Alcohol Kills Relationships: are you having an affair with the bottle?

Alcohol problems kill relationships. It's as simple as that. Check out the page that that lead sentence links to and you can find some straight dope from a variety of sources. It isn't all that encouraging news, but what is is.

So, that ol' devil booze messes us and our families up. We've heard that more than a few times, but we don't have a problem with it, me and you, do we? It's those other guys who get out of control.

Not so quick! Unfortunately, as we get older, it takes less alcohol to have bigger effects on us. It sneaks up on us and what was just fine ten years ago can be over the top now. I don't know about you, but when I went through some of the self-screening checklists it made me think a bit more carefully about how I use alcohol.

Not fair you say? Well of course not. Neither is needing less calories to maintain the same weight, but that's the way it is. What are you going to do about it?

There are all kinds of infidelity and they don't necessarily involve other people. Is drinking your affair? Check it out.

More Infidelity: now it's John Edwards

Now it's John Edwards who we hear has been having an affair. What the heck is with these guys?

On the one hand, one might think that what politicians do in their private lives is just that, private. Or maybe that line of thinking starts with an assumption that it should be. I have found this view quite attractive and apparently logical for many years, but I am starting to wonder.

All moral, ethical, and pragmatic relationship reasons not to cheat on your spouse aside, . . . if you are a public figure you are going to get caught.

And, if you have taken on a public trust, if you have said you were willing to take a leadership position in championing the interests of groups of people, then you had better not do obviously dumb things to lessen your ability to do that. It isn't a breach of trust just with your partner, but also with all the people who supported you.

So here's Edwards, who was arguably one of the most articulate and effective spokesman for groups of people who aren't doing so well in society today, going out and making it easy to devalue not just him as a person, but also the issues, ideas, and ideals that he expressed.

Does this apply to all the rest of us who walk around in relative anonymity? Does it matter less if we do stupid, destructive things?

I used to think that it didn't, at least not in the same way, but giving our trial lawyer-millionaire-friend of the disadvantaged bad example of the week, John Edwards, some more thought I have changed my mind.

The only thing that is different in the size of the circle of damage. And, to each individual within the circle of that influence affairs, cheating, infidelity is just as hurtful. In fact, the smaller that circle, the more concentrated the hurt.

If your level of moral development hasn't progressed far enough to consider the interests and needs of others, for crying out loud be smart and keep yourself out of trouble!

ps - and if you think you can just not get caught and stay out of trouble that way . . . WAKE UP!! and while you're smelling the coffee notice all the cell phones with cameras built in, the IP addresses with your web activities, the reverse phone number services. Even without all that stuff your odds of not getting caught were never that good, but now the deck is stacked against you even more.

For more consideration and resources on this topic, check out the infidelity section of my website, www.better-relationships-over-50.com

Does Infidelity Ever Die?

Talk to anyone who has ever been caught in an affair, admitted to an affair, or seriously accused of being in an affair and one thing you will hear over and over is that nothing they do or don't do seems to make any difference. It is always hanging over them.


Talk to anyone who has caught their partner in an affair, had their partner admit to an affair, or who has seriously thought their partner was having an affair without being able to prove it or get a confession and the one thing that you will hear over and over is that there seem to be nothing that makes them feel safe again.


Apparently, how surprised you are by your partner cheating correlates directly with how bad it is for you, how hard it is to move on.


This is why finding out that your partner, lover, spouse has been unfaithful to you leads to a form of post traumatic stress disorder. The theory goes something like this - -

• We live in a very uncertain and dangerous world and there isn't much we can do about it. The incidence of bad things happening may be low, but it is always there.


• To survive and manage the uncertainty, we act as if it isn't going to happen to us. As long as it doesn't, this strategy works pretty well.


• When the unimaginable does happen to us or to someone close to us and this strategy is torn from us, our internal environment becomes very unstable. In other words our mind/body/emotional system freaks out.


• Getting back is possible, but tough.

Moral to the story? If you decide to mess around, if you allow yourself to be convinced to cheat, if you think that you are just too wonderful for only one person, if you find yourself slipping into infidelity and don't do anything to stop it, you are setting yourself for disaster.


You will probably blow your relationship up and if you avoid that you'll be taking on baggage that you'll lug around for a long long time. Ask anyone who's tried it.

Revenge Affairs

Dr. Bob Huizenga has recently written about what he calls the Revenge Affair as one of the identifiable types of infidelity. What is it?

The obvious answer is that when your partner has had an affair, you get back at him or her by having one of your own. Simple, right? Well, yes and no, because I think that emotional revenge or distancing can happen in a number of ways using a number of tools.

Can you be untrue to your relationship by how you relate to:

• your children?


• your grandchildren?


• your job?


• your hobby?


• your humanitarian causes?

I think that you can. It all depends on how you do it, what your intention is, and how it affects your partner.

Worth some thought? That's up to you.

Survive the Affair

Affairs deliver a huge body blow to any relationship, whether they are

• suspected, but not proven


• have recently been discovered


• are still going on


• have recently stopped

or . . . .


• occurred a long time ago, but the hurt, confusion, and lack of trust live on.

They aren't something that anyone can reasonably be expected to know what to do about, whatever role you are in. It just isn't that kind of thing.




Which is why I support getting and using advice information from a professional who has spent years working with people in the throes of affairs and their effects. A readily available and affordable source can be checked out by clicking HERE.




And do me a favor, would you? Tell me what you think of both the free information that you find there and any of the services and products that you may buy too. It looks quite good to me, but everyone has their own specific needs.

Affairs and Airplane Crashes

Affairs are deadly things when it comes to relationships. And that goes for ones that are happening now and the ones that were over last week and the ones that were over 10 or 20 years ago.

A quick look at the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists' website on the topic contains references to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) type reactions, especially from the partner who was left for another and especially if they were taken by surpise and didn't know it was happening.

But once it's upon you, what do you do then? Eh?

Everything is off kilter. Most of us in such a situation wouldn't be completely clear which way was up and which down. And those of us who thought we did, would very likely be wrong. Not unlike an airplane pilot who gets disoriented.

For airplanes and relationships the response is pretty much the same. In the airplane they teach you to put your attention on the instruments, level the wings, and put the nose on the horizon. Forget about everything else until that is in order.

Of course if somehow you've been in a power dive pointing straight at the ground and you have had enough altitude and skill to get the wings level and the airplane in level flight, neither climbing or descending, nothing else seems very important for quite a while.

Same with the relationship under intense pressure. Back to basics and let the details be taken care of in their own time. Deep breath. Feet on the ground. Get yourself back in touch with what you believe. Work through what you feel, Act in integrity with that. Fly straight and level for a while before you set about doing anything. Just be there. With yourself. With your partner.

Avoid anyone or anything that is telling you that you just have to to anything else. You'll know what you want to do in time. And it will be right, . . . for you. Take care of you.

For some excellent advice and/or support in this area, check out Dr. Robert Huizenga's stuff by clicking here.

Keep a light hand on the controls until things are settled down enough that you can make decisions from a place of knowing and strength.

Affairs Are Yesterday's News - So?

Apparently, extra-marital relationships and their effects are nothing new or surprising to a majority of Americans polled recently. At least that's what it says here in USA Today.

But even though most of us know someone who's been involved in one, they're still a really hurtful mess. Right?

What's the deal? It's sort of like smoking, cars, or wars.

Last time I heard the numbers the number of people who die from the effects of smoking tobacco each year are somewhere around what would happen if a jumbo jet full of people were to crash and kill everyone every day for a year. We'd never put up with an airline safety record like that.

Again, though my numbers aren't exact I think the number of people killed in the US annually in automobiles is somewhere between 40 and 50 thousand. Every year. But we have to drive, right? I guess so. I'm not sure. And do I have to drive with half-blind, drunken, aggressive idiots? I guess so. I'm not sure. Maybe I'm one of those in the eyes of someone else.

Sometimes you'll hear someone note that it's safer to be in Iraq than to drive across the country in a car or to smoke. Is that right? Could be, but what the heck does that mean to me? There's something about other people trying to hurt or kill me than makes it different. Right? Maybe.

Which brings us back to affairs. Are they like cars and cigarettes, . . . or wars? And, does it matter?

Affairs Leave One Partner With PTSD?

It's been reported that people whose partners have an affair often show emotional responses similar to the post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) symptoms of people who have been through fires, wars, assaults, etc.

The less they saw it coming, the worse the reaction.

So, with all the affairs that apparently are going on, maybe we have a whole group of survivors that is largely unrecognized as such.

- - - -

In my limited experience, partners who have strayed and want to get back have a pretty high level of ongoing stress themselves, but that's another topic.

Seems as though the whole thing is a bad deal.

Internet Infidelity

If a relationship is only on the internet and no real life contact is ever made, is it an affair?

That clearly is a matter of opinion and the answer depends on the meaning you place on the word "affair".

If an affair, a case of infidelity, is a "go-directly-to-divorce-court" card, then I would say that an internet relationship would better not be categorized as an affair. It will undermine the primary relationship. It will let off pressure that would best be dealt with in the primary relationship. It doesn't help anything in the long run and is likely to lead to some real time trouble.

And, it isn't fair. You don't even really know who is on the other end of that wire in the first place. Also, they don't have to deal with all of the parts of a real relationship, so they can seem to be better than they really are. And even if they are truly wonderful people, they just don't have to deal with as much with you.

It's not unlike one partner going to a therapist and then judging the other partner from there. It isn't fair either. Sure the therapist is more understanding and appreciative. They get to see you an hour a week and then go home to their own problems.

Ah, what about being with a partner who is repelled by your sexual kinks so you leave them alone on that, getting your needs met by imaginary relationships with more open-minded folk you ask? Same principles hold, but that one is a little more complicated, isn't it? Still, these kinds of things are telling us what we need to deal with in ourselves, not what our partners should do or that we need new partners.

Internet relationships? Tempting, but better left alone. Or, use them to highlight what you'd like to get more in your real relationships, but never count them as the real McCoy.

If There Is No Sex, Is It an Affair? Is It Infidelity?

When it comes to relationships is "No Sex - No Infidelity" the equivalent of the sports saying "No Harm - No Foul"?

In an interview in the December 2007 issue of the Harvard Business Review, John Gottman, PhD, says no. The most important things that lead to harm from relationships outside the primary relationship is more about friendship, feeling appreciated, feeling listened to, feeling valued than about sex.

He made a powerful case for this point of view. What he didn't do was really give, me at least, much of an idea of what to do to keep it from happening and wrecking your relationship.

It was clear that if you can't both go to the party, then the two of you had better do some pre-planning an have a non-defense treaty about how you'll talk about it after.
While not saying it explicitly, Dr. Gottman was clearly calling for some attention to the relationship before the inevitable unexected comes along.

Find some general discussions and advice at www.Better-Relationships-Over-50.com.

Infidelity- Do You Want to Catch a Cheat?

There are people who can tell you how to catch a cheating spouse and if you are sure that's what you want to do, I encourage you to click on that link and go for it.

However, that's a pretty big "if you are sure" back there. And, it isn't really asking if you want to get the facts out on the table ever. The point is to ask if you are ready to deal with what you may find or not find now.

Either way --> they-are-having-an-affair or they-aren't-having-an-affair-but-aren't-being-a-lover-with-you <--, you are at the beginning of something, not the end. Finding out guilt or innocence isn't even the half of it.

So, before you break out the computer spy programs, semen detectors, reverse phone call programs, and the "exact words to get them to spill the beans", make sure you are ready for the next step(s).