Are you Suffering from an Affair?
Is your partner having an affair?
See
Signs of Affairs and
Recovering from Affairs
Although this may be a difficult period, we can
help you save your sanity.
Don't waste time - our telephone coaching can help you!
- Are you considering or have started divorce?
- Are you separated and have little contact with
your spouse?
- Is your partnership is in trouble and you want a
better relationship?
- Do you often argue about sex, money, parenting,
free time, religion etc?
- Do you and your spouse live together but you
feel emotionally disconnected?
Do you want to rebuild a committed happy
marriage?
Or do you want to end an unhappy partnership peacefully?
Or do you just want to make a decision?
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Affair: an intimate or sexual relationship
between people not committed to each other
Crisis: a period of
uncertainty in which disaster or breakdown can be avoided or accelerated |
Systemic Coaching: solutions for emotional and relationship issues, to
change relationship habits
Couple Coaching: simultaneous coaching
to help partners coach, nurture and love each other |
Who has Affairs? ... People like you!
- People in mid-life crisis
- People with opportunity and time
- People who want to fulfill a transference
- People who want to punish a partner or past partner
- People with unmet physical desires or emotional needs
- People who want to diminish the intensity or intimacy
of a partnership
Are you trying to get over an affair? Coaching or counseling that does not
resolve cross-generational entanglements,
transferences,
identity loss and
emotional incest is unlikely to
provide you with long-term solutions. Our relationship coaching can help
you dissolve partnership and marriage problems.
Perhaps you feel emotionally hurt by your partner's romantic,
intimate or sexual affairs. Or perhaps you suffer guilt following your own acts
of betrayal. Yet the casualties of adultery are not only betrayed spouses - the
casualties include the children who will later be found in depressed corners of society.
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Before our ancestors developed
agriculture, mankind walked on the edge of extinction. We may survive because they could copulate to produce children in
almost any
moment, without a mating season. That ancient urge is no excuse for so much
suffering. |
What Price is a Free Lunch?
Some people flirt with everybody because they don't know other
ways to relate. Some people use internet chat to feel an emotional
intimacy that they lack with their life-partners. Some people
take training in hypnosis, NLP and seduction, to increase casual
sex. But few lunches are really free, and the costs are higher
than those people expect.
There ain't no such things as family secrets!
Your children will feel and respond to your or your partner's romantic
or sexual affairs, usually in proportion to the length of time and emotional
intimacy of your affairs, even if they are never told. Someone you love
will pay for your free lunch. One possible result is childhood
ADD and ADHD.
Another is chronic psychosomatic symptoms.
Infidelity is a dark shadow of partnership. Affairs can
provide excitement for the bored, adventure for the restless and pride
for the egotistic. Affairs also provide heartache, guilt, disappointment,
shattered dreams and damaged lives - especially
for the children of parents who have affairs.
Mother-Son
Bonds .
Fathers & Daughters
. Emotional Incest . Psychosomatic
Types of Affairs
Probably you or your partner could have affairs.
Happy partnerships do not eliminate infidelity - and may
even motivate you (if you are entangled
with a parent or past-partner) to reduce the emotional intensity of your
partnership. But affairs rarely
mature into long-term committed relationships.
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Many people
manifest their repressed emotions and sexuality as an obsession to observe and / or
a compulsion to control
the sexuality of other people.
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If you are having an affair, you are probably
focusing on your own needs. You may forget or ignore the needs of your life
partner, affair partner and any children. You may avoid considering the
consequences of your affair on your affair-partner. After all, no-one else will know ... right? See
Signs of Affairs
- Business sex (trading sex for money, promotion
or favors; including prostitution) may have the least emotional
consequences and the highest risk of venereal disease
- Brief sexual affairs and one-night-stands rarely become love affairs or long-term friendships
- In-love affairs can be powerful and life-altering with
overwhelming emotions - and they often end in severe suffering and stress for one or
both affair partners
- Love affairs can become long friendships, although
unpleasant feelings of guilt may cause you to eventually separate from or distance yourself from
your affair partner
Men & Affairs
Men often tell us that they want casual sex for the pleasure of sex. Men
may admit or boast that they pretend to be in love to have sex
with women. (Many women have told us that men pretend to be in love as a preliminary for sex.)
Younger men usually seek sexual affairs rather than love
affairs. Their primary motivations are physical pleasure, to succeed, to impress
friends and to gain sexual experience. Older men are more likely to have
affairs with women who understand, accept and appreciate them. They may also want to
gratify sexual desires that they would not ask of a decent woman. (See
Emotional Blackmail)
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THE ONLY WOMAN I EVER LOVED WAS ANOTHER MAN’S WIFE
... MY MOTHER! Bumper sticker seen in Hawaii
|
Men who are emotionally bonded to their mothers (see
emotional incest)
are likely to have affairs to avoid or to sabotage any committed
partnership. They are also likely to boast to their
male friends about the number and variety of their sexual adventures.
(See Little Prince).
Women & Affairs
The longer a woman is married, the more likely she will have
an affair. Women choose sexual affairs for pleasure and for experience. An
affair may provide a woman with missing
emotional intimacy. A woman may have affairs to create a reserve source of
intimacy, especially if she feels bored, disappointed or uncertain about
her partnership or marriage.
We find that women are more likely to satisfy missing emotional needs
in a partnership by mentally reliving past romantic affairs, or by
preoccupation with the love
lives of other people (gossip and soap operas etc).
We also note that women who are emotionally bonded to their fathers (see
emotional incest) seem much more likely to have
affairs and partnerships with immature older men
(see Little Princess).
Affairs page divide here ...
Reasons for Intimate or Sexual Affairs
Do you claim that
an affair merely fulfills your needs, and helps you avoid feeling lonely or bored?
Do you imply, "I want to feel good regardless of the consequences of my
choices on my partner or family - or on my affair-partner's partner or family".
You may justify affairs with: "I want ...
- to feel alive
- excitement and adventure
- to rescue or help someone
- to seduce or to be seduced
- to avoid the reality of my aging
- to fulfill an impulse or compulsion
- to feel desirable or sexually potent
- new or unusual sexual experiences
- to distract myself from important problems
- to enjoy love, intimacy, and companionship
- to defy my social, religious or parental rules
- to enjoy sensual pleasure and sexual release
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Many people who say they "never would ..." still do!
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Attacking, criticizing or defending these justifications
will not improve relationships nor resolve partnership needs. Our systemic
coaching can help restore peace, balance ... and love.
Sexual Abuse . Sexual Dysfunction
. Sexual Solutions
But we were so much in love...
The experience of
romantic love may seem to replace any need to develop physical,
emotional and spiritual partnership skills. However, sooner or later, lovers
will confront their responsibilities and transferences. Then they can either
create deeper bonds, or stagnate, or separate.
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I had affairs
because ... my partner was too good to throw away,
but not good enough
to keep! British Columbia, Canada |
Predictable Partnership
. Enjoying
Partnership . Consequences of Abortion
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We both had affairs
... we thought it was better to have four happy people
than two unhappy people! But we
separated anyway. NB, Canada |
Affairs & Divorce
Affairs endanger marriage, although some
people say that affairs helps them survive marriage.
Divorce is more common among people who have
affairs.
Women who have multiple affairs, especially
if her affairs start early in a marriage, have the highest divorce rates.
For a woman, if a male partner has a
homosexual affair with another man - there may seem absolutely no alternative to
separation.
For a man, if a female partner has a lesbian affair
with another woman - this may not be perceived as betrayal. He may even want
to join them.
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Women may give sex to get
love and men may give love to get sex! |
Affairs & Recovery
Romantic or sexual affairs can control emotions resulting from
suppressed or unmet needs. A first step to recovery is
relationship diagnosis. Our telephone coaching offers help if you:
- avoid communicating your agendas, values and needs
(partnership skills)
- obsess about some other person (entanglements)
- carry guilt or depression from previous relationships
(entanglements)
- experience ongoing conflict (complex
conflict)
- express your lost "sense of self" (lost
identity)
- identify with someone else (identification)
- identify with two people (identity conflict)
- express toxic or resourceless "I am ..." beliefs
(relationship bonds)
- express trauma and overwhelming emotions (trauma)
- follow toxic role models or post-hypnotic suggestion
(mentor damage)
One or both partners may use
complaints and excuses to justify deception and betrayal.
Coaching after Affairs
Romantic affairs have strong emotional consequences, which may
be delayed until an affair is over.
- Blame: Following exposure, the partners may
energetically and uselessly argue about topics such as "Who really
caused this?" or "Why did you make me do it!"
- Denial: Many people who choose sexual affairs
will deny and lie about their actions if the truth may bring immediate
unpleasant consequences.
- Grief: The suffering of betrayal, broken dreams
and shattered love may be overwhelming to the betrayed person. Suicide
attempts may follow a romantic affair.
- Guilt: The betraying partner, the betrayed
partner and the "third person" carry burdens of guilt. This guilt
may be immediate or delayed. Hidden guilt can manifest as anxiety,
depression,
hypochondria and psychosomatic disease.
Following a partnership crisis, it may seem impossible for the
partners to avoid overwhelming emotions and childish behavior. our telephone
coaching can make space for and referee desperately needed discussions and clarification.
We offer:
- Individual coaching with both partners
to clarify entanglements and
bonds
- Couple coaching with both partners
to identify and resolve transferences
- Couple coaching with both partners to make decisions and
plan the future
Couple Coaching
Flowchart & Testimonial
Healing Partnership after Affairs
Romantic affairs rarely last more than two years.
Short-term solutions that attempt to fix and forget the surface symptoms of
affairs may not resolve or even expose the underlying entanglements.
Our systemic solutions can heal entanglements and emotional bonds, and
dissolve relationship damage.
Effective and
joyous partnership results from partners
know and respect each other's values and needs; and by cooperating to
fulfill those needs. Our relationship coaching can provide
partnership skills and coaches people to end relationship damage and deal with affairs.
You are not alone.
Predictable Partnership
. Enjoy
Partnership . Evaluate Partnership .
Partnership Breakdown
Do you want to dissolve success blocks and relationship issues?
Do you want success and quality
relationships?
Do you want Telephone Coaching?
Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 2002-2009 All rights reserved
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