How to Save a Marriage or Relationship From Catastrophe...

If you’ve ever been through a breakup or divorce, you may be a little gun-shy about your next serious relationship. You’re suddenly second guessing yourself and every decision that you make. It can be exhausting and a little (lot) frightening to consider starting over with someone new. What if the same things happen? What if the problems your last relationship had were all your fault and you bring them to the new relationship? What can you do to start your new relationship off on the right foot? Are there any strategies that you can use to help your new, fledgling relationship find its way towards lasting romance? If you want to help your relationship start (and stay) strong, here are some Dos and Don’ts to get you going. Do Make new friends (but keep the old). The Girl Scouts have it right – you need to keep your girls around. Just because you have a new relationship in your life, you don’t have to get rid of your old friendships. Friends add color, stability and flavor to yo...

Let’s face it: casual sex is everywhere. Sitcoms on television glorify the idea of sleeping with the boyfriend/girlfriend of the week, fiction books glamorize affairs and one-night stands, musicians pen ballads about the wonders of relationships based on physical attraction. Sex between consenting adults is perfectly accepted in society, until it happens between your spouse and another consenting adult. Suddenly that barroom pick-up line song takes on a whole new meaning when confronted with the reality that your spouse picked someone else up and took them home for their own episode of casual sex. Sex is (and should be) a sacred part of marriage. Imagine if these were the vows during a wedding ceremony: "I, (insert name), take you (spouse’s name) to be my lawfully wedded wife. I promise to love you, and cherish you, and will be faithful to you until I find someone more attractive. Then, I will probably have sex with them, but will still love you and cherish you. I may find ...

After an affair has been discovered and the initial shock has worn off, there is a sense of helplessness that the offended spouse goes through. Similar to stages of grief, there is a time of shock, anger, mourning and disbelief. In a sense you are mourning the breakdown of a relationship – and what happens from here will be up to you. So what’s next? What do you do after the initial horror? Sometimes what you SHOULDN’T do is just as important as what you do. Don’t: • Make revolutionary decisions about the state of your marriage . The day you discover an affair is not the day to call a divorce lawyer – although you will certainly be tempted to get one on retainer. Spend some time letting the raw emotions settle before deciding one way or another. • Stop taking care of yourself. A couple of days drowning your sorrows in a pint of Ben and Jerry’s is not going to be the end of the world. A couple of months with Cherry Garcia and not only is your marriage in trouble, so is your he...

By the time when a relationship gets to the point of ending, typically one person in the relationship has already worked through the stages of heartache. In most cases, this person is the one who ends the relationship. They tend to recover from the loss of the relationship sooner – making them appear as though they aren’t mourning the loss. In fact, they may have already been through the grieving process – mourning the relationship’s end before it actually ended. For the person who was left, it may seem as though you are the only one upset over the breakup, when in fact ending a relationship can be devastating to both people involved. The loss of a relationship can be worse than a death in many ways. A death has a sense of finality, while the end of a relationship can seem less permanent. When a relationship ends, you will go through several stages of recovery. Everyone progresses through them at different times and in different ways, but generally before you can experience a new ...

Without a healthy sense of self-esteem, it is virtually impossible to find a lasting and real relationship outside yourself. Whether you are currently in a relationship, or you are single and looking for your next relationship, you can improve your self-esteem. Do a self-check and evaluate your self-esteem levels; take some time to work on your self-esteem this week! Are you in charge of your own mood? Let’s face it – we all love receiving a compliment or hearing something nice said about us.  We will smile all day long remembering what was said, and there is nothing wrong with that. The problem comes in when our mood depends on the words of others. If you need the validation of another person to ensure that you are happy, your self-esteem needs some work. Find something about yourself that you love: your sense of humor, your eyes, your snarky sense of wit and focus on those areas. When you find yourself wondering why you haven’t gotten a compliment, start giving yourself o...

It’s like a double whammy: your relationship is over, and depression sets in. Now, you’re alone and depressed a fact which makes you even more depressed and lonely. Trying to break the cycle of depression can be difficult: the very things that you need to do to escape your depression are often the most difficult. How can you get out of the depression cycle? Take one day at a time, and start small. Don’t set grandiose plans for yourself – make it through today. Once you accomplish that, set plans for the next day. When you’ve mastered the one day at a time philosophy you can start to look forward and gradually will find that you’ve left your depression in the past. Surround yourself with supportive friends and family. When you’re depressed, you want to stay home, usually in a darkened room, alone. You need to understand that depression will trick you into thinking that there is nothing wrong with secluding yourself – don’t listen to it. It can be painful and difficult to make y...

At the end of a relationship, it seems as though everyone has some helpful (and sometimes not so helpful) advice. These tidbits of “wisdom” range from the annoying “You’re better off now” to the offensive “I don’t know what you saw in him anyway”. Unfortunately, these little snippets of help often lead to myths that make you feel as though something is wrong with you. Let’s dispel some of the more common breakup myths and get you back onto the road to recovery. “Your ex was a jerk – don’t waste time missing him.” This classic line sounds like good advice on the surface. The reality is that a breakup is an emotional event. While your ex may in fact, be a jerk, you saw something in him that drew you to him, so there was some connection between you. When you lose that connection, there is a loss that can cause you emotional pain. You will still need to move through the stages of loss before you can move on in your life. Even when your ex is a jerk, you are actually mourning the los...