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Archive for December, 2009

Relationship Questions You Need To Ask

December 29th, 2009

If you want to fix your relationship, then you need to ask the right question. Relationship repair can be tricky in the best of times, which is why you need to know the right questions, relationship questions, to get the information you need to repair what has been broken.

This is not necessarily an easy thing to do. Most of us won’t want to ask these questions, relationship problems or not. This is because the natural human reaction to things is to try and avoid the problem as much as possible.

But relationship problems will not fix themselves. You need to make the effort to fix them, not wait for your ex to magically come around. You are the one who has realized there is a problem, and this means that you have to be the one to do the work to fix it. Whether you like it or not, it’s become your responsibility.

Which brings us to the questions. Relationship questions are not easy to ask, but the answers will be worthwhile. This is the information you need to do the work that will bring you back to having a healthy relationship with your girlfriend or boyfriend, husband or wife.

Question One: What Do You Want?

This is a question you need to ask yourself and your significant other. You need to ask yourself because you need to be able to know and articulate what it is you want from your relationship. You need to ask them so that you know that the things you want from the relationship are, if not the same, then at least compatible.

Question Two: What Were Our Best Times?

This is another question designed to get you looking at how the two of you view your relationship. If you both view different times in your relationship as the best times, this will give you a very strong indication of where things went wrong, which is the point of these questions. Relationship is based on knowing what these questions will tell you.

Question Three: What Don’t You Like?

Again, this is a question both of you need to ask. This is an area where it is crucial that you don’t assign blame or allow your emotions to be hurt. You need to take a full inventory of where you stand and knowing what it bothering both of you is essential.

Question Four: Where are we Heading?

The point of this is question is to see where you both think the relationship should and where it will go. Without knowing this, you won’t know how bad the relationship is. If your partner thinks that the relationship is doomed to failure, this is information you need to know.

The point of doing all this is to find the true answers to these questions. Relationship rescue will be much easier when you have this information, because it will give a roadmap of the problems you need to resolve to have a stronger relationship. This is only the beginning, and you should seek out and find the information that will allow you to overcome these problems.

Ending A Relationship Know When To Stay And When To Go

December 29th, 2009

When ending a relationship, it’s important to know how to end a relationship properly and whether you should be ending a relationship. Not every relationship that has problems needs to end, and not every relationship that has ended needs to stay that way. The trick is having the knowledge to make the right decision.

Some relationships truly do need to end. If your partner is abusing you, you need to get out of the relationship as soon as possible. If you’re on other side, and you’re having trouble controlling your temper, then you’re obligated to break up with the other person for both of your sakes.

Aside from the obvious, when should you consider ending a relationship? When it’s clear to you that the two of you no longer want the same things in a relationship. If the other person wants to get married and you don’t, that’s a sign. When you find yourself moved to cheat on them with someone else, that’s a sign.

Ending a relationship shouldn’t follow a big fight. This is how good relationships end up being broken apart when there’s no reason they had to. When considering breaking it off with the other person, you need to have a clear head about the entire relationship.

Once you decided to break it off, you need to do it the right way so that you can both move on. There are three basic guidelines you need to follow:

Don’t Play Games – Nobody likes to break up with someone. That’s normal, but there’s a temptation to try and make the other person do the dirty work in ending a relationship. Mostly subconsciously, we pick fights and play games to try and antagonize the other person into breaking up with us.

This is a trap you need to avoid. Be direct, be honest and be proactive; make sure you treat the other person with respect. Trying to goad them into breaking up with you will simply make you both miserable.

Do it in Person – Breaking up is a very painful experience for both parties. It is very tempting to bring the relationship to the end by email or phone or, these days, text message. That way, you don’t have to see the look on their face or if you leave a message, without even talking to him.

But obviously, this is no way to end a relationship. If you do not interact with the other person will breaking up, you won’t have any kind of closure. This defeats the entire point of making a clean break. Do both of you a favor and break up in person in a relatively private place.

Be Honest – You need to tell the other person exactly why you are ending the relationship. This isn’t easy, because they will have tendency to try and talk you out of it, but the truth is that lying to them about the reasons doesn’t help either of you. Be honest, even if they don’t want to hear it.

If you follow these three tips, you will find ending a relationship to be a much smoother, much more effective process. Be aware, though, that along the way, you might find that the problems you have are fixable. If this is the case, you need to find some resources to help you mend and repair the relationship.

How To Come Back Stronger Than Ever After Infidelity

December 29th, 2009

After infidelity, a relationship is going to be at its weakest point, but it is possible to come back from it. Infidelity is one of the major reasons that relationships fall apart, but the truth is that cheating is almost always a symptom of something bigger. As bad as cheating is, it’s not what you need to focus on to restore your relationship after infidelity.

Cheating is usually a sign that the person doing the cheating is looking for something they’re not getting from the relationship. This isn’t saying that the partner who was cheated on is doing anything wrong, just that there is a major problem in bedrock of the relationship.

If you are going to come back after infidelity, then there are a few tips you need to follow in order to make the process as easy and effective as possible.

Tip One: Take Charge

If you want to repair your relationship after infidelity, then you need to take charge. The cheating might not have been your fault, but the responsibility for fixing things is going to have to fall on you. You can’t make your partner do something, so you can’t just sit back and hope that things will fix themselves.

This will also help you to feel better about the relationship. Being cheated on makes you feel like a victim, and taking charge to repair your relationship will give you back the strength and pride that cheating took away.

Tip Two: Don’t Play the Blame Game

The human thing is to want to blame the cheater and heap all your emotions on to them. While this may help you feel better, it won’t help you rebuild your relationship after infidelity. You need to put away blame and move past it.

This can be difficult, but the best thing you can do is not expect an apology and don’t fish for one. You’ll get one, if the relationship can be saved, but if you spend timing trying to get them to admit how much they hurt you, you won’t be spending the time you need to be spending fixing the relationship.

Tip Three: Find the Reasons Why

Infidelity is a sign that something is broken in your relationship. Even if you manage to get over the cheating and get back together, if you don’t fin d out what caused it, then your relationship is going to fail.

This will take brutal honesty on both of your parts, and it’s important that you try to keep your emotions in check. Your partner’s reasons are going to sound like excuses, but if you keep communicating you will eventually be able to find the truth about what needs to be fixed in your relationship.

Tip Four: Learn to Trust Again

In many ways, this is the toughest thing to do after infidelity. The trust has been broken, and it will be hard to get it back, but you need to be able to trust your partner again. No relationship has ever succeeded based on suspicion and paranoia.

There are many resources available to help you recover after infidelity, and you should make use of them. Repairing your relationship is hard enough, no matter what, so take the extra step and get the help you need to make things good again.

Relationship Breakups What You Need To Know

December 23rd, 2009

Relationship breakups are a terrible thing, and are devastating for most people. What most people want, more than anything else, is to find someone to spend their lives with, someone who will always be there for you. Thinking you have this and then losing it is one of the worst events most people will suffer in their life.

After relationship breakups, people tend to suffer from the same kind of emotional healing process that people who have suffered the death of a loved one. This isn’t surprising, since the death of a relationship is very much like the death of someone. But unlike the death of a person, sometimes something can be done to take back the death of a relationship.

Relationship breakups do not have to be forever in many cases. Far more relationships can be saved than those that are permanently destroyed. What you have to know and understand is the various kinds of relationship breakups that exists and what you can do about them.

This article is going to give you a brief look into the kinds of relationship breakups and what strategies you’ll need to undertake to fix them. Not all relationships can be repaired, and not all of them should be, but most of them can. You just need to know the right techniques for each kind of breakup.

The Abusive Relationship Breakups

This is a breakup that should stay a break up. Unlike the other relationship breakups, this one can and should stick. There’s a chance that you may be considering returning to someone who physically or mentally abused you, but you need to stick with this kind of breakup. No one should take being abused.

The Mutual Breakup

Sometimes, both people in the relationship may want out and the relationship ends by mutual consent. Now, if this is truly a mutual breakup, there’s a good chance that this is another relationship that shouldn’t be repaired. On the other hand, if it was just called a relationship and was really one of the next two kinds of relationship breakups, that’s a different matter entirely.

They Broke Up with You

This is usually the most hurtful kind of break up. If this has happened to you, what you need to do first is figure out exactly why the relationship ended. Once you know this, you have to decide if what went wrong is something you could or should fix. If it is something you can and should fix, then this needs to be your starting point.

You Broke Up with Them

Sometimes, we break up with people and then realize we’ve thrown away something good. When this happens, the first thing you need to do is reestablish trust. This means that you’re going to essentially start the relationship over. Start slow, with coffee dates or something similar, and then work your way slowly towards repairing the relationship.

No matter which of the relationship breakups you’ve experienced, you need to be aware that help is out there. You just need to find the right kind of advice and instruction to allow you to mend feeling and repair your relationship with your ex.

Can I Get My Ex Back If…

December 22nd, 2009

“Can I get my ex back if . . . ?”

Whether the break up is very recent or it happened a long time ago, you probably ask yourself that question a lot. Sometimes you have to recognize that it’s simply time to move on. But if you’re determined get your ex back, there are some things you can do.

Can I get my ex back if I play hard to get?

And there are some things you should probably not do, like pretend you really don’t want your ex. Playing hard to get is a popular ploy, but very often it only discourages the person who wants you from trying to get you. If you play hard to get with your ex, it might just be easier for them to let you go and move on to someone who’s easier to catch!

Let your ex know that you’re available and ready to fix the relationship. Let your ex know that you’re willing to do what it takes to make it work this time. That approach will probably give you a better chance of getting back together than playing hard to get and playing games.

Can I get my ex back if I try to pressure him or her?

Trying to get someone to do something they don’t want to is a sure way to upset them. Whether you’re trying to get someone to do a chore or to remember to pick something up after work, too much reminding can become nagging.

Pressuring your ex to take you back will quickly sound like nagging, too. Your ex might decide that since you do little but complain and nag about the break up, it’s easier not to be around you. So you might drive your ex farther away by trying too hard to fix things.

Try the opposite approach.

Stop asking your ex to come back. Once you’ve made it clear that you want to get back together, they know it. Let it go and focus on being a good friend to your ex, with no expectations.

This might be difficult, especially at first, but if your ex sees that you’re really a pleasant person to be around and not a nag, they’ll want to spend more time around you. And that could lead to you making up and getting back together. At least, you have a better chance at it than if your ex dreads seeing you and hearing you harp on them about coming back.

Can I get my ex back if I make them jealous?

You know your ex best. If jealousy worked in the past, it might again. But it might make them so jealous they become angry and decide that since you’ve moved on, so will they.

Can I get my ex back if they’re dating someone else?

It’s possible, but it’s the most difficult situation. Concentrate on being fun and enjoyable to be around, and give them a chance to miss your good qualities. Then see what happens.

Emotional Infidelity – What It Is And How To Recognize It

December 21st, 2009

Emotional infidelity is almost always the first step on the road to cheating, and may well be considered cheating its own right. There is far more to a relationship than just have a physical relationship with only one person and one person only. The truly satisfying and meaningful part of a relationship is the bond you share with the other person.

The emotional connection is a deep and integral part of a relationship, which is what makes emotional infidelity so devastating. The true bond in a relationship goes far beyond just physical fidelity; it’s a large part of what makes a relationship a relationship. A relationship is about sharing your thoughts, feeling and soul with another.

Emotional infidelity is when your significant other begins to form those same kinds of bonds with another person. This almost always goes along with withdrawing from the original relationship.

You go from being your significant other’s friend and confidant to being a stranger in your own relationship. This freezing out can be difficult to deal with, and may be hard to see. You may feel that the problem is on your end and that you are the one doing something wrong.

At the same time, emotional infidelity involves the other person forming bonds with another person outside the marriage. One of the terrible things about emotional infidelity is that it can be difficult to define and identify. Because there is nothing as obvious as sleeping with another person going on, saying for certain that it is going on is trickier to prove.

One big sign is a sexual chemistry between the two people, flirting and teasing each other. It may seem innocent because there is nothing physical going on, but emotional infidelity will cause the person to behave differently.

This is a key point that you need to keep in mind when you suspect emotional infidelity. Everybody has friends; men have their best buddies, women have their girlfriends. Many people have close friends of the opposite sex, people with whom they confide much of their lives.

This isn’t emotional infidelity, and the big thing to look for is signs of guilt. The big sign that someone is becoming involved with someone else on an emotional level is the fact that your significant other feels compelled to hide it. No one hides their relationships with just friends from their significant others. When they’re hiding something, it means there is something to hide.

Emotional infidelity is a problem in and of itself, but it tends to be one of the early signs of a relationship going bad. The next step is usually physical infidelity, and this is almost always preceded by emotional infidelity. If you can recognize and do something about emotional infidelity, you may have an easier time than if you catch it at a later stage.

The two big signs are emotional disengagement and secretive behavior. If your significant other is pulling away from you, becoming distance or hostile, this is a big sign. Likewise, if they are acting suspiciously, hiding phone calls and emails, avoiding questions and just generally acting like they have a secret, this is a sign.

You need to catch emotional infidelity in its early stages an fix it. This can be tough to do, but if you suspect emotional infidelity in your relationship, then you need to seek out and advice and instruction on how to fix your relationship.

4 Steps To Stop Your Divorce And Save Your Marriage

December 21st, 2009

The thing you need to know is that it is not too late to stop your divorce. The break up of marriage is one of the worst things that can happen to a person, and it is all too common. More than half of all marriages today will end in divorce. When you consider that divorce is commonly regarded as one of the most stressful events that can happen in a person’s life, even beyond the death of a dead one, this is a lot of heartache out there in the world.

The tragedy is that most of these breakups could have been prevented. You do not have to be a statistic. You can do something about it; you can stop your divorce. I won’t say that it is going to be easy, but it is possible. You just have to follow the steps to rebuild what has been broken.

You can’t expect to stop your divorce without a plan anymore than you can expect to build a house without blueprints. Fortunately, the help is available and it behooves you to take advantage of it. Your marriage does not have to fail. You can do something.

Step One: Find the Problem

You can’t stop your divorce if you don’t know why your marriage is falling apart. You need to work with your spouse to diagnose what is wrong with the marriage. This is a little harder than it sounds, because what you think might be the reason for the divorce is just a symptom.

Step Two: Fix the Problem

In many ways, this is the most important step. If you can’t fix the problem, then you can’t stop your divorce. Some problems can’t be fixed, but most can. The reason most marriage ending problems don’t get solved is that they are never identified. But you’ve already done that in step one. What you need to do know is work with your spouse to make the compromises that will save your marriage.

Step Three: Remember the Good Times

You’re going to need to remind both your spouse and yourself why you were together to begin with. No matter how bad your marriage has gotten, there was a point when things were good. You should try to get back to that place, but you should always keep in mind that it existed.

Step Four: Start Over

The last step in your quest to stop your divorce is to begin again. You need to look at your marriage as a brand new marriage. While you should keep in mind the good times, you need to forget the bad times and learn about your spouse all over again. Things have changed, and you need to make your marriage work with the person you are married to, not the person you used to be married to or the person you wish they were. Accept them as they are, and work together to build a better, stronger marriage.

If you follow these four steps, you will be able to stop your divorce. If you need more help, then don’t be afraid to look for it. There are systems out there to help fix what is broken in your relationship, and you need to be willing to use them.

Relationship Breakup

December 19th, 2009

Ease the Pain of a Relationship Breakup Right Now

A relationship breakup is one of the hardest things most people will ever have to do Indeed, most studies on stress show that a divorce ranks even higher on the stress scale than losing a loved one. Most people don’t have any idea how to properly handle a relationship breakup.

The end of a relationship will always be painful, even if it’s one that needs to be broken up. You’ve spent a lot of time and emotion with this person, and even if you’re the one doing the breaking up, it’s going to come with a lot of hurt feelings.

Obviously, this going to be even worse if you’re the one being broken up with. A relationship breakup that you don’t want or expect is a horrible event. What you have to keep in mind is that a relationship needs two people in it. You may want it to go on, but if the other person has checked out, you may have to consider that the relationship needed to end.

Still there are techniques you can use to ease the pain of a relationship breakup. I’m going to outline several techniques that have been proven to help relieve the pain of a broken heart and move you past the hurt.

Step One: Figure Out Why

You need to know why the relationship ended. This doesn’t matter if you were the one doing the breaking up or the one being broken up with. Either way you need to do some soul searching to find out what the reasons were behind the breakup. If you have some questions about why you broke up, then you’re never going to be able to move beyond the relationship breakup.

Step Two: Get Rid of Reminders

You need to get some space between you and the person you’ve broken up with. This means that you can’t go to bed each night hanging on to your ex’s old sweater. You need to clean the deck and get your mind off of them. You need to make a clean break, so you need to put away all the little reminders.

Step Three: Positive People

There are negative people in the world and there are positive people. If you’ve just experienced a relationship breakup, you’re going to find that you are in a very negative place. What you need to do is find the most upbeat and positive people you can and spend as much time with them as possible. In combination with the previous two steps, this will put you in the right place to move.

Step Four: Start Dating Again

The final step in recovering from a relationship break up is to start dating other people. The thing you need to keep in mind is that you are not trying to replace your ex, you’re just trying to start seeing the world as a place without them. So you need to see other people and get out there. Don’t look at every date as a new chance at love, just look at them as a way to get your mojo back.

The four steps will have you over your relationship breakup in no time flat. But keep in mind; you don’t necessarily have to get over a break up. Sometimes good relationships fall apart for the wrong reasons, and you can fix the damage. You just need to find the right plan.

Define The Relationship To Save Your Relationship

December 19th, 2009

If you want to have a healthy relationship, you need to define the relationship. One of the biggest reasons that relationships have problems is because both people in the relationship have different expectations and assumptions about what kind of relationship they’re in.

Frankly, if you think you’re on the road to marriage and happily ever after and your boyfriend or girlfriend thinks that’s what you have is a nice light fling, you are going to have problems. Hurt emotions, broken hearts and generally misery tend to lie in the future for people who fail to define the relationship they’re in.

The problem is that everyone, and I mean everyone, tends to think of everything they do as normal. This is a problem because there is no such thing as normal. Every person is a unique bundle of needs, fears, and desires. The strengths and weaknesses that make us who we are make the need to define the relationship essential.

Whether we realize it or not, we are all using ourselves as the baseline for behavior. This means that on some very essential levels, we assume that other people want what we want, feel what we feel. Most of us are aware that this isn’t the case on a conscious level, but it’s hard to put this into action all the time.

As long as things seem to be going okay, we have a tendency to let this go on more and more. After all, when they seem happy and you seem happy, there’s no reason to examine your assumptions and expectations. Most of us only do that when things have gone wrong in a relationship.

This why the need to define the relationship early on is so great. Because other people are, well, other people. They may be happy in the relationship, but they may be happy for different reasons. If you let this go too far, you may be setting yourself up for resentment and pain.

By taking the time to define the relationship, you are taking the reins in the relationship. You will be able to see where you are and where you are heading. This will allow you to have a healthier, stronger relationship because you will both be pulling in the same direction rather than going off in two different emotional directions until the strain on the relationship is so great that it breaks.

The problem with taking action to define the relationship is that it’s not the comfortable path to take. The conversations can be awkward, and there’s always an element of fear that the two of you will have such radically different expectations and goals that the relationship may end.

These are false worries, for the most part. You need to look at the effort to define the relationship as being exercise for your relationship: it may be tough and the time and there’s a small chance that you may get injured, but the truth is that it will almost always make the relationship better and stronger.

If you need help in figuring out what you need to do to define the relationship, there is loads of help available. This is one of the best things you can do to build a strong relationship, and it is well worth the effort.

 

How To Survive An Affair – Relationships That Last

December 17th, 2009

After an affair, relationships can be hard to mend. The most essential part of any relationship is trust, and if you’ve cheated this bond is broken. The good news is that it is possible for a relationship to come back from cheating. The bad news is that you are going to have to work for it.

The first thing you need to do is swear off affair relationships. This is not a guide on how to cheat on your partner. If you’re going to continue to cheat, then these guidelines will not be of much help to you. If you’re willing to do the work, then these tips will help you repair your relationship.

The first thing you to need to do is admit your affair. Relationships are built on trust, and you can’t have trust when you’re lying to the other person. Not telling them is lying, a lie of omission. You need to tell them if they don’t know, even though it is going to hurt.

Aside from general honesty, which is always a virtue, there is a practical side to this as well. If they don’t know, they will find out, and it’s better that you take the bullet now rather than add to the pain when they do find out. If you try to keep it a secret, you’re going to torpedo the relationship.

The next thing you need to do is to take the blame. You may feel that your partner did something to drive you to cheat. We also all have natural tendency to rationalize our behavior, to explain ourselves by coming up with an excuse. But the reality is that it is you that cheated, you that the affair. Relationships aren’t built by blaming your partner for your mistakes. Take the blame and move on.

Then you need to apologize. What you’re looking for here is a complete admission and a sincere apology. You need to make sure that they know that you are truly repentant and regret what you did. Don’t try to explain, just let them know how you feel.

Once you’ve done that, you need to give them some space. They are going to react, they are going to be hurt, and you can’t push them into forgiving you any faster than they are going to already. Be there for them, but make sure that you don’t push. They will be ready when they are ready, and if you try to push the issue then you are only going to succeed in pushing them further away.

After an affair, relationships are going to be different. The best thing you can do is to look at it as if you are starting the relationship all over again. You’re going to need to win back their trust, and this is a process that is going to take some time.

Fortunately, there are resources available to you to help you repair the relationship. It may be hard to admit to yourself that you need help, but using one of the systems can be the best relationship move you’ll ever make.

How to Become an Alpha Male