Will You Make Sense of Your Relationship and Stay With a Cheating Husband?

Making sense of relationships is hard enough as it is.  Throw in a cheating husband (or wife or partner) and it becomes much, much harder.  Dr.  Slake has some good thoughts here.  But this is a subject that's highly debatable.  And why not?  Why not debate on it?  Especially if it's about making sense of relationships?

Q&A – Should I Stay With My Cheating Husband?

Daily Inspiration

By John H. Sklare, Ed.D, Lifescript Personal Coach

Published July 19, 2012

 

Q: Last August I found out that my husband of 26 years was having an affair. We separated at the time, during which I had a nervous breakdown, attempted suicide and was hospitalized. I’m currently in therapy. After six weeks we got back together, until I learned the affair had continued. He now says he wants to work on us, but he’s still seeing this girl. What should I do?

-B. W.

A: Hi B,

You’ve certainly had your share of tough times in recent months and I’m sorry that you find yourself in this situation after 26 years of marriage. Because of the breakdown and attempted suicide that you shared, I’m also relieved to see that you’re currently seeing a therapist. My instincts tell me that it will take more than a brief and surface level exchange with me to help you find your way through all of this heartache, betrayal and disappointment.

Because your husband has been dishonest with you about seeing this woman twice, I’m reminded of that old saying, Fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice, shame on me. However, because you’ve been married for 26 years, I understand your desire to try to work this out and stay together. I tend to judge people by what they do more than by what they say and, as a result, I’d have great difficulty trusting this man again. On the other hand, if you honestly believe that he’s sincere and you want to give it another go, I would absolutely insist that marital therapy for the both of you be an integral part of the reconciliation agreement.

Wishing You Great Health,
Dr. John H. Sklare

www.innerdiet.com

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Stressed? Angry? Not over your ex? Email your question to Dr. Sklare to get expert advice! Ask Dr. Sklare
 

My Thoughts

 

People get their hearts broken.  That's  part of loving.   That's why making sense of relationships is important.  People need to know how to deal with heartbreak.  Otherwise, it's the relationship that would break.

Dealing with cheating is something else.  It breaks, not only the heart.  It breaks the person.  Easier if there were no wedding vows.  But when you promised to love and to hold, the issue of "let no man put asunder" comes in.

I used to think that this is impossible: to forgive and let God take care of the healing.  But it happens.  I've seen a lot of couples get over the "cheating" and they are now happy.  I've seen the pain of staying with the "cheater", but the obedience to God's directions really do pay off.

God gave us the wisdom, and the will, to do what we can in making sense of relationships.  But it's Him, only Him, who can truly make sense of our relationships for us. 

What Do You Prefer in YOur Relationship: WORDS OR ACTIONS?

Words Versus Action
Daily Inspiration
By John H. Sklare, Ed.D, Lifescript Personal Coach
Published December 10, 2010

There are two separate but distinct kinds of emails that I receive from people who are struggling in their relationships: Those whose significant other says he or she loves them but doesn’t show it, and those whose significant other shows love but never says it.

Personally, I tend to judge people more by what they do than by what they say. However, the ideal relationship contains a healthy mix of both of these. But some people get all words and others get all actions. Today I ask you to reflect on which two modes of loving communication you most appreciate. In other words, even though both are important, what’s more important to you in an intimate relationship? Is it what your lover says or does?

Wishing You Great Health,
Dr. John H. Sklare

MY THOUGHTS

What's more important to me in a relationship?  If I have to choose between words and actions, I'd probably go for the latter. Who doesn't want to feel that you're loved?.  Who wouldn't want to be showered with love?  Still, it's nice to hear, every so often, what the other person feels.  Why does it have to be a choice between the two?  I believe you can have both.  It's not impossible.  But if you are in a relationship where you have one but not the other, be thankful.  Be very thankful.  Some people have not even experienced either one.

LOVE MORE BY CARING LESS

How to Love More by Caring Less
By Martha Beck
O, The Oprah Magazine  |  From the July 2011 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine

Now my whole family is abusing me!" said Loretta, a client at a women's resource center where I volunteered back in the '90s. "If I leave my husband, it'll just be out of the frying pan and into the fire."

"Are you—" I cut myself off before finishing my thought, which was, "Are you crazy?" Just the week before, I'd participated in an intervention where Loretta's family had urged her to leave her battering husband, Rex. Each person had expressed enormous love for and protectiveness toward Loretta. Now she thought they were all abusers? Huh?

"They're just like Rex," she said. "You saw it. They judge me. They criticize me. Nothing I do is enough for them."

I opened my mouth, then closed it. Opened then closed it again. I kept that up for about a minute, like a perplexed goldfish, as I groped for the right thing to say. It killed me that Loretta was interpreting her family's desire to rescue her as criticism and judgment. But even as I tried to come up with the kindest possible phrasing for "What the hell is wrong with you?" I knew my question would come across like a slap.

That's when it dawned on me that Loretta had a point. No, her family wasn't abusing her the way Rex did—and yet in its own way, their treatment of her must have felt like an attack. They weren't accepting her as she was. They needed her to change. They raised their voices, made demands, pushed hard. And their intense negative emotions were triggering her fear and defensiveness.

It was in the midst of processing all this that I suddenly heard myself say, "Well, Loretta, I just love you. I don't care what happens to you."

The statement shocked me as it left my lips. But even as I mentally smacked myself upside the head, a funny thing happened: Loretta visibly relaxed. I could feel my own anxiety vanishing, too, leaving a quiet space in which I could treat Loretta kindly. It was true—I really didn't care what happened to her. No matter what she did, I wouldn't love her one bit less.

Since then I've found that loving without caring is a useful approach—I'd venture to say the best approach—in most relationships, especially families. If you think that's coldhearted, think again. It may be time you let yourself love more by caring less.

Next: How does it work?

Detached Attachment

To care for someone can mean to adore them, feed them, tend their wounds. But care can also signify sorrow, as in "bowed down by cares." Or anxiety, as in "Careful!" Or investment in an outcome, as in "Who cares?" The word love has no such range of meaning: It's pure acceptance. Watching families like Loretta's taught me that caring—with its shades of sadness, fear, and insistence on specific outcomes—is not love. In fact, when care appears, unconditional love often vanishes.

When my son was first diagnosed with Down syndrome, I cared so much that my fear for his future overshadowed my joy at his existence. Now that I couldn't care less how many chromosomes the kid has, I can love him boundlessly. For you, loving without caring might mean staying calm when your sister gets divorced, or your dad starts smoking again, or your husband is laid off. You may think that in such situations not getting upset would be unloving. But consider: If you were physically injured, bleeding out, would you rather be with someone who screamed and swooned, or someone who stayed calm enough to improvise a tourniquet? Real healing, real love comes from people who are both totally committed to helping—and able to emotionally detach.

This is because, on an emotional level, our brains are designed to mirror one another. As a result, when we're anxious and controlling, other people don't respond with compliance; they reflect us by becoming—press the button when you get the right answer—anxious and controlling. Anger elicits anger, fear elicits fear, no matter how well meaning we may be. When Loretta's family insisted she leave Rex, she insisted on staying. When I told her I loved her without caring what happened, she mirrored my relaxation. That's when she began to request and absorb the advice I was now welcome to give.

Free to Be...Carefree

If you want to try loving without caring—and by now I hope you do—here's how to get there. Just be sure to buckle up. This may be a bumpy ride.

1. Choose a Subject
Think of a person you love, but about whom you feel some level of anxiety, anger, or sadness.

2. Identify What This Person Must Change to Make You Happy

Think about how your loved one must alter herself or her behavior before you can be content. Complete the sentence below by filling in the name of your loved one, the thing(s) you want this person to change, and the way you'd feel if the change occurred:

If _______ would only _______, then I could feel _______.

3. Accept a Radical Reality

Now scratch out the first clause of the sentence you just wrote, so all that remains is:

I could feel _______.

That last sentence, oh best beloved, is the truth. It is the whole truth. Yes, your loved one's cooperation would be lovely, but you don't absolutely need it to experience any given emotional state. This is incredibly hard to accept—it would be so easy to feel good if others would just do what we want, right? Nevertheless, you can feel sane even if your crazy-making brother stays crazy. You can feel peaceful even if your daughter robs a bank. If Helen Keller could write, after growing up deaf and blind, "I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad," then you can find a way to be happy even if your mother never does stop correcting your grammar.

Accepting that this is possible—that you can achieve a given emotional state even if a loved one doesn't conform to your wishes—is the key step to loving without caring. I'm not saying that such acceptance will make you instantly content. Creating ways to be happy is your life's work, a challenge that won't end until you die. We'll come back to that in a minute. For now, the goal is just to try believing, or merely hoping, that even if all your loved ones remain toxically insane forever, it's still possible you'll find opportunities to thrive and joys to embrace.

4. Shift Your Focus from Controlling Your Loved One's Behavior to Creating
Your Own Happiness

When I make this suggestion to my clients, they tend to take umbrage. "I always focus on creating my own happiness!" they insist. "That's precisely why I'm trying to get my grandchildren to visit, and my cat to stop biting, and Justin Bieber to engage with me in a mutually rewarding exchange of personal e-mails!"

Best of luck with that. Because as AA or any other 12-step group will tell you, sanity begins the moment you admit you're powerless over other people. This is the moment you become mentally free to start trying new ideas, building new relationships, experimenting to see what situations feel better than the hopeless deadlock of depending on change from someone you can't control.

Again, this is a lifelong project, a game of "You're getting warmer; you're getting colder" that stops only when you do. But the focus shift that helps you stop caring is like a little dance (drop hope of changing significant other, embrace determination to find alternative sources of peace and joy, step-ball-change) that immediately, reliably diverts your energy toward happiness and unconditional love.

The Payoff

Once we'd established that I didn't care what happened to Loretta, our work together finally became productive. In a follow-up family session, I had each relative tell all the others, "I love you unconditionally—I don't care what happens to you." We discussed ways in which each of them might begin creating personal happiness, regardless of Loretta's actions. And as the focus shifted off her, Loretta felt less pressured, less harried, more respected. Smiles and hugs appeared in place of tension and tears.

Supported by her loving, uncaring family, Loretta eventually triumphed: She left Rex, got a job, and found a healthier mate. As you support your significant others, they may realize this same spectacular success. Or not. You can be happy either way, so what do you care? You have the freedom to live and let live, to love and let love. Granting yourself that freedom is one of the healthiest, most constructive things you can do for yourself and the people who matter to you. And if you disagree, I truly, respectfully, lovingly do not care.

Martha Beck is the author of six books, including Steering by Starlight (Rodale).

MY THOUGHTS

I had to read this over and over.  Definitely requires thinking outside of the box.  And actually doing, what this article suggests, will require more than just thinking. I just have to read it again.  Am still not convinced.

TRUE LOVE?

True Love
Daily Inspiration
John H. Sklare, Ed.D
Published December 01, 2006

The Internet has brought many great advantages to our lives. However, It has also created a few problems as well. Take this E-mail that I received recently for example. A woman wrote, “I have sort of a problem. Yesterday morning I accidentally opened my boyfriend's browser instead of mine, and saw that he had been visiting all of these girlie sites. This really hurts my feelings. I looked at these girls. They are all blonde and like 110 pounds. I am brunette and waaaay overweight. I confronted him and he feels bad. Can you help?”

I think it’s very understandable that one would feel upset and hurt over this. But I did caution her not to blow this too far out of proportion. Now having said that, I must admit that since I had very limited knowledge about her and her boyfriend I can’t say for sure that she was blowing this out of proportion. This is something only she can know, but the point I want to make here is this. If you are constantly comparing yourself to other people that you think are slimmer and prettier, you are creating a life of dissatisfaction and misery.

The picture of one woman can never compare to the substance of another. As a professional who has worked with countless couples and as a man who has experienced deep love, I can attest to the fact that true love is never about the how one looks. Sure initial attraction is definitely about looks, but true love is all about substance. How one looks is a powerful magnet for attracting people to you but keeping them there requires a great deal more. Embrace your individuality and stop comparing yourself to idealistic and fantasy images of beauty! That’s your wellness message for today.

Wishing You Great Health,
Dr. John H. Sklare

MY THOUGHTS

wow! if someone i know had this experience and asked me whatshe should do, i wouldn't know what to say. if this happened to me i would probably blow it out of proportion. isn't that a form of cheating?

HOW TO MAKE ROMANCE LAST

How to Make Romance Last
By Helen Fisher
O, The Oprah Magazine | From the December 2009 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine

The truth about what keeps marriages together

I have a friend who met her husband at a red light. She was 15, in a car with a pile of girls. He was in another car with a crowd of boys. As the light turned green, they all decided to pull into a nearby park and party. My friend spent the evening sitting on a picnic table talking to one of the guys. Thirty-seven years later, they are still together.

We are born to love. That feeling of elation that we call romantic love is deeply embedded in our brains. But can it last? This was what my colleagues and I set out to discover in 2007. Led by Bianca Acevedo, PhD, our team asked this question of nearly everyone we met, searching for people who said they were still wild about their longtime spouse. Eventually we scanned the brains of 17 such people as they looked at a photograph of their sweetheart. Most were in their 50s and married an average of 21 years.

The results were astonishing. Psychologists maintain that the dizzying feeling of intense romantic love lasts only about 18 months to—at best—three years. Yet the brains of these middle-aged men and women showed much the same activity as those of young lovers, individuals who had been intensely in love an average of only seven months. Indeed, there was just one important difference between the two groups: Among the older lovers, brain regions associated with anxiety were no longer active; instead, there was activity in the areas associated with calmness.

We are told that happy marriages are based on good communication, shared values, a sturdy support system of friends and relatives, happy, stable childhoods, fair quarrelling, and dogged determination. But in a survey of 470 studies on compatibility, psychologist Marcel Zentner, PhD, of the University of Geneva, found no particular combination of personality traits that leads to sustained romance—with one exception: the ability to sustain your "positive illusions." Men and women who continue to maintain that their partner is attractive, funny, kind, and ideal for them in just about every way remain content with each other. I've seen this phenomenon, known as "love blindness," in a friend of mine. I knew him and his wife-to-be while we were all i n college, when they both were slim, fit, energetic, and curious: a vibrant couple. Today both are overweight couch potatoes. Yet he still tells me she hasn't changed a bit. Perhaps this form of self-deception is a gift from nature, enabling us to triumph over the rough spots and the changes in our relationships. I'm not suggesting you should overlook an abusive husband or put up with a deadbeat bore. But with the holidays upon us, it's worth celebrating one of nature's best-kept secrets: our human capacity to love…and love…and love.

MY THOUGHTS

that's what i have - "positive illusions" and yes, "love blindness". i refuse to let go of my romantic side. i will probably take that to my grave. and i don't mind.

Happiness in Marriage

Happiness in Marriage
Don't Depend on Marriage to Bring You Happiness
By Sheri & Bob Stritof, About.com Guide

One of the myths about marriage is that marriage will make you happy. That's not true. Marriage alone cannot bring you happiness.

A Happy Marriage Comes From Within
Your happiness both as an individual and as a married partner must come from within yourself. Being married can add to your happiness, but it is not and can not be the primary source of your happiness.

"... getting married is not necessarily the key to achieving eternal bliss. Most people were no more satisfied with life after marriage than they were prior to marriage in a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology."
Source: Anne Becker. "Marriage Is Not the Key to Happiness." PsychologyToday.com. 3/18/2003.

A Few Strategies for Creating a Happier You and a Happy Marriage

* Like yourself.
* Be yourself.
* Be nice to one another.
* Show mutual respect.
* Be supportive of each other.
* Agree to have fair fights.
* Each evening, share with one another three happy things that you noticed during the day. Talk about why these moments of happiness occurred.
* Both of you write down how you want to be remembered. Talk with your spouse about how the way you are living your lives helps or takes away from what's important to you both.
* Make a list of things that make you happy such as a sunny day, a hot bath, a child's laugh. Create ways to include these happy times in your life more often.
* Do a random act of kindness not only for a stranger each day, but also for one another. Don't talk about these acts of kindness with one another. They are for your own personal self-esteem and growth.
* Fill your own emotional needs.
* Compliment and affirm your spouse.

Word of Caution
We are not saying that you can create a happy marriage when there is infidelity, abuse, lying, etc.

If you are in a dysfunctional marriage, please seek professional counseling so you can make an informed and rational decision as to whether or not your marriage is worth saving.

MY THOUGHTS

so, i hope you're not in a dysfunctional marriage. work on these tips, then. yes, work. some people think, saying "i do" is enough. real work comes after the vows. and more work is required when your wedding photos start to fade. when bulging tummies, double chins and sagging (i was going to say cheeks!) share that old creaky bed each night. it's so easy to fall out of love in the everyday mundane things of a married life. once you do, it's a lot harder to try and fall in love all over again. if you're married and you have not seen the movie fireproof, please do.

what would love do?

What Would Love Do?
By Mike Robbins
Original

When answering life's difficult questions, it's important to call on love! Get three new strategies to keep in mind when you're making tough choices and feeling powerless.

Recently, I was reminded of the powerful idea of asking the question, "What would love do?" when making decisions or facing
challenges in life. When I think about my own life and some of the places where I find myself struggling, stressed out, worried or stuck right now, I can see that instead of asking what love would do, I'm often asking other less inspiring questions to myself like, "What should I do?" "What's the right thing to do?" "What's wrong with me (or them)?" or various other versions of these types of questions. Can you relate?

What if we did actually ask ourselves, "What would love do?" in all of the important areas of our lives, especially the most challenging ones? I bet that would dramatically alter not only how we relate to those people and circumstances, but also would alter what we did and said and ultimately how we felt.

We have the opportunity to pause and reflect on ourselves, our lives and where we are. Letting love lead the way, especially right now, is something that will benefit most of us and can allow us to listen to a deeper aspect of who we really are.

Everything I write about, speak about and teach is really all about love. I sometimes find myself a little shy, embarrassed or self-conscious to come right out and say it—somehow fearing that love seems too soft, too personal, too intimate or too mysterious. However, being authentic and being appreciative , and just about anything else we aspire to in life, are all about love—of ourselves, of others and of life itself. Love, I believe, is the most powerful force in the universe—yet so many of us, myself included, almost apologize for talking about it, thinking about it and wanting to have it play a lead role in our lives.

As we interact with (or avoid) our families, in-laws, friends and even strangers on the street or in stores or restaurants over these next few days and weeks, ask yourself, "What would love do?" As we sit back and reflect on this past year and begin to plan, dream and prepare for the year ahead, what would love do? As we relate to ourselves in the midst of all of this, what would love do?

3 things to think about when you're making a decision

As Karen Drucker says in her beautiful song "What Would Love Do," "Love has all the answers. Love makes no demands. Love will lead me to the truth and help me to understand…that life is all about love."

Here are a few things to think about, as this relates to some of the areas and aspects of life where you may be challenged at the moment:

Pick a challenging or difficult aspect of your life right now. What's going on and how do you feel about this situation or relationship? More specifically, what kinds of questions are you asking yourself about this? The quality of the answers we receive in life is directly related to the quality of the questions we ask.

Ask yourself, "What would love do?" This may be an easy or difficult question for you to ask yourself about this specific situation or relationship. Allow yourself to hang out in this powerful inquiry and see what shows up. You may have lots of ideas or insights, or not. However, asking yourself this empowering question will almost surely give you deeper awareness and insight for what you could do if you allowed love to lead the way. Take bold and loving action, based on your answer to this question. Allow yourself to ponder and consider this question
long enough that you really feel it in your bones. The paradox here is that it's not so much about what you do; it's more about where it comes from. If it truly comes from a deep place of love within you, you'll know it, feel it and it will be the right thing to do. Trust yourself and your heart—and then be willing to take the risk and put yourself out there.

These days, so many of us are ripe with opportunities to practice asking ourselves the bold question, "What would love do?"

If we're courageous enough to ask, to truly listen to the answers we receive and to act on them from a place of real love, compassion and truth, we will have the opportunity to transform our lives and relationships in a real and profound way.

Let's do it…with love!

Mike Robbins is a best-selling author, sought-after motivational keynote speaker and personal growth expert who works with

people and groups of all kinds. Robbins is the author of the best-selling books Focus on the Good Stuff and Be Yourself:

Everyone Else Is Already Taken . He and his work have been featured on ABC News , in Forbes , Ladies Home Journal , Self

and many others.

MY THOUGHTS:

what would love do - now that will certainly change the way i look at things and the way i respond.this is not going to be easy especially when one is expected to respond immediately. to ask that question every time you need to respond or make a
decision would entail always stopping for awhile to think before acting. and this would be double hard for people like me who shoot from the hips - until the question becomes a part of me. i will need a miracle here.

Making Love Last

Make Romance Last
By Helen Fisher
O, The Oprah Magazine | November 18, 2009


I have a friend who met her husband at a red light. She was 15, in a car with a pile of girls. He was in another car with a crowd of boys. As the light turned green, they all decided to pull into a nearby park and party. My friend spent the evening sitting on a picnic table talking to one of the guys. Thirty-seven years later, they are still together.

We are born to love. That feeling of elation that we call romantic love is deeply embedded in our brains. But can it last? This was what my colleagues and I set out to discover in 2007. Led by Bianca Acevedo, PhD, our team asked this question of nearly everyone we met, searching for people who said they were still wild about their longtime spouse. Eventually we scanned the brains of 17 such people as they looked at a photograph of their sweetheart. Most were in their 50s and married an average of 21 years.

The results were astonishing. Psychologists maintain that the dizzying feeling of intense romantic love lasts only about 18 months toâ??at bestâ??three years. Yet the brains of these middle-aged men and women showed much the same activity as those of young lovers, individuals who had been intensely in love an average of only seven months. Indeed, there was just one important difference between the two groups: Among the older lovers, brain regions associated with anxiety were no longer active; instead, there was activity in the areas associated with calmness.

We are told that happy marriages are based on good communication, shared values, a sturdy support system of friends and relatives, happy, stable childhoods, fair quarrelling, and dogged determination. But in a survey of 470 studies on compatibility, psychologist Marcel Zentner, PhD, of the University of Geneva, found no particular combination of personality traits that leads to sustained romanceâ??with one exception: the ability to sustain your "positive illusions." Men and women who continue to maintain that their partner is attractive, funny, kind, and ideal for them in just about every way remain content with each other. I've seen this phenomenon, known as "love blindness," in a friend of mine. I knew him and his wife-to-be while we were all i n college, when they both were slim, fit, energetic, and curious: a vibrant couple. Today both are overweight couch potatoes. Yet he still tells me she hasn't changed a bit. Perhaps this form of self-deception is a gift from nature, enabling us to triumph over the rough spots and the changes in our relationships. I'm not suggesting you should overlook an abusive husband or put up with a deadbeat bore. But with the holidays upon us, it's worth celebrating one of nature's best-kept secrets: our human capacity to love…and love…and love.

What is intimacy to you?" Recently, I asked this of a man I've been seeing. He replied, "Doing things together." I knew what he meant.

Most of us have a primal craving to be truly known by someone before we die, to build a deeply committed relationship based on honesty, trust, self-disclosure, respect, appreciation, interdependence, and togetherness. But the sexes often define intimacy differently. When women want to draw closer, we face each other, lock eyes in what has been called the "anchoring gaze," and proceed to reveal our hopes, our worries, our lives. To women, intimacy is talking face-to-face—a behavior that probably evolved millions of years ago when ancestral females spent their days holding their infants up in front of them, soothing them with words.

Men, however, often regard intimacy as working or playing side-by-side. Sure, they might discuss a bad week at work, even troubles in their love lives. But rarely do they share their secret dreams and darkest fears. (When they do, they often use "joke speak," camouflaging their feelings with humor.) And men almost never look deeply into each other's eyes. Their approach to intimacy probably also harks back to prehistory: Picture ancestral males gathering behind a bush, quietly staring across the grass in hopes of felling a passing buffalo. They faced their enemies but sat next to their friends.

This is why, to build intimacy with a man, I do things with him—side-by-side. That way, when I talk, he isn't threatened by my gaze.

Curious to find out more about such gender differences, I asked 4,876 members of the Internet dating site Chemistry.com , "What would you do as an intimate activity with a partner?" and offered various choices. I found that men were far more likely to regard "debating" as intimate. I wasn't surprised: Intimacy requires being in your comfort zone, and men's testosterone is associated with competitiveness. On the other hand, women were more likely to consider "organizing a neighborhood or community party together" and "taking a vacation together with a crowd of your closest friends" as ways to be close. Because estrogen is associated with social skills and nurturing, I wasn't surprised by this either.

What I didn't expect was that 95 percent of all respondents rated "talking heart-to-heart with your partner about your relationship" as something they'd do to be intimate, while 94 percent felt that "doing something adventurous together" spelled togetherness—with hardly any difference between the sexes. If these results are any indication that men are learning to appreciate women's need to talk, while women are understanding the male way of showing love ("actions speak louder than words"), then bravo!

There are, of course, many other things you can do to cultivate togetherness . Help your partner achieve his goals. Face your problems as a team. Develop a private spiritual or religious world. Choose a new interest to pursue jointly. Do chores together. Play.

And get the oxytocin flowing. Oxytocin is a brain chemical that produces feelings of trust and attachment. Men get a blast of it when they kiss, women feel a rush when they hold a lover's hand, and during orgasm, both partners are flooded with the powerful substance. So last but not least, enjoy each other physically. Good sex really does build intimacy.

MY THOUGHTS

SO, THERE IS A WAY TO MAKE LOVE LAST. BUT WE NEED TO WORK ON IT. IT'S NOT AUTOMATIC AND IT'S NOT YOUR PARTNER'S RESPONSIBILITY. IT'S YOURS! IF YOUR PARTNER IS NOT DOING HIS/HER SHARE, LET GOD HANDLE THAT FOR YOU. LOVE CAN LAST. I KNOW....