Topic : Communication

You say you feel strong after going to the gym so keep doing that but find other activities that make you feel strong too in other ways. I was very shy growing up and still am in some ways but people who meet me now have an hard time believing it. I discovered what my gifts are and I nutured those things, that helped me feel better about myself. The better you feel about you the easier it will be for you to reach out to others. You're too young to give up your dreams especially when they are within your reach. I'm sure you have been given gifts and a purpose that's what you need to focus on and the rest will follow. 

Hi, i have been with my boyfreind for about three years now and we have really had a rocky path and things are going a lot better recently. For the past month things seem good but deep down inside i want more. I feel like i hold alot back like things i want to say to him cuz i know if i bring up certain things it will just turn into a fight or he will just be mean to me. I have told him before that we have a problem communicating with eachother and he agrees with me but it never improves. 

We have broken up about tons of things, first it was his porn use, that took me forever to get over and we would fight about it all the time. He has done everything in that department to please me. Then we would fight about him not being loving enough and we would break up for awhile. But it seems to go good for the first cuople weeks we are togther again but then we fall back into old habits. We both say we are going to cahnge and blah blah blah. But nothing ever really changes. 

I want him to open up to me. i feel like he does not communiacte at all anymore. Sometime i feel like he is just sick of me. Yet he tells me he loves me and sometimes he seems so in love but sometimes its seems like he really hates me. When i tell him that, he says i am being crazy and that he loves me and all this stuff. 

We have been togther for over three years and that is causing aproblem too. I want to get married soon i dont want to be waiting for ever. I know we have a million things to work out before marriege but  

Continued from before cuz i did nit want to get booted. 

Anyway he acts like he wants to marry me. He will talk about what he wants our wedding day to be like and what music we will play and all this mushy stuff. But then when i ask him when it will ahppen he just says soon. I cant take it anymore. I dont want to give him ultimatum. But i need a time frame here. My mom thinks he will never marry em and everyone is so pushey in my family. I ahve told them that we have had probelms and we need to get past thiose and then it will happen but they just dont get it. 

Dont get me wrong i dont want to marry him right this moment, mainly cuz i know it would nver last. We need to figure out things and mainly figure out how to communicate with eachother. How can i get past all this. How do i get him to talk to me and open up more. How do i know what he wants? Does he even want to marry me? I need to know these things but i dont want to drive him away. 

What do i do? 

I am a single 40 yo male who has been having an emotional and sexual affair with a married woman of 14 years. We first met 2 years ago but we have been seeing eachother for 8 months. We bring the best qualities out of one another and challenge eachother to be better people in this affair. I have asked her why she is having this affair with me? Her reply was: You fullfill a void in my life which you made me realise I had, you have taught me things about myself that I had never been opened to in my life and mind.  You open my life to opportunities and remove all boundaries and elevate me to a higher being"   

I want a long term commitment with this woman. We have declared our deep love and respect for one another. She has expressed that she loves me and is in love with me, but does not feel the same "love" for her husband. She has told me that she wants 2 months to herself to feel confident that if and when she decides to leave her husband that she has at least made a fully informed decision to do so.    

We have tried to resist the temptation to contact or see one another during this time but we have failed within the first week of our agreement. During the last few days she has said that she cannot accept divorce as an option given her love for her church, however she says that "I am her water of life and cannot live without me".  She is very concerned about her soul if she does divorce, and would like to re marry in her church.     

Her religion as a Roman Catholic is  very important to her and I respect this. (She is finding it difficult to accept a divorce in the RC Church without a formal annulment of the marriage). I also want to stress that she has emphasized that her marriage vows are very important to her.   

I am finding everything so uncertain in my life during this period as I am sure that she is as well. PS: We both do not have any children, however her husband is infertile which they found out 2 years ago.  Her yearning for motherhood is also very strong.  She is 35 years old.   How can  I help her to help herself and myself to move on with our lives whether together or not ? I have never bonded to another human being as I have with this person in my entire life and it is the most open, accepting, intimate and passionate, soul sharing moment whilst we are together.   

I am dating someone that I've been friends with for three years. He lives in another state. We see each other when we can. We are now trying to see one another every month or so. By next summer, he will be much closer. The frustration comes in because of the next year. We are very much in love, but I just hope we can stand the test of time. I really want this to work.  

Does anyone have any similar story to tell? Any good advice on this subject? Thanks.  

Three years is a long time, and you guys are still not communicating?!  

You said that there are things you want to discuss, but you don't bring them up because you "know" it will start a fight. My advice regarding that is this: whatever it is that you need to talk about or ask him, do it in a way that is validating towards him, in a way that won't provoke him to be defensive, such as, "hey I love you so much and I know you love me, lets make a deal, from now on lets make a resolution not to fight, but to talk about our issues, and if one of us starts to feel too upset, then before something is said that can't be taken back, we take five minutes apart to cool off..." Something like that...I got alot of ideas to improve communication with my husband in Dr Phil's book "relationship rescue"..the problem with that is that your boyfriend has to be willing to read the book with you and do the exercises with you. Do you think he would go for it? Its too improve your lives together, to make life better. You know that you can't live like this much longer, right? If you allow much more time to go by, you are going to be full of resentment over how much of your life you wasted with this guy! Don't do that to yourself. Don't worry about starting a fight..you've got to be willing to be the first one to put yourself out there..otherwise, you aren't going to get anywhere, because you KNOW that HE isn't the one who will make the first move to make things better! You can do this in a non-confrontational way. It might not feel like that, but thats because the two of  you have a pattern: you have an issue, he hears it as b*tching, and then you fight, and you get labeled as the 'trouble maker'....its time to change that... From now on when you have an issue you need to discuss, start out with something positive about him or your relationship, then make the issue about both of you, not just his faults. This has really changed my relationships with everyone, not just my husband! (Even when my sister p*sses me off, I can deal with it without a fight now!) Usually it boils down to people's past experiences in life. When a person feels attacked or 'wronged' they aren't going to be open to talking about your problem with them...but if they feel secure, and that you are working together instead of separate, things can go smoothly, you could open doors in your relationship that you didn't even know were there.  

I wish you the best! 

Your post is full of contradictions!! How can your lover be a devout Catholic who emphasizes that her marriage vows are very important, all the while having an affair for 8 months with you? I suspect that since you posted here, you know truly in your heart that this is all wrong, but because of your personal greed, you won't stay away from her. And because of her greed, she won't stay away from you, why should she when she has it made with everything the way it is?  

She already told you that she can't accept divorce, (more like "won't" accept divorce".) So now you are faced with either continueing to be her "water of life", which by the way is one of the oldest lines in the book, or taking charge of your life and making the decision that you DESERVE more then this relationship is giving you. 

Usually married people who have affairs do it to feel more attractive, vibrant, more "alive".... feelings that you get when you are doing something you know isn't right yet you are getting away with it, kind of like a crime. Your lover should be giving more of herself to her husband and less to you if she truly takes those vows seriously. Of course you are feeling uncertain, but you can't just wait around and let life pass you by while your lover has a whole other life without you. You can have a bond with another woman if you open yourself up to that decision. Can you picture yourself in 5 years from now? What will you be doing?  

I urge you to seek professional counceling, because you are in a serious situation that needs guidance. You can't do this on your own, and your lover isn't any help- she's more temptation. You deserve to love and be loved by someone else, don't settle for less then that. 

Here's the thing; I don't know if I mentioned anything about a guy in any of my other posts, but I have been under the impression that this guy was going to ask me out, cause he said that (not that guys don't lie!) he liked me and that he just got out of a bad marriage. He told me to "give it time." I have. Apparantly however, one of his buddies (and a co-worker) told me that he is seeing some hoochie in the alley. On top of that, apparently this hoochie (I will not say woman/lady/or any other related term, because anyone like that does not deserve to be called a woman or a lady), has full blown AIDS. I'm not 100% sure that the guy that told me that she has AIDS (I'm 95% sure she is---whoring--HELLO!), wasn't just saying it to get me to stay away from him no matter. But, that's not the point. I'm just pissed that I let myself be let on. I asked him a week ago if he liked me and he was like "yeah, yeah." And, at the same time I knew it. I mean he didn't pay attention to me at all when we were downstairs in the cafeteria for breakfast (I work at a food bank), and he'd avoid me during work. Also, I heard a statement toward him, regarding him in a car with a female. Now, the thing is we tend to joke around making lude remarks (I can take them, they know that when I say "that's borderline"--that means they've gone too far); however, I knew it. I was just lying to myself, hoping it was just my imagination, and that I was being too clingy (but how is 5min of hanging out clingy?). I mean he's intelligent (in a academic way), good looking, and I thought he was nice (lying to me by not telling me that he's not interested and leading me on. I mean we never went out or anything, so his decision to sleep with someone isn't cheating, obviously. What pisses me off is the lying and the leading me on. I hate myself that I'm not even worth a simple "Hey, I know I said I liked you, but I've decided to ask someone else out." I've had someone who actually had the dignity to say that, and I wasn't upset at all. Now granted I wasn't really interested in him as I was with this guy. I mean, do I really have a right to be angry, or am I just being too emotional? 

 He meant as a potential girlfriend, as he has stated that he wants to date me, and yes I get what you are saying, but he was the one that brought for the ride purposefully indicating that he wanted time, and that he wanted to go out with me. Anyways, I told his friend to tell him to come up and tell me himself (he told him that he had--liar). And technically, he is not dating her, but sleeping with a hoochie in the alley. UGH! Anyways, I want to talk to him, not to try to force him to get with me or anything, but to tell him that he disrespected me by lying and taking me for a ride. Oh well, he could have had the full package, but he decided to go out and buy the one feature value package, on the clearance rack, at a condemned building of a store going out of business. His friend, the guy that told me, thought that I'd been sleeping w. him before, but I have never seen him anywhere except work (we are both volunteers--which is why I liked him---he seemed stable, intelligent, polite, and nice), and to not sleep with him because he says that he knows (as someone who knows that person) without a doubt that this lady has full blown AIDS. I have conflicted feelings toward him. First off anger, cause he messed w. me, second being fear because he's with someone he knows has a fatal disease (unless of course it's a ploy to keep me from wanting to date him at all--which is fine). I want him to know that we can be friends and that when I come around him, he doesn't have to run the other way. If I knew than I wouldn't be trying to get with him. Anyways, thanks for the comment. :)