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Our culture seems to promote love addiction to such an extent that it seems like a healthy way to relate. While it is very common, it is anything but healthy. Because it is so prevalent, many people don’t realize they are love addicted. Henry asks: “Is love addiction like when I see a friendly . . . → Read More: What Does It Mean To Be Love Addicted? Do you find yourself getting hurt over and over in relationships? Discover why. Do you find yourself falling hard for someone and then ending up feeling rejected and not good enough when it ends? This is the problem that Sabrina is having: “Why do I fall so hard for men? How can I . . . → Read More: “I Fall Too Hard In Love”  Comments are closed  Relationships  codependent relationships, Inner Bonding, inner child, loving yourself, Margaret Paul, neediness, Relationships, self worth, self-abandonment, self-love, self-rejection Are you focusing on getting your partner to change to avoid a painful choice that you might need to make? If you find yourself often focused on healing others or hoping you can get others to change, it is likely that you don’t think of this as an addiction. I define an addiction . . . → Read More: Addiction to Getting Others To Change Discover what you may need to address before deciding whether you can be friends with an ex partner.
Elise writes:
“My partner and I separated a year ago. My partner now wants to finalize the relationship but work on being ‘friends’. I am having difficulty connecting as just ‘friends’, it seems to trigger all my old wounds of rejection and abandonment. Do you have any advice?” Elise, the fact that your old rejection and abandonment wounds are getting triggered is a great opportunity for you to become aware of how you are rejecting and abandoning yourself. This is the real issue in the present. Old rejection and abandonment wounds get healed when we learn to give ourselves the love, compassion, gentleness, tenderness, caring and understanding that we didn’t receive as children. As children, our parents or other caregivers created these wounds in us with their unloving behavior. Now, these triggered wounds likely indicate that you are treating yourself the way your parents treated you and themselves. Continue reading “Can We Be Friends After A Relationship Ends?”       Infidelity is a huge challenge, but relationships can heal from this and actually become stronger.
Sheldon wrote this question to me during one of my free webinars: “I am trying to repair my 20-year marriage after my infidelity. I was discovered by my wife two years ago. I had been visiting massage parlors and prostitutes for a period of three years. We spent six months in counseling and made a little progress, but stopped going because of issues with our counselor. My wife is still suspicious of me and has no trust in me at all. How long should I expect before I can regain a little bit of trust. I know that I can’t live the rest of my life like this.” Sheldon, infidelity is a very challenging issue and there is much to learn from it. Something I’m not hearing in your question is what you have learned in the last two years since your wife discovered your infidelity. Visiting massage parlors and prostitutes is a sign of deep self-abandonment. Seeking these experiences indicates that you felt empty inside and were looking to be filled up externally through sexual experiences. If you have not done the inner work of discovering how you were abandoning yourself and have not learned to love yourself, fill yourself, and be a trustworthy loving adult toward yourself and your wife, then it is unrealistic for her to trust you. Continue reading Healing From Infidelity Do you often crave solitude, or is being alone too lonely for you? There is an inherent reason for these differences.
“Language has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone, and the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.” –Benjamin Tillett
I find this quote very interesting in the light of recent research on introversion and extroversion. The research indicates that introversion and extroversion are inborn qualities that stay with us our whole lives. About 20 percent of the population are introverts, which means that their nervous system is very different than that of extroverts. The nervous system of introverts is much more sensitive to stimulation and gets overloaded much more easily than that of extroverts. It is likely that introverts, looking at the above quote, might say, “Well, I’m not sure about the pain of being alone, but I certainly understand the glory of it.” Continue reading Loneliness versus Solitude |
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