Original article by Jill Cory October 16, 2016 5:27 AMYou would know if you were in an abusive relationship, right? It would be obvious. Well, maybe not. Most women who experience abuse from a male partner spend months or even years thinking the relationship problem is something other than abuse.
It’s a “communication issue” or “a failure to set boundaries.” Maybe you’ve thought your partner has a bad temper or a problem with anger management. Perhaps you think that you are doing something wrong or that there is something wrong with you. In our society, we aren’t very good at talking about abuse, so women are often left wondering.
A common myth is that abuse means only physical abuse. But, actually, there are many different types of abuse, including emotional, psychological, financial, and sexual abuse. These can be just as damaging as physical abuse. For example, abusive partners can attempt to isolate you or cut you off from sources of support, use sarcasm or threats to put you down, change moods to intimidate you, express jealousy, and become emotionally distant.
They can also refuse to allow you to practice your faith, devalue your knowledge or education, control the finances, or threaten to have an affair if you don’t do what they ask. These and many other examples are not generally thought of as abuse. You may know there is something “wrong” but may not label it as abuse. Here’s a list of seven things that abusive partners often do in their relationships. Ask yourself if your partner does any of these things:
- Takes away your freedom to choose what you want or need
- Demeans you
- Is unpredictable and volatile
- Blames you or others for their abusive behavior
- Uses the “silent treatment” to punish or frighten you
- Limits your access to money
- Apologizes for their behavior and promises to change but never does
They prevent us from being in harmony with the world. Resentments are hardened chunks of anger. They loosen up and dissolve with forgiveness and letting go.
Letting go of resentments does not mean we allow the other person to do anything to us that he or she wants. It means we accept what happened in the past, and we set boundaries for the future. We can let go of resentments and still have boundaries.
Try to see the good in the person, or the good that ultimately evolved from whatever incident you feel resentful about. Try to see your part. Get clarity on what your boundaries are and be willing to speak up and state your boundaries with others. (teach people how to treat you). Then put the incident to rest.
reached out to me for sex and I turned my back, pushed you away, or made lame excuses to avoid any romantic or sexual time together? How about if I went day after day ignoring your sexual needs?
It’s hard for me to feel like helping you or supporting you when you’re so insensitive. Problem is, it takes two of us to be sexual but only one person (you!) to say no. You have the power to stop our sex life and you have used that power at the risk of our happiness.
You must not feel what I feel when we go without sex. I can’t help but believe if you knew how physically, emotionally, and psychologically uncomfortable it is for me, that you would feel guilty about your resistance. Or maybe you just don’t care; maybe you don’t care about sex and don’t care about me. Whatever the reason, I’m not happy about it and you should understand why I’m upset.”
them anymore.
A significant number of couples simply don’t make time for sex. The lead busy lives with little relaxation or quiet moments together.
Some partners simply aren’t interested in sex and feel justified in ignoring their partner’s needs- although this is far rarer than you might believe. Given the right situation almost everyone enjoys sex.
If the partner who initiates sex more often exhibits offensive behavior, such as acting in an angry or defensive manner, this may serve as a turn-off and justification for the other partner to withhold sexual contact. Without effective communication skills a cold war may ensue.
Easily, the most common reason partners withhold sex is lack of information related to healthy, fun, sexual practices. They don’t know what turns them on and therefore cannot provide their partners with constructive information that would lead to mutual satisfaction. They may never have come close to experiencing their own sexual potential.
commitment to be available as a sexual/ sensual/ intimate partner whenever either of you has the desire.
There are many, many ways to be sexual. From the quickie to the weekend sex fest, couples run the gamut when it comes to sensual pleasure. Get in the habit of expanding your sexual repertoire in terms of time, attention, and technique.
If the issues between the two of you are more complicated than just getting off track, then you might need to address the unresolved issues that are contaminating your sex life:
stranger mean more to you than your own family? You have ruined all our lives just to follow your feelings and please yourself.
So is this about sex? Are you not attracted to me anymore? Did you ever find me attractive? Am I such a miserable failure? It feels like my heart is being torn out of my body. Why are you doing this to me?
I am angry but I am also deeply sad. I’m grieving the loss of a dream. I guess it was a dream because I thought we had a strong loving relationship while all along you were giving your love and attention secretly to someone else.
How could you look at me and act like nothing was happening while knowing you were lying to my face? Some part of me feels like a big fool- for loving you, believing you, and trusting you. Well, you’ve broken that trust, and I don’t know if I can ever get that back again.”
Most people, however, don’t decide- they slide into an affair. Conscious thought doesn’t enter into the picture. An innocent acquaintance gradually becomes more intimate until it’s the primary source of pleasure. An innocent acquaintance gradually becomes more intimate until it’s the primary source of pleasure. The affair begins with two people sharing information or an activity; they bond around personal contact and mutual experiences. With little or no conscious thought, they cross the line into infatuation. Once the affair relationship start to provide a sensual or sexual high, then it’s “game over.” You are now under the influence of infatuation, one of the strongest forces found in nature. Infatuation sets up an insatiable craving for more contact that’s practically impossible to resist.
It’s easy to be judgmental about affairs. But being attracted to another person is normal. For some, monogamy is compatible and comfortable. For others, monogamy takes a more conscious effort.
An important clarification regarding affairs- contrary to popular belief- is that affairs can and do happen in good relationships. You can be in a happily committed relationship and still meet someone at work with whom you have chemistry. If you follow the chemistry, an affair will follow.
Affairs change your image of your partner. Whether you had the affair or you’re reeling from your partner’s affair, the experience will show you another side of one another’s personality. When we are in the throes of fear or shame, none of us function at our best.
Affairs are traumatic. Trauma is any real or perceived threat to survival. When you are in a committed love relationship your partner becomes an attachment figure. This means, your partner’s attention determines your feeling of security and survival. So if your partner chooses someone else over you, it feels like you are going to die. Affairs evoke fear of abandonment. Even though affairs most often are the result of your partner’s unilateral, personal decision, it’s hard not to take it as a personal affront. When you’re reeling in the hurt it’s hard to reach the love that once connected you.
The unfaithful partner can feel shame because:
These can also be addressed in psychotherapy with a professional who is familiar with guiding you through to build trust, safety and a positive connection.
It’s not inappropriate to ask what is most pleasurable or most exciting for married couples, but meaningful lovemaking is so much more than creating greater sexual arousal and climaxes. In my view, “healthy” protects happy pleasure it doesn’t threaten it.
Some people find that after they get married that their spouse has some sexual hang-ups. At first, they thought the best thing to do was to “go along.” Going along never works; it just prolongs the inevitable crisis. Nursing an unhealthy inclination never makes things better; it just makes the way back a little longer and ultimately more difficult.
Seeking a healthy sexual relationship is a fair, good and wise pursuit.
These six marks aren’t exhaustive; I’m sure there are many more, but here’s a short, non-scientific test to see how you and your spouse are doing in regards to sexual intimacy.
When sex becomes the relationship it’s like trying to support a fifty story hotel on a foundation made of toothpicks. You build a healthy sexual relationship by building a healthy marriage on all levels: emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, and relationally. As Dr. Harry Schaumberg so ably puts it, “To be spiritually mature, you must be sexually mature; to be sexually mature, you must be spiritually mature. And I’d say that to be spiritually mature, and sexually mature, you need to be relationally mature. In other words, a mature marriage is a three legged stool of spiritual, relational, and sexual maturity.”
Dr. Mitch Whitman points out that the absence of healthy sexuality sometimes increases the aggrieved spouse’s focus on sex almost to an obsession, so that it becomes practically the only thing that matters to the frustrated spouse.
If one spouse says, “The rest of our relationship is so strong you shouldn’t need sex,” that’s tantamount to the other spouse saying, “Our sex life is so good you shouldn’t need anything besides sex.” In other words, we can fall off the rails on either side of the equation: asking sex to do too much, or not taking advantage of its power at all.
pain’; media portrayal of ‘S and M’ roles often involves humorous exaggeration. Grim reality exists that we in our cultural denial attempt to avoid and deflect with humor. For many, the combination of pain and sex is as repugnant as violence.”
The agenda in this culture today, seems to be to tell us that we are missing out on something if we’re not practicing some of these habits. I emphasized the phrase “very mood altering” because that’s the marker of unhealthy sex–using it like a drug (as opposed to an expression of relationship). It’s not even pleasurable. It just puts us in a trance. Healthy sex affirms lasting pleasure; its focus isn’t to feel less of something negative, but to experience more (and help our partner experience more) of something positive.
expression of your faith), as a person who is cherished and loved. In unhealthy sexuality, the sexual experience leaves you feeling empty, alienated, almost like you’re role-playing or an object.
You may realize that, for any number of reasons, your sexual sense of self has become distorted. Maybe from a hook-up culture that promotes porn, a repressive upbringing, trying to medicate pain, or hoping sex can create a shortcut to intimate connection. If sex doesn’t affirm who you are, there’s a good chance you’re not being made love to; you’re likely being used. Perhaps you feel like you have to be someone you’re not to keep your spouse interested or from acting out inappropriately. That’s manipulative sex; that’s co-dependent sex, it’s not healthy sex.
Sex should affirm and reaffirm who you are, your sense of worth, your sense of being valued, and your sense of relationship. A healthy sense of your sexual self will promote both a profound sexual intimacy and an amazing sacred relationship full of deep connecting moments.
Marriage can be that sacred place.
What makes this story so moving is that two individuals had greater empathy for the difficulties the other faced rather than their own difficulties. Selfish marriage is the opposite: each partner feels their own pain more intensely and are either unaware or calloused in regards to their spouse’s pain.
What if you asked your spouse this simple question: “What makes your life most difficult?” Or perhaps, to start things off, you could imagine what must be difficult about their life and then bring it up: “I bet it must be really difficult for you to….
As they respond, your sole aim is to truly understand the challenges your spouse faces on a regular basis. For the purpose of this exercise, don’t try to solve the problems. Avoid counseling your spouse as well. Certainly, do not try to convince them that whatever is bothering them shouldn’t—as if they are over-reacting or being unreasonable.
Just listen and try to understand.
This single question may sound too simple and too small to have any impact, but it can generate more feelings of intimacy than you might imagine making your spouse feel much closer to you.
Just try it, and you’ll see.
A young man “falls in love” with a woman, woos her until he has monopolized her social calendar and then weeks or months later, drops her. Once she has abandoned everything for him, he abandons her. But it was all done in the name of love. His feelings once told him it would never end, so he demanded absolute commitment and focus. But now that the feelings have changed, so apparently has his view of “love.”
A premarital couple the jackpot when the young man finally said, “Okay, now I get that loving her means I’m supposed to support her to be the best she can be”. What this means is being concerned about your partners well being (emotionally, physically, sexually and above all spiritually). The relationship comes after that.
Our primary aim in every relationship, including marriage and dating, is help each other grow and to bring out the best in each other.
If you start spending every extra moment together and the relationship doesn’t last, you’ve pulled this person from their friends and their life focus. When the relationship crashes, their life crashes and has to be completely rebuilt. Leaving someone in that condition is like mortgaging their house so you can gamble with their money to get rich. It’s reckless, it’s selfish it’s the opposite of love.
When a married woman uses sex to manipulate or humiliate her husband, that is not love. That’s taking something precious and using it as an evil weapon. When a married man considers it a betrayal if his wife has any other significant relationships that is also not love. He’s controlling her in the name of preserving some misguided sense of marital loyalty.
Love is always—always—doing what is best for the other person. Not what is best for you. Not what will make them like you or need you or want you. Love is kind, it is patient, it is strong enough to do what is right instead of giving way to the weakness of selfishness or feelings, it is self-sacrificing, it never rejoices in wrongdoing, it doesn’t insist on its own way.
Don’t be fooled by self-interest masquerading as love. Insist on love.
It was almost as painful as watching a man slowly bleed to death; instead, I was watching a marriage die before it had even begun.
Communication is the key to maintaining a healthy relationship. Communicating with your significant other requires both listening and expressing your thoughts and desires.
Gary Chapmans’ book, The 5 Love Languages, suggests that there are 5 ways that we SHOW and RECEIVE love. His languages are: gifts, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service, and physical touch. Chapman explains that it is important to learn the ways in which you like to show those that matter most that you love and appreciate them, as well as how you like to receive love from others.
Here are Gary Chapman’s 5 Love Languages:
Words of Affirmation
Hearing the words, “I Love You,” are important, but hearing the reasons on why someone loves you are just as important. Words of appreciation, encouraging works, and kind words are a powerful communication of love. Verbally communicating your love must be done with a humble heart, kindness, tenderness and sincerity.
Quality Time
Nothing says “I love you, like giving your beloved your undivided attention. A person who loves through quality time, or needs to be loved with quality time need that one on one time, with no TV, cell phone on vibrate, no outside influences, just one on one time. Quality time is not just being at the same place at the same time. It involved interaction and sharing the time together. Maintaining eye contact, no multi-tasking, and actively participating in the conversation are a must for the QT lover.
Gifting
Gifting should not be confused with materialism. Receiving gifts as a form of love focuses on the thoughtfulness and effort behind the gift, and vice versa for the gifter who shows love through gifting. The gifter is expressing that their sweetheart is cared for and prized for above whatever was sacrificed to bring the gift. The one showing their love through gift giving often goes through a great deal of thought and planning in an effort to provide the perfect gift at the most appropriate time.
Acts of Service
Showing love through acts of service display the devotion that one has towards their object of affection. Attempting to ease their workload and make their life easier bring pleasure to the acts of service lover. Actions such as housework, cooking meals, laundry, yard work, running errands, dealing with finances are just a few examples of acts of service one might perform to show their love and devotion. These acts, no matter how big or small, require thought, planning and effort. For the loved one who likes to receive love through acts of service, they see them as a display of love and commitment.
Physical Touch
Don’t confuse this love language as just related to sex. Physical touch can be hugs, pats on the back, hand holding, caressing as you pass each other, and kissing when you leave or return to the home. These small acts of affection build excitement and display loving and caring. Love touches don’t take much time and the holding hands, kissing, hugging, touching each other when you leave the house and when you return may involve only a brief kiss, but speaks volumes.
The Importance To Learn Your Love Language
If we use this model of showing and receiving love, it is important to have a healthy relationship to understand two things:
In many relationships, the concept of love languages is foreign. Opening the lines of communication between you and your partner will allow you both to express your thoughts, observations and desires to each other without being criticized. The goal is to build a deeper and long lasting relationship while enjoying each other’s characteristics that you bring to the relationship.
Gary Chapman does offer an assessment: http://www.5lovelanguages.com/profile/couples/
This is a great tool that you and your partner can take and learn the best ways to communicate love and build a lasting relationship.
This past weekend also marked the much anticipated release of a movie based on the E.L. James bestseller, 50 Shades of Grey. 50 Shades of Grey is a erotic romance novel where a business exec who is into BDSM develops a relationship with a college student. The novel tells the story of their sexual romance in explicit detail showing the arousal achieved by pain, bondage, and other S&M practices.
This novel and movie portray intimacy and love mixed with untraditional practices that connect love with pain, control, power and submission.
Bestselling author and international speaker on relationships, Gary Thomas, sheds some light on the portrayal of love and intimacy in heterosexual relationships as depicted in 50 Shades of Grey. Here are some of the problems (paraphrased) he sees with “Grey”. Whether you’ve seen the movie or read the book, you can reflect on these comments to confirm your own ideas on love and sex and what you think is healthy and fulfilling in relationships.