Married, But In Love with Ex

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The whirlwind courtship is over and hopefully you settle into a great marriage.  Sometimes, however, you feel a “tug” from the past and think you’re in love with someone other than your spouse.  That’s what happened to one of my listeners, who wrote me, wondering if she had a problem:

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Read transcript here

These Days, Most Women Are Pigs

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I know the title of this blog may be shocking, but it’s all around us:  women (and even girls) who are sexually available and almost advertise that fact, and/or who are having sex by the third date when they barely know the guy.  If you want to be in a relationship for the long run, watch my video for why this “sex first” approach doesn’t lead to long-term caring:

Or watch other videos at youtube.com/DrLaura.

Read transcript here.

The Prince Was Really a Frog

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I love “Law & Order” and “Cold Case” types of programs, because of the cleverness of the characters in discerning truth from lies (either from witnesses or clues at a crime scene).  I find it fascinating.  Detective Goren from “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” seems to know everything about just everything, which is a plot device that sometimes strains credulity, but, in general, I find the most interesting leaps to be that of a “gut feeling” or a “hunch” which is not easily explained by logic until after the fact.

Some people are better at this than others - perhaps it’s an inner talent that is unique, or maybe that individual just pays more attention to detail, or maybe it’s just the willingness to listen to that still, soft voice that tells you something just isn’t right.

I find that many people who call my radio program with concerns about the behaviors of someone they’re dating already “knew” on some level that something just wasn’t right.  But they ignored or denied those feelings because they wanted the fantasy to be true.  Generally, these desired fantasies turn into disasters.

One caller earlier this week met a guy online who immediately treated her like he was her fairy godmother.  “Zap” with his wand, and they were off to foreign lands for lunch and distant places for vacations.  She found out that he was still married, even though he had said he was divorced.  She called me all upset and sad.

I told her that she had behaved like a slut (yeah, I said that), because he had money.  Certainly, she couldn’t have believed that he loved her - he didn’t even KNOW her!  She was gullible and pretty and sexually available and that was what he was looking for.  He wasn’t looking for the love of his life.  She, however, wanted the princess fairy tale, and she had it for two months.  Meanwhile, she had suspended her good sense about why a man would operate like this with no real knowledge of the woman.  Answer?  Knowledge of the woman was not of interest to him.  Showing off and having passionate sex with a very willing woman was what he really wanted.

Instead of worrying about not being able to trust men, and sobbing with great hurt at being dumped, I suggested that she start behaving like the kind of woman a real man without a selfish agenda would value.  She didn’t listen to that small voice, and ended up used and humiliated. 

Don’t deny what you know in your gut, even in the midst of what seems like the most unbelievable reality.  It is unbelievable, because it is not to be believed.

Diary of a Recovering “Bad” Wife

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I got this email from a self-described former “bad” wife, and I’ll let it speak for itself:

Dear Dr. Laura:

Some people are recovering alcoholics.  I am a recovering bad wife.  I don’t know much about the 12 step programs, but from the little TV I watch, I recall that the first step is to recognize that you have a problem, so here I go:

 My name is S., and I am a bad wife.  My addiction is not alcohol.  My addiction is the “blame-it-all-on-the-husband” or “take-it-all-out-on-the-husband addiction.

I know you’ve described all of my symptoms much better than I can and much more eloquently in “The Proper Care & Feeding of Husbands,” and that you’ve also given me the solutions to become a better wife, but I think my first step needs to be acknowledging my problem.

I acknowledge that I have too much on my plate, and that I cannot do it all well, and that my husband’s needs and desires have been at the bottom of my priority list for a long time.  People will tell you I am a really nice person, always ready to help, and yet the one person I should be caring about the most (my husband), does not get the respect, the love, and the care that he deserves.

As of today, I am no longer a bad wife.  I am a recovering bad wife, and I vow to be the girlfriend and wife my husband deserves.

Thank you, Dr. Laura, for hammering good sense into my head.

S.

Resisting Irresistible Impulses

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I always look for patterns in callers’ questions, because I’m interested in what that pattern means in terms of what folks have come to believe…and why.  A persistent thought seems to be that impulse is irresistible.  That means, if you feel like a burger or a cigarette or a roll in the hay with someone you know you shouldn’t be with, then you have some kind of addiction, which means a disease, which means out of your control.

That’s a darn good rationalization…but it ain’t true.  The only irresistible impulse is one which hasn’t been resisted, and that is most definitely (but not simply) a choice.

I say “not simply,” because resisting impulses is difficult and sometimes painful.  Generally, such inappropriate behaviors have the purpose of 1) immediate gratification of feelings, and 2) hiding you from other emotionally distressing thoughts and feelings.  That means that, if you resist the impulse to drink, eat, or have a sexual fling in the office stationery closet, you will be left with the anxiety or sadness that resides within.

It is clear, therefore, that the emphasis should be on dealing with the not-so-well submerged anxieties and sadness.  For example, a man called recently to say that he is mean to his wife, criticizing anything he sees around the house.  I immediately suggested that he saw the cluttered kitchen counter as a sign his wife didn’t love him.  Now, you’d think that was a ridiculous leap, but it was “spot on.”  He (after some nagging from me) offered that his mother had not been, well, “motherly” and loving.  To this day, he has his wife do things to prove/make up for the lack of affection and attention he missed as a child.  Did he know he was doing this and why?  Yes for the “doing;” no for the “why.”

I suggested he go home with a flower in hand and tell his wife that he needed her to hold him.  I told him that’s what “his woman” was for.  You can always hire a maid, but you can’t hire someone to really love and care about you.  He was treating his wife like his mom, when he really needed her to be a wife with loving kindness.

You get love by being open to it, and by being loving in return.  You do not get love by eating that cake, smoking that joint, drinking that beer or overpowering those who care about you. 

Resist those impulses.  Yes, it’s painful and difficult, both physically and emotionally, but the ultimate reward is the very thing you’ve been trying to get (just all in the wrong way), and that thing is LOVE.

The Sad Tale of Steve McNair and Sahel Kazemi

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I get calls all the time from young, emotionally hungry young women (girls, actually), who think that an older, often married, man really loves them.  It makes me so sad in my heart to hear these young women denying reality and setting themselves up for hurt.

20 year old Sahel Kazemi thought she had it made in the shade, because a celebrity, a former NFL football star, Steve McNair, took her partying in VIP rooms and on vacations for eight months.  She believed him when he got her on his condo bed for sex that he was going to leave his wife of twelve years for her.  He didn’t.

And then, one day, she saw some other young thing - probably another girl believing she was the one who was special to McNair.  So, one night, when McNair was sitting on his sofa, likely asleep, she shot him twice in the head and twice in the chest.  Then she sat down next to him, positioning herself so that she would fall into his lap, and shot herself (according to FoxNews). 

Here was an attractive young girl (she had just turned twenty), a teenager, a high school dropout who had moved with a boyfriend at age 17 to Nashville from Florida.  When she was 9, her mother was murdered, and, born in Iran, she and her family were persecuted for their religious faith.

This is a lot of turmoil and chaos and hurt for a young girl, and it is sad that so many family members and family friends tell this upbeat story about her, surprised that she would do such a thing.  She was clearly emotionally tortured and vulnerable, needy, and naive.  Her life began and ended in violence.

Men like McNair make me sick.  I am sicker still, reading sycophants talk about his actions on the football field, as though the admiration he earned for running a ball around a field should count for more than the human lives he betrayed.  He had a wife, with whom he had two sons, and two more sons from I don’t know where and I don’t know by whom.  He was a 36 year old man who had been given great opportunities and huzzahs for his accomplishments. His response was to cater to his childish needs to “do” young women who (without question) would simply adore him. 

It is sad that this ended in death for him and a naive and needy girl who believed that without him, there was no purpose in life. 

It is sad that, as I speak, older accomplished men in business, politics, clergy, academe, and medicine are doing the exact same thing, in order to fulfill their needs to receive a naive reverence, to feel youthful and important in the reflection of a young woman, or because they feel entitled to spoils because of their celebrity or wealth or power.

I warn young girls every day to live a life of integrity and modesty with morals, so they won’t be used in such a way.  Sometimes, though, a girl is so damaged that shortcuts seem the only way.

This time, it resulted in death seeming the only way.

Divorced, But We Get Along

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As you’ve heard on my radio program, sometimes when people get divorced, they can’t stand to be in the same room with each other.  This week, I got a question with a slightly different twist:  should divorced parents (who aren’t constantly in “battle mode”) get together occasionally for family dinners?

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Read transcript here.

The Emptiness of Internet “Friending”

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Either directly (e.g., sadness about not having a relationship with a parent or sibling) or indirectly (e.g., having trouble being intimate), more and more callers to my radio program report a sad sort of alienation from close, loving relationships. Yet the numbers of people deeply invested in “virtual” relationships via Internet “friending” social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, is growing exponentially. We are involved more in frivolous levels of intimacy and less invested in warm, caring, loving, involved relationships.

The pseudo meaningfulness we imagine as we add our names and faces to someone’s Internet site is addictive, yet ultimately vacuous. There isn’t really anyone out there who cares enough to hold your hand when you are in pain.

The Annenberg Center for the Digital Future at the University of California reported last week that 28% of Americans interviewed last year said they have been spending less time with family members. That’s nearly triple from the numbers in 2006.

In the old days when television was young, families watched together in one room. Now there are TVs in every room of the home, with 500 or more channels, and the family is dispersed, with each “doing their own thing.” The Internet is a one-on-one, non-family experience also - breaking down the cohesiveness of family dynamics, parenting, sharing, and plain old caring.

The problem is that people are, by nature, gregarious. That means we need company. When we spend our time with the technology that minimizes the intimacy of company, we forever alter the ability of individuals to actually experience pure intimacy in a positive, ultimately satisfying manner. And the experience of having lots of so-called “friends” on the Internet is beguiling, but empty — -in effect, a distorted form of solitude.

There is no wonder that so many people have a deep problem with being able to love - they mostly want to be satisfied by flattery, freedom from reciprocal responsibility and the reality of obligations and responsibilities, much less sacrifice for the general good or the benefit of another.

Technological advances in “communication” have actually increased the number of people you can interact with, but have more importantly diluted out the meaningfulness of those same interactions.

Think of families together at dinner, and a whole town helping rebuild your barn. Compare that to what you have now in your life. Which is better for quality of life?