Emotional abuse can do just as much harm as physical abuse. While anyone can hurt you physically, someone who knows you as well as your husband or wife does has a real advantage when it comes to doing emotional harm. What is emotional abuse? It is using whatever causes a person fear, anxiety, embarrassment, shame, or rage for the purpose of manipulating them. If you argue with your spouse to the...
Lots of married people, men and women, cheat. Some do it repeatedly, believing they are somehow entitled to do so. Others do it once, looking for emotional or sexual relief when there is great tension in their marriage. This second group usually decides never to try that again, whether they get caught or not. Cheating is contagious. Research shows that those who know someone who has cheated are...
The on/off cycle of love from an abuser can mess with your mind. Which is real, the over-the-top words of affection or the underhanded, life-threatening acts of violence? If your mate still loves you, both. And he or she can control one of them, not the other. No one who loves you will assault you intentionally. Think about this. No one who loves you will assault you intentionally. Assume Love...
Earthquakes and the discovery of your spouse’s extramarital affair have a lot in common. You can live in a place for decades before an earthquake big enough to cause damage occurs. Day after day, even though you know the odds of an earthquake in your lifetime are high, you live your life normally. To do otherwise would keep you tied up in knots. Then one hits. Overturned shelves, collapsed...
I am reading an excellent book by Beverly Engel on emotional abuse and what to do about it. But I keep imagining her asking, “You don’t really expect a man or woman who is being emotionally abused to assume love, do you?” I do. In addition to bringing back a lot of the warmth and joy in a lot of marriages, this simple practice can actually protect you against any type of abuse...
I am a widow who got it right the second time. I have been sharing here since February 14, 2006 what I learned from that experience and from positive psychology, marriage research, and my training as a marriage educator.
