been asking to have your needs met in the wrong way. In fact, lots of times people think that they are requesting a change from their partners when they are doing nothing more than complaining. Complaints turn people off and build resistance. They don’t spark a spirit of cooperation. I learned this firsthand in my own marriage. My husband, Jim, work

Talking Tip #7: Heed his effort to make amends. John Gottman also noticed that in healthy relationships, one person often reverses the flow of negative communication by attempting to say something conciliatory. Then the other person acknowledges it and becomes more conciliatory in return. For instance, after fighting for a while, one person might say, “Well, I suppose there’s something to what you’re saying” or “I think we both do that [admitting culpability]. Hearing the

Here we go again. We are endlessly fascinated when high profile marriages crash and burn. It offers us opportunities to speculate, criticize, engulf ourselves in smugness, or in humbler moments, recognize the humanity in all of us. But most of all, just like the outrageously popular show, American Idol, it gives us something to talk about and weigh in on. So, today’s flavor of the month is the Gore marriage. Inquiring minds want to know, “How is it possible that college sweet

Although future posts will include a step-by-step guide for healing from infidelity, I want to jump start you on the process in case you just discovered the betrayal and you’re eager to improve things between you and your spouse. Healing from infidelity involves teamwork; both partners must be fully committed to the hard work of getting their marriages back on track. The unfaithful partner must be willing to end the affair and do whatever it takes to win back the trust of his

Your marriage is on the rocks. Your husband is emotionally unavailable and you strongly suspect he is having an affair. Your wife never wants to have sex. You are so miserable about your home life, you can’t even concentrate at work. You’re so desperate; divorce starts looking like a reasonable option. But you’re just not sure what to do. So, you turn to your friends and family for a shoulder to lean on. You tell them about the problems in your marriage and how your spouse ju