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Fixing a broken relationship
08 May 2007 by Rod Smith in Affairs, Anger, Attraction, Betrayal, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Domination, Family, Forgiveness, Grace, Grief, High maintenance relationships, Listening, Living together, Sex education, Sex matters, Sexual abuse, Sexual compatibility, Single parenting, Stepfather, Stepmother, Teenagers, Therapeutic Process, Victims, Violence, Voice, Young Love / 16 Comments
“How do I fix a broken relationship?” is one of the most common theme of letters I receive. Given that there is NOT the continuation of duplicity or deceit, violence or cruelty, even the most troubled relationship can find healing.
Here are a few generic principles to jump-start the journey of greater health whether the relationship in question survives or not:
1. Don’t focus in “the relationship” but on doing what is healthy and mature for your individual sake. This is not selfish. Getting your house in order will challenge everyone around you to greater health even if you lose your primary, but toxic, relationships in the process. If you do not have the energy to do this, a simple way to help you access the healthy thing to do is to ask yourself the question What do really well and emotionally healthy people do when faced with such a situation and then try, as tough as it might be, to live the answer.
2. Never participate in sexual behavior you do not want. Good sex, or sex at all, (or what one partner regards as good sex) will not salvage a toxic relationship, but only serve to perpetuate all that is already unhealthy about it. Keep in mind that sex frequently prevents love from growing within a relationship.
3. Talk to close friends about what is really happening to you within a deteriorating relationship. Secrecy escalates toxicity. Opening your life to a trusted friend will help you to see healthier options. While a toxic relationship might be “killing you” allow your community to help save you.
4. Do not go rushing back to anything or anyone simply because they say they are sorry. Being sorry (asking forgiveness) for unacceptable behavior is not, in itself, change. Forgive, yes, but do not forget. Look for the fruit of regret. The fruit of an apology and forgiveness is changed behavior.
About the Author: Rod Smith
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Verbal log-jam
When I was a boy I’d endlessly practice the fluent delivery of my name but it seldom flowed easily from my lips. As if it was new news to me, adults pointed out my stutter. Perhaps they thought I was beginning, at that precise moment, for the first time in my life to spit from the mouth, twist at the neck, jig my head back and forth trying to expel some inane statement log-jammed between my gut and my throat.
Idiots – always adults, children were surprisingly patient, – would make me repeat sentences as if a repeat performance of the humiliating uncoordinated gesticulations, my arms and legs flying in all directions, would make for an easier delivery the second time. That I’d just spent every ounce of energy trying to cough it up was lost on them. That I was already thoroughly humiliated was something to which they were blind.“Practice, practice,” they’d say as if stutterers simply didn’t speak enough. “Think before you speak. Now – try that again,” they would declare slowly and loudly as if I was stupid and deaf. These thoughtless people were ignorant of just how much stutterers do think. Too much – which is central to the issue!
If I’d known at twelve or thirteen that the day would come when I’d make a career of public speaking I might have strolled off a high-rise building.
Now it is quite easy to hide. I am very comfortable with crowds.
It’s asking driving directions or ordering food at a drive through where it gets tricky. Sitting in a cozy circle waiting for my turn to introduce myself sends my blood-pressure through the roof. The ticket attendant on the London underground can render me dumb after I’ve just spent days addressing a room full of graduate level adults about Family Systems Theory. I know. It sounds ridiculous.
I was almost immobilized the first time I saw Thulani put himself “on duty” in the event he needed to be my mouthpiece. He did it. No one asked him or appointed him. He just did it.
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Life in our beloved 122
If the inside of a house (outside, too, I suppose) is a metaphor of the lives of the people who live in it – which is something I once read somewhere – gosh, are we in trouble. Our house is a mess.
I consistently clean it room by room, thinking often of the legend that the Golden Gate Bridge that says there’s some guy constantly painting it. I feel for him. While I am sure the view is wonderful I must believe that the poor guy whose doing it daily from one end to the other must find the wind and the weather quite a challenge.
Our house is the same, but instead of painting from end to end and back again, I am the guy constantly cleaning, – and, it’s hard to tell.
Where I cleaned and swept and dusted and vacuumed and sponged and sterilized yesterday there are scooters and bicycles (boys), mail in piles (me), books (boys and me), newspapers (me), magazines (me), and socks (boys and Max, the Chihuahua).
Turn my back and the boys and Max are at it again – enjoying life as boys (and a dog) while I find being a cleaning lady quite an exhausting challenge.
There is a point of no return, I’ve noticed, or at least a point of the chaos where I feel compelled to let it all go for a while and I throw up my hands and join in the fun of trashing the place.
But when I clean I like to think I’m just like the guy painting the Bridge, which I can only imagine must be a slow and methodical task.
I do it room by room, starting at one end, the front, in the event that I soon lose interest – then, at least, the front room is somewhat in order. I push it (trash, magazines, books, socks, clothes) all back from the living room, through the piano room, then into the TV room until everything lands up in the kitchen.
Once it hits the kitchen I separate out what’s Max’s – he’s has his own set of toys with which he ruins the house – what’s Nate’s, what’s Thulani’s, and what can be recycled, dumped, restacked on bookshelves, placed in drawers, hung on a hanger, or filed in the “important documents” file I keep losing.
We moved into “122” (creatively named for its street number and which has had very few updates since it was built in 1886) when Thulani was about two – and I have been getting it in order ever since. Nate joined us in 2002. Max, in 2009. The house- attachment, at least for the boys and Max, is strong. When I talk of selling Thulani reminds me that Rhino, the husky that was on the run for nine months and returned to die within a few weeks after we reconnected, is buried in an Air France first class cabin blanket just outside of the kitchen door. Nate reminds me of where the fat goldfish is buried and Thulani ends the litany with his inability to think of living in a house without the large tree in the front yard where he has his brother (and Max) have “peed like boys” (and a dog) for the past several years.
So. I’ll go on painting and, before you send me letters about giving the boys chores and responsibilities and assigning daily tasks and getting on top of it before it gets on top of me let me advise that you are barking up the wrong tree (sorry, Max for the dog metaphor) because we do have all that in place and it does work here and there and off and on.
I know, I know. Consistency is the name of the game for parenting and let me tell you, the ONLY thing that is consistent here is the need to keep going room by room with or without the boys (and Max) to get this little bridge painted one stretch at a time so the world can see just how organized and decent our lives are here at our beloved “122.”
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Being a white South African can come with complications
Being a white South African reared under Apartheid is no simple matter. It permeated everything for me. While I do not pretend to have been a political activist, I was always cognizant that my privileges, simply a result of being born white, were unmerited, and most unfair especially when enjoyed at the expense of others who were not. I think this unsettling truth (for I took advantage of my station in life) was somewhat of a companion to me from the age of about six or seven.
I am regularly aware that:- I was discouraged from playing soccer in the “front” yard (in view of the neighbors) with the servant’s children. While this may seem insignificant in the light of other much more severe problems rising from racism, it was huge for me as a child on several fronts. I loved the children and I loved soccer even more. They were excellent soccer players.
- I did attend a segregated school as did almost all white South Africans while there did exist some church schools that were integrated even under Apartheid. I vividly recall my school principal scolding the entire student body (over a thousand white boys) because a domestic worker (a black adult man) was seen walking in the neighborhood wearing a school blazer.
- Although, by no means wealthy, I was waited on hand and foot by a full-time servant.
- In the late 80s I was warned not to pray publicly for Prisoner “Nelson” Mandela from my church pulpit.
- A member of my family did balk at my request that I bring black children to his home-swimming pool to swim.
- Even as late as 1987 I was embarrassed that a young black boy whom I’d “helped” in his squatter camp had shown up at my door unannounced. I recall wondering what the neighbors would think seeing a child arriving at the home for a social visit and not to work in the yard.While I am aware that these are piddly problems in the light of what millions faced under the Apartheid regime, I am also aware that these factors in my immediate environment “shaped” me into believing perverse things (like in my own superiority and in “their” inferiority) about persons of other race groups. More significantly, I am frequently reminded that my children and I could not have shared life as we now do if we were still living in the era of Apartheid.
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Location, location – remembering winter in August
We live very close to our school and church, so close we can hear the school bell from our kitchen and the church bells in my bedroom.
Sometimes we walk to both and we don’t see the car for days.
I like it. I like not having to get in and out of the car. I like not having to negotiate traffic, something as synonymous with life in the USA as Disney, Fast Food, and the Fourth of July.
That’s the upside.
We are a 10-hour-drive to the nearest coast – and, most of the east coast beaches are not worth the drive. The west coast, which has many wonderful beaches comparable to where I was reared, takes three full days of driving to reach.
Being landlocked is one thing but another is the weather. Indiana weather is erratic, neurotic, and downright psychotic.
Days ago I could’ve (but I didn’t) ice-skated across the street. Now, as I write, there’s a small lake in the street next to the sidewalk from last night’s rain. The weather is so brutal and extreme (it is as hot as blazes in the summers) that when we do drive anywhere (there are no grocery stores in walking distance) the streets are often full of potholes making some of America’s finest suburban streets resemble stretches of road you’d find in a rural stretch of South Africa’s Wild Coast. So, I am exaggerating but really not too much. Washington Boulevard is a challenge to drive right now, you have got to dodge potholes and loose pavement or, unless you drive a tank, you stand to severely damage your suspension.
But I do love living here. My neighbors are some of my best friends. My children are free and safe in the neighborhood and everyone knows everyone’s children. Even as I write Joseph (born a week or so before Thulani) from down the street has wondered into the house and it is quite likely he will eat with us, stay the night, and then wander down back down the street to his home sometime in the morning. His mom and I will talk sometime between now and nightfall unless he of course chooses to wonder off home and be gone just as quickly as he showed up.
Potholes and crazy weather won’t send us running, although we will drive to church in the morning – even though it is really close. I’m not sure I want to brave the elements which could be a snow-storm, an ice storm, the threat of a tornado – or a little or a lot of each. What else could you expect during March in Indiana?
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Ready to adopt?
If you wait until you are ready to adopt a child you never will because you will never be ready. The baby, and only the baby, will make you ready. Reading the right books will be helpful, but “ready” magically comes upon you when a real baby is sleeping in your arms or crying in the middle of the night. If you are not ready to change diapers – and I always am amused at the big deal about this non-issue – being unprepared will last only as long as a clean diaper. Of course you can go baby-stuff-shopping, get a room painted, stencil yellow ducks on the wall – if you know long enough in advance your child is coming. But painting a bedroom with ducks and rainbows and a pot of gold, and getting a truck load of stuff from your local one-stop baby emporium will only fill your home with a lot of weird and wonderful, and mostly unnecessary, equipment.
Children interrupt everything. It is the child who is really ready to teach you, whether you are or not. Once he arrives he will become the hub of all your scheduling. You will be fine with this because the child is not an interruption to your life but rather, from this point on, central to it.
The baby will make you ready and you can’t really prepare for the baby until he is breathing in the crib right next to your bed.
Life inside the Smith household
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16 Comments
lace
my boyfriend and i live together now but ever since i moved in i see him less than i did when i want living with him. he says he’s working but i dont think he is. He’s become rude and uncaring and he lies to me now.
this never happend when we lived in different houses. is this because we rushed into things to soon?
08 Dec 2007 12:12 am
Fatima
I am 28 years old and divorced. I have a son who will be turning 3 in April . About 6 months ago I moved in with my boyfriend. We had been dating for about 1 and a half years before the move.
My problem is that at first he use to make really clear to me that he cared for me . always fussing about where I was and if I was ok . there was a moment that he didn’t want to be around me .. After the first year things started to change . he often made me feel like I was intruding in his space. Everytime I tried to speak to him he would get angry . I have caught him chatting to a girl that we have both worked with for about 5 years. The kind of conversations they had has that of an adult nature.
When I confronted him , I said that it was all just for the fun of it and nothing really happened . Our problems and my insecurities have doubled since then.
He never says he loves me or shows me any affection . Our sex life is almost non existant. He shows no interest in me . He has a temper and therefore I don’t always speak my mind .
I can feel that he doesn’t love me , but yet when I have given him the option to leave if he is no longer happy , he doesn’t want to .
He loves going into porn sites , yet when I try and meet him halfway when it comes to porn or spicing up our sexual life he pushers me away.
When I try and tell him how I feel and how his actions have hurt me he makes remarks such as “ with your behavior its easy for someone to stop loving you “ .
When I asked him if he was trying to say that he didn’t love me, he said that that was not the case and he didn’t mean it that way.
My boyfriend and I were friends for 6 years before we started dating . I know his past and all the girls that we included in it.
I am difficult .I check his phone , I ask a lot of questions , I’m always saying things like , you don’t love me or Do you still love me . I look at my physical appearance and I would ask him am I not attractive enough for him any more. When I ask questions never answers . All he says is that he will not be answering any of my SHIT questions again. I trusted him and left my husband for him. He has broken my trust in many ways and there fore I have become difficult .
I hate the idea that he speaks to girls from his past. I get angry as he always tells white lies thinking that im to stupid to find out the truth . He has lifted his hands for me in the past , and always threatens to do it again when we argue .
With all his wrong , he seems to be financially looking after my son and I . We are never short of anything.
If this man has had enough of this relationship , why does he continue to spoil me and my son knowing that he doesn’t love me anymore. What is keeping him in this relationship.
Is it because a take care of him , or is it the convenience of having a woman in the house .
I need help .
12 Mar 2008 12:03 am
Tumi
Hi Fatima, i feel your pain and i know exactly what you are going through. My boyfriend of 6 yrs now is almost like your man. We moved in together just 3 months into our relationship and all was perfect for a very long time. He then proposed to marry me just after i moved in and i accepted, guess what, we are not married yet.
The problems started when i was pregnant with our son in 2005, the mood swings and the emotional abuse, but then i did not want to see it as abuse as i thought maybe my pregnancy is making him the way he was. Later in my pregnancy he became loving again and we were even together when i gave birth, and i thought to myself, ” yes, it was the pregnancy that was turning him sour. Last year he hit me for the 1st time and when i asked him why did he do that he said he does not know, he just got angry when he saw me. He then said in July this year he is paying lobola for me. The problem now is that i do not love and respect him anymore but i am scared of him and i do not want to be his wife and don’t know how to tell him that without him being violent.
I know for a fact that as soon as i can afford getting a place of my own i will move out and never come back because i deserve to be happy and so do you but at the moment we are not happy. We do not have to put up with the nonsense men give us and i can tell you now that you are special and beautiful and don’t you ever let your man make you feel otherwise. It is about time that we women stick together and fight for our happiness and making sure that we give our children the best of everything and i can tell you now that your man is not the best thing for your child.
Stay beautiful Fatima.
01 Apr 2008 12:04 am
Nomvula
Ladies
What is it with us women that we always see the signs but always find a reason to stick it always believing that things will be better and they never do. I am in a situation excatly like yours yet I always forgive and believe that things will improve.
17 Oct 2008 08:10 am
Roelien
Ladies
I have been in a relationship for 3 years know and we also live together but sins last month we started fighting about everything and we had a talk last night and he told me he do not know how we can solve this problem, he wants me to loose weight and i do exercise but he stil doesnt seem to see what i’m trying to make dim happy, and i love him with everything i have do not wane loose him and it looks like he doees not wane be with me nomore? What can i do so i dont loose him. He told me that i have changed and are not the same as i was when we met and when i told him that he changed he didnt seem to agree. He doesnt want to have sex with me, he does not hold me at night, he doesnt tel me by himself that he loves me just when i tell him then he wil replay with i loveless tone. Can you please tell me what i can do?
01 Nov 2008 12:11 am
betty
how do yu fix a sibling relationship
15 Nov 2008 03:11 pm
sarah lane
me and my girlfrind have been going out for a year and a half. i fell in love with her a long time befor that, but now i just dont fell the same.its like i wont to brake up with her but than at the same time i dont know what to do without her, she is the love of my life.but i can’t stand her she always is blaming me for things i have nothing to do with and it fells like she dont love me at all she wont even kiss me the same. i dont know what to do…….
24 Nov 2008 01:11 pm
Anonymous
Is there someone to talk to.
30 Nov 2008 11:11 pm
Rod E. Smith, MSMFT
yes….. when would you like to talk.
30 Nov 2008 11:11 pm
Rod E. Smith, MSMFT
call through the link at the end of the post
30 Nov 2008 11:11 pm
Cody
I am 17, turning 18 in January, and my girlfriend is 18. Me and my girlfriend have been going out for about a year and a half. We met because we were both in theater. At the time i was in a bad relationship where the girl i was dating had cheated on me and admitted it to me, it hurt because the girlfriend before that had cheated on me and left me….for another girl. I knew my relationship was breaking apart so i decided to begin a relationship with the girl im with now. Eventually she found out about me and my girlfriend and we broke up…horribly. But my girlfriend stayed with me. We have had so many moments together, and we became engaged a few months ago. I love her but recently we have been fighting over the smallest things. She does theater in college but when i want to go join theater groups she wont let me because she says it would keep us from spending time together…were teens and we practically living together, she only goes home to sleep, and even then only on week days.
We are young and i understand that, but i lover her and she claims to be unable to live without me…she has had a suicidal past and i dont want to do anything to possibly push her over that edge. We rarely cuddle anymore and our sex life has gone down to about one night a week for only 2 hours. When we first met we had sex every single day for 3 months for about 3 hours a day on average. Obviously it has gone down a lot, it almost makes me think that im not enough for her anymore and i start to feel like she may cheat on me.
I have begun talking to my ex again too, she lives in lancing Michigan and i live near Detroit (we were seeing each other on weekends when we were going out, we always had a long distance relationship). I have no intention ig going back to her because of what happened when we finally broke up for good….bad drama, but talking to her makes me remember how much more romantic my relationship was with her. and it makes me wonder even more if i should just give up on the relationship im in. And i really dont want to.
I cant explain how sorry i am for cheating on my ex, or how sorry i am that the fact that i cheated on my ex with my current girlfriend made my current girlfriend unable to trust me from the start. I have been a horrible bf in the past so i tried to do everything i could to keep this one from failing, but im starting to believe that in truly unable to be a good bf and lover to anyone.
there is not enough room on this forum to explain how bad our relationship has become…..but its BAD!
I need advice on how to fix a broken relationship with a girl who i plan to make my wife, who i love more than anything, who is way overly clingy, and who’s trust i no longer have. I allow myself to be whipped by her (i do everything she asks and i never do anything for my own fun, its all about her and i allow it in hopes she will love me more.). Any advice?
05 Dec 2008 03:12 pm
Cody
Also, at this point i’m actually starting to believe that were both still together because were afraid to be alone, and because the people we hang around with are 2 or 3 years younger than us and look to us for advice and help. I kind of wonder if i should just break it off with her, but i always decide thats its better to keep truing because i believe that i i don’t want to break up then i must still have feelings for her enough that theres something i can salvage from all this and maybe rekindle the sparks in our hearts that were once roaring flames.
I just don’t want to loose her, and make everything ive gone through and lost in her name to be for nothing. Ive always been called a hopeless romantic but recently the hopeless part is starting to ring true in my head.
05 Dec 2008 04:12 pm
Jamie Scrase
Hi there im 16 years of ages yes i get it 16 years of age and he thinks he is in love well anyway. i had fell in love with this girlthe relationship started slow but with alot of rumous around everywhere about eachother, I met he about 1 year ago at a friends house and ever since i laid eyes on her i knew she was the one for me a few months later she asked me out and i said yes. So we started going out with eachother it got to about 6 months of the relationship that we started going on holiday with eachother, Then 7 and a half months into the relationship i was talk to some girl on this msn fingy and it got a bit personal i ended the convosation because i didnt want it to effect our relationship so days went and weeks went then me and my fiance yes we got engaged at 6 and half months. But anyway we went on holiday again to this butlins resort the first day was fine the the second came along then she was avoiding me i asked her what was wrong she always said nothing is wrong so i trusted her on that the we went back home after 5 days of being there, She seemed different but i fort nothing of it so we caried on as usual i was working she was to we only got to see eachother on the weekends even then i was working on the saturday she asked me about the convosation on msn i just just feel to the ground crying because i knew it was the beginening of the end of our relationship i didnt say that i didnt do anything, i knew what i did wrong i said i was sorry many many times and she said dont worry about it but i was worried about it. Then a few weeks later she went to visit her sister on a friday and i was msn that night and she came online i was talking to her the she said the words that nearly killed me. (“ITS OVER”) And that was 1 month ago ever since ive been trying to get back with her but then i found out she has got a new boyfriend that is 6 years older than her she is 17 and he is 23 i said tio her about this you know have you got a new boyfriend she said yes his name is ant and he is 23 years old and i love him. the next week i had a phone call on my way to work she said can i have those baby clothes of mine at yours i knew what she was saying she is either pregnant or trying for a baby at the age of 17 with a 23 year old she has known for 3 weeks.With knowing all this my body has crashed down i havent eaten which has made me lose 3.5 stone in wieght always crying and what not. I keep on asking her what can i do to get your trust back and she says i dont know, but the hardest thing is she looks me in the eyes and says she still loves me. I Dont know what to do anymore my family and friends say get rid of her but i say i cant she is always in my heart i always think about her in dreams, Nightmares, At work all the time…..
Someone please help me with this i want to get back with her but i dont know what to do ive tried everything post here or my email- jamiescrase@hotmaill.com thanks jamie xx
18 Dec 2008 04:12 pm
Anonymous
Me and my girlfriend have been dating for little over a year. Her ex was a total unkind to her, and mine only was using me. We had an affair for a few months before we both went out officially, Everything was great. Just being around her. I felt so powerful. Like no matter what, I had her in my corner. Unfortunately, things seemed to go south after January rolled around. We kept fighting, I had started to get mad at her about little things. I pushed her to her emotional limit and she didn’t want to continue the relationship. Thing is, she is still in love with me, and I am with her. I’m hoping this is only a short hiatus. I feel like poorly for the way I argued and treated her. I just want to make amends and let her know that I still love her, maybe even more so than before. I don’t want to rush her though. I’m not sure what to do. We’re both still in love, but I have to show her that the constant fighting will stop. (Edited by Rod of unacceptable language)
19 Feb 2009 09:02 pm
sobha
Am a married woman.. Last year I was in love with divorced man…He loved me a lot…we are like husband and wife… but sudden everything is changed ..my husband came from US and my lover become angry to me…Now he is never sending a love letter or anything but he is sending money to me… He never called me, never send sms never come for chat…Am totally upset..I want my beloved…what to do? Am in apathetic situation…I love him more than anybody in this world. He loves me so much… I know still he loves me..but he is acting angry …How can he show these type of actions? Please give me a reply..I’m totally upset with the situation.
27 Feb 2009 04:02 am
kaybaybay1990
Well my ex boyfriend and i have been dating for a little over 2 years and we just had a baby back in january.
I got a letter in the mail saying that we had to go to court for child support and if not Landon (my son) would lose his medical card! Plus Raymond (my ex) was not giving me the money that he promised me…Well i got awarded 220 dollars a month (not alot of money). He agreed to it and then when i got home he called me and said im not trying to be a pussy about this but IM DONE!
But i dont get it because child support was going to be dropped theis summer before the end of june because we were talking about moving in together.
He called me a few days ago and told me that the past few times that he had sex that it was not out of love and he felt no connection! I told him how i felt yesterday and i feel that he is realizing that he made a big mistake.
All i want is to be with him and to be happy but i cant read his mind…its like he never knows how he feels.
22 Apr 2009 07:04 am
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