• Don’t be haunted by the list of ‘shoulds’ in your life – you know the sort of thing, ‘I should be doing ….’ Eliminate these ‘shoulds’ from your life
• Stop worrying about time running faster than you can – and saying things like, ‘I didn’t do….’, ‘I ran out of time to ….’ Do what you can – and is humanly possible in any one day – and the rest can be done tomorrow or the next day
• If you find yourself – and your heart – racing and it’s not because of that exhilarating feeling of love – then slow down and breathe deeply and mindfully – when we’re stressed our breathing becomes laboured and rapid

One woman, Cleo, speaks about her sense of the ‘good’ stress becoming ‘bad’stress for her when she faced a number of life crises in a matter of months. At 42, she was running from one thing to another and began feeling dizzy and experienced a pounding sensation in her chest. She says, ‘I went to the doctor because I was worried about my heart and my breathing. I was told that my heart is a muscle, not a perpetual-motion machine, and if I continued as I was I’d have some serious health problems. I had already hyperventilated and had some panic attacks. I started doing some mindful breathing and positive visualization to get me through the really stressful times. I learnt I had to devote time and effort to managing my stress.’

Helping yourself to more calm

Learn to recognize the stress messages your body is sending you. Sometimes, we’re so busy doing, we don’t think about our unrealistic schedules and our bodies have to react in order to alert us to the fact we’re in trouble. Whether it’s chronic fatigue, cold sweats, stomach ‘knots’ or ‘butterflies’, dizziness or chest pain, constipation or insomnia, your symptoms are telling you to stop and take note – and then use sound tips to survive your stress.

Try this exercise: Think back over the past month. How many symptoms of stress have you had? Write these out for yourself. By writing them out and seeing them written, you’ll become more conscious of how stress is affecting your life – and you’ll feel more empowered to do something to ensure that you eliminate as much bad stress from your life as possible.

You’ll find more strategies for coping with stress in Stress-Less: Your guide to better living.

1. Reserve your right to be optimistic. Guide yourself to ‘think well’ about difficulties
2. Consider ways of doing something about the difficulties you face – and always avoid that feeling of helplessness
3. Always take a broad view of matters – consider all sides of the question and all aspects of the issue and behaviours
4. Build a mental model of meeting your challenge and visualise a successful solution for your stresses
5. Embrace uncertainty – because it’ll always be with us in life
6. Learn about the hidden advantages of stress and adversity – use your mistakes and struggles to improve your understanding of challenges and how to deal better with them

Choose your attitude

While you have little control over stressful events, you can choose your attitude towards them. Choose to be optimistic. Reserve your right to embrace hope. Think positively and come up with solutions to your difficulties.
Learn optimism and let it be a guiding feature in your life.
Develop the habit of ‘thinking well’ about your difficulties by being:

• flexible
• curious
• balanced
• tolerant
• constructive

By learning the elements of thinking well, you’ll begin to think constructively about solutions to your stress and consider the best possible outcome.

You’ll find more strategies for coping with stress in Stress-Less: Your guide to better living.

It’s also true to say that communication is crucial for a relationship. But communication can’t be left to chance. It doesn’t necessarily happen spontaneously. In fact, it’s really a skill that can be learned.

How well do you communicate?

Try this quick test:

1. How can you show that you really listened to something your partner said?

(a)Nod, give them visual clues that you’re listening and say ‘Mmmm’
(b)Tell them what you think they said and check out if this is correct
(c)Turn back to your computer and continue your search for what interests you
(d)Tell your partner how you feel about what they’ve said

2. Your partner is preoccupied reading while you are frantic with chores to complete. Do you…?.

(a)Ask them to help
(b)Ask them sarcastically if they want a cup of coffee
(c)Cast them the odd dirty look and go even faster
(d)Yell at them

3. When, in your view, is the best time to discuss something really important?

(a) In the car when they’re driving
(b) Over the phone
(c) Over dinner
(d) After sex in the hope of getting a more positive response

4. Your partner has just told you something which has upset you. Do you…?

(a) Say something that you know is guaranteed to upset them too
(b) Pretend it’s all okay
(c) Try to explain what you’re upset about and why
(d) Walk away and make it clear you’re really angry

5. You think your partner has something on their mind but they haven’t said anything. Do you….?

(a) Try to guess their concern and say what you think this imagined concern is
(b) Wait until they decide to speak up
(c) Start worrying that you’re going to break up
(d) Ask them if there’s anything on their minds that they want to talk about

Look at your score:

1. (a) 0 (b) 1 (c) 0 (d) 0
2. (a) 1 (b) 0 (c) 0 (d) 0
3. (a) 0 (b) 0 (c) 1 (d) 0
4. (a) 0 (b) 0 (c) 1 (d) 0
5. (a) 0 (b) 0 (c) 0 (d) 1

What’s your score: /5?

0-1 – Communication classes needed

2.3 – Not bad

4.5 – Go to the top of the class

The rules of love
One of the rules of love is: Be the best communicator you can be! Work on your skills and make sure your practice makes for better communication each day. Build on your listening skills and you’ll become much better at communicating with your partner.

Learn more about how to communicate effectively in The Rules of Love

Put simply, our bodies, when stressed, flood our system with hormones like adrenalin and cortisol, which is just what we need in the short-term emergencies, but is detrimental to our long-term health, causing physical and emotional problems.

It’s a fact that our bodies don’t discriminate between the flight-or-fight stress response. So, whether it’s fighting wild animals or meeting a tight schedule or preparing for that nerve-wracking all-important interview, our bodies will register a stress response.

Keep calm and relax – Give yourself a dose of calm
We all want to learn how to keep calm and relax. Researchers have found that developing a personal sense of serenity is important for a robust immune-system and psychological well-being. Because we’re all unique individuals, the dose of calm that works for one person may not be right for another. You might already have your own ideas about what calms you. Strengthen your repertoire by learning about other ways of capturing calm and try them on for size.

#1 – Eat Smart
Many of us are all too familiar with comfort eating when we’re stressed. Resist the urge to comfort eat, but do learn about what foods will help you capture your calm. Yes – it’s true, there are certain foods which help calm emotional stress. Eating smart helps you keep calm and relax because you’re not over-stimulating your body with unnecessary nutrients.

Fact File:
Researchers have found that when a probiotic (lactobacillus casei) found in some yoghurts was consumed by people with chronic fatigue, they reported their feelings of anxiety eased. Another study found that 40 grams of dark chocolate per day lowered the stress hormone cortisol in people who had rated themselves as highly stressed. Getting adequate omega-3 fatty acids from fish or fish-oil supplements can also help reduce anxiety.

#2 – Get Crafty
People who knit, bead or sew say that these activities are as stress-busting as meditation. The fact is that when you get involved in a flow of rhythmic, repetitive movements, your whole being is immersed in a calm state.

Fact File:
Research by the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine in Boston found repetitive activities decrease heart rate and blood pressure. When you shift your focus to the activity your brain’s electrical activity drops to a more relaxed frequency and your fight-or-flight response is toned down.

#3 – Ponder a painting
Have you ever noticed how calming standing – or sitting – and pondering a painting can be? Your senses are soothed by the visual creativity you’re viewing. Researchers at the University of Westminster found that a lunch-time visit to the art gallery can lower a person’s stress levels. In fact, after 40 minutes of viewing, people’s cortisol levels in the saliva had decreased 32%, a drop that would usually take about five hours of regular down-time to achieve. Who would have thought that it’s so easy to keep calm and relax?

So next time you’re feeling like you’re about to unleash a tirade on your colleagues, take yourself off to the art gallery. It’s closer than you think…you can easily virtually explore international galleries – a definite visible feast, which also lowers your stress levels.

#4 – Listen to some music
Listening to music has long been known as a relaxant. This music is not the thumping kind of music but the classical and calming kind. Even classical music which seems rousing at times can calm your jangled nerves. Close your eyes and sit or lie down in a comfortable space. Tune in – and focus – your ears to the strains of music you hear.

You might want to experiment with what kind of music best relaxes you. People respond differently to sounds. Maybe violins work for you or perhaps the sound of the forest and oceans works for you. Choose what’s most relaxing for you and listen and calm down. Let your ears do the work for you.

#5 – Back to nature
When you’re feeling overwhelmed by the demands of your work and domestic life, do the sensible thing that people have been doing forever and get back to basics – embrace the beauty of your natural surroundings to help calm you.

Fact File:
Researchers have found that nature has positive effects on your well-being. It’s a theory that’s worth pursuing. Called ‘attention restoration’, the idea is that you leave behind the distractions of your busy everyday life and go outside to restore your capacity to attend to things.

Nature, being a low-intensity environment, helps to decrease our arousal and calms us down as well as inhibiting negative thoughts. By taking a walk in your local park, sitting outside in open green spaces or walking around the waterfront, you’ll find that things that you thought were effortful become effortless.

So, for your well-being, develop your practice of calming activities and slow down your pace of life to fully take in your surroundings, stop and smell the roses or just sit and have a moment to yourself. By capturing calm you’ll learn how to keep calm and love what you do. Too often we’re so stressed out in our lives and find it hard to distinguish what helps us remain centered enough to appreciate the small moments and cherish the love we feel.

Develop the habit of capturing calm to learn more about yourself – keep calm and love – who you are, what you do and capture the hope for a calm and loving future.

Read more about strategies to find calm in Slowing the pace – losing the hurry habit

Fact File:
One US study found that 43% of people suffer adverse health effects from stress. Women, in particular, reported feeling the negative effects of stress more than men. These negative effects can be physical, emotional or psychological or any combination of the three.

Deal with stress – What can you do to outsmart stress?
First, it’s important to recognize the detrimental ways we handle our stress. Secondly, it’s vital to replace these with healthier options. Developing new and healthy strategies helps us better cope with our stress.

Stress reaction #1 – Eating for comfort
Researchers have found that high-fat and high-sugar foods are the most common foods we reach for when we’re stressed. It’s understandable as many of these foods are convenient and give us a quick boost of energy.

Poor diet choices are the result of feeling stressed and needing to comfort eat. However, in the long-term, these food choices lead to an increase in the risk of health problems, including weight gain, heart disease and diabetes.

Dealing with stress: Strategy #1
Make sure you always have some healthy food at hand. Learn to plan your diet and cook batches of healthy food which you can freeze for later use. Remember, you can substitute – a couple of squares of dark chocolate are a healthier choice than a muffin or lemon cheesecake.

Stress reaction # 2 – Giving up exercise
We’ve all done it when we’re stressed out – we find excuses not to exercise. Exercising becomes effortful when we’re feeling stressed. We use excuses to be inactive. Interestingly, exercise has been found to be an effective antidote to stress.

Fact File:
Researchers have found that exercise releases those ‘feel good’ chemicals into your body. Not only that, but when you exercise, you breathe more deeply and take in more oxygen and that helps to calm you down. So overall, you feel better – what more evidence do you need to get moving and work out?

When we’re feeling stressed and less motivated to do our regular exercise we’re often very creative in our excuses! Resist the urge to make excuses and remember that missing out on your exercise occasionally may not be harmful, but in the long-term it can mean gaining weight, losing fitness and these can affect our confidence and well-being.

Dealing with stress: Strategy #2
Really reflect on what exercise works for you. For one person, yoga might be the answer, for another, jogging. Exercising when you’re feeling stressed is important, but it has to be a form of exercise that you enjoy and are likely to stick with when you find your motivation waning. Don’t let other people tell you how you should be working out. It’s up to you. But, the minimum you can do – no excuses – is taking a brisk walk a few times a week.

Stress reaction # 3 – Sticking-your-head-in-the-sand
Ignoring what’s going on for you and hoping your problems will simply go away is a common reaction to stress. But, this is a flawed strategy, as you risk cutting yourself off from potential help and support. And remember, when you come up for air – you’ll find your problems are still there!

If you know you have a tendency to do this, then maybe you can develop a new habit of stepping back to assess the situation, instead of hiding from it.

Dealing with stress: Strategy #3
Stepping back from the situation and identifying why you’re stressed is a good start. Look at what you see. What are the triggers to your stress? What are the maintaining factors?

Once you’ve learned how to identify and assess your stress factors, you can add a little meditation to help you manage your stress. Progressive muscle relaxation relieves muscle tension and slows your breathing – all helping to calm you down.

If you really want to relax, think creatively about what really works miracles for you. Perhaps a long, hot bath or seeing an uplifting or funny movie can be helpful. Or – anything that gives you that nice relaxed feeling.

Read more about stress self-help strategies in Stress-less: your guide to better living.

• maintain a healing environment and when you feel like crying, give yourself permission to cry
• allow your open expression of thought and emotion and when pain is present, learn to nurture it
• be kind to yourself at all times because you are your own best friend
• consider your healing to be an ongoing and natural dynamic, not something that can be hurried
• give yourself the permission to share your pain with someone who cares about you

Above all, never hide your feelings because they are there to be expressed. Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not coping. Find that special, caring someone who can nurture and care for you. The sort of person who can sit with you through the pain without judging you or expecting you to ‘be strong’.

Don’t be afraid of indulging yourself
In our society, we sometimes find ourselves being critical of people who seem self-indulgent. But when you’re grieving, you need to indulge your self-indulgence by being – and doing something – self-focused to get you through the days, weeks and months.

Self-indulgence doesn’t mean being self-centered nor does it mean spending lots of time and money on yourself. What it does mean when you’re grieving is the ability – indeed, the skill – to know how to look after yourself. It’s important to try to be self-indulgent before you actually feel like it. So, don’t wait until you feel like going out to have breakfast, do it anyway. Do it whether it’s been a habit of yours or not. Indulging yourself to a cooked breakfast served with juice and coffee is a way of nurturing yourself.

Other self-indulgences include:

• having lunch with friends
• going to a movie
• going for a long early morning walk and meeting friends for breakfast
• buying something new for yourself
• a therapeutic or gently nurturing massage

Physical and emotional benefits of self-indulgence
Researchers have found that massage allows for both emotional release and physical release from the trauma of grief and people have said that it gives from a sense of well-being.

Other activities that have been found to give a sense of well-being include gardening and exercise, particularly walking.

So, whenever possible, get out into the sun and fresh air for 15-30 minutes a day. Getting a little sunlight on your skin can give you a warm and nurturing sensation and sunlight can change brain chemicals, reducing your risk of getting depressed.

Last, but not least, remember to begin doing self-indulgent activities as soon as possible. Don’t wait until you feel like doing them. Get out there and pursue self-indulgence for an enhanced feeling of well-being.

You can read more about coping with grief in Good Grief

• Instead of saying: ‘I don’t feel like getting out of bed and doing anything today’

Say something like: ‘I’m going to get out of bed and try to do something for fun, even if I don’t feel like it at first, because I’ll probably feel better for it’

• Instead of saying: ‘I’ll never find a job and soon I’ll lose my apartment and then probably everything’

 
Say something like: ‘If I persist in looking, sooner or later, I’ll find a job and that will make everything easier’

You’ll be surprised how much better you’ll start feeling about yourself when you tell yourself encouraging and positive things.

Try to give yourself that encouragement
Tell yourself, ‘I believe in myself and I will find a way to do things and reach my goals’

Believing in yourself can work slow magic – don’t expect it to happen overnight, but, if you persist in your determination to be encouraging of yourself, then you’ll find that you’ll free up your energy to help yourself and enhance the way you present yourself to the world.

To find out more about how you can nurture yourself when depressed, see Losing the 21st Century Blues

• Am I hungry?
• Am I thirsty?
• What sort of food do I want?
• What type of drink do I want?

Use your sense of aesthetics
Find yourself a comfortable and visually pleasing place in which to eat. Make your eating experience pleasurable.

Be conscious of how your food looks. Attractively arrange your food on your plate.

Stay mindful during your eating experience. Eat slowly. Pay attention to the taste, the nuances in flavour, the sound, texture and look of your food.

To learn more about powerful strategies of mindful eating and healthy weight-loss see Think Yourself Thin: The Psychology of Losing Weight.

Using your mind and understanding how emotions work for you in your quest to lose weight is central to your weight-loss goals.

Be mindful of your weight-loss resolution
If you’re resolving to lose weight, you’re probably resolving to overhaul your health. Too often, when people begin with vague resolutions, they end up back at square one.

It’s important to be specific enough in your resolutions to keep you on track.

Researchers at New York University found that the solution to keeping your resolution is setting ‘when, where and what’ plans.

Here’s a tip:
Write down for yourself all the obstacles and opportunities you may face – and how you can respond to each one. By writing these down, you make it visible and this can keep you more accountable.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• When and where do major obstacles to my weight loss occur? What can I do to overcome them?
• When and where is a good opportunity for me to act on my weight-loss goal? What would this action be?

By setting yourself these questions to ponder and work with, you reduce conscious mental effort. In doing this, you work towards making healthy and positive weight-loss behavior automatic.

Use visualization
Researchers at the University of Birmingham in the UK found that remembering our last meal actually reduces appetite and curbs our desire to snack.

Two groups of university students were given tasks, one was food-related, the other not. One group of students was asked to write a detailed description of what they had for lunch. The other group was asked to recall their journey to the campus. When offered a selection of sweet foods afterwards, the group who recalled and described their lunch ate less than students who hadn’t recalled their eating.

It appears that evoking a vivid memory of your last meal activates the hippocampus, the area of the brain which influences decision-making and appetite regulation.

Read more about the skills and strategies you can use in your quest for mindful weight-loss in Think Yourself Thin: The Psychology of Losing Weight.

Look at the following scenarios and imagine what you would do.

Scenario 1
Your partner is away on a business trip and you’ve rung and left a message for them to call you. It’s 11 p.m. now and they still haven’t rung back.

Do you:

• start to worry what they’re doing?
• begin to picture a romantic dinner they’re having?
• get on with your night?
• ring every 10 minutes?

Scenario 2
You’re at a party and your partner has spent the last two hours talking to a good-looking friend.

Do you:

• join in on the conversation?
• start flirting with the next person you see?
• sulk?
• laugh it off?

Scenario 3
You’re out having a relaxing week-end breakfast with your partner when their mobile phone rings. They look at the number and don’t answer it. The person doesn’t leave a message.

Do you:

• ask who called?
• get suspicious because they usually answer their phone?
• hang out for them to pay the bill so that you can grab the phone and see the number?
• assume they didn’t want to be bothered with speaking while they’re eating?

Scenario 4
You wake at 4 a.m. and your partner is not in bed. You get up and find that they are on the computer but sitting in such a way that you can’t see the screen.

Do you:

• tell them to come back to bed because you miss them?
• move closer to a place where you can see the screen?
• make a joke about them having an online lover?
• accuse them of having cyber sex with a gorgeous stranger?

Scenario 5
It’s 2 a.m. on a weeknight and your partner is still not home from that work dinner. You had been warned it could be a late night.

Do you:

• wonder which would be worse – an accident or your partner being with someone else?
• have a fleeting idea that your partner could have lied about a work dinner and has spent the night with someone else?
• assume they are having an affair and are in their lover’s arms right now?
• thank your lucky stars that you’re not out on the town because you have an early start in the morning?

How do you score?
If most of your answers indicate that you trusted your partner and you could dismiss any idea of feeling threatened by the situation, then you’re showing little or no jealousy. On the other hand, if most of your answers indicate that you have little trust in your partner and doubts about their commitment, then you are showing signs of jealousy that you might need to work on.

If you find that you feel jealous most of the time then you need to look at your self-concept. Jealousy is possessiveness. But, the truth is, we can never possess anybody. We cannot own another person. Nor can we control a person to the extent that they can’t have contact with anybody of the opposite sex.

Learning to develop clear thinking skills when you find you’re feeling jealous is a good start. Challenge your negative thoughts and find positive ways of reinforcing what you and your partner have together that’s so special. Develop your self-esteem and don’t look for ways to have your partner reassure you or build your self-esteem for you.

If it’s your partner who’s jealous it’s up to them to work on their jealousy. But you can help them. Try to empathise and not be too annoyed when they turn into that green-eyed monster. Building and maintaining a healthy relationship means not hiding things from each other, but also not having to reassure each other constantly either.

Developing a good sense of yourself and who you are – and how lovable you really are will have the positive consequence of having you feel not only good about yourself, but also less doubtful about your partner’s feelings and behaviour.

Work towards increasing the trust level between you and valuing each other for your ability to be interdependent but also secure, autonomous adults who can interact with attractive strangers without causing insecurity in you or trouble in your relationship.

For more about relationships and how to survive them, see The Rules of Love.

1. You discover that you’ve slept with someone your partner knew in the past.  This happened before you two got together.  Should you tell your partner, even though you think he would be upset?
2. You’ve been talking with a good-looking stranger at a party and your lover accuses you of flirting and wanting to go to bed with this person.  Should you put your hand up for it or should you lie through your teeth?
3. You’ve just had sex with your partner but while you were having sex, you fantasized about someone else.  Would you tell your partner?

To question 1 you might have answered something like, ‘Yes, of course, there shouldn’t be any secrets’ or maybe ‘Only if she asked’ or even ‘No, it’d only create a huge problem’

To question 2 you might have responded,  ‘Innocent flirting is just that’ or perhaps ‘Why’s he so threatened by another guy?’ or even ‘Yes, I’d love to have sex with this stranger, but the feeling will pass’

To question 3 you might have answered ‘Yes, she’s got the right to know’ or maybe ‘No, my fantasies are private and mine alone’ or even  ‘What’s the point in telling him, but I hope it comes true!’

It’s a delicate matter
Sexual honesty can seem like a minefield.  There are some situations that require discretion.  Always be mindful as to why you’re being honest.  Is it to shift some guilt?  Is it to punish your partner?  What’s your agenda?

Fact File:
People have told researchers and counsellors that mostly, they attempt to be honest in sexual matters in their relationship.  But sometimes, a little twisting of the truth or a ‘white lie’ is necessary.

Some guidelines
Perhaps you can reflect on the following points and use them to direct you in your thinking about your honesty:

• If you’re asked directly by your partner, try to tell the truth
• If you haven’t been asked but you feel the need to reveal something to lessen your guilt, perhaps you shouldn’t
• Minimise your tendency to tell white lies or lying by omission

To read more about relationships and how to deal with the issues that emerge see  The Rules of Love.

Did you know….?
Developing your ability to be assertive and stand up for yourself helps with your dilemma about whether or not to be sexually honest.  If you believe you can handle challenging issues in your relationship openly, then it’s less threatening and hurtful if you joke about your fantasies of having sex with that attractive stranger or your past romances.  

Both of you are in the relationship together – it takes the two of you to be determined to practise being honest and assertive about sexual challenges.  Agree on your guiding principles and you’ll find that you can deal with whatever issues come your way.  

If you see your lover glancing at that cute person at the next table in the café, make a joke about it, use your discretion and think about the consequences before you threaten them with ending the relationship.

Fact File:

Research has found that deep breathing can calm us. So it’s official!

In Eastern cultures, it’s long been recognized that mindful breathing is essential for maintaining life force energy or chi. In yoga, the breath is all important and the ultimate aim of yoga practice is to calm the mind and focus the attention on the breath.

Deep breathing and your health

It’s becoming increasingly recognized in Western culture that one of the most beneficial things you can do to improve your body and mind – to achieve calm well-being – is to breath deeply and purposefully.

However, a lot of the time, most of us get the breathing wrong.

Deep breathing sounds simple enough but there is technique involved.

Mostly, we do it incorrectly because we do the opposite of what we are meant to do. We suck in the stomach as we inhale and leave less room for air in the lungs. We might also lift our shoulders and only fill the top third of our lungs. This results in taking in only the bare minimum of oxygen.

Lung capacity is diminished by bad habits like slouching – and when we’re stressed – our posture is invariably affected. Many people have become habitual ‘chest breathers’.

How can we learn deep breathing?

You breathe deeply when you push downwards on your diaphragm. Your diaphragm is the large muscle at the base of your stomach. This allows your lungs to fill up with air, starting at the bottom and reaching all the way to the top.

This deep breathing improves the general functioning of our bodies because it allows for the optimal supply of oxygen to all our organs and it helps detoxification by stimulating the lymphatic system.

By breathing deeply, we can clear our minds and improve our focus and concentration.

We are calmer, more centered and refreshed.

You can read more about the importance of breath and how your conscious breath can calm you in Slowing the Pace: Losing the hurry habit and moving towards a balanced life

Try this simple technique:

• Sit or lie in a comfortable position, hands lightly placed on your knees or by your sides, your shoulders relaxed
• Inhale slowly to the count of five, expanding our belly as you breathe in
• As you exhale, breathe out slowly through your nose, to the count of five. Engage your stomach muscles and draw in your diaphragm to help your lungs deflate
• Pause for two counts after exhaling and then begin inhaling slowly to the count of five again.

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Begin by repeating this cycle five times in the beginning and with practice build up repeating it to ten times.

Helpful tip: use this technique whenever you feel stressed – breathe in for five, breathe out for five – and you’ll feel much calmer.

Fact File:

Although it seems a difficult thing to do, research has found that people who work towards accepting the loss and engaging with the new world they find themselves in are more readily able to move forward and re-establish relationships with others and the world around them. By finding a new reality and clarity in the lessons you learnt from the hard times, you’ll find yourself empowered. Some people report that the lessons learnt along the way have helped strengthen them and make them more resilient.

Dealing with the pain of your loss and your new reality can assist you in letting go and making peace with the past. Whether your loss has been symbolic, for instance, a loss of status through job loss or a divorce or an actual loss of a person whom you loved, your journey towards healing will an individual one, although there are some skills and strategies that you can use.

As you proceed on your journey to healing, be gentle on yourself. Remember, you set your own pace.

Some skills and strategies

There are three things you can develop and practice to help you release your loss and resolve your grief:

1. Talking

Talking to a trusted person or a professional like a counselor or medical practitioner can help early after your loss as well as a later date. The person you choose should be a good listener. They should be empathic and non-judgmental. Beware of people who want to give you advice or say things like, ‘If I were you….’ because they are not you and therefore it must be your choice to do whatever needs to be done.

A person who can guide you and help you work out your options and strategies is what you need to help you talk about and release your sense of loss.

2. Thinking

For some people, thinking through their circumstances in a systemic way is very useful. This way of thinking things through will move you along in your journey of healing by revealing often hidden thoughts and feelings about your loss.

Think about:

• opening yourself up to emotions – let yourself and your body feel these emotions
• what emotions arise for you? Maybe sadness? Perhaps anger? Feel the emotion and let the tears flow if they’re welling up in you
• scan your thoughts and emotions after you’ve let them come to the surface – do you feel a little less burdened?
• listen to your inner voice – and ask yourself: ‘what have I learned from letting my emotions arise within me?’
• reflect on the light and shade of your loss and your road to releasing loss

3. Writing

Many people find writing and journaling valuable in facing and releasing feelings of loss and grief. Sometimes, when you’ve feeling particularly vulnerable, then writing out your thoughts and feelings is a good way of ‘sharing’ them in a private way. Perhaps at a later date, you might share your writing with a trusted person or with members of a mutual support group.

Make up your own rules about writing. You might decide to write every day, or once a week, or when the feeling takes you. Writing thoughts and feelings down – and writing them out – serves the purpose of not keeping them inside you and completing unfinished business of loss in order to move on in your journey of healing.

You can read about more ideas for skills and strategies in dealing with loss and feelings of grief in Good Grief.

Your journey towards healing means reconnecting with life and by expressing your feelings of loss, through talking, thinking and writing you can, at your own pace, exchange feelings of grief for a better understanding of yourself and your social world. This is an empowering and health-giving transaction that can lead to your ability to enjoy life again, knowing that you’ve lived through distressing times, but have emerged stronger for the experience.

We all know the spin – affairs are erotic and highly sexual. But what counselors can tell us is that affairs may not be about sex alone.

What an affair can signal is that something is wrong in the relationship. It may not be obvious to the couple, but they are dissatisfied in some way. Sometimes it’s just a vague feeling of things not being right.

1. Conflict avoidance affair

Take the case of Jerry and Deanne. Jerry confesses to Deanne that he had an affair when he was away at that conference last month. He tells Deanne, he doesn’t know why it happened, it’s just that one thing led to another and before he knew it, he’d cheated. He promises to never see this woman again. Can Deanne forgive him? Deanne is a forgiving woman and is prepared to forgive, but she realizes that something is wrong in their relationship. In counseling, both expressed only vague dissatisfaction in their relationship, but as they worked on issues, they discovered that they had never really been honest with each other in the two years of their marriage. Both were conflict aversive and couldn’t express unhappiness or anger easily. After the discovery of the affair, Deanne found it easier to be angry with Jerry. Feeling guilty, Jerry tried to avoid any expression of resentment, but after a few sessions, admitted he was irritated by Deanne’s frequent disinterest in sex.

What this kind of affair shouts is: ‘I’ll make you pay attention to me!’ The couple usually has a ‘nice’ relationship where issues are avoided and to the outside world they appear to have a model relationship. Very often these couples believe that anger is bad and must be avoided at all costs. A typical pattern with this sort of couple is that the more dissatisfied partner has an affair and quickly manages to get caught. The discovery of the affair exposes problems in their relationship and allows them to bring things out into the open.

If the couple is prepared to work at maintaining their relationship then they will learn to better address issues of conflict in the future.

2. The sex addiction affair

Tim was in his second marriage to Ada. His first wife, Lisa, had left him because of his sex addiction and serial philandering. Tim knew that he didn’t want to continue having affairs and possibly damaging his relationship with Ada but he claimed that one woman couldn’t satisfy him sexually. He’d had dozens of flings with friend’s partners, neighbors and colleagues. He said he found it hard to pass up any opportunity. Things came to a head when he had sex with Ada’s best friend. Tim said he didn’t expect Ada to tolerate his behavior and he loved her a lot and he wanted to change. Ada confessed that she knew about Tim’s sex addiction before they married, but believed she could change him and when he had an affair with her best friend, she felt doubly betrayed.

People, very often men, involved in these affairs avoid dealing with personal needs by making conquests. These conquests compensate for feelings of emptiness, isolation, low self-esteem and shame. Some of these feelings might drive the person to search and search again for ‘true love’. These affairs are addictive behavior and like all addictive behaviors are used to escape from some real – and often – troubling feelings.

3. The out-the-door affair

Ellie, although reluctant to hurt her husband James, finally decided to tell him that she’d been having an affair for 12 months and intended leaving him. James was 15 years older than Ellie but in the beginning, this age difference hadn’t mattered. After two children and James’ success as a lawyer, Ellie wanted out. She told her counselor that she was using her affair as a stepping-stone to leave the marriage. She didn’t intend staying with and marrying her lover, rather she wanted to forge a life for herself.

In this sort of affair, the partner who has the affair is testing out the possibilities beyond their primary relationship. This often happens when the marriage has been a long one and questions need to be answered about whether another life is possible. Questions such as: ‘Can I make it on my own?’, ‘Am I still attractive?’, ‘Can I be happy in another relationship?’ and most importantly, ‘Can I get you to kick me out?’ The out-the-door partner is looking for self-validation and perhaps, less consciously, a desire to avoid taking responsibility for ending the relationship. It’s fairly typical in this sort of affair that the relationship has become a shell.

4. The intimacy avoidance affair

Even though Harry and Tamsin thought they were close, when Harry revealed that he’d had a number of flings and even visited prostitutes whilst overseas at a conference, they realized that they never really communicated nor connected at a ‘deep level’. Interestingly, their styles were very different and learned in their families of origin. But neither style made for any really ‘deep and meaningful’ connection between them. Harry’s parents had been two people who appeared to be strangers and Harry recalled they hardly ever spoke to each other. Tamsin, on the other hand, had come from a family where real intimacy was impossible because her father had been an alcoholic and her mother had a tendency to drama, so there was one crisis after another.

What Harry and Tamsin are playing out is the avoidance of intimacy – that’s central to their relationship – and the reason for Harry’s affairs. The affair is a shield against hurt. Typically, intimacy avoiders are skilled in conflict – there may be exchanges involving criticism, sarcasm and blame. It’s easy to see how this kind of hostility provides justification for turning to someone else. In this way, the affair can become a weapon and the other partner may counter with their own affair.

5. The ‘empty nest’ affair

It can be either the man or the woman who decides that there’s not much holding them in their long-standing relationship now that the children have gone. An affair seems to be the answer. This happened to Emma and Stan who’d been married for 28 years but found that after their last child left home, they had nothing to talk about. Emma had an affair with an old friend and was seriously considering leaving her marriage for this man, who is a widower.

The empty-nest affair can signal that the marriage was held together in a belief about family rather than a strong emotional bond. The person who has the affair wonders whether they ever ‘really loved’ their partner – they certainly have nothing in common anymore. When the children were still at home, the focus is on them, all communication between the couple is centered on their parenting roles. When the children go, then the relationship can seem empty. The answer appears to be to seek fulfillment elsewhere.

6. The gay/lesbian affair

Lucinda had one brief lesbian encounter at college. When she and Barry married 10 years earlier, she believed herself to be heterosexual. But there were some niggling doubts in the back of her mind. However, it wasn’t until she’d met another woman at a special interest group she’d been attending that her real sexual orientation became obvious. Barry was devastated and worried that this new development would have a negative effect on their two children – a boy and a girl. Lucinda’s newly found sexuality meant that she had to make a decision and Barry had to deal with being rejected.

The gay/lesbian affair is similar in dynamics to the ‘out-the-door’ affair in that in both, the erring partner tries out another way of life before exiting their primary relationship. Men, like Barry, feel doubly rejected because they can’t compete with their partner’s new lover. As Barry said, ‘I could even understand it if she went with another man. But a woman? She’s so turned off that she’s rejecting men altogether. How could I fail her like that?’ Men like Barry, or women when their male partners have chosen a gay affair to end their relationship, feel like they have failed as sexual partners and have difficulty accepting the change in their partners.

For more about the range of affairs – from flings to true affairs of the heart, you can read more on my blog Affairs 101:  Part One.

What’s an affair?

Once upon a time, an affair could be defined as a relationship in which a married person has sex with someone other than their spouse.  But this definition is far too narrow in the 21st century.  An affair is a relationship where a person who is already in a committed relationship (whether married or not) secretly engages with another person:

• in any kind of sexual activity
• in sexually-charged activity without actual sexual activity
• in a deeply meaningful emotional connection whether sexual or platonic
• in a sexually connecting manner in an online environment

Basically, an affair involves secrecy and deception.  One partner is doing something their partner doesn’t know about – although it’s often the case that there are suspicions.  Sometimes the person having the affair consciously or unconsciously leaves clues and drops hints which may or may not be picked up on by their partner.  

In any case there’s always a lot of interesting conscious and unconscious behavior going on.   If the person having the affair wants their partner to discover they are,  then there are always a lot of hints and clues.    

But some partners may not want to know and unconsciously block all hints and remain stubborn to all that is obvious.  One woman admitted long after she’d discovered her husband was playing away from home that he’d given lots of clues, but she’d not wanted to see them at the time.  He’d even left a Valentine’s Day card from his lover on the dining room table and his wife had chosen to accept his feeble explanation that it was from an infatuated colleague, all the while unconsciously ‘knowing’ he was telling lies.   As this woman explained, she didn’t want to know at the time, it suited her to continue with her marriage and she didn’t want any scenes, so she turned a blind eye.

Types of affairs

Affairs range along a continuum, from serial affairs and flings to romantic love affairs and long-term affairs that may last an entire life-time.  The emotional investment in the affair depends on the type of affair it is.  But things are not always so fixed and that meaningless affair can morph into a romantic love affair or the romantic love affair grows and becomes a long-term affair.  In recent years, the no-sex affair, the sexualized friendship, cyber-love and open relationships have been legitimized as affairs.

Serial affairs are those that have little or no emotional attachment and can be a series of one-night stands or short-term affairs.  Out-of-town trips can provide opportunities for such affairs.  This sort of affair is usually not serious but if discovered, it can lead to trouble in the primary relationship.   They can damage goodwill within the relationship.   Usually, there’s a pattern to these affairs with  the serial lover is remorseful, contrite and becomes more emotionally engaged with and attentive to their spouse – until the next time.  Good intentions and apologies sometimes are not enough to prevent a relapse – and another serial affair.  Re-building trust is a slow process when it has been eroded time and again over a long period of time.  Many prominent men, such as John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Senator Gary Hart and Bill Clinton have been labeled ‘womanizers’ and pursued serial affairs.

Flings are like the serial affair with little emotional investment.  A fling might be a one-night stand or it may go on for a few months, but there is no real commitment to the sexual partner.  In many ways, this sort of affair is the least serious threat to the primary relationship, yet when these flings are discovered, some partners take them very seriously and counselors might advise that couples put these flings into perspective.  It may be painful to discover that your partner has had a fling, but it need not destroy your marriage.  The best fictional illustration of the fling is in the movie Fatal Attraction, now widely considered a classic cautionary tale of extramarital sex.  Of course, not every single woman involved with a married man is a rabbit-boiling temptress, nor is every single man involved with a married woman an axe-wielding psycho.  But the point if well made:  what begins as an innocent sexual fling can deteriorate into a living hell, with the lover stalking you and the strength of your marriage being tested – either crumbling before you or with combined goodwill, being steadily re-built over time.    

Holiday romances or flings, have been popularized in novels and the movie Shirley Valentine.  Holiday sex is a popular sex fantasy because the location and the lure of sand, sea and sex is a heady mix. There’s an unspoken understanding that the lovers will enjoy the sex and the good times, say goodbye and resume their real lives with no further contact.  This is the ideal, but unfortunately, there are reports of stalking and psychological fall-out from holiday flings when one lover wants more from the relationship than the other can offer.  

Romantic love affairs are those relationships where the lovers have a high degree of emotional commitment to one another.  The relationship is serious and important to both and they’re keen to integrate the affair into their everyday lives.  These types of affairs may have started off being serious or they may have begun as a meaningless fling that became more serious and important.  The longer this type of affair continues, the more serious it becomes and the more committed the lovers feel towards each other.  If both feel equally strongly about the affair, it may mean moving towards divorce and remarriage – to one another.  If that’s not possible, then sometimes these affairs are then terminated – or alternatively, they evolve into a long-term affair.

The best fictional example of this sort of affair-of-the-heart is that of Ilsa and Rick in the film Casablanca.  Lovers before the war, Ilsa and Rick find each other again, only Ilsa has married Victor Laszlo, a celebrated resistance hero when she meets Rick again in Casablanca.  They fall in love again, but Rick makes the momentous decision to end the affair so that Ilsa leaves with Victor.  The moral of the story is the importance of sometimes difficult decision-making in such affairs-of-the-heart.

Another such affair, which was largely played out before the public, was that of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.  They had been lovers before Charles married Diana and a few years into that marriage, reports began circulating that the two were lovers again.  Their romantic love affair had developed into a long-term affair and they eventually married.  

Long-term affairs last for years and sometimes the whole course of the lovers’ marriages and other relationships.  The lovers in these affairs are highly emotionally invested in their relationship, which runs parallel to their marriages.  Some people in such affairs feel more married to their lovers than their ‘official’ partners.  It seems hard to believe that if your partner is so intimately and permanently involved with their lover you wouldn’t know.  But it appears to be the case that some partners have not guessed about these affairs and have only made the discovery when their partner has died.  One counselor tells of a case where a woman only discovered her husband’s long-term affair when she found records after his death.  She felt crushed by this betrayal and doubly frustrated because she couldn’t confront him about it.  Apparently he’d been a frugal man with her and the family, yet she found check-books and statements revealing lavish holidays, gifts and even a regular allowance for his lover.  This woman’s sense of betrayal was so great she told the counselor that she felt resentment at being cheated out of her life – she felt their marriage had been a sham.  

Some couples turn a blind eye to the other’s affairs.    In some long-term affairs, there is a ‘Don’t ask – don’t tell’ and ‘Ask no questions and I’ll tell you no lies’ agreement.    Long-term affairs pose the greater threat to a marriage because of the high level of emotional attachment the lovers have to one another.  The eternal triangle– or sometimes even a four-sided arrangement – becomes a feature of life, with a wife and her lover and husband or the wife, her lover, her husband and his lover involved in the complex relationship dynamic.  Everyone helps to create the situation that eventually is lived out.

No-sex affairs or ‘everything but’ affairs are ones where there is sometimes intense emotional involvement but the relationship is kept in sexual check and the attachment is not consummated.  Sometimes these types of affairs happen in the workplace, with the lovers sharing intense thoughts and feelings and perhaps giving in to some heavy petting, but stopping short of full sex.  Researchers have found that often one or both parties are deeply religious and the very idea of physical contact with someone other than their legitimate partners is morally reprehensible.

Sexualized friendships are similar but different from the ‘everything but’ affair.  Again, many sexualized friendships grow out of workplace contact between people who have good rapport and develop a strong emotional connection.  Sexual tension and attraction can be intense and when acted upon, the lovers have a feeling that it was something that ‘had to happen’.  Even though these affairs seem inevitable, most are short-lived, perhaps with only one sexual contact, yet the emotional connection and friendship endure.  Sometimes the sexual experience acts to intensify their emotional bond and deepen their fondness for one another.

Cyber-love affairs are a relatively new phenomenon and a type of affair that is growing and works well for some people.  Intense feelings of intimacy have been reported by many online lovers.  Some researchers believe it’s really pseudo-intimacy rather than real intimacy.  Cyber-lovers have said how shocked they were at how quickly such a feeling of closeness is experienced with someone they have never actually met.  And the question needs to be asked:  how truly intimate is this form of intimacy?  One woman claimed, ‘My online lover and I were so close, I felt more intimate with him through words than I ever have during sex.’

This type of affair can blossom and then turn into a real-life relationship.  The transformation process from online to reality is possible.  On the other hand, some cyber-lovers have said that they keep their relationship online and find it as satisfying as many real life relationships.  But a number of questions remain about this type of affair.  How is it possible, if you think about it logically, to feel intimate with someone whom you’ve never met physically and interacted with in the real context of everyday life?  How can you know someone’s true weaknesses, vulnerabilities, strengths and self-doubts?  How can you take their word for it, without having seen it tested in real life?  Despite some people’s reservations, cyber-love affairs are on the rise and the cues and clues of face-to-face communication in real time are dismissed by those for whom cyber-love has worked.

Open relationships are the equivalent of the equal opportunity affair.  The ‘open marriage’ of the 1960s and 1970s popularized this sort of arrangement.  Both parties give each other permission to have outside sexual relationships, with or without each others’ actual physical presence.  Some forms of the open relationship operate in a swinging sense, where the couple attends parties where they swap partners, or deliberately set up meetings with at least another couple.  Other forms allow for each partner to go their separate ways and have their own affair with a lover, often reporting back to their partner about their experience.   Sometimes these couples claim to have a fierce commitment to each other, but believe in the liberation of exploring sexual experiences with other people.  Interestingly, people sometimes underestimate the power of sexual jealousy and their reactions can surprise them.  Something which sounds good in theory, may not translate so well into everyday practice.  

You can read more about these types of affairs and how twelve women have experienced their unique affair of the heart in Unfaithfully Yours:  Real life stories of women who take on a lover.

Or read part 2 on my blog Affairs 101:  Part Two.