Advertising executive, Carol Fena has been in and out of a relationship with banker, Neal for the last two years. They break up for a week or two but then keep getting back together until the next blow-up. Carol’s friends can’t understand why she keeps going back to Neal and why she is so addicted to him in spite of the fact that he is emotionally abusive.

Many are the people caught in the web of addictive relationships. And often, we ourselves realise that we have been in relationships that have disappointed us in some way or another… relationships that didn’t work out the way we had hoped, wanted or thought they would. And, we’re not just talking about intimate and love relationships. We’re talking about toxic friends, back stabbing relatives, abusive partners and controlling family members, vicious colleagues.

Sometimes the poisoned relationship is with a family member or an in-law. Or perhaps a friendship has lived out its purpose. In this case, so much time has been invested in the friendship that it is hard to let go. However, addictive relationships are most often evident in romantic interactions between men and women.

UNMET EMOTIONAL NEEDS

Remaining in a bad relationship not only causes continual stress but can also cloud your life with frustration, emptiness and despair. It can drain your energy and make you tense and stressed. Addicts become so elaborately enmeshed in the other person that the sense of self-personal identity is severely restricted, crowded out by that other person’s identity and problems. Such people struggle relentlessly to fill the great emotional vacuum within themselves. Despite the pain of these relationships, many rational and practical people find that they are unable to leave, even though they know the relationship is bad for them.

One part of them wants out but a seemingly stronger part refuses or feels helpless to take any action. It is in this sense that the relationships are addictive. In case of romantic relationships, entering a relationship based on the fear of being alone is totally self-destructive.

In this type of scenario, an individual will choose to be with just about anybody to fill the void he/she has in life. Desperation for love and romance to fulfill your desires may lead to selection of wrong partners. So, if you use your fears and insecurities to make your relationship decisions, you inevitably will have to suffer pain and suffering.

ATTACHMENT HUNGER

A person who is excessively attached to another person most likely carried those habits over from past relationships. The conditions in past relationships can leave a person feeling inadequate or mentally and/or physically abused.

Romantic relationships are not the only type that causes such habits to develop; they can also stem from lack of nurturing or attention during childhood, isolation or detachment from family, early abandonment, unrecognised early needs and fears of rejection. Often, children who are not loved, nurtured and encouraged in their independence are left feeling ‘needy’ as adults and may thus be more vulnerable to dependent relationships.

These ‘clingy’ feelings which develop early in childhood, often operate without awareness and can exert considerable influence on a person’s life. Often, dysfunctional relationship patterns are passed on from parents to their children.

Thus, unhealthy relationships can be a source of great agony if there is emotional or physical abuse involved. Often, relation addicts do not want to see or believe that their parents, spouses, children or friends can be a toxic influence in their life. This kind of denial may last a lifetime, or it may give way to a painful awareness that the relationship is not healthy. Also, for many people caught in this trap, it is often a vicious circle. For them, the end of one relationship is not always the end of the battle.

They choose destructive relationships over and over again. The consequences of their choices are painful and emotionally damaging, yet those that engage in this repetitive behaviour never seem to learn from their experience.

BREAKING THE CYCLE OF BAD RELATIONSHIPS

All relationships leave very important clues about who and what we are. Try to remember all the relationships that you know have been bad for you. Think of the relationship history and look for patterns, themes and repeating incidents. “If it is all about everyone else and what they did to you, it means you are a victim, helpless to affect change. When you can see where you are contributing to the problems, you can make changes.

Personal accountability is the most empowering tool for healing. You can talk to a trusted friend or a counsellor depending upon the severity of your situation. Sometimes having an outsider’s perspective is helpful. Such a person can help you filter through your options and underlying motives for making a decision.

Often, it is difficult to sever ties with people with whom you are emotionally involved - say family members, spouses, boyfriend/girlfriend, etc. Breaking up will not be easy. Be sure to resolve any guilt you might be feeling. Too often we let other people relate to us on the basis of our weaknesses and faults. We are attracted to bad traits in people and consequently, these characteristics lead to unhealthy relationships. These people have no other way of relating to us.

It will take some re-learning and re-conditioning to achieve this change of relating to others through our strengths, especially if the negative relationship has been long term. You have to let go of negative relationships. It could mean you have to break a business partnership. It could mean you need to call off an engagement. It might require you to avoid toxic friends and acquire some new friends who are true to you.

STAYING IN A BAD MARRIAGE

Married people stay together to work out their issues. This approach to marriage counselling believes that your partner is the right person to help you heal your wounds. With this approach, many marriages can be saved. However, there are three reasons to leave a relationship: The Three As. There is severe abuse, severe adultery and severe addiction.

These three extreme conditions rarely change. In such cases, getting out of the relationship is important. You are putting yourself, and possibly others, in serious jeopardy if you continue to stay in the relationship. Divorce in such cases is merited. Also, partners sometimes stay in bad marriages for the sake of the children. But this can be a big mistake if there is abuse involved, because doing so puts a terrible burden on the children.

But marriage experts believe that each marriage has different issues and if the problems can be solved amicably, there is no need for divorce. A study conducted by sociologist Linda Waite at University of Chicago suggests that staying together is better for the children. She writes in The Case for Marriage that “most current divorces leave children worse off, educationally and financially, than they would have been if their parents stayed married, and a majority of divorces leave children psychologically worse off as well.

Only a minority of divorces are taking place in families where children are likely to benefit in any way from their parents’ separation. I do not advocate divorce as a first step when a marriage is going awry. There are always ups and downs in a marriage. Anyone can manage life during good times. It is getting through the bad times that makes or breaks a relationship.

HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS

It is not difficult to break bad relationship habits. Once you decide to let go off your clingy nature, healing will automatically come. Once you aim to heal your past and maintain healthy relationships, you will automatically stay away from associating with toxic people.

Always try to keep your relationships healthy. People in healthy relationships grow together and don’t stunt each other’s progress. Learn to respect your individuality and give and take space. Sometimes we have to associate with negative people, but if you have a healthy self-esteem and courage to stand up for yourself, you won’t be affected by such people.

Thus, the first step towards breaking bad relationship habits is having a strong conception of your own identity. Often, we allow people into our lives who treat us as we expect to be treated. So, if you feel contempt for yourself or think very little of yourself, you may pick partners or significant others who reflect this image back to you.

Learn to recognise such patterns in your life and pluck them off. There will be anger, resentment, hurt and pain. But, you will be breaking your psychological dependency on other people. Recovering from relationship addiction is a process of acknowledging and then letting go of pain, and finding ways to build a happy life.

OVERCOMING RELATIONSHIP ADDICTION

1) Make your ‘recovery’ the first priority in your life. Look for roots of emotional abuse.

2) Go through your early relationships. Tell yourself that you’re an adult now, in charge of your life. Invest your time in disconnecting from the emotions that have been eating you alive.

3) Cultivate whatever needs to be developed in yourself, i.e., fill in gaps that have made you feel undeserving or bad about yourself.

4) Learn to stop managing and controlling others; by being more focused on your own needs; you will no longer need to seek security from others.

5) Develop your spiritual side, i.e., find out what brings you peace and serenity and commit some time, at least half an hour daily, to that endeavour.

6) Learn not to get hooked into bad relationships.

7) Find a support group of friends who understand the pressures you might be facing.

Consider getting professional help, if need arises.

In our society we have become obsessed with love. Our films, our books, our plays and our music are full of stories about love – the joy of finding it and the heartache of losing it. We treat it as a commodity, a transient emotion that comes and goes. We are deliriously happy when we find it but suffer terribly when we lose it again.

A vast majority of romantic relationships start well, with two people falling in love, but then something begins to go wrong. The feelings of love begin to fade and we start seeing our partner’s failings.

They begin to irritate us and act in ways that seem unloving. We then either move into compromise and settle for a relationship with less love and connection or we end the relationship and try to find someone better. Forming a successful romantic relationship is a real challenge, but it ends up this way because of a basic misunderstanding about love.

All our romantic problems stem from a destructive self-belief – that we are personally lacking in love. Deep down we feel empty and incomplete. It feels as if there is something missing in our lives. These feelings of scarcity then create a powerful need for love. That is why we go out into the world to find a romantic partner who will take away the emptiness and make us feel whole again.

Of course our search for somebody to love us is often successful and the sensations of falling in love convince us that our strategy was right. Unfortunately, the ease with which we fall in love can become the biggest trap we face in life, because it seems to confirm that love lies outside us.

The sad truth is that most of us fall in love for the wrong reason. We bring a partner into our lives to fulfill our need for love, and it is this outward focus that creates all our problems. It creates a dependence on our partners – we rely on their presence in our lives, to make us happy. This is a recipe for disaster, as I discovered when my marriage failed. When my wife suddenly left me, all my needs and insecurities were laid bare and it was not a pretty sight. How many of us fall in need rather than fall in love?

I am not saying needs are wrong – to be human is to have all sorts of needs, but the need for love is one of the most destructive. As long as we search outwards for love we will fail to see that we have it within. Our strong need for love usually comes from early experiences in our lives where we felt our needs were not met.

Not only do we resent the people who failed to give us what we wanted (normally or parents), we also feel guilt for having failed in the relationship that would have provided those needs. We get really guilty for having given up on our store of self-love and taken on the belief that we are lacking in love. At the spiritual level we feel guilty for having turned away from our divine essence – that of 100% love and connection.

The problem with being needy in a relationship is that it tries to take from our partner. It assumes that they have the thing we need to make us happy. They may feel scarcity themselves so having to continually meet our needs drives up the feeling that they are losing something. We might end up fighting for who is going to meet the needs of the other person – this is the power struggle stage of relationships.

When we feel our needs have not been met we might get angry, disappointed or moody as a way of punishing the other person. If this carries on we might be hit by depression because we just cannot get rid of the emptiness and deadness that we feel inside. Neediness eventually destroys a relationship or takes away all its joy.

So how do we remove the neediness from a relationship? Well the first thing to do is recognize the times when it is present in us and in our partner. Sometimes we may know we are being needy but at others we can be blind to it. If there is any bad feeling in a relationship, you can be sure that unmet needs are the cause. Try to identify what these needs are. What is not being met for you in the relationship – it will be exactly the same for your partner.

Here is the quick fix: Try to give the need that you feel is missing and it will be returned by your partner. Then start to understand your own needs in a situation. When was the first time in your life when they were not met? What was happening? Who was present?

Try to forgive the people involved and realize that you could have given that missing need if you had been more mature and experienced. Visualize the situation now and give the need to all the people present. Breathe love back into the situation. As you heal your need you will find that your self-esteem grows.

You can do this exercise for all your emotional needs. Typically they lie in layers in the mind so we have to repeat the process for all the layers. Soon you will become an expert at spotting needs and healing them. Every single human problem can be traced back to a feeling of unmet needs and at the deepest level it is a belief that there is a lack of love.

Emotional maturity and intelligence is really the ability to become aware of our needs and then not to play them out on the people around us. If we can’t do this our needs drive the things that we want away and paradoxically as we heal the needs within, the very things that we desire begin to appear in our lives!

Peter Granger is an acclaimed relationship counsellor and a Psychology of Vision Trainer (an organisation that specialises in helping people have happier and more fulfilled relationships. You can find lots more advice and tips about love, romance and relationships on www.iloveyouloveme.com

Has married women looking for married men become the new social rage? Many women feel neglected in their marriage. The emptiness of being with a spouse who has turned cold and indifferent is a recipe for sheer misery.

Likewise, many married men looking for women are in the same boat. Sometimes, we see a nagging wife who is very critical of her husband’s goals in life. The nagging brow beater will totally drain the love out of a marriage and suck the life from their partner.

However, criticism and coldness may not be the only cause if one is married looking for an affair. Sometimes the activity of married women looking for married men is the result of plain boredom and sexual dissatisfaction. In other cases, we often see and hear about a wife who has ‘cut off’ her husband’s sexual needs. Female frigidity cuts the most vital connection of a healthy marriage. A man in such a position feels that something else has been ‘cut off’ too! (sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun) In response, we see married men seeking women to discreetly fill the need.

Let’s be frank. In most cases, physically healthy married women looking for married men need sex. They need a good emotional outlet too; a chance to feel the excitement of flirtation. If we are spiritually, mentally and physically healthy, then we have a normal desire for strong compatibility, emotional nurturing and good sex.

Men looking for women in this state can be a perfect alternative.

Why would married women looking for married men become such a new social phenomena? As we’ve all heard, there’s “too many fish in the sea”. Single young men and ladies abound. However, there’s a problem with that.

The reason many married-looking-for-an-affair individuals seek other married individuals is the ability to create a discreet relationship based on mutual silence. There’s a ‘no strings attached’ code that locks such an arrangement.

A divorce could cause the destruction of the family unit, relationships with children and financial stability.

Healthy married men looking for women do not want to pay half their salary to alimony or give the house away. Married women do not want to destroy the relationship with their children or their home.

In fact, in many cases they love their spouse! It is certain compatibility factors and the sexual fulfillment that they cannot get straight after, perhaps many years of trying.

People who are married looking for an affair may be doing so after many years of expensive professional counseling to no avail. Their spouse just does not want to “get with the program”.

What is one to do after they give 100% and their partner is giving about 15 on their best day? Have you ever been in such a predicament?

There is an alternative. There is something to do when all else has failed.

There is someplace to go when you need to break the monotony and get relief without the danger of blowing up your life.

Are you one of the many married women looking for married men? To peruse the members area of the world’s most discreet married dating service; to have access to married men looking for married women, pictures, personals and other married dating information, The Ashley Madison Agency is one of the best resources on the internet. Click here for more information about The Ashley Madison Agency.

Author CG McKey is an e-marketer and publisher, who’s focus is on marketing/reviewing “under the radar” products and services, that are high in quality. CG Mckey strives present to the World Wide Web, high quality products that provide an alternative ways of thinking, and living.

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Gain More Love and Harmony – Now!

Although we may not always realize that we are doing it, we normally place conditions on our happiness. We decide that we will be happy when certain conditions are met in our lives – for instance, we might decide that we must live in a particular type of house in a particular location for us to be truly satisfied and happy .

Or it might be about a situation that we feel must come about – for example, we decide that we must get a particular job promotion so that we can be content in our work.

There is one other big condition that we often set before we think we can find happiness – we must find Mr or Mrs Right. We believe another person in the shape of a partner will make us happy.

Think about all the conditions you have set yourself for happiness – make a list of them. Notice how we can spend our whole life waiting for these things to be fulfilled. Even if we fulfil one, we then create a new one! All of these conditions have one thing in common, and ironically it is a flaw that prevents us ever finding lasting happiness. Each of these conditions is about bringing something from the outside, to make us happy.

Each of these conditions is designed to meet a need – to fill an emptiness we have inside. These conditions fail because ultimately we cannot ask anybody else or any situation to heal our insecurities and sense of lack – we must do that ourselves.

In the relationship work I do, I often hear people complaining that their partner does not do things right – fails to meet their expectations of a devoted, loving partner. They normally say that they no longer love their partner in the way they did when they first met – they think their partner has changed. This is conditional love – it says that “when you behave in the way I want you to, then I will love you.”

This places a huge demand on the other person and they feel they are being judged. They might find that they are frozen out and starved of love, unless they behave in the expected way. It is not surprising that this control will damage or destroy a relationship.

The way forward is therefore Unconditional Love, which as it’s name suggest, sets absolutely no conditions on the love that we feel for another person. It really does mean that we will love them no matter how they behave or treat us. Of course this can be a real ‘stretch’ because we will often feel that the other person does not deserve our love.

To break-through this resistance we need to look within and see that the every thing we are asking as a condition of our love is something we are not doing ourselves. For instance – we might say that the condition of our love is that our partner must listen to us and understand us as a person. But how well have we listened to and understood them?

As all bad behaviour originates from low self-esteem, if they are not behaving in the way we want them to, then we have failed to fully understand why this is. If we could see their inner pain we would know why they are not meeting our conditions and immediately know how to respond with empathy and compassion.

Tip

To be able to love somebody unconditionally we need to be able to see through the surface behaviour to the beautiful, innocent, perfect person underneath. If you find this hard to do today – think back to the time you fell in love with them. Those amazing feelings came about because you were loving them unconditionally – faults and all! It was only later those faults became more obvious as you settled down to a longer-term relationship.

So think back to those heady times and visualise yourselves back in that situation of falling in love. Re-live those feelings and then take a long, compassionate look at your partner – see their beauty and grace and imagine yourself melting into them. Forgive them for failing your conditions and forgive yourself for doing the same.

If you can, tell them how much you appreciate and love them and remind them of those original wonderful times together – those feelings are still available as soon as you stop judging them and placing conditions on your love.

Conditional love is a viscous circle because if we withdraw our love as a form of punishment, our partner does exactly the same to us. Unconditional love has the opposite effect – it reinforces itself because the forgiveness and acceptance is felt as pure love by our partners and they then naturally return it.

Practice unconditional love at every opportunity with your partners, family, friends and colleagues – it is the key to sustained happiness.

Peter Granger is an acclaimed relationship coach and counselor and runs workshops in the UK. For more free advice and tips about relationships, please go to http://www.iloveyouloveme.com

Easily the best way to gain more Love and Harmony in your relationships is to know this life-changing material.

Read the information on this page before it’s too late:

Love and Harmony