http://www.care2.com/greenliving/ask-the-loveologist-to-stay-or-go.html
Ask the Loveologist: To Stay or Go
Many people are faced with the difficult decision of staying or leaving their relationship for a variety of reasons. The questions below reflect some of the most commonly asked questions about the topic. I have been married for over fifteen years and it seems like lately every one of our couple friends are splitting up. There is nothing really wrong about our relationship, but no spark that feels right either. Mostly we just coexist. I am not really sure that my husband loves me the way he used to. How do you know when to stay or leave a relationship? Do relationships just naturally end?
My wife has been having an affair which she tells me she will stop. I am not sure if or how I can trust her again. Is it possible to get a relationship back on track after such a huge breach in trust? Maybe we should divorce, but we still have two young children. I am heartbroken; this isn’t how I pictured things turning out. What do you suggest?
There is probably no more difficult endeavor that we work at than a long term committed relationship. We bring so much expectation and hope to these promises, but they are often burdened and influenced by our own personal history and invisible filters of what marriage is “supposed” to look like. The strong biological impulses that drive the experience of “falling in love” and pull us into long term commitments are not sustainable. When the afterglow has worn off and couples are left with the heavy work of learning to love each other, many couples believe that the loss of the “feeling in love” means that they have made a mistake. Loving people over time is not inspired by our biology, it is a daily choice that requires courage of heart and intention.
The two biggest thinking errors that prematurely end many relationships are the ideas that the relationship is supposed to get easier or that it should be making you happy. While a healthy and growing relationship provides the experience of ease and happiness from time to time, they are in no way a barometer of the merit or quality of your partnership. Intimate personal relationships are the most gentle form of education that we can imagine to learn how to love one another. This education is by its nature hard earned. Inventing ways to continuously find what is loveable and intriguing about your partner is the act of loving them.
Watching mutual friends split up is discouraging and I think makes everyone in the community of those people question what they believe. Failed marriages don’t just shred the fabric of a family. They impact so many people who are tied to the couple over the life of the relationship. It may seem like the fresh start that newly divorced friends are enjoying would be more worthwhile than the relationship you are trying to sustain, and perhaps for a short time it is. Yet second and third marriages have an unbelievably high fail rate because both partners are bringing the unfinished issues from their last relationship into the new one.
Affairs are one of the most damaging injuries that a relationship can sustain and many don’t. They are remarkably common because they fill the romantic gaps that are the likely result of living day to day with someone and raising a family. A true comparison between the long term relationship and the affair is difficult at best and often yields unfair and erroneous judgments. Many people leave one foot out the door of their relationship for years and wonder why it never works. The only way you will know if you can make your relationship work again is to fully commit yourself to it and take up the hard work of saying yes, I will find what there is to stay for- day after day.
Recovering the trust you lost and rebuilding the self esteem that erodes from a partner’s affair takes time and patience. Many couples can find their way back to each other with the help of a good therapist. Couples therapy is recommended during these kind of transitions because many of the things that need to be said and heard are so painful, that having them witnessed and being coached by an experienced and talented relationship therapist is often essential.
Wendy Strgar is a loveologist who writes and lectures on Making Love Sustainable, a green philosophy of relationships which teaches the importance of valuing the renewable resources of love and family. Wendy helps couples tackle the questions and concerns of intimacy and relationships, providing honest answers and innovative advice. As her online presence continues to grow, Wendy has become a trusted and respected source of information on lasting and healthy relationships. “I feel like I am inventing a language to give intimacy back to the people, take the fear away and open a space for physical love to serve as the glue that holds relationships together.” Wendy lives in Eugene, Oregon with her husband, a psychiatrist, and their four children ages 11-20.
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27 comments
add your comment »Bradford I actually got to the point that I don't think there was anything I hated more in my life then what's suppose to be relationships. I know of so few that even have lasting marriages so maybe you know some that are built on trust but I don't. I have an older friend who is in his second marriage. He was trying to play match-maker with a woman who used to live in the neighborhood. I presented the question to him could I get in a friendship with her where we both could appreciate the communication without just pretending we did because we wanted a relationship? In all my years on this earth I haven't met anybody in a female body that I could. It's nice that you do but you're not me nor experienced life like me.
As I understand your spirituality I don't believe in it the same way you do. God gave us a brian and mind to reason and make decisions with so the choice making is up to me. My belief is life is perfect because the most difficult people and situations have always the way my faith grew the most. The journey to heaven sometimes has to go through hell so humans will appreciate the final destination. That's the reason I also stay away from getting into affairs as I've learned to realize that all the faults that have been pointed out about me in affairs are a blessing. Heaven knows it wouldn't be right of me to subject anybody else to them, yea. I do not care to ever put any effort in trying to get long with another human being so I appreciate my life being single.
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Ken,
I can't really judge your situation. Most people I know who are married have relationships based on trust. I think relationships should defintely be based on trust from the beginning or they are destined to fail.
But going beyond that, I believe the only way to know if someone is right for you, is to pray and ask God if it is right. He wants us to make good choices on our own, but I can assure you he will confirm our good choices if we ask Him.
You mentioned that you don't get involved in affairs anymore. I don't understand that comment, it's the only thing that doesn't make sense to me. I'm not judging you, because if you had affairs that's your own business, I just don't understand it in the context of everything else you said.
Expound further if you wish, and sorry for the delay in responding.
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Bradford how many people do you know get in relationships based on trust in the first place? My own marriage which ended in divorce and years later my ex died of lung cancer had absolutely zero trust in it. So in our own way we started out violating each other's trust from the start.
When you write about loving somebody I can not say I've ever felt that way. Mine was more of a feeling of being there for another out of guilt I felt for my mistake getting involved with another. Love to me is a choice I make the same as hate is but that sure isn't the reason I stayed involved with somebody. Divorce ought to be prevented before marriage in my opinion by using caution before making a commitment.
I'm older so I stay away from getting involved in affairs anymore. I got hung up on believing that earning each others trust and respect is the most important thing in relationships and I never came close to that before so I now can at least enjoy the hell out of my life by earning my own trust and respect.
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Ken G,
I agree that there are many ways to violate trust. However, I also know that if you love someone, you can work through many of those things. If a spouse just doesn't want anything to do with the commitment of marriage anymore, then I don't know. All I know is there's way too much divorce going on. I subscribe to the philosophy that most of those marriages could have been saved (and consequently many kids lives salvaged) if husband and wife realized that love is what you make of it, not what "happens" to you, or what someone else does to you.
It's a fundamental misunderstanding about love and committed relationships. All you have to do is look at how much more rampant divorce is today, to realize that the problem is in people's mentality. And it is also in large part to Societal acceptance of the notion "get your pleasure now" and don't settle for anything less...and all the rest of that garbage in our pornographic society. It's like we're going back to the 70's notion of "free love" but it has evolved to fill every home and computer screen in America. Anyone is just one click away from seeing something that will blatantly and completely contradict the virtues of real Love and Commitment.
It's just flat-out acceptable today to view that garbage. It's there and it's readily accessible, so it has to be good right?? Why would it be there if we're not supposed to consume it? Pathetic way of thinking I know, but I gaurantee you many justify it this way.
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One's partner is not the only one hurt when one is unfaithful. Think about the children--what do they learn from this? That it's all right to make a promise and then walk away when you don't want to keep it anymore.
And think of the spouses of the two being unfaithful. What must they think when they find out their husband or wife is being unfaithful to them?
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Actually any vow is scared Bradford, but now we've got more ways to justify them not being scared now days. I was married for 21 years and that was the biggest mistake I ever made in my entire life. I divorced because I was wore out from protecting and defending all the time and knew no other way to stop what I went through. Then after being divorced 23 years I get a letter from my ex saying it was time to make amends cause she was dying of lung cancer. All I could think of is how worthless I felt trying to get her to stop smoking. She died after we wrote back and forth for 13 months. That is really different than divorce because the relationship is then really over. The purpose, be it bad or good, that another serves in one's life is over where as divorce the purpose of another isn't over. Things like children join parents till death.
While the article mentions affairs with another person, I think affairs also could be control and manipulation by one partner not including another. Things like money matters or making decisions together taken on by just one instead of two are also affairs I had in relationships. To me anything that violates another's trust and respect is an affair to me and if it's not possible to earn that back from one another that's when it's time to leave. Run don't walk when leaving too.
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I agree Ken.
As far as the other comments offered, all I see is trying to justify infidelity. Infidelity (while still married) is Never acceptable by any moral code, and it's as simple as understanding the fact that we "vow" to be faithful when we get married. Period, end of story. It's not a vow that says "if my partner doesn't do X than I get to cheat" It's an individual commitment and each spouse has to individually answer for their end of the bargain, before man and God.
Separating from one's spouse through the proper channels and getting a divorce etc. is another issue, not that I condone it, but at least it's mutual. At that point you've nullified your vow, in mutual agreement, to each go a different direction. Still, I believe divorce should be avoided, except for instances of abuse, etc. Way too many people buy into this "starter wife" mentality which is just pathetic. If you're not planning on being with your wife til death (or as I believe through eternity) then don't make the commitment, or better yet, change your attitude. I believe that most marital issues can be worked out if both parties "choose" to act differently and "choose" to love one another.
The bottom line is that a marriage vow is sacred, and as long as two people are married, it ought to be treated as such. What happens in the movies is not real, no matter how you spin it. Infidelity is never an answer, if you believe in honoring your word and having integrity in life.
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I don't buy into the affair and forgiveness bit in the least. In my opinion the majority of human beings get into relationships without a clue what they really are suppose to be about. I mean we mate and bring children into this world yet the philosophy seems to center on sex being the major part of a relationship. I seen a show about how a woman's brain shrinks in one area after she has children and grows much larger in another. It grows larger in intuition. At that point if the relationship wasn't put together decently in the first place a strain is placed on it, especially for the male. He's really part of it to offer her security in raising the children but in my opinion he probably didn't offer her that in the first place. I think I like most males have a tendency to have a female take over where our mothers left off when we get involved.
Even the word 'love' is a bummer because I believe love is a choice we make the same as making the choice to hate. I definitely am sold on relationship belong being established on earning each other's trust and respect so then the choice to love can be with more clarity in our individual minds. I can love and hate the same person in a relationship but when there's trust and respect earned my choice making is more concentrated on the importance of the person to me and not just the person's body or what the person can do for me. It's what I can do for another that matters in a lasting relationship.
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In the movie SUMMER SOLSTICE with Henry Fonda, he's unfaithful to his wife. They had passion in the beginning, and it into something else, but they both had affairs. Hers was to understand his, his was because, for whatever reason, he was madly in love. He ended the affair, after realizing the pain it caused his wife, due to having it inflicted on him with her infidelity, and their relationship prospered. He said, and I'm sure the character was true to his word, that even late in his life he was in love with the other woman, but she made him love his wife even more.
In the class that analyzed the film, the teacher said I was the only one to not have a hard time accepting their infidelity. Perhaps it is our culture, but perhaps an affair isn't the worst thing to happen to a marriage either. I'm not saying it's right, or that it's OK, or even good, but I'm just saying there's another side to it that, in some cases, might make it that way.
I used to think it was absolutely wrong, but I also used to think you'd only ever love one person. Ironically, SOME people who cheat, love their spouses, &/or, even can have healthier relationships.
Yes, it's something to look into (why's there desire or infidelity?), but what's a normal healthy relationship, and who are we to judge what's right or wrong for something with its own life--as healthy relationships are.
& no, don't run from difficulty, but realize when too much is unhealthy & you should stop.
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I agree with this, yet I also agree with all these European countries where both parties take on lovers. However, they're a different culture, with a different attitude on sex. But what if somebody makes the commitment without ever having had that passion they've always craved so desperately...ever? What if they've made the commitment because denying their spouse was too much of what they'd endured--no chance ever given? What if they'd given up on passion, after in their 40's, due to it never having been requited, just dangled in front of someone desperate for it, and they've since established a long term relationship that is an unselfish love--they do gain from in ways, but lacks not only passion, all the other things mentioned as gains here? What if that's, not only the best relationship that person was able to ever have, it's the same for the other who thinks it's passionate and all is fine, but would be heartbroken beyond repair if they knew otherwise? What if the one who's been denied all those wonderful things everyone else seems to enjoy from any type of relationship, but they've committed to a wonderful deserving person for those reasons, finally finds the passion they'd long said goodbye to, that they'd tried so many times to invoke in their current relationship, in another? If the spouse were never to know, so as not to be hurt, and the adulterer could do it without guilt, why would it be a bad thing to have an affair?
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