Thursday, September 28, 2006

A Nice Cup of Tea & A Sit Down


Coach Fabulous is taking a bit of a rest - on a velvet chaise longue of course. Normal service will be resumed shortly. In the meantime, send in your questions and I'll spring, cat-like, into action - well, a bit like a lazy cat really ... I shall rouse myself gently from my slumber and amble back to the keyboard at a genteel pace.

If you have an issue you’d like guidance on, need some help finding direction or could just do with a bit of inspiration, email cmailto:Coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk and a little cyber-coaching will appear, as if by magic. Of course, the names will be changed to protect the innocent (and the not-so-innocent). All material © 2006 Alison Porter

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Tainted Love



Dear Coach Fabulous

I wondered if you might be able to help me. Eleven months ago on a boys’ trip to Las Vegas to attend a motorbike event my husband of 20 years, and of previously good character, paid $250 for sex with a prostitute. He didn't manage full sex (nerves, drink, overawed by the presence of a twenty-something in his bed, whatever it may have been) but I can't get over it. I'm heartbroken that he should want to risk our relationship for 10 minutes with her. I feel weak that I didn't just throw him out but can't think of life without him.

He's a completely changed person now. He worships the ground I walk on and I know he hated the experience so much there's no way he'd go down a similar path again, but I can't move on. Any advice?

All Shook Up


Dear All Shook Up

It’s completely understandable that you’re finding it difficult to move beyond the betrayal and disappointment, so don’t put undue pressure on yourself to have ‘handled’ this by now. It’s a very tough and complex emotional issue to deal with. For some people, the mere fact that this had occurred would have been reason enough to terminate the marriage, but we all know that human relationships are a lot more complicated than that and nothing is ever really that straightforward.

I’m not so sure that this is an issue of low self-esteem for you as much as it is for him. More on that later, but for now, just let it be OK that you valued your 20-year relationship enough to want to salvage something out of a very tricky situation. If you’d told me that this was a recurring pattern, then I’d probably take a different view, but as he seems genuinely remorseful and there is obviously a lot of love between you still, the question seems to be more about how to forgive him, let go of the pain and move on in your marriage.

Rule one would be don’t judge yourself as weak for choosing to see beyond this aberration to hopefully move to a deeper and more honest relationship. If you’re staying simply because you can’t imagine a life without him in it, then that wouldn’t be a healthy choice, but to have the courage to move beyond such a profound tear in the fabric of your marriage is a bold statement of the strength of feeling between you. It’s not clear how you found out about this, but you seem to have enough details to have heard it from the horse’s mouth, so at least there appears to some degree of honesty from your partner.

Hear me correctly – I am in no way condoning his behaviour, but what I am saying to you is that this is not a black and white issue, so the choice is yours whether to continue in the marriage and there is no absolute right or wrong choice. There’s just the choice that feels most deeply and authentically the right one for you. If you feel that there’s enough love and trust to be able to rebuild the relationship, then that’s equally as valid as deciding that it’s just too much for you to overlook.

If you decide that you want to find a way to forgive and move forward, then you’ll need to get a clearer perspective on what actually occurred. What we do when these kinds of betrayals of trust occur is to make them mean something about us and our relationships, when in fact they’re often just thoughtless acts of gross stupidity. That by no means excuses the behaviour, but it does allow you to see that when this occurred, he wasn’t thinking about your marriage – he just wasn’t thinking, period. The story smacks of a typical male mid-life crisis, when he sees his life passing him by, but doesn’t deal well with those emotions, and ends up acting out and doing something as teenage as this idiotic encounter.

I don’t know what was going on for him at the time, but if you want to move forward towards forgiveness, you need to have a very honest discussion with him about the events that led up to that particular evening. If whatever produced that behaviour isn’t dealt with now, it will continue to fester. For your own sake, he needs to be willing to hear just how painful this whole experience has been for you. If you don’t feel heard and try to put this behind you without fully expressing your hurt, then that will just fester too. You don’t even have to be sure of what outcome you want from this discussion – it just needs to be honest, no holds barred and absolutely from the heart. It will help you to decide if the marriage is worth saving, because without a willingness to really address the cause, not just the incident, then it’s just going to implode at some point in the future anyway.

If you choose to go forward together, then you’re going to have to draw a line under the past. You can’t keep harking back to it and he can’t keep walking on eggshells around you – that’s just a tenuous truce, not a real agreement to move forward in honesty and trust.

Within yourself, you will have to be willing to see that his actions do not necessarily invalidate your long-term relationship. Yes, he betrayed your trust and that will take some time to return, but it doesn’t mean that all those years of love and support are suddenly worth nothing. They’re still there, even if they’re tarnished by the pain you’re currently experiencing. If you continue to dwell on this one incident as meaning that he doesn’t love you and that your whole 20-year marriage was a sham, then you’ll never get over it.

Forgiveness is never easy, but it can be made easier to contemplate if you are willing to see that forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning what he’s done. It means being willing to overlook that single event in order to see a higher truth about him and your partnership, to recognise the love that is still there, regardless of what has happened. If you want to make a go of it, this is what you need to do. Your priority must be to look to the future and the creation of a much stronger, healthier marriage that is open and honest for the both of you. Air your old resentments, any skeletons in the closet, any wish to make him suffer for what he’s done and then make a choice to move beyond that.

I genuinely believe that there’s a gift in even the darkest of circumstances. For you, this might be a marriage made stronger through adversity or a choice to move on to a whole other life for yourself. Either way, the choice is yours to make and it’s best made from a standpoint of complete honesty. Anything less would be cheating both yourself and your husband out of the opportunity to face this problem fully and deal with the underlying issues it has brought up for the two of you. If you face them now, they do not need to repeat themselves.

It’s going to take a while, but you obviously have the courage to do this. Just be kind to yourself in the process of discovering what’s right for you from hereon in. Taking him back doesn’t make you any less of a person than leaving him would have made you a better one. Just make sure that if you stay, you’re doing it because there’s a genuine foundation for a better marriage to come out of this.

Coach Fabulous

If you have an issue you’d like guidance on, need some help finding direction or could just do with a bit of inspiration, email CoachFabulousCo@aol.com and a little cyber-coaching will appear, as if by magic. Of course, the names will be changed to protect the innocent (and the not-so-innocent). All material © 2006 Alison Porter

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Reasons To Be Cheerful


Dear Coach Fabulous

I’m trying to stay positive, but the recent breakup with my boyfriend is getting me down. I know that it was for the best, but a part of me is still finding it hard to let go and I’m always thinking about it. Why is this happening and how do I get him off my mind?

Crazy Little Thing Called Love


Dear Crazy Little Thing Called Love

It goes with the territory that when a relationship ends you’re going to be a bit obsessive about it, so give yourself a break on that one. Trying to work out why it happens is probably one of the biggest mind-traps going. Forget about that and concentrate on what to do when it happens.

When you’re having a bad ex day – which is rather like a bad hair day, but more annoying – what’s happening is that the pull of the past (or your current sadness) is stronger than the vision you hold for your future. First of all, it's fine to have them, so don't dishonour your feelings. Feel them as they come up – however sad and lonely they may be – then when they've been acknowledged, you can get on with creating your future, not looking back at over your shoulder at your past.

When the obsession feels really addictive, one way to shake the grip is to focus on remembering what didn't work for you in the relationship, rather than looking wistfully back at what did. Then put some energy into visualising the kind of relationship and life you'd actually like to have. Think of the qualities you want to find in your new partner and make sure you're already creating them in your own life, eg creativity, success, vision, focus, playfulness, kindness etc. Put some energy into being grateful for the good things and people that are here in your life right now that offer you support, love and friendship.

And just be kind to yourself. Everyone has bad hair (or bad ex) days. None of us is immune. As my friend Lothar – a barman, and therefore a font of wisdom (and profanity) – always used to say in a very droll manner, C'est la f****ing vie! If you don’t take it too seriously, your mood will lift and your cares will fade away. I recommend that particular mantra to be taken on an hourly basis when things are tough. It’s true radical acceptance in action, even if it’s not something for polite company!

Coach Fabulous


If you have an issue you’d like guidance on, need some help finding direction or could just do with a bit of inspiration, email CoachFabulousCo@aol.com and a little cyber-coaching will appear, as if by magic. Of course, the names will be changed to protect the innocent (and the not-so-innocent). All material © 2006 Alison Porter