When I discovered my husband’s affair I was distraught, devastated and blown apart by his betrayal. He was supposed to have my back, emotionally and physically. Instead, he hid behind his back a double life. Like a magician, he concealed a five-year relationship in plain sight, leaving me to feel worse than a fool. I cared for our two children, one just an infant, while he was falling in love with someone else and telling me he loved me, and that he was blessed to have me in his life.

Under the moon

And then, a pocket call blew the lid off his jar full of lies. I had finally discovered just how much he loved me. I then sat in a deep meditative state under the virtuous light of a full moon, which was pretty fascinating, because at the time I didn’t meditate. I didn’t think I knew how. I guess people turn to meditation for all sorts of reasons, including spontaneously in an effort to survive after witnessing their world vaporise.

At least that’s what I did

There, in the dark, began my metamorphosis from an uptight, nothing is ever right, I’m not worthy, judgmental, over-taxed, overwhelmed woman to a woman filled with gratitude and love for all, even my former spouse. I pulled myself out of the past and back from the future and began the process of retraining myself to live in the present moment. Because I didn’t have a choice, my world had just vanished. I was panic-stricken. My past was a lie. My future was shot. The only place I felt I could breathe was in the present moment. However, I wasn’t enlightened, I was afraid.

The trauma of discovering infidelity broke me apart. Then, the moon blew me open. When I looked at the scattered pieces of me, I had the opportunity to reclaim those that felt useful and set free those that no longer fit. Over the next three years I rebuilt myself. This was not a piece by piece experience. Sometimes the walls would fall again, or the foundation would get shaken. Sometimes I would pull the pieces apart to start anew. But I became accustomed to the process and was adept at reconfiguring the pieces of me so they fit better together.

Figuring out who I am

Each time I reconstructed or reconfigured I did so not out of fear but out of great curiosity. Who is this person I am to become? I took to the mountains, spending time in meditation to answer the question. And what I discovered was that my ego was the part of me that kept me stuck—in fear, filled with angst. I was unsure, always. It was my ego that needed to know who I was. It required me to answer—am I a wife? A mother? A writer? A failure? A success?

I am none of those things.

I am light. I am life. I am gratitude. I am love. I am presence. I am peace. I am a reflection. I am whole.

Mother, woman, wife, writer… those are positions I hold with gratitude, grace and reverence.

Addressing my ego

After many months of looking at my ego, coming to understand its role in my life, I sat it down and sent it on holiday. Sure, it tries to check in every now and then but I let it know all is well and send it away. Instead of seeing life through the eyes of my ego, I now live from my centre, my heart. I live from my soul.

It is from this place that I am able to express gratitude to my former spouse for being the catalyst that jettisoned me out of unconscious living and into presence. He has played a crucial role in my life. With him I became a wife, a mother, and then, through the experience of infidelity and divorce, I transformed my entire being.

The discovery of his affair was as near to a near-death experience as one can get, and the process of healing after was akin to a rebirth. Without having experienced it, or something like it, I feel safe saying that I would have lived a half-hearted life. And, upon my death, condolences would have been appropriate. Not now.

Moving on

Now I celebrate each day. And when I feel myself wanting to judge or complain or be taken by fear, I come to the present moment, to my heart. I join hands with my soul, feeling secure and knowing that I am right here, right now, exactly where I am supposed to be. I feel the unconditional love that surrounds this gorgeous planet. And I nurture my vibrational energy so I exude that love. I have no idea what the future holds, which is fine. It is in the now that I must reside.

It is in the now that I hear the applause of the universe for living a life of presence.

Before the pocket call, I was eating cheese steaks and complaining about politics and hated my body and struggled under the weight of the world. I was always on the go with not enough time and never enough sleep. There was a constant ball of angst in my centre, as if at any moment tragedy could strike so I best be wary and on guard.

Gratitude for my husband’s affair

Do I hate my former spouse? No way. He played his role perfectly. I am eternally grateful. I know who I am now. I forgive his human actions because I know deep in my soul that his choice to have an affair fulfilled my need to be shaken to my core so that I could come alive.

This appreciation doesn’t mean I want to flip through our wedding album together, which I threw out, or reminisce about our brazen move across the country [the one that put him within an hour’s flight of his mistress]. Although I have laughed about the irony of that one… I do empathise with the burden he now carries. One day he’ll need to look into the wide eyes of our children and face their questions about his choice to break our marriage vows.

I accept that this was the journey he needed to take and I was the one who would walk beside him until the time when his actions would part our union.

I thank him because his affair, which to the world-at-large makes him a bad person, made me a more present and loving person, a more integrated being.

If you told me that I’d one day I’d be grateful for the experience of infidelity and divorce, I would have been shocked by your suggestion. Yet, that’s exactly how it played out.

The post Why I am thankful for my husband’s affair appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

At every step in life, you are faced with a choice. The choices you make then, determine the next set of choices that become available to you. Mature individuals know this.

Let us examine some reasons of cheating we have come across in our practice of counselling couples. We realised that far from feeling regret, many people, in fact, feel deserving of a relationship on the side.

6 lame reasons for cheating in marriage

I deserve it

Dev had a mistress in Switzerland. She had been his interpreter cum secretary when he started his business there. He claimed that when he got married, he had an inferiority complex as back then he was a “nobody”. This prevented him from objectively evaluating if he would be compatible with his wife.

He was now a successful business man and felt that he deserved to have true love and the pleasures of life with an attractive and compatible woman. After all, he had worked hard to be where he was. He asked his wife to deal with this reality and accept the status quo for the material comforts he provided, or agree for divorce.

Then, there are also men who abuse the religious sanction they receive for more than one marriage, by getting involved with other women. Some men even claim they have ‘royal blood’ in their veins. They feel this gives them the right to have a mistress like their ancestors. Yet others see it as a sign of wealth and prosperity if they can materially look after many women.

Such people do not feel the need to resist post-marriage attractions, and they permit themselves to think about and engage in cheating by being in more than one relationship at a time.

A word of advice: Those who justify cheating in their marriages need to engage in the light-shedding process of counselling. This will help them evaluate the validity of the cause, and objectively examine the reasons for the same in their marital relationship or their individual pasts. It is only through such a process that the individual can be helped to understand one’s own attitudinal and behavioural patterns, and heal.

Entitlement issues

Kalpana had grown up seeing both her parents engage freely in infidelity. Her father justified his cheating as a need for a mentally stimulating company of an educated woman, which his wife didn’t provide. Her mother reasoned hers as the need for emotional support and companionship, which Kalpana’s father didn’t provide.

As a child, at one level Kalpana was confused and upset with the estrangement of her parents, and their subsequent justification of their respective extra-marital affairs to her. At another level, there was a need to accommodate her parents’ conduct. This was an attempt to overcome her own feelings of inadequacy and low self-worth due to her lineage.

As a result, Kalpana herself engaged in a string of extra-marital affairs, each one lasting briefly. She explained her own behaviour each time, saying that her husband was making a big thing out of nothing. She saw her marriage as an arrangement, which she was willing to continue, provided that she be allowed to find ‘happiness’ wherever she found it. Kalpana was re-enacting the script her parents followed.

A word of advice: Those who are repeating history by living a life of promiscuity like their parents should examine the deep pain they experienced as a child of such parents. They should ask themselves if they felt that the parents should have exercised another option, such as attempting a mutually fulfilling relationship through counselling, or having a respectable and friendly separation, where the interest of the child is kept in mind. This could help them with insight into their own options today.

Cult culture

Mohan belonged to a spiritual cult that encouraged open marriage as a more evolved form of relating between man and woman, under the guise of discouraging dependency. You can well imagine his marital life. He had convinced his wife of living this life, and had dumped several of his post-marital girlfriends saying that he was discouraging dependency in them, thus doing them a favour. He would sell the same spiritual jargon to them and move on to his next affair. Two of his ex-girlfriends, who were almost his daughter’s age, came to us for counselling, nursing their wounds. They were confused about relationships.

A word of advice: Those who condone an open marriage because of a cult, could evaluate the credentials of those who propagate it. They should ask themselves whether they are using this concept as a cop out to avoid being in a committed relationship, in which partners exchange constructive feedback for personal growth.

Rebel trouble

Individuals growing up in authoritarian households with an extremely moralistic upbringing often creates in them a deep desire to rebel. They might rush into marrying out of caste or marry early, to adopt a lifestyle that is completely different from their parents’.

They develop an attitude of rebelling against any form of binding whether of the family or of being in a committed relationship. Sona was one such person. She married a foreigner, had a baby, and was done with the rebellion against her parents.

However, the rebellious streak remained and manifested when her husband asked her to participate in a family tradition. She rebelled against being told to do so and threw a fit. The conflicts soon began. She looked for someone who would humour her and let her do as she pleased, and subsequently left her husband and child to live with a younger man.

A word of advice: The indiscriminate rebels without a cause need to examine their automatic reactions and consciously break free from them. They need to decide with their partners, and with the help of a counsellor, if the marriage can be saved in a fulfilling way. Together, they could start afresh, or separate amicably and maturely.

Cheating for kicks

Some married women claim that getting attention from a male colleague gives them a high. They are curious to see how far this can go and to what extent they can keep the attentive male on a string. They justify their affairs by saying that their husbands are unattractive, uncommunicative or insensitive, and if they can get it elsewhere, they deserve to enjoy it.

A word of advice: Those who take what they have for granted, and experiment with post-marriage attractions for the kick of it obviously have no other creative outlet. An empty mind is an ideal place for the devil to start his workshop; such individuals should engage in some creative pursuit to channel their energies, so that they can feel the joy of what they have i.e. the positives in their partner and their relationship.

Office spouse

There also is an increasing trend of having ‘work-husbands’ and ‘work-wives’. This happens because of the long hours people spend at work.

A man and woman working together can communicate better with each other and empathise, especially if both are having issues at home. In such a case, there is a strong chance of the work relationship becoming more attractive and taking precedence over the marital relationship. Although it is termed as good friendship by the one engaging in such a relationship, it is labelled by the married partner as emotional infidelity or emotional cheating.

Professional environments (a call-centre, for instance) demand long working hours in close proximity with colleagues and are a natural breeding ground for such emotional attractions. There is a possibility of cheating in the form of physical intimacy as the relationship gets more intense with time.

A word of advice: To counter work attractions, it helps to consciously maintain work-life balance. Increase communication time with your spouse and create pleasant memories. Whenever possible take a vacation, and iron out all differences through constructive dialogue to find a win-win situation.

When it’s time to end the marriage

Most people who give in to post-marriage attractions do so because they think that the grass is greener on the other side. However, that illusion is soon broken. The truth is, you are the same person, and you carry yourself into every relationship. Therefore, unless you fully understand your own motivation and behaviour, you will perpetually be looking for greener pastures.

Finally, if you have truly found the love of your life even after marriage, then have the courage to end the previous relationship and live the life of your dreams. But, if you want to have your cake and eat it too by continuing adulterous relationships, remember, this decision has far-reaching consequences. It affects not just your own emotional well-being, but also lives of your children.

The post 6 lame reasons for cheating in marriage appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Vanita had fallen head over heels in love with a participant from her course. She was married [against her parents’ wishes] to a hard-working, middle-class boy from her medical college. Actually, she wanted to study literature, but ended up becoming a doctor to fulfil her parent’s wishes. After marriage, she had settled down to keep house for her husband and had two children. At the time it provided a refreshing change from the stress of fulfilling her parents’ ambitions. Slowly, her husband got busy as his medical practice flourished. Vanita claimed that he didn’t even have time for romance. She complained that in the little time that he did spend with her, he discussed medical cases or future plans for the family. He was a gentle man, but she did not feel cherished in the relationship. She met us saying, “I love two men, and I don’t want to choose. I am in a moral dilemma. My husband has been a gentle, caring person who works hard for the family. I value that and respect him immensely, but my lover makes me feel cherished as a woman. My body burns with passion for him.”

So, can one woman love two men at the same time?

Many Relationships Suffer From Unrealistic Expectations

Marriage is a package deal, and one needs to accept what comes in it. No partner can be perfect and many marriages fall prey to the ‘utopia syndrome’ of unrealistic expectations of a fairy-tale life. Reading too many romantic novels could make one lose touch with reality. And many marriages have suffered because of such unrealistic expectations based on fiction. Not being able to appreciate what you have in reality is the fallout of comparisons with perfect fairy tales.

Your partner is a gift from God, and you need to appreciate and accept this gift just like you would accept and appreciate God’s gift in nature. When you see a spectacular sunset, you don’t say, “A little more orange around the sun please, and a little pink on the clouds. How about a little deep purple on the waves?” You enjoy the sunset just the way it is. People are just as much gifts of nature as sunsets. So why can’t they be enjoyed as they are?

Is It Really Love?

Raised in an orthodox family, Surabhi was not allowed the freedom every teenager craves. So, she escaped the parental prison by marrying her best friend’s brother. After marriage, she was given every freedom and she reveled in it. Her husband went to great lengths to keep her happy. The rebel child in her found instant gratification in the husband who was like a pampering parent. Now, she sought a more adult relationship, which she found with one of her husband’s friends. This man was always upfront and assertive with her and did not give in to each of her whims and fancies. She was immensely attracted by this quality, and found herself at a crossroads when he proposed marriage. On one hand, she felt grateful to her husband to let her experience life in all its colors and loved her lifestyle with him. On the other hand, she “felt like a woman” with her boyfriend and respected him for not indulging her whims.

Once again, this woman loved two men for different reasons. But is it really love?

Looking Only for One’s Own Gratification

Love has various levels, from merely seeking satisfaction for oneself to meeting the needs of others. Human love moves along a continuum, from the pole of self-centredness to the pole of other-centredness. There are many words for love in the Greek language: storge refers to love between a parent and child, eros refers to passionate and sexual love, philia refers to real affection between close friends, and agape refers to unconquerable benevolence and invincible goodwill—the highest and purest form of love.

Often, a woman who finds herself drawn to two men, is one whose certain desires are being satisfied by one man and certain others by another. She wants both of them for what they bring to her life. For her, giving up one man means giving up some of those desires, which she is not prepared to do. More often than not, this problem arises when we look at a relationship, based purely on our own gratification [I-centric], and not as a mutually shared partnership [we-centric], where the relationship, the ‘we’, the ‘us’ is valued and where healthy negotiations take place.

A we-centric person takes the effort to communicate to the partner that certain basic valid relationship needs are not being fulfilled. Through such healthy and open communication, mutual understanding and negotiations take place. The we-centric person also knows the delicate art of when and what to negotiate and when and what to simply let go and ignore.

In Giving We Receive

A meaningful life can result only from the experience of love in our life, and this implies a commitment and dedication to another. Love does not ask the question, “What am I getting out of this?” as the criterion of fulfillment. Love takes time, demands a history of giving and receiving, laughing and crying, living and dying; it never promises instant gratification, only ultimate fulfillment.

Love means believing in someone, in something, it supposes a willingness to struggle, to work, to suffer and to join in the rejoicing. There has not been even one recorded case of deep and lasting fulfillment by a person whose basic mindset and only question was, “what am I getting out of this?”

Satisfaction and fulfillment are the by-products of committed and dedicated love. They belong only to those who can reach beyond themselves, and to whom ‘giving’ is more important than ‘receiving’. Sometimes we are tempted to confuse ‘good times’ with a ‘good life’. A successful pursuit of endless good times is something that can never really exist, and can only result in the inevitable sadness and disappointment of unfulfilled expectations.

How to Nurture Genuine Love

Here are a few ways you can work on yourself if you want your life filled with genuine love:

• Break the fixation with self and give up your self-centredness
• Learn how to care about and be sincerely dedicated to the satisfaction of another
• Become a sensitive listener, who hears what is said and also what is isn’t
• Postpone personal gratification to meet the needs of another
• Get in touch with your deepest feelings and most hidden thoughts
• Share your most vulnerable self as an act of love
• Get honest feedback from someone who really knows you through your own self-disclosure
• Work at the delicate art of communication and shared decision-making.

The Takeaway

Man goes through life, selfishly blind to anything and anyone other than himself. ‘Poor me’, ‘I want’, ‘I need’, ‘I feel’, ‘my life’ form the sub-stratum of his life.

If we step out of our self-consumed world, we can understand, for the first time, the true meaning of love. In the words of St Francis of Assisi, “It is in giving that we receive”.

We are transformed by love. What we receive in giving is so much more than we can ever give. It leaves us feeling grateful to those who allow us to love them, eternally grateful for the opportunity to experience the gift of love. Ask yourself, “Have you ever lived for someone more than you live for yourself?” If not, today is your chance.

The post Can One Woman Love Two Men? appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

The meaning of marriage

To understand the dynamics of an extramarital affair, we need to first understand the true meaning of marriage.

Marriage is much more than an institution to enhance physical survival and ensure continuity of life. It is not just a bond between the male who is the provider and protector, and the female who bears children and raises them. If that were only the purpose, both roles would have fitted perfectly, but it is much more. Marriage is a spiritual partnership between two equals, instituted for the purpose of spiritual growth; and today, no marriage will last until the partners share such a relationship. This spiritual partnership is the vehicle for personal growth, and is invaluable for this purpose.

The Upanishads [Hindu scriptures] talk of marriage as a beautiful relationship, which—even as the needs of the partners are fulfilled—creates an ideal atmosphere for inter-personal growth, where both partners have a golden opportunity to evolve and grow towards their own higher selves. This happens because the intimate relationship makes us vulnerable and provokes us to bring to the surface our true selves, otherwise kept hidden under a social mask. Our partner, in turn, mirrors this face, and creates a perfect opportunity to honestly see and admit to ourselves what we see, introspect, accept, transform, and finally be in harmony with ourselves.

Marriage as a mirror of self

In a deep and intimate relationship, the mirroring of one’s true self is most accurate. Some individuals are uncomfortable with the truth about themselves. They have kept their true face carefully hidden under a social mask from others as well as from themselves, and have convinced themselves that their mask is their true face. Such individuals feel threatened when there is too much intimacy because, in intimacy, there are unguarded moments when the mask slips, and your partner instantly reflects your real face to you. This whole process frightens them, so they shy away from an intense relationship. They do not want to face their own reality and therefore, justify their actions. Whenever the closeness feels threatening to them they get uncomfortable and escape to another relationship—in other words, they have an extramarital affair.

Escape from problems

The escapist reacts in these two ways instead of seeing their problem of discomfort with reality.

• They blames the partner point-blank for creating a conflict
• If they can’t find something obvious to blame the other, they justify the escape under the guise of wanting so-called “freedom” in marriage.

The escapists can never be committed to anyone unless they see this “escapist” pattern of life, and want to transcend it truly. The truth therefore remains unchanged, that is, the escapist mind wants the comfort of being an irresponsible child at all times, and cannot and will not stand the truth; therefore it is anti-truth, anti-love, anti-commitment and thus anti-life.

What one gets from an extramarital affair

Today it is considered trendy, liberal and even being with the times if you have an extramarital affair. Flirting between married couples is rampant in the elitist society, and if you do not have a taste for it, you are considered square and primitive.

How do people react to having such an experience? Some people find exactly what they are looking for:

• the reassurance that they are not really getting old
• that they still have sex appeal
• escape from boredom
• a release of pent-up tensions
• a means of getting even with their spouse for something
• a way of satisfying their curiosity
• a change of pace from their ordinary sexual diet
• a temporary form of escape.

Others find the experience to be empty, guilt-provoking, awkward, frightening and psychologically de-stabilising.

Man as a polygamous animal

Those who indulge in extramarital affairs very often justify their actions by saying that man is a polygamous animal, and that it is natural for them to have multiple partners. They compare themselves to animals and say that they too, like animals, function with biological instincts, cleverly restricting the comparison to polygamous animals in the sexual arena only. Here, we would like to ask all those who want to live like animals [in accordance with the Law of the Jungle], why they are not living like them in other areas of life? Animals don’t have the security of banks, secured jobs, a secured meal, a secured partner tucked away at home to indulge if none other is available outside. They do not have ambitions of name, fame, prestige for themselves. They do not go after exotic varieties of foods, nor do they overeat. They do not live to eat like man; instead they follow their biology faithfully and merely eat to live. They do not stimulate themselves with pornographic literature or movies. So, in effect, we see that man does everything that animals don’t do in every other sphere of life. He follows the law of man in other areas, but wants to follow the law of the jungle in the sexual sphere only. Animals never over-indulge—they are true to their biological nature—but man does.

Sexual Evolution

But as therapists we can understand the statement “Human being is a polygamous animal” in a deeper context. It is part of the sexual evolution of human beings. Yes, human species is polygamous to begin with. However, we are born with a capacity to evolve as a higher being—from animal-man to man-man to ultimately God-man.

We are all born autosexuals—it means “in love with ourselves”. If you observe carefully, every child is in love with himself. Every child is utterly self-centre; it is concerned only with its own body, its own needs and its own pleasures.

But by the age of seven, very naturally, the child transcends this stage and goes into the second stage of evolution. The second phase is homosexual. Homosexual means “in love with someone just like you”. Boys make friends with boys and girls make friends with girls. If the child has lived his first autosexual stage properly, and has loved himself completely, very naturally he starts loving those who have similar bodies.

When a man is really out of autosexual and homosexual phases, he is capable and mature to fall in love with a woman—to be in a true heterosexual stage—which is a totally different world, a different chemistry, a different psychology, a different spirituality. He is able to play with this different world, this different organism. They are poles apart, but when they come close, interpersonal growth occurs. To love a woman or to love a man, a new kind of being is needed, which can accept the polar opposite.

It is clear that extramarital relationships occur only in the autosexual stage of sexual evolution. This is, as seen above, an out and out “taking” state. If one evolves to a heterosexual stage of sexual evolution, he/she will be in a “giving” state. Here, the commitment is between two opposites for the purpose of spiritual growth. And thus extramarital affairs do not exist in such a relationship.

What is love?

A meaningful life can result only from the experience of love in our life, and this implies a commitment and dedication to another. Love does not ask the question, “What am I getting out of this?” as the criterion of fulfilment. Love understands by direct experience that it is in giving that we receive. Love takes time, demands a history of giving and dying; it never promises instant gratification, only ultimate fulfilment. Love means believing in someone, in something; it supposes a willingness to struggle, to work, to suffer and to join in the rejoicing. There has not been even one recorded case of deep and lasting fulfilment by a person whose basic mindset and only question was, “What am I getting out of this?” Satisfaction and fulfilment are the by-products of committed and dedicated love. They belong only to those who can reach beyond themselves, and to whom giving is more important than receiving.

Do you want love?

Sometimes, we are tempted to confuse good times with a good life. A successful pursuit of endless good times is something that can never really exist, and can only result in the inevitable sadness and disappointment of unfulfilled expectations.

If you don’t want to:

• Break the fixation with self and give up your self-centeredness
• Learn how to care about and be sincerely dedicated to the satisfaction of another,
• Postpone personal gratification to meet the needs of another
• Get in touch with your deepest feelings and most hidden thoughts
• Share your most vulnerable self as an act of love
• Get honest feedback from someone who really knows you through your own self-disclosure
• Work at the delicate art of communication and shared decision-making.

If you don’t want these things, then obviously you don’t want love.

The choice is yours!

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