The other day, someone mentioned checking a spouse’s phone, and my hair stood up. What a terrible idea. Let me share some reasons to avoid checking what’s on there unless your husband or wife invites you to do so. Reason 1: Nothing Good Can Possibly Come from This If you’re wondering whether your spouse is cheating on you, and you find no evidence of it on the phone, you know...
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...
A great quote from Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity, in her article After the Storm in the Psychotherapy Networker about which marriages survive and which don’t after she helps them get beyond an act of infidelity. When we seek the gaze of another, it isn’t always our partner we’re turning away from, but the person we ourselves have become. We’re seeking not...
Husbands who cheat — and wives who cheat — cause great harm for selfish reasons. A lot of them have made the news recently, in part because our strong reactions to such news help pull in viewers and readers. Why do we have such strong reactions? Whether we want to see the harm avenged, can’t abide public scrutiny of any private relationship, or don’t believe such a...
Politicians can wield a great deal of public power, but it is often how they conduct their personal relationships that takes it all away in an instant. People are human. They make really foolish mistakes, especially when it comes to feeding their very human desires for love, respect, intimacy, and sex, mistakes almost as shocking to them as to the rest of us. The preventative medicine is not fear...
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.
