Divorcing Your Marriage

If you aren’t happy in your marriage what have you done to make it better?  If you are like most people, you have complained to your spouse.  Good! Complaining is the appropriate first step.  But what else have you tried? Have you asked your spouse to go to counseling?  I hope so.  By doing  these two things, you have done what most people do when they are unhappy in their marriage.  Unfortunately however, this is where most people stop.  These are two positive steps that can move you forward but they aren’t enough.  Why you ask?
First, change is hard.  Let me say it again.  Change is HARD.  If it were easy, every diet would work and we would all be skinny!  But research shows that changing even little behaviors take monumental effort and motivation.  When you complain to your spouse and tell them you need to see changes, you are giving them an alert but not the motivation to actually make the effort to do something about it.  Your unhappiness is usually not enough to spur them into action.  Your spouse has to feel a serious threat to his/her own happiness before they are motivated to make changes.
There are lots of ways to motivate a spouse to want to change, but most people don’t get creative here.  They just give up, assuming nothing is going to help.  What usually happens is the unhappy spouse gets discouraged.  After months and sometimes years of complaining, your spouse doesn’t seem to care or even understand you are unhappy. This makes you feel angry so you withdraw in the relationship.  You stop putting forth the effort to connect.  You stop initiating sex.  This doesn’t seem to motivate him/her either so you start to feel hopeless.  You begin to question if this relationship is worth staying in and you become apathetic about your spouse and the relationship.   You feel he/she doesn’t really love you because surely they would change if they did, right?   Soon you start to believe they simply can’t change.
This is a dangerous place to be.  Once you believe change is impossible, what’s really left?  Staying in a miserable situation?  Trying to learn how to endure and find happiness where you can?    Here is where one of two things usually happens.  You either have an affair (emotional or physical) or you divorce your spouse.  And here’s the kicker.  Once your spouse finds out that you have had an affair or are filing for divorce, he/she becomes very motivated to make changes.  Why?  Because now they are losing something they want.  But oftentimes it is too late.  You have been suffering for so long and you are done!  You waited until you were worn out and emotionally disconnected before raising the alarm to DEFCON 4.   In fact, when you see your spouse making changes now it makes you angry!  I hear “Why now?” from my clients every single week.  You finally get the courage to end your marriage and NOW your spouse is changing.   You are upset it took extreme measures to get their attention and you tell yourself the changes aren’t real and they surely won’t last. Your spouse is upset because they feel ambushed.  They didn’t see this coming because you didn’t let them know how bad things were until it was really too late. Now your spouse is feeling desperate and alone.  They are promising to change any and everything if you will just give it one more shot.
Too often these marriages end and it shouldn’t be that way!  If you aren’t happy in your marriage, raise the level of alarm before you shut down emotionally.  Don’t just complain, give your spouse some motivation.  Let them know if things don’t improve by a certain date, you are moving out.  If your spouse won’t go to counseling, go by yourself!  Just be sure you see a marriage counselor who is PRO marriage.  Keep doing something!  Raise the alarm to DEFCON status and make sure your spouse knows it!  But don’t quit trying.  Complaining and withdrawing isn’t enough.  Get their attention!
By the time most people get to the point of wanting to divorce, they are exhausted and tell me they just don’t have the energy to keep fighting.  But here’s the thing.  Divorce requires exorbitant amounts of energy.  It is not a restful or peaceful journey.  Use the energy you would spend to divorce your spouse and divorce your marriage instead! Leave your old marriage behind and begin a new one with your spouse!  Build something better than you had before.

Pornography Destroy Sex in Marriage

I was exposed to pornography for the first time when I was in the third grade. Surprisingly, I cannot remember much about the picture that I was shown. However, I remember vividly my friend’s mom smiling approvingly at her son showing me the pictures. It seemed after that pornography was everywhere: my dad’s closet, the bathroom at a friend’s house, movies and magazines. The consistent theme was that pornography was okay for adults (especially men) and maybe even kids with parents cool enough to allow it.
My teenage years were filled with pornographic images. I knew it was something I should hide. I knew it wasn’t who I wanted to be. I tried to quit hundreds of times and failed. But I didn’t worry too much about it having long-term effects because I believed once I got married and could have sex anytime I wanted, I wouldn’t be drawn to pornography.
I remember a lady even told me, “When you are married, you can have sex any time you want.” I still laugh as I remember her husband responding in shock, “Really?!! I had no idea.” Yet most single guys still believe getting married will end their porn problem.
Unfortunately, many women believe the same thing.  If a woman finds out her boyfriend is into porn, they reason that after marriage he’ll have the real thing and will no longer need it or want it. They think, “I’ll be his pornography.” It is a common theme for many many women to think they will change him after they marry him.  There is even an old joke that explains this is why the wedding starts with her coming down the aisle, heading to the altar, while the musicians sing a hymn.  (Aisle, altar, hymn) or I’ll alter him.
It can be really devastating when he new husband and wife quickly find they were incorrect. Getting married does not cure or replace a pornography problem. Here are a some reasons why:
The purpose of pornography is sexual excitement. Most definitions of pornography will have this as part of the definition. The purpose of marriage is certainly not sexual excitement. The purpose is two people learning and growing and uniting into one being. Married sex can be exciting, but that is not its purpose.
The focus of pornography is selfish desires. When someone indulges in pornography they will go through countless pictures, videos, or stories looking for the one that brings them the most excitement. It’s all about the users pleasure.  The focus of marriage is learning to be completely focused on the other person. You learn what is sexually pleasing to your spouse.
The subject of pornography is variety. The pornography user will quickly grow tired of the porn that brings the most excitement. Then the quest is on for the new porn. The process of the search is repeated. Without variety, most pornography users would quit because the thrill would fade. The subject of marriage is one person. There will be variety as you learn the intricacies of that one person and see them grow and develop. In marriages that work, you will be completely enthralled with one person.
Getting married does not cure pornography, but pornography can destroy a marriage.
Pornography can destroy sexual attraction to your spouse. I have talked to many women whose husbands struggle with pornography. Every single one thought if only they were prettier or sexier, he would not choose pornography over the real thing. It’s hard to convince them his porn use has nothing to do with them. But it’s true.
Halle Berry is considered to be one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood. The guy married to her must never be tempted by other women, right? Evidently not. Her husband admitted to sleeping with at least 10 other women, including two of the Halle’s closest friends. He said, “I have made some terrible mistakes but the truth is, I love my wife.”  The problem was revealed when he soon sought treatment for sex addiction. If you are married to Halle Berry, the issue is obviously not your wife’s looks. It isn’t love either. Unfortunately, the marriage eventually ended in divorce.
Message to ladies: Not even being the most beautiful woman in the world would be enough to overpower pornography.
Message to guys: Do you really want to get involved with something that can make you sexually unsatisfied with the most beautiful woman in the world?
Pornography can destroy a man’s ability to physically have sex. Men who use porn are finding they are unable to have sex with an actual woman. Porn has raised their levels of sexual excitement so high that no real woman is sexually exciting enough.
Many men don’t realize their brain’s sensitivity is declining toward normal sex because pornography delivers endless dopamine hits—making sex possible where normal encounters would not. In some porn users, the response to dopamine is dropping so low that they can’t perform sexually without constant hits of dopamine via pornography.
An Italian study surveyed 28,000 men and confirmed male sexual performance issues could be connected to porn use. 70 percent of the young men seeking clinical help for sexual performance problems admit to using internet pornography habitually.
If you or your spouse is using pornography or even if you use it together, it is not too late to avoid these consequences. Our brains can go back to “normal.” However, it takes complete abstinence. Complete means not just pornography but all visually sexually stimulating material. Personally, I found that I had to eliminate R-rated movies and even some TV shows and PG-rated movies.
It is difficult work. There may also be trust issues in the marriage relationship that need to be healed. That, too, will take time. Research says theoretically that six months of porn-abstinence and relationship work will get the job done. Some people I have talked with, as well as in my own recovery, have needed two or three times that long.

Scientific Examination of Loneliness By Rick Nauert PhD

Emerging research scrutinizes loneliness through a scientific lens as investigators review its causes, consequences, and potential remedies.
Experts say that while loneliness is a fundamental part of the human condition, the topic has been under investigated.
Now, a series of articles explores the condition in a special edition of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
The section, edited by psychological scientist David Sbarra of the University of Arizona, investigates loneliness across multiple levels, from evolutionary theory to genetics to social epidemiology.
“As a group, these articles set the bar high for future research on loneliness,” Sbarra writes in his introduction to the special section.
“At the same time, they also contain ‘something for everyone’ — they are accessible, thought-provoking ideas that can be tackled from many different perspectives.”
Topics by authors included include:

• J.T. Cacioppo and colleagues argue that loneliness is not unique to humans but is likely part of a biological warning system that, like signals of hunger or pain, enhances chances of survival and reproduction for members of various social species;
• Goossens and colleagues explore the potential genetic basis for loneliness, highlighting the need to integrate a whole range of approaches, from genomics to behavioral science, in understanding the underpinnings of loneliness;
• Holt-Lunstad and colleagues present an analysis of over 70 studies, including data from more than three million participants, demonstrating a link between social isolation, loneliness, living alone, and greater odds of mortality, even after taking various other factors into account;
• S. Cacioppo and colleagues review various types of existing interventions (one-on-one, group, community) that provide social support, increase opportunities for social interaction, and teach social skills as a way of preventing or mitigating the negative effects of loneliness;
• Qualter and colleagues approach loneliness from a lifespan perspective, showing that people of all ages experience a motive to reconnect with others in order to mitigate loneliness. While the motive to reconnect is often constructive, the researchers point out that it can sometimes spur thoughts and behaviors that exacerbate feelings of loneliness.

According to Sbarra, these articles “display a breadth, depth, and collective synergy that will not only spur answers to the questions outlined above but will also open lines of inquiry that are currently unexplored and will be highly generative in time.”

Communication

This quality is essential for a strong relationship and dynamic sex Communication affects your total life; your total life affects sex. Couples need to communicate about their hopes, dreams, fears and hurts as well as the daily details of life in order for the relationship to flourish.
Even if partners have mutual love and commitment, they need to communicate this to each other by what they say and do. If a problem arises, they need to talk it out and forgive rather than give each other the silent treatment and stew in their juices. As one sociology professor expressed it, “Sexual foreplay involves the ’round-the-clock relationship.” Sex is a form of communication. You can bet that if partners are harboring resentment or not communicating appropriately, it shows in their sex life. Psychologists, sex researchers and textbook authors Albert Richard Allgeier and Elizabeth Rice Allgeier note that “a substantial number of sexual problems could be resolved if people felt free to communicate with their sexual partners…about their sexual feelings….”

PRAY FOR YOUR MARRIAGE

 

How does the Lord Jesus want you to pray for your marriage?
I'm not asking how often He wants you to pray for your marriage. I'm not asking how long He wants you to pray for your marriage. I'm simply asking how does He want you to pray for your marriage? What type of things does He want you to be praying for your spouse? What should your focus be when you pray for your spouse?
Someone might respond, "Those are great questions, but there is no verse in the Bible where the Lord says, 'Pray for your marriage in such and such a way'." That is true. But there are certainly many prayers in the Bible that could serve as models of how God wants us to pray. This is especially true of the most well-known prayer in the Bible: the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13).
Just before Jesus begins the Lord's Prayer, he does not say, "Pray these words: Our Father who art in heaven...." No, Jesus says, "Pray, then, in this way: Our Father who art in heaven..." (Matthew 6:9a). In other words, Jesus is not giving us a prayer to recite as much as He is giving us a model of what prayer should look like.
So, what does Jesus want our prayers to look like? And how can we use Jesus' model of prayer in praying for our marriage?
Our Father, who art in heaven...
Jesus begins His model prayer with a reminder of who it is that we pray to. Before bringing any of our requests before God, we pause to remember the God to whom we are praying.
On the one hand, we remind ourselves that God is "our Father". He is not a distant God who is far away; He is a God who is near, a God who loves us, a God to whom we can come like a little child can come to his or her father.
On the other hand, we remind ourselves that God is our Father "who is in heaven". This speaks of God's sovereignty and greatness, His absolute control over the world. As a result, we not only bow before Him with reverence, we also bring our requests to Him in confidence, knowing that He is powerful and mighty to help us.
Our prayers, then, begin with praise to God, our loving Father who is great and powerful and able to help us. This can be especially important to remember in the context of a marriage that is difficult or going through a rough time. God does indeed love us and is indeed able to help us.
Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven...
The focus of these three petitions is the glory of God. This is very important to recognize. Unlike many of our prayers, Jesus' prayer does not begin with asking for daily bread; that comes later. Instead, Jesus teaches us to begin by praying for the glory of God. In fact, all three of these petitions are focusing on that very thing.
For example, the word "hallow" in this context means "to treat as holy". When we pray, "Hallowed be Thy name", we are praying that God would be treated as holy in this world. We are praying that people would acknowledge His holy character and respond to Him as a holy God. What we are praying is that people would give glory to God.
When we pray "Thy kingdom come," we are praying the same. The "kingdom" of God is His rule and His reign in this world that is shown especially in the lives of those who have submitted to His lordship. When we pray that His kingdom would come we are praying that more and more people be rescued from the kingdom of darkness and submit their lives to the kingship of God Himself.
When we pray "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," we are again praying that God would be glorified in the earth. We are praying that people would be obedient to the will of God so that the kingdom of heaven itself would be reflected in their lives. Once more, then, we are praying that God would be glorified.
How should this impact the way that we pray for our marriage? If God's glory were our first concern, what kinds of things would we be praying for? Here are a few suggestions to consider:
1. We would pray for the Lord's perspective - a kingdom perspective - in the decisions that we make as a couple. Ask the Lord to give you a kingdom perspective on life. Ask him to make the things that thrill His heart thrill yours; ask him to make the things that break His heart break yours.
2. We would pray that our spouse would love the Lord God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. We would go so far as to pray that our spouse's love for God would be greater than any other love that they had.
3. We would pray for our spouse's spiritual life and their growth in Christ. If they are not a Christian, we would be bold to continue to pray that God would bring them to faith in Jesus Christ.
What all of these suggestions have in common is that they are prayers for God's glory to be manifested in the context of our marriage. This is how prayer for marriage should begin. Is this how our prayers for our marriages begin?

Don’t Give Up!

It is never easy to face marital problems and deal with the pain and wounds that have been inflicted. But if couples are willing to stay and tough it out, Gary said, research has shown that they can usually restore the marriage and be happier than before.
“Those kind of hurts, those fears, those betrayals, those conflicts -- whatever those things are -- they are all valid, and they break our hearts,” he said. “I’ve done 25,000 hours of marriage counseling, so I’m very tuned in to the reality of that pain. Yet here is what you find. When people stay, invariably they get to the other side of it and become happy in their marriages.”
He points to research where couples were surveyed about the happiness of their marriage over five years. Eighty-five percent of the couples who reported being in either an "unhappy marriage" or a "very unhappy marriage," that stayed in the relationship, five years later reported being either "happy" or "very happy".
“Now that is secular research,” Gary said. “Imagine the power of the Holy Spirit in the midst of that.”

DONT LET ANYONE FOOL YOU

 

 Don’t let anyone fool you…divorce is devastating with much collateral damage.  It affects everyone including your kids, your future grandchildren, your parents, your in-laws and friends.  There are lots of articles and books trying to convince you that divorce isn’t as bad as you fear it will be.  There are even therapists who will minimize the damage but more often than not…this is more about their personal situation than about yours.  Divorce is the death of a family unit and it is traumatic even to adult children.  It takes a psychological toll on you as well.

Loneliness Affects Brain

A new study finds that social isolation affects not only how people behave, but also how their brains operate.
University of Chicago scientists presented their research, “Social Emotion and the Brain,” at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The work is the first to use fMRI scans to study the connections between perceived social isolation (or loneliness) and activity in the brain. Combining fMRI scans with data relevant to social behavior is part of an emerging field examining brain mechanisms.
Researchers found that the ventral striatum — a region of the brain associated with rewards — is much more activated in non-lonely people than in the lonely when they view pictures of people in pleasant settings. In contrast, the temporoparietal junction — a region associated with taking the perspective of another person — is much less activated among lonely than in the non-lonely when viewing pictures of people in unpleasant settings.
“Given their feelings of social isolation, lonely individuals may be left to find relative comfort in nonsocial rewards,” said John Cacioppo, the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Professor in Psychology at the University. He spoke at the briefing along with Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor in Psychology and Psychiatry at the University.
The ventral striatum, which is critical to learning, is a key portion of the brain and is activated through primary rewards such as food and secondary rewards such as money. Social rewards and feelings of love also may activate the region.
Cacioppo, one of the nation’s leading scholars on loneliness, has shown that loneliness undermines health and can be as detrimental as smoking. About one in five Americans experience loneliness, he said. Decety is one of the nation’s leading researchers to use fMRI scans to explore empathy.
They were among five co-authors of a paper, “In the Eye of the Beholder: Individual Differences in Perceived Social Isolation Predict Regional Brain Activation to Social Stimuli,” published in the current issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
In the study, 23 female undergraduates were tested to determine their level of loneliness. While in an fMRI scanner, the subjects were shown unpleasant pictures and human conflict as well as pleasant things such as money and happy people.
The subjects who rated as lonely were least likely to have strong activity in their ventral striata when shown pictures of people enjoying themselves.
Although loneliness may be influence brain activity, the research also suggests that activity in the ventral striatum may prompt feelings of loneliness, Decety said. “The study raises the intriguing possibility that loneliness may result from reduced reward-related activity in the ventral striatum in response to social rewards.”
In addition to differing responses in the ventral striatum, the subjects also recorded differing responses in parts of the brain that indicated loneliness played a role in how their brain operates.
Joining Decety and Cacioppo in writing the Journal of Cognitive Science paper were Catherine Norris, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Dartmouth College; George Monteleone, a graduate student at the University of Chicago; and Howard Nusbaum, Chair of Psychology at the University of Chicago.
Decety and Cacioppo discussed the new field of brain mechanism in a paper in the current issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, “What Are the Brain Mechanisms on Which Psychological Processes are Based?” The new field extends the work of Charles Darwin, who “regarded the brain as a product of evolution and the science of psychology as concerned with these foundations,” they wrote.
By studying brain mechanisms, researchers hope to gain new insights by examining mental activities surrounding consciousness, perception and thought through an understanding of how columns of neurons stacked next to each other form elementary circuits to function as a unit, they wrote.
New visualization tools such as three-dimensional imaging will help scholars develop a new way of studying psychology, they said.
“Psychological science in the 21st century can, and should, become not only the science of overt behavior, and not only the science of the mind, but also the science of the brain,” they concluded.