I humbly dedicate this bookTo my beloved Teacher,Whose Light has kindled my own,Whose Love has made me whole,And Who, in a sublime and miraculous instant,Answered all my questionsBy revealing the Truth to me.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Dear Reader

Love and Intimacy

1 How do you convince a workaholic partner to put more time and energy into a marriage?

2 Is it natural for the passion to disappear after years of marriage?

3 If a relationship takes a lot of work, does that mean something is wrong with it?

4 How do you deal with a partner who is a flirt?

5 How can I stop mothering my husband?

6 How can I help my partner break through the emotional barriers she put up because of her painful childhood?

7 Is it possible to “fall back in love” with someone after years of feeling dead and disinterested?

8 How can I get my husband to pay as much attention to me as he does to our children?

9 How should you handle a partner who smothers you with too much love and affection and is too possessive?

10 How can a couple learn to trust love when they’ve both been badly hurt in past relationships?

11 What does it mean when your partner won’t introduce you to his family and friends?

12 How do you heal old emotional hurts from the past so you can have a healthy relationship with your partner?

13 How important is sexual chemistry in a relationship? If it’s not there in the beginning, will it develop over time?

14 How do you motivate someone to want to change and open up emotionally?

Compatibility

15 Why am I only attracted to the wrong, “bad boy” type of man, and feel no sexual chemistry with the “nice guys”?

16 Can a relationship work when you’re in love with your partner’s potential?

17 Is there such a thing as being too “picky” when choosing partners?

18 Can long-distance relationships work?

19 How important are cultural differences in a relationship?

20 Is it damaging to a relationship when one partner is still controlled by his parents?

21 Why do I always fall in love with people who need rescuing?

22 Can a big age difference between two people hurt the relationship?

23 Can a relationship with an addict (drugs, alcohol, etc.) work?

24 Why do I keep choosing unavailable partners?

25 What signs should I look for in the beginning of a relationship to make sure I don’t end up with someone who’s bad for me?

26 Can you ever be 100 percent sure that someone you’re with is the right one for you? What qualities should you look for in a partner?

Commitment

27 How long should you wait for a partner to make a commitment?

28 How soon in a relationship should you expect a commitment from your partner?

29 Should you stay with someone who isn’t over his ex-partner?

30 Is it right to stay with someone even when you know inside she’s not the right one for you?

31 How can you tell if someone is really committed to the relationship?

32 How can I tell if I have “commitment phobia”?

33 Is there such a thing as falling in love too quickly? What does it mean if a person experiences this often?

34 Should you wait until you are 100 percent sure that someone is right for you before you make a lifelong commitment?

35 Should a couple live together before marriage?

Communication and Conflict

36 How can I get my partner to express his feelings to me?

37 What do you do with a husband who refuses to discuss problems or work on the relationship?

38 How can I get over my fear of conflict and be more honest with my partner?

39 How important is it for a couple to be totally honest with one another? Is there such a thing as too much honesty?

40 How can I learn to control my temper?

41 Why do my wife and I fight all the time? How can we stop?

42 What can I do about a partner who is mean?

43 How do I deal with a partner who is physically abusive?

44 What does it mean if a couple never fights? Can this hurt a relationship?

45 How can I ask my partner for what I need without sounding like I’m being too demanding?

46 How do you handle a partner who is very critical of you?

47 Is there a way to detect symptoms of trouble in your relationship so you can solve the problems before they get too serious?

48 Is it possible to have a good marriage when your partner is a control freak?

49 Should you tell your mate bad things from your past even if you’re afraid it will hurt the relationship?

50 Shouldn’t my partner understand how I want him to love me without my having to explain it all the time?

51 Why do men hate talking about emotional issues late at night?

Sex and Physical Affection

52 How can I get my partner to give me more physical affection when we’re not having sex?

53 How can I get my partner to initiate sex more, instead of waiting for me to always be the one who wants it?

54 Is it okay to have sexual fantasies about someone else when you’re making love to your own partner?

55 What should a couple do when one wants to have sex much more often than the other?

56 Why can’t my wife just have spontaneous sex sometimes?

57 When is the right time to start being sexually intimate with a new partner?

58 Is it possible for a couple to rediscover their sexual desire for one another after it has disappeared?

59 How can a couple with children maintain a spontaneous, exciting sex life?

60 How can I overcome some childhood sexual trauma and have a normal sex life?

61 How can I tell my partner I don’t like the way he makes love to me?

62 Why is it that men don’t know how to touch women the right way and in the right places?

63 Why do men experience premature ejaculation?

64 Is it okay for my husband to look at porno magazines?

65 How can I get my partner to slow down during sex?

66 How can I get my partner to do more than just lie there during sex?

67 How can I learn to have an orgasm when my partner and I make love? What does it mean if I can’t?

68 How can I get my wife to give me more oral sex?

69 What can I do to really please my husband in bed?

Cheating and Infidelity

70 How should you deal with a cheating partner who denies having an affair?

71 Should you give a cheating partner another chance?

72 Do one night stands mean anything?

73 Should you continue an affair with a married man who won’t leave his wife?

74 After your partner has an affair, should you just forgive and forget? How do you learn to trust again?

75 Is it acceptable for a cheating partner to still see the person she cheated with after the affair is over?

76 Is there such a thing as an emotional affair? Is it as bad as a sexual affair?

77 Is it possible to be in love with two people at the same time?

78 Should you trust someone with a history of infidelity?

Breaking Up, Starting Over

79 How can I get my partner back?

80 How long should it take to recover from a breakup?

81 How can I learn to trust men again?

82 When is it too late to leave a loveless relationship and find happiness?

83 Should you continue to spend time with an ex-lover as a friend after you break up?

84 How can you break up with someone without causing that person pain?

85 How do you know when a relationship just isn’t going to work, and it’s time to leave?

86 Should you stay in an unhappy marriage for the sake of your children?

87 Is there such a thing as having been hurt too much to even want to give a relationship one more chance?

88 How soon after getting divorced should someone start dating again? How do you know when you’re ready to have a relationship?

89 Is it harmful to continue having sex with your ex-lover?

Living and Loving

90 Is it appropriate for a widower or widow to start dating again even if his grown children disapprove?

91 Is it true that a woman shouldn’t pursue a man or initiate a relationship because he will lose interest without the challenge?

92 How soon should a single parent tell a prospective partner that she has children?

93 What’s your opinion of bachelor parties? Can they have a damaging effect on a relationship?

94 How can I find a good therapist? What should I look for?

95 If you have a friend who is in an abusive relationship, should you try to help, or mind your own business?

96 How do I deal with the negative influence of my husband’s ex-wife on our relationship?

97 What should you do as a parent when you hate your child’s choice of an intimate partner?

98 What do you do about a partner who insists all the problems in the relationship are yours?

99 Is it normal to feel jealous of the attention my wife gives to the dog?

100 Do you believe there is such a thing as a soul mate? Can we have more than one soul mate?

Index

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Dear Reader,

Everywhere I go, and I mean everywhere, people ask me questions about their love life. I can be eating dinner in a restaurant, standing in line for a movie, sitting on an airplane, or walking down the street—it doesn’t matter—and someone will approach me with a question they’re desperate to get answered. I’ve talked to men and women about the most intimate details of their relationships in the strangest of places, from the dressing room of a department store, to the galley of a jumbo jetliner crossing the Atlantic in the middle of the night, to a hiking trail in the California mountains, to the restroom of a museum in Paris.

What do people ask me? ANYTHING!!! I’ve had a salesperson ask me if I thought she should stay with her boyfriend even though he was sleeping with his ex-wife … while I was buying underwear! I’ve had a Marine officer roll down his car window and ask me to explain why his girlfriend was mad that he went to a friend’s bachelor party… while his vehicle drove alongside mine at fifty miles an hour! I’ve had a security guard at an airport ask my advice on how he could give his wife an orgasm … while he X-rayed my carry-on bags! Then there was the time a cab driver was intent on discovering the secrets of getting women to be attracted to him and (as I discovered later) drove me miles out of my way in order to prolong the ride!

However unusual the circumstances or delicate the questions, most of the time I’m happy to offer my answers to the people who approach me (that is, unless I’m in the middle of chewing a mouthful of food, or trying to have an intimate night out with my husband!!). The reason is simple: I have great respect for anyone who has the honesty and courage to search for the truth about love, sex, and relationships. I believe that most of us need to ask ourselves and the people we love more questions, questions that will help us live with more integrity, love with more success, and move through our days and nights with more peace.

After almost twenty years of teaching about personal and spiritual development, it dawned on me that there were certain questions I kept hearing over and over again, at my seminars, through letters, on call-in radio and television programs. They are the kind of questions that anyone who has ever been in an intimate relationship needs the answers to. They are the questions you’ve asked yourself when you’re lying in bed late at night, the questions your friends call and ask you when they’re having a hard time, the questions whose answers you wish you’d had before your first date.

I wrote this book to be like a “love encyclopedia,” offering you information in various categories to help you with whatever you’re going through at a particular time in your life. You can read the book from beginning to end, or just turn to a section that specifically applies to your issues right now. And whenever you’re having an argument with your mate, or when you’re wondering how to handle a particular situation in your love life, or when a friend in a romantic crisis calls you up asking for advice, look through the list of questions, turn to that page, and you’ll find the answer.

If you’ve read any of my other books, you know that I believe creating successful relationships takes a lot of commitment and hard work. So obviously, The 100 Most Asked Questions about Love, Sex and Relationships isn’t meant to be a cure-all for every personal issue you are faced with in your love life. My hope, though, is that what I’ve offered you in these pages will help connect you to your own inner wisdom, and guide you to discover the answers that are already waiting for you in your own heart.

In love,

Barbara De Angelis

July 25, 1996

Los Angeles, California

Love and Intimacy

1 How do you convince a workaholic partner to put more time and energy into a marriage?

I feel like I’m always competing with my husband’s job. He’s an attorney and works sixty to seventy hours a week, not to mention most weekends, which doesn’t leave much time for me and our two boys. When I complain, he argues that he’s doing this for us, and points to our lifestyle, which I have to admit, is very luxurious—we have a beautiful home, a boat, a vacation cabin (which we hardly use), and all the money we need. The only thing missing is him! He blows up when I call him a workaholic, and tells me I’m being ungrateful. Is he right? How can I convince him to pay attention to us?

You’re not ungrateful … you’re just lonely, and with good cause. You can’t snuggle up to a checkbook, or hold hands with a share of stock, and neither can your kids. I have a saying: Marriage is not a noun, it’s a verb. It’s not something you have, like a house or a car. It is not a piece of paper that proves you are husband and wife. Marriage is a behavior. It is a choice you make over and over again, reflected in the way you treat your partner every day.

Men tend to define themselves by what they are doing, rather than what they are feeling, so it’s no surprise that your husband has gotten caught up in the “doing more must mean I’m successful” mentality. That’s the way society, and perhaps his family background, has trained him. He may feel like he’s on a treadmill, running as fast as he can, and he doesn’t know how to stop. Along with this, he may have other unconscious emotional reasons for working so hard. Some workaholics actually use their business to avoid intimacy and to maintain a sense of control over their lives. After all, it’s probably easier for your husband to feel in control when he’s doing business than it is when he’s interacting with you and your children, and dealing in emotions, needs, and all that amorphous stuff.

Here are a few of my favorite methods to wake up workaholic partners. Whether or not these approaches are effective will depend on how addicted your mate is to the illusion of power and control that work gives him.

1. Give him some perspective. Have him close his eyes and imagine that he’s at the end of his life, on his deathbed. As he looks back on his life, ask him to share what moments will have made his life truly meaningful. What, in the end, will really matter to him? You can bet he won’t say “I can die happily because I closed ten big deals in 1997,” or “I feel content with my life because I owned a five-thousandsquare-foot house,” or even “I feel at peace because I left my children a lot of money.” No, the moments that really matter, the moments that will have filled his life with meaning will be moments of love, connection, and sharing. I call these “real moments,” and he probably isn’t having enough of them because he’s too busy doing the things he has decided are more important. Tell him you want to share more meaningful time with him.

2. Use fear to scare him into slowing down. Sometimes this is the only thing that works to snap a guy out of his workaholic stupor. Ask him how he would spend his time if he knew he had only one month left to live. (Trust me, he won’t say “I’d work like a dog for twelve hours a day.”) Then remind him of some men he knows of who have died at his age, either accidentally or of natural causes. The truth is, we never know if a day, or a month, or a year will be our last. We live as if we have all the time in the world, and we don’t. Share this anonymous quote with him:

First I was dying to finish high school and start college.

And then I was dying to finish college and start working.

And then I was dying to marry and have children.

And then I was dying for my kids to grow up.

And then I was dying to retire.

And now, I am dying, and suddenly I realize,

I forgot to live …

3. Use guilt as a last resort. Ask him to imagine what his children will say about him when they are grown. Does he really think they will look back on their childhood as happy because of their big house and expensive toys, and not care that they hardly saw their father? Does he really think that they don’t care that he is hardly ever around? All children really want is to feel they matter, that they are important to us. The toys and treats may buy the children’s silence now, but when they grow up, they won’t even remember what he bought them—they’ll only say “I hardly knew my dad.” And they will wish he hadn’t sacrificed “for their sakes,” because whatever he leaves them will never be as valuable as the cherished memory of a good-night story, a game of catch, or the sight of Mommy and Daddy snuggled close together on the couch.

2 Is it natural for the passion to disappear after years of marriage?

My husband and I have been married for eighteen years and are more like best friends than lovers. We have sex very infrequently and have settled into what I would call a “comfortable” relationship. There’s a part of me that longs for that passionate emotional connection we used to have, but many of my friends tell me I’m being unrealistic, and that all couples feel this way after years of marriage. Am I expecting too much?

Don’t buy into the popular but misinformed attitude that losing romantic attraction to your partner is an inevitable part of marriage. That’s like saying becoming unhealthy and having a heart attack is an inevitable part of growing older. Are heart attacks common? Yes—but now we know they are preventable IF you take good care of your body. In the same way, just because it’s common for many couples to lose the passion in their relationship over time doesn’t mean it is natural. It all depends on how you take care of your relationship.

Relationships don’t just lose their chemistry overnight. It takes years of neglect, not making the marriage a number-one priority, not talking about your needs, not resolving and healing hidden resentments, and not actively learning how to make love work. All these unhealthy emotional habits are what takes a couple from feeling “in love” to feeling like roommates.

I strongly believe that you do deserve to have a marriage that grows in love, passion, and connection year after year. Is this realistic, even in an eighteen-year relationship? Yes … IF both partners decide to do what it takes to rekindle the passion and learn some of the skills you were never taught about successful loving. Start by sitting down with your partner, taking his hands, and telling him how much you miss the physical and emotional closeness you used to share. (Believe me, he misses it too!) Without blaming him, tell him you want to work toward transforming your “comfortable” relationship into one that is intimate and exciting. Tell him he deserves more than he’s getting, as you do. When you both recommit to learning how to love, and use some of the skills I teach in my books and programs, you’ll find renewed levels of communication, closeness, and excitement.

3 If a relationship takes a lot of work, does that mean something is wrong with it?

At times, I find myself wondering whether my wife is my perfect partner, because our relationship doesn’t ever seem to be completely effortless and without issues. We love each other very much and have grown tremendously over the past eight years, but it seems we’re always “dealing” with something—balancing her needs with mine; learning to ask for what we want; giving each other enough attention, or space. Should it be this complicated?

Yes! Show me a relationship without conflict and issues and I’ll show you a couple that is either dead or in denial! A conscious relationship requires a lot of work, because it asks you to push past the fear that would keep you protected and invulnerable to your partner and, instead, to reveal all of you—the giving and the selfish part; the forgiving and the angry part; the compassionate and the blaming part. In other words, a truly honest, deep, and committed relationship will continually confront you with all the parts of yourself that are not totally loving, and thus will make you uncomfortable as it stretches you beyond the boundaries of your ego.

Where I think people get stuck is in the erroneous belief that a relationship is always supposed to make you feel good, so if it feels bad, it must be bad. Actually, it is often during the times when the relationship doesn’t feel good that something good is happening: You are being forced to see a part of yourselves or a dynamic between you that is not healthy, so you can change it and make your relationship even stronger. It may feel like things are falling apart, but actually, they are trying to come more together. It’s at these times when you need to be careful not to misinterpret your difficulties as signs of doom, but rather, opportunities for growth. (This only applies if you are actually with the right person in the first place—see section on compatibility.)

Of course, both partners need to be willing to work on themselves and the relationship. And it’s essential to share a vision and understanding of the purpose of your relationship, so that when stuff comes up, and it will, you remember what you’re doing there in the first place. Here are three understandings I suggest couples adopt:

1. We have been brought together for the purpose of helping each other grow, and will be each other’s teacher.

2. Our relationship is a precious gift—it will take us through whatever we need to learn to become more conscious, loving human beings.

3. The challenges and difficulties we experience will always illuminate our most needed lessons.

4 How do you deal with a partner who is a flirt?

My boyfriend of two years is a flirt! He’s always staring at other women when we are together, especially certain body parts, and sometimes he even comes on to women right in front of me. When I complain about his behavior, he insists he’s just being “friendly,” and “joking around,” and accuses me of being “insecure” and “jealous.” What do you think?

What I think doesn’t count—it’s what you think and feel that matters, and you already know what that is. You think he’s acting like an insensitive jerk, and he is! You don’t need me to validate your opinion, but since you asked, I’ll add a little something! What your boyfriend is doing is totally disrespectful. I call it “leaking sexual energy.” He may not be doing anything physical, but on the astral plane, he’s lusting after, undressing, and probably doing much more to other women, and right in front of you no less. His saying it’s just “friendly” behavior is like someone whose dog is humping your leg telling you the animal is just being friendly. You know it’s much more—you can feel it in your gut.

As for his accusations that you are “insecure” and “jealous,” those are buzz words men (and women) often use to control their partner, invalidate their feelings, and make them feel something is wrong with them. Don’t fall for it, and don’t let him minimize what he’s doing to you. This is a problem that needs facing.

See, there’s a difference between “noticing” that another human being is attractive as she walks by, and enjoying the contribution her beauty adds to the world, and, on the other hand, having a wild, ten-second sexual orgy with her in your imagination. The first is acknowledging attractiveness; the second is indulging in it and, temporarily, forgetting that your sexual commitment is to your partner. And you know when your lover is doing the second, because it feels like he disappeared for ten seconds—and he did.

Now, let me take his side for a moment, because the fact is that unfortunately our society trains and even supports men to behave in this disrespectful manner toward women. It’s the old eye-winking, back-slapping boys’ club that gives men points for “scoring,” and looks the other way on cheating, flirting, etc. So it’s possible that your sweetheart is a really nice, but misguided, member of the male race who just doesn’t realize how his behavior is hurting you. Then again, it’s possible that he’s not a nice guy and couldn’t care less about your feelings. That’s a distinction only you can make.

Try sharing this information with your boyfriend without blaming him, coming from a more neutral place. See if it helps him understand how hurtful his behavior is to you, and let him know you respect yourself too much to stay in the relationship if the flirting continues.

5 How can I stop mothering my husband?

My husband and I have been married for ten years, and have three small children, but I feel like I have four kids—including him. I find myself treating him like a child because he acts like one. He’s always misplacing things, forgetting appointments, and leaving his stuff all over the house. I hate feeling this way, and I know it turns him off, because our sex life is practically nonexistent. How can I stop acting like his mother?

Boy, am I glad you asked. Mothering our men is one of the biggest mistakes women make in relationships. The more we treat them like little boys, the more they act like it. They end up resenting us and, eventually, rebelling against us just like they did against Mom at some point. And what’s worse, mothering your mate is the quickest and deadliest way to kill the passion in your love life. After all—no man wants to sleep with his mother, so if you’re acting like her, it’s going to be just about impossible to turn him on, unless he has a strange fetish for nagging and scolding.

Now, as a woman, I know how natural it is to mother someone you love. We’re trained to do it from the time we are children ourselves. After all, your first and most predominant experience of love was probably associated with your mother, who carried you inside her for nine months, fed you, bathed you, burped you and powdered your behind. Once you realized you, too, were a female, it was just a mental hop, skip, and jump to treating people you love with a “mothering, nurturing” attitude. There’s only one problem—it drives men crazy, reminds them of you know who, and makes them want to leave home all over again.

There are six “Mommy-No-No’s” that we do as women:

1. We act overly helpful by doing things for men that they should be doing for themselves (choosing his clothes, picking up after him, finding his keys).

2. We play verbal guessing games with men to try and pull information out of them. (“You’re hungry … how about some cereal? No? What about pretzels? Not pretzels? Okay, what if I make you some nice soup?”)

3. We assume men will be absentminded or forgetful and remind them of information they should remember by themselves. (“Don’t forget it’s trash night…” “Don’t forget to pick up milk …”)

4. We scold men as if they were children. (“How many times do I have to tell you to turn off the kitchen lights?”)

5. We take charge of activities that we assume they can’t do right. (Planning trips, taking the kids out to buy clothing.)

6. We correct and direct them when they don’t ask for our help. (Correcting their memory, offering the “right way”, to cook something.)

I know what you’re thinking… “But he always forgets where he put his keys” … “But if I don’t do it, it won’t get done …” Believe me, I’ve been there. All I can say is that you have much more to lose by behaving motherly than you do by waiting for him to find the keys once in a while. So here are my rules for you to follow if you want to transform yourself from a mother back into a lover:

Rule #1: Stop doing things for your mate that he can do for himself.

Rule #2: Treat him like a competent, reliable person.

Rule #3: Don’t speak to him in “Mommy-talk.”

Rule #4: Agree on what responsibilities are his in the relationship, and don’t take over even if he makes a mistake.

Rule #5: Make a list: “The ways I play Mommy …” Read it every day, and give him a copy so he can bust you when you fall off the wagon.

Hang in there, and remember—when you break the mothering habit, you will feel and act more like a woman, and he will feel and act more like a man.

6 How can I help my partner break through the emotional barriers she put up because of her painful childhood?

My wife had a very tough childhood, lots of physical and verbal abuse and very little love. The result is that she has locked herself behind thick emotional walls, and no matter what I do, I can’t get through to her. I know she loves me, but she has a hard time showing it and is very withdrawn. Is it possible for someone like this to ever open up? What can I do to break through her walls?

I’m going to say something you may not want to hear: It’s not your job to break through to her. It’s not your job to rescue her. It’s her job to rescue herself. That doesn’t mean you can’t be a part of her healing process, but that can only happen if she decides she wants to break free from her emotional prison.

Perhaps, like many of us who have loved someone in emotional pain, and wanted desperately to save that person, you haven’t asked your wife the most important questions: Do you want to change? Do you want to open up emotionally? Are you willing to do whatever it takes, counseling, reading, seminars, to heal yourself of the emotional damage from your childhood?

Whether your marriage works or not lies in her answer to these questions. If she wants to heal herself, and is willing to take action to do so, then you have a chance. But if she won’t, or can’t start a journey of recovery, you will need to face a very heartbreaking but necessary fact—your wife may be emotionally incapable of having the kind of healthy relationship you want, at least right now, and perhaps for a long time to come. Some people truly are too wounded, too damaged to love fully and freely. And ironically, your pressuring your wife to open up and let you in may actually make her feel even worse about herself and more like a failure than if she were in a less demanding relationship, or even lived alone.

While you’re asking her the questions I mentioned, you need to ask yourself some too, because it’s no accident that you are in this kind of relationship and are acting as a rescuer. Rescueholics tend to become involved with partners they feel compelled to help, whom they feel sorry for. This almost always goes back to your own unfinished emotional business from childhood. Maybe there was someone you couldn’t rescue, but wanted to, like an abused mom, an alcoholic dad, an ailing sibling. Or maybe the person you wanted someone else to rescue was yourself, so you’re acting it out as an adult. Do some emotional work on your own issues, because you may “need” her to be messed up in order to run out your own patterns.

Someone once said that you can’t force a flower to open its petals before it’s time. Find the courage to ask your wife if she’s ready to work on loving you the way you need to be loved, and know that the truth will set you both free.

7 Is it possible to “fall back in love” with someone after years of feeling dead and disinterested?

I’ve been married for twenty-eight years, and for the last ten, I’ve felt numb toward my partner. We’ve discussed divorce, but neither of us really wants to go out and start dating at this point in our lives. Is it possible for us to fall back in love again, or should we just accept the fact that our marriage is over?

Yes, it’s possible to fall back in love again, or more accurately, to break through the numbness you are both feeling and rediscover the love that is still there underneath. If you’re a couple (and I’d bet anything you are) who never worked on maintaining the intimacy in your relationship, avoided major confrontation, suppressed unpleasant emotions, and didn’t talk about your feelings, then of course you are feeling numb. You’ve spent years becoming experts at numbing yourselves to the little things, and now you’re wondering where the love went. It may still be there in hibernation, underneath all the other frozen emotions.

It sounds to me like you are both not only numb to one another, but numb period. You aren’t interested in dating or starting your love life over again, and I’ll bet you feel kind of tired and blasé about everything. This could be a major turning point in your life, a moment where you look at one another and say, “I’m tired of feeling this tired of everything …-I’m tired of feeling numb … I’m ready to make some changes.”

The first step is to break through that numbness by confronting some of the issues that are sure to be lurking beneath the surface. You won’t be able to do this on your own—you’ll need help, and I suggest you find a well-trained therapist or marriage counselor who has an excellent reputation for helping couples in trouble. If you don’t get the results you want, try someone else, read books, attend seminars, etc. You won’t be able to tell if your marriage can be saved until you try everything. Then, if you decide it’s over, you can do so knowing you made every attempt to resurrect the relationship.

Here’s something to give you some hope: I’ve personally worked with thousands of couples who believed they were on the verge of divorce, who, after giving their relationship the attention it needed, fell back in love again; every week I receive letters from couples I’ve never even met, but who share this same kind of success story with me. So it’s not just possible—it’s happening all the time, and I pray it can happen for you too.

8 How can I get my husband to pay as much attention to me as he does to our children?

I consider myself lucky to have a husband who is my best friend, and two healthy young daughters. So I feel even more guilty to admit that I’m jealous of my girls! The truth is, my husband gives them more attention and affection than he gives me. I always brag about what a great dad he is, but I need more physical and emotional closeness with him. I’ve tried to talk about this, but he ends up feeling criticized and pulls even farther away. Am I expecting too much?

Guess what? Millions of wives and mothers feel the same secret envy you do about how much love their husband shows the kids, so be assured that you’re not “bad,” “selfish,” or “weird”—you’re just not getting everything you need from your partner. (I hear this same complaint from men, too, by the way, about their wife showing the kids more affection.) So the first step is to stop making yourself wrong for longing to be the recipient of the tenderness and caring your husband showers on your daughters. Of course you’re jealous: the little girl inside of you is hungry for the intimacy you know your mate is capable of, since you see him share this with your girls. I know it feels awful to see your own daughters, whom you adore, as rivals, but that’s what’s happening.

It might help you to understand where your husband is coming from. You see, it’s easy for him to be so emotionally generous with his children. They don’t nag him, criticize what he says or does, or see his faults!! In other words, they still love him unconditionally. That feeling of being loved purely and completely allows him to feel safe enough to open his heart and share the most giving part of himself with them. With you, it’s a different story. You don’t have him on a pedestal, like the girls do; you don’t think everything he says is so smart; you see him as he really is. So it’s much more difficult for your husband to feel as safe and loved with you as he does with his daughters. This is true for all parents—it’s a lot more challenging to be as consistently loving with our mates as we are with our kids, but that’s the whole point of marriage—ideally, to learn how to love another person in spite of their imperfections.

That’s the compassionate part of the answer, but the second part is more practical: Your relationship with your husband must be placed first, before your relationship as parents to the kids. I believe strongly that, as a wife, you need to feel you are Number One to your husband, and not that you get the emotional leftovers, if there are any, after your daughters are loved. If your marriage isn’t healthy, it won’t matter how much your children feel loved … you will end up feeling resentment toward them, and they will not grow up with a positive example of how a woman should be treated. The stronger your relationship with your husband is, the better both of you will be as parents to your kids. Keeping you happy and well loved should be your husband’s first responsibility to the family, because that ensures a stable and lasting home life for your children. And the happier you and he are together, the happier your girls will be. Tell him I said so!!!!

9 How should you handle a partner who smothers you with too much love and affection and is too possessive?

I have the opposite problem than most women have—my boyfriend loves me too much. He wants to be with me every second; he never takes his hands off me; and when we aren’t together, he calls me every few hours. I’ve asked him to back off, to give me some space, but he gets really hurt and rejected, and I end up comforting him. I really care about this man, but I’m starting to turn off, and even feel scared of him. How can I make him see that I need him to love me less?

Your problem isn’t that your boyfriend loves you too much—it’s that he doesn’t love himself enough. He’s what I call an “emotional vampire.” His heart is like an emotional container that’s empty, and he desperately needs you to fill him up, only there’s a hole in the bottom, so no matter how much you give him, it will never be enough, and he’ll always crave more. No wonder you feel uncomfortable: although he appears to be giving in his desire to be with you, touch you, and call you, he’s actually taking. He’s feeding off your attention, your presence, your energy.

People like your boyfriend who seem to “love too much” are almost always desperately needy, seeking to distract themselves from their pain with a temporary dose of love, sex, or affection. They can fall in love instantly, and become easily compulsive and obsessed, sucking their partners in by sweeping them off their feet, and, eventually, keeping them around with guilt and pity. Your boyfriend probably has been very hurt in his life, perhaps by a family member, and he has an emotional wound that will not heal until he deals with it at its source. Your relationship and all the others he has had are like Band-Aids, temporary solutions for a deep and chronic problem.

What am I telling you? Probably to end this relationship now, before things get worse, and they inevitably will. The only circumstances under which you should keep seeing him would be if he admitted to the problem and sought help immediately. There’s a chance that, if your boyfriend receives some intensive counseling, you could work things out together. However, I sense that you’ve already had enough. And don’t forget to take a look at why you got sucked in by this kind of person. (Hint: He begs for your love—you withhold it … Are you punishing Mom or Dad? Are you staying in control?)

10 How can a couple learn to trust love when they’ve both been badly hurt in past relationships?

After surviving a very bitter divorce and custody battle for my children, I finally met a wonderful man who is everything my ex-husband wasn’t. He’s kind, open, and willing to talk about everything. Our problem is that his ex-wife left him for his best friend, so he’s afraid to trust love again, and so am I. How can we leave the past behind us and make this new relationship work?

First of all, congratulations!! You are faced with what I call a “high-class problem,” a problem that looks like a problem, but is really a great situation with some challenges attached to it. In essence, what you’re asking is, “How can my partner and I get rid of the fear in our relationship so we can love fully?” That’s a wonderful question to be able to ask. So the first step is for you and your sweetie to remind yourselves that you’ve worked very hard to get to this place. Before you get too intense about climbing your next mountain, take a moment to stop and really celebrate how far you’ve both come to finally have found a healthy relationship.

Okay, now, back to the fear. I’m going to say something that might sound strange—a little fear isn’t such a bad thing for you and your boyfriend to feel … it will keep you on your toes and force you to pay attention. I’ll bet if you and he look back on your failed marriages, you will notice that you didn’t pay attention to warning signs, problems, conflicts, unmet needs, and all kinds of stuff. Eventually, it was precisely what you weren’t paying attention to that sabotaged your relationships, right? You didn’t treat those relationships carefully enough. So here you are with a new, wonderful partner, and you’re both scared of making mistakes again, and a little reluctant to just blindly trust. I say, that’s great! It’s about time! You should be afraid of making mistakes, all of us should. You should be careful to make sure your needs get met. You should be paying very close attention, because the more you pay attention to your relationship, the better it will be.

Do you get my point? It’s like someone who carelessly used a sharp knife and cut herself badly. The next time you pick up the knife to use it, you are afraid. You respect its power much more, as well you should. A relationship is like that—a powerful tool that can be used to help us or hurt us, and I feel not enough people respect that tool.

Here’s something practical you can do to help. Each of you should make a Relationship Mistake List. Go back and honestly assess your former relationship from the very beginning to the end. Write down every mistake you made. Examples: “Let my ex-husband talk me out of my feelings, and then pushed down my resentment.” “Didn’t ask for what I wanted in bed, and felt dissatisfied.” Don’t be surprised at how long these lists are. Share yours with your partner, and have him share his. Talk about each item. Then, together, come up with a new Relationship Rule for each old mistake, and write these down. Example: “When I disagree with something my partner does or says, I will express my feelings, even if it causes tension between us,” or “I will let my partner know what I enjoy sexually so he doesn’t have to guess.”

The point of this exercise is twofold: First, it will help you understand that your prior relationships didn’t just go bad. There were specific unhealthy behaviors and love habits that caused the relationships to fail. Second, by paying attention to these unhealthy love habits, and committing on paper to new, healthy behavioral choices, you have a great chance of avoiding the old mistakes that would hurt you again. Throw in some good books, tapes, or seminars on making relationships work, and you will have a great foundation to go forward into this new romance with excitement, enthusiasm, and high hopes.

11 What does it mean when your partner won’t introduce you to his family and friends?

I’ve been dating a man for nine months who won’t introduce me to his family or his friends. I know he has children from a former marriage, and I haven’t even met them. Most of the time, we spend alone at my apartment or his condo, and when we do go out, it’s always at the last minute. He claims that he is a private person, and that he doesn’t want to bring other people into our relationship, but something doesn’t feel right to me. What does this mean?

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but this behavior means just what you secretly suspect it means—that your boyfriend is ashamed to be seen with you or associated with you, and is hiding you from the people in his life. It could be that, for some reason, he doesn’t think you’re “good enough” to be an official girlfriend—maybe you don’t look the way he thinks you should or come from a background he thinks is acceptable. This may sound terrible, but it’s nothing compared to the second possibility you need to look at: Your boyfriend may be married or involved with someone else, and is cheating on her with you! Thus, the sneaking around, staying inside, and keeping you isolated from the rest of his life. The signs all add up, don’t they?

I’ll bet you’ve known this deep inside yourself, but haven’t wanted to face it, because it means confronting him and, if you have any self-respect, ending the relationship immediately. And respect is the key word here. He obviously doesn’t respect you—his behavior is totally disrespectful. So once you’ve broken up with him, you need to ask yourself some difficult and confrontational questions: Why did I put up with this kind of treatment for so long? What in my emotional past attracts me to men who treat me like I’m not important? What are some of the ways I kept myself in denial about something so obvious? How can I begin to heal my own emotional wounds so I don’t get hurt like this again?

It’s time for you to love yourself enough to know you don’t deserve to be treated like some awful secret too grotesque for the world to see. The man who is lucky enough to be with you should be proud and honored to have you in his life, and excited about showing you off to everyone he knows. And the sooner you get rid of this character you’re with, the sooner you’ll meet a partner who will treat you like the wonderful human being you are.

12 How do you heal old emotional hurts from the past so you can have a healthy relationship with your partner?

Even though I know that many of the problems in my relationship are caused or aggravated by some past hurts from my childhood and from painful love affairs, I still can’t figure out how to let go of the past. My husband has his own issues, and between the two of us, I wonder how we’ve survived this long! Is there a way to heal the past so it doesn’t sabotage our relationship?

This is one of the most important questions any of us can ask ourselves: How can I identify and heal any unhealthy emotional patterns formed in my past so they don’t sabotage my adult relationships? In fact, you’ve just taken the first step in healing yourself: acknowledging the existence of your emotional baggage and expressing a willingness to get rid of it! Sadly, most people in the world will never even admit that their past experiences are emotionally handicapping them in their present lives, and therefore will never have the opportunity to experience what I call “true emotional freedom.” I define emotional freedom as the freedom to live as the person you want to be, and love as much as you want to love. It’s freedom from the past to be all you can in the present.

In order to heal the past, you have to understand what I call your “emotional programming.” Your emotional programming is simply a set of decisions you made about yourself, others, and the world in general when you were growing up. As an infant, you came into the world like a blank slate. Even though you were born with a certain set of genetic predispositions, you had no experiences yet to affect you either negatively or positively. But each day that you are alive, you collect experiences, and each one teaches you something about yourself and other people. You are either treated well, or treated harshly; you are either loved or neglected; you are either praised or put down.

Each of these experiences helps you form a decision about yourself, about people, and about life. For instance, if your parents had an unhappy, turbulent relationship, and as an infant or small child you heard constant fighting, you might have unconsciously decided: “I have to always be good, so I don’t make people I love unhappy,” or “It’s not safe for me to express angry feelings.” Here’s another example. Let’s say your father was emotionally distant and not there for you. You may have unconsciously decided “I can’t count on the people I love,” or “People who love me abandon me.” Each experience you have as a child helps you make certain decisions, until you have a collection of decisions you have made about life. This collection of decisions or beliefs is called your emotional programming. In the same way you would program a computer with basic information, and the computer would use that information to do tasks or solve problems, so you program your mind with this emotional programming. For the rest of your life, this “program” affects how you think, how you behave, and especially, how you react to circumstances that remind you of your painful childhood experiences.

The majority of this emotional programming occurs when you are still very young. Psychologists estimate that:

 Between the ages of 0-5 years old you receive 50% of your emotional programming

 Between the ages of 5-8 years old you receive 30% of your emotional programming

That means, by the age of 8 you are 80% programmed psychologically. In other words, 80% of the decisions about yourself and others have already been made.

 Between the ages of 8-18 years old you receive 15% more of your emotional programming

So by the time you are eighteen years old, you’re 95 percent complete! That leaves 5 percent for the rest of your life. This may not seem like much, but it’s that 5 percent that I work with when I help people make changes in their lives. And the good news is that you can use that 5 percent to understand and change the other 95 percent!

Perhaps now you can better understand why it’s easy to be so unaware of what motivates you in your relationships. The 5 percent of your mind that is conscious says “I want to be a loving husband to my wife” but the 95 percent of your mind that is unconscious may be programmed to avoid intimacy and keep a wall around your heart.

In my Making Love Work at-home video and audio seminar, I talk about a three-step healing process that you can use to eliminate your emotional programming:

1. Identify, feel, and express the old, unresolved emotions that are trapped inside your heart so that you can “Work them out, not act them out.”

2. Understand your old, unhealthy love choices, and then make new, healthy love choices which will heal your old fear and build new trust.

3. Open up to new, positive experiences of love that will heal the old pain which was caused by some lack of love.

I strongly suggest that you find a system of emotional healing that incorporates both experiential work in releasing old emotions and practical, action-oriented behavioral changes to build healthy new habits.

Now I’ll bet you’re thinking, “Boy, this sounds like a lot of work.” And it can be. But the rewards are worth it—the freedom to give and receive the kind of love you’ve always wanted!

13 How important is sexual chemistry in a relationship? If it’s not there in the beginning, will it develop over time?

People who ask me this question are usually involved in a relationship they wish were different. They feel love for their partner, but don’t feel sexually attracted to them. They don’t want to leave, so they try to rationalize their lack of sexual chemistry and make it “okay.”

My honest response to this question is:

“NO, I DON’T BELIEVE IT IS POSSIBLE TO HAVE A HEALTHY, LASTING, ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP WITH SOMEONE WHOM YOU AREN’T ATTRACTED TO, at least for me or anyone else who wants to include sexuality as a part of our lives.” After all, it is sex that distinguishes an intimate relationship from a friendship. Perhaps if a couple met when they were both quite elderly and no longer had an interest in sex, they wouldn’t need more than a strong friendship as a foundation to live together happily. But there is no reason people in their seventies and even older can’t enjoy active and fulfilling sex lives, so I don’t even like to use this example. Besides, it’s not sixty or seventy-year-olds who usually ask me about love without attraction—it’s men and women in their twenties, thirties, and forties.

If you’re not attracted to a partner, can the sexual chemistry develop over time? That depends. For instance, if you have an issue like the woman in Question 15, where she isn’t normally sexually attracted to nice guys, you could develop sexual attraction over time by doing some emotional healing. However, if this pattern or any kind of sexual dysfunction or abuse hasn’t been a problem for you, and you simply haven’t felt sexually attracted to your partner from the beginning of your relationship, you’ll be unlikely to develop it over time.

If you’re in a relationship with someone you’ve never been sexually attracted to, here are some things to think about:

1. You are avoiding true intimacy. A sexual connection binds a couple together in a very special way. There is nothing more intimate than taking someone inside your own body, if you are a woman, or putting a part of yourself into someone else, if you are a man. Especially when you are making love, and not just having sex, you create tremendous intimacy between yourself and your partner. Although it may look like you are avoiding sex, becoming involved with someone to whom you aren’t attracted may actually be a way you are unconsciously avoiding intimacy in your life. Since you know you aren’t going to have a strong sexual relationship, you are naturally protected from feeling too vulnerable with your partner.

2. You are avoiding sex. Some people aren’t just avoiding intimacy by selecting mates they aren’t attracted to—they are avoiding sex. If …

 You have experienced any form of sexual molestation or abuse

 You have been raped

 You have felt sexually controlled by previous partners

 You were brought up with negative sexual programming

… then you may unconsciously fall in love with people who don’t turn you on sexually. This way you get to avoid sex. You may not be aware that you have these sexual issues. You may even bemoan the fact that you keep attracting partners in whom you’re not sexually interested. But if lack of chemistry is a recurring theme in your relationships, you may need to do some work on healing your sexuality.

3. You are trying to maintain a position of control. When you feel sexually attracted to someone, you are, in a sense, giving them some control over you. It’s as if your mind is saying “You affect me so strongly that you make me want to lose control around you.” If you have issues with needing to be in control, or being afraid of being controlled by others, you may choose partners toward whom you feel no or little sexual attraction in order to keep yourself “safe.” Because you don’t feel a strong sexual pull toward them, you get to maintain a certain emotional distance, creating the illusion that you hold more of the power in the relationship.

This is one of the most difficult, yet most important issues a couple should face before getting seriously involved. As painful as it may be, think carefully about everything I’ve said, and make your decision based on what you know in your heart to be true.

14 How do you motivate someone to want to change and open up emotionally?

Every time I try to talk to my husband about working on our relationship, he says he’s “happy with the way things are.” I’m not happy, but no matter what I do, he shows no interest in changing or growing. How can I motivate him to want to open up more?

I’m going to give you an answer you don’t want to hear: You can’t motivate another person to grow and change. He has to motivate himself. That may sound logical, but I know how painful it is to accept when you really love someone, and know that if he doesn’t open up and grow, your relationship probably won’t make it. In my own life, I’ve faced this same dilemma several times, and understand how much it hurts to see your partner resisting the very kinds of help that would ultimately save your marriage. It’s like watching someone you love drowning in the ocean, and wanting to save him, but when you throw him a life preserver, he pushes it away, claiming he doesn’t need it. You know that if he doesn’t reach out, you will lose him, so you plead with him to grab hold. Stubbornly, he refuses, and you are forced to see him slip away

Here’s one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned about love: Some people just aren’t capable of loving you the way you want to be loved, or capable of having the kind of relationship you need. It’s not that they are trying to be difficult, or stubborn, or deliberately trying to make you unhappy. They simply cannot operate on the same emotional level you operate on, nor do they want to. Unfortunately, most couples don’t discuss these issues sufficiently in the beginning of the relationship so they can determine whether they have enough emotional compatibility to live happily together. They fall in love, have a family, and then realize they are two very different people with very conflicting pictures of what they want and need from an intimate relationship. One partner isn’t right, and the other wrong—the problem is that their love styles are incompatible.

This is what I suggest: Without blaming him, and without making him feel like the bad guy, sit down with your husband and share something like the following … “I love you very much, and have tried for ‘X’ years to make this relationship work. I know you’re aware that I’ve been begging you to open up, to work on our marriage, to talk about issues we have. I’ve been doing this for one reason—to try and save our marriage, because I’m not happy with the way things are. You’ve always told me you’re satisfied with this kind of relationship, that you aren’t interested in growing or changing in the way I am, and I haven’t respected what you’ve said, and have tried to get you to change. Now I realize that I was wrong in doing this. You have the right to live just the way you want to, and so do I. My way isn’t better than yours—it’s just different.

“So, honey, I need you to take as much time as you need, days or a few weeks, to ask yourself one last time if you are happy living as the person you are, and do not want a relationship where your partner needs you to open up or work on yourself. If you come to me and tell me this is definitely how you feel, then I will know it’s time for me to go on without you. See, I do want a relationship in which I and my partner are always growing and changing together, and actively working on becoming more intimate and more loving. That is one of the most important things in my life. I would love to have that kind of marriage with you, but if that’s not what you want, I will understand, and free myself to one day find someone who shares my vision of love, and free you to find someone who loves you just the way you are.”

Find the emotional courage to have this conversation with your husband. It will be one of the most difficult yet loving things you’ve ever done, not just for you, but for him. I’ve had people tell me that, after hearing it put this way, their partner miraculously went through a total change and dedicated himself or herself to tremendous personal growth, so it’s possible. Whatever the outcome, know that it’s time to turn the corner in your life, one way or the other, and experience the kind of relationship you’ve always dreamed of.

Compatibility

15 Why am I only attracted to the wrong, “bad boy” type of man, and feel no sexual chemistry with the “nice guys”?

For years I have had a series of very painful, dramatic relationships with men who don’t give me what I need or treat me the way I deserve to be treated. Some cheated, others were very critical, or simply emotionally distant. Finally, I met a really nice guy who is crazy about me. He’s everything I ever wanted—respectful, considerate, and really sweet. But there’s one big thing missing: I don’t feel the sexual chemistry with him that I used to feel with my ex-boyfriends. Lately I’ve been feeling I should break up with him, because I miss that passion and excitement. Help!!

You’ve come to the right place for help—not only is this one of the questions I’m asked most often, but I used to suffer from this same pattern and wonder what was wrong with me. Why did men who didn’t love me the way I wanted to be loved appeal to me so much? Why did I get “bored” in calm, peaceful relationships? Why did the phrase “nice guy” turn off every sexual impulse in my body? It took me years to understand and finally break this unhealthy love habit, but I did it, so I know you can do it too.

Okay, here’s what’s happening. You’ve obviously already figured out that it’s no accident that you happen to attract (or be attracted to) men who, in some way, make you feel unloved, and you’re right … there’s a reason it feels “right” when you’re with a man who withholds his love, and a reason it feels “wrong” when a man gives you all the love you’ve ever wanted. This reason has nothing to do with what your conscious mind tells you about those unloving partners: “You know he is wrong for you. He’s just going to hurt you like the last one. Run in the other direction as fast as you can!!” You may know this is true, but something makes that kind of man so appealing, and that something has to do with your unconscious mind and what I call the “Going Home Syndrome.”

I came up with the phrase “Going Home Syndrome” to describe how our emotional programming (see Question 12) can cause us to seek out emotional situations that are similar to those we experienced in childhood, regardless of whether those experiences were positive or negative. As human beings, we gravitate toward the familiar. I’ll bet you like to sleep on the same side of the bed each night, park in the same space at work, and go back to your favorite vacation spot. Returning to the familiar is a basic instinct that gives our lives a sense of continuity and safety in a very chaotic and changing universe. Unfortunately, this instinct can work against us when it comes to relationships, in that we may tend to unconsciously seek out emotional situations that are familiar to us.

Here’s how it works: When you were a young child, your home was the main source of love and safety in your life. Even if there was violence or chaos in your household, it was still “home”—it was where you were fed and had a place to sleep and received some sort of attention. So you associate LOVE with HOME. You also associate HOME with other characteristics, based on your experiences at home. For instance, if your parents fought a lot, you might have an equation in your mind that says HOME = CHAOS. If you weren’t shown much love or affection your equation might be HOME = LONELINESS. If one of your parents was abusive, it might be HOME = FEAR.

Remember your basic math from school, where you learned:

If A = B, and B = C, then A = C

Let’s use this same principle to illustrate “Going Home”:

If LOVE = HOME, and HOME = CHAOS, then

LOVE = CHAOS

If LOVE = HOME, and HOME = LONELINESS, then

LOVE = LONELINESS

If LOVE = HOME, and HOME = FEAR, then

LOVE = FEAR.

Your mind will equate whatever associations you have about “home” with what love is supposed to feel like. So if home felt like chaos, you might seek unstable partners who will help you create dramatic, chaotic relationships. If home felt like loneliness, you might seek a partner who doesn’t give you enough love, affection, or attention, so that you end up feeling lonely. If home felt like fear, you might attract someone who always criticizes you, or threatens to leave, or makes you jealous, so that you always feel fearful. You unconsciously choose what is familiar— YOU ARE GOING HOME.

Obviously, we all have positive associations with home as well, which we also seek to reproduce in our adult life. I’ve found, however, that it is the more painful associations that can cause the most trouble, because they are usually unconscious. In other words, if you came from a home where your parents showed you a lot of affection, but criticized one another, you might consciously seek a partner who was very loving, but unconsciously attract someone who was critical.

In your case, your previous partners were probably all “home” to you, possibly because when you grew up, you either watched your mom or dad be mistreated and abandoned by the other parent, or you felt unloved by one of your parents. So for you, it feels comfortable to be uncomfortable with a man! And this explains your present dilemma. You have love, and therefore passion and sexual attraction, associated in your brain with a sense of danger and pain. Of course you don’t “feel” attracted to your “nice guy”—he makes you feel too good!!

As I mentioned, I had a very similar pattern for years of my adult life. When I finally met my husband, Jeffrey, I didn’t even realize I was in love for months, because it didn’t “feel right.” I was used to drama, intensity, fear of criticism and loss, insecurity—all signs of an unhealthy relationship. For the first time, I had developed an emotional connection with a man based on friendship, trust, openness, safety, consistency, and true caring, and I hadn’t even recognized it because it felt too peaceful to be love!!

It took a little while for me to discover the healthy passion and excitement with Jeffrey, and to literally reinvent my experience of love, but when I finally did, I felt more attracted to him than I had felt to any other man in my life!! So my advice to you is: Don’t break up with this wonderful man. He’s the best thing that ever happened to you. Instead, do some work to explore and heal your emotional programming: LEAVE BEHIND THE PATTERN, NOT THE PERSON!!

16 Can a relationship work when you’re in love with your partner’s potential?

A few months ago I met a man I really care about. We get along well, but he’s going through a difficult time right now. He’s just recovering from a serious drug addiction and a bad divorce in which his ex-wife got most of his savings. I know he has a lot of anger and mistrust from his past, and he has a hard time showing any affection, but inside, he’s a very sensitive, talented person, and I feel like he needs someone to believe in him. Can this relationship work?

I wouldn’t call what you’re in a relationship—it’s closer to gambling, and I’m sorry to say the odds are against you. You aren’t in love with who your boyfriend actually is; you’re in love with who you hope he could become. You even talk about him like he is a project, a “fixer-upper.” You’re describing someone who is barely capable of loving himself right now, let alone you. Obviously, every relationship between two people involves some hopes and dreams of how you’d like to see your partner grow and improve. But the key is feeling satisfied with how your mate is today, not living for the future. Having a healthy relationship with a person means loving him for who he is now, not loving him in spite of his situation, or in hope of who he will change into tomorrow.

Inside, you know all this, yet you ignore the facts because something about this situation is so appealing to you, almost irresistible, and very hard to walk away from. That’s what we need to talk about. People who fall in love with their partner’s potential tend to have several issues of their own that attract them to this kind of situation:

1) You need to be in control in relationships. When you love someone in order to improve him, you get to feel superior. Perhaps you felt controlled or criticized for never being good enough as a child, and now you unconsciously are attracted to someone whom you can turn the tables on.

2) You get to avoid your own life and dreams by focusing on rehabilitating your partner. When you’re busy looking at how someone else can improve, you don’t have much time left over to face your own sense of inadequacy or your own fears.

3) You made a decision as a child that you couldn’t get what you wanted. If you felt rejected or unloved as a child, you may have decided you can’t get what you want from people you love, and so you unconsciously seek out a man who doesn’t give you what you want. You’re “going home” (see Question 15).

If you care about this man, end the relationship now. Does that sound strange? Well, here’s what will happen if you don’t. Soon you will end up feeling angry at him for letting you down, bitter that you wasted so much time with him, and guilty for rejecting him after you promised undying love and patience. Ending it now will free him to do the healing he needs, and will open you up to attracting someone you can love and respect as he is today.

17 Is there such a thing as being too “picky” when choosing partners?

I’m single, in my thirties, and having a hard time finding the right person to spend my life with. All of my friends accuse me of being too picky, and warn me that I’ll never find anyone if I don’t compromise more. I’m afraid if I’m less careful, I’ll end up settling for someone who isn’t right for me. What’s the answer?

Here’s what “too picky” means: You meet a potential mate who has all of the qualities you’ve been looking for … except you love tennis and he doesn’t, so you disqualify him immediately; or you get to know someone who seems to be just what you’ve always wanted … except she could lose about ten pounds, so you end the relationship. See what I mean? A person is too picky when he finds small things about a potential partner that probably won’t affect the core of the relationship, and uses those missing items as excuses to avoid intimacy and cover up his fear of not being good enough himself—“I’ll reject you before you have a chance to reject me.” So perhaps this describes you, and if it does, take a look at the fear that underlies your hypercritical attitude.

I have a sense, however, that in your case, you are simply being choosy, not picky. You are holding out for the kind of person you truly want to spend the rest of your life with, one with whom you are highly compatible in all the important areas of your life. I talk about ten areas of compatibility that you should look for in a mate:

1) Physical style: appearance, personal fitness, and eating habits, etc.

2) Emotional style: attitude toward relationships and affection, ability to express feelings

3) Social style: personality traits, how he interacts with others

4) Intellectual style: educational background, attitude toward learning, creative expressions, cultural experience

5) Sexual style: sexual experience and skill, ability to enjoy sex, attitude

6) Communication style: how he communicates, attitude toward communication

7) Professional/Financial style: relationship with money, attitude toward success, work and organizational habits

8) Personal Growth style: attitude toward self-improvement, willingness to work on relationship, ability to change self

9) Spiritual style: attitude toward Higher Power, spiritual practices, philosophy of life, moral views

10) Hobbies and interests

You don’t have to have total compatibility in all these areas, but in the ones that are most important to you, you should have very strong compatibility. (For an extensive discussion of compatibility and how to determine it, pick up my book “Are You the One for Me?”)

The truth is, I wish more people were as “choosy” as you. There would be fewer divorces and dysfunctional relationships. So don’t let yourself be pressured by your family or friends to compromise what you know in your heart is important. And don’t give in to the artificially manufactured social timeclock that says you “must” be married before a certain age. Remember, your soul mate is waiting for you out there. He (or she) doesn’t want you to give up looking before you find him. “Hang in there!” he’s whispering. And when you find him, I know it will have been worth the wait, and you won’t care how long it took.

18 Can long-distance relationships work?

Last year I met a wonderful man at a friend’s wedding, and we’ve been having a relationship ever since. The problem is that we live in two different parts of the country, two thousand miles away from each other. Does our relationship have a chance? How can we keep it working when we are so far apart?

Of course your relationship has a chance, but since it is a long-distance romance, you have to be aware of the possible problems and do what you can to avoid them. The very same factors that make a long-distance relationship so exciting also make it hazardous. It’s easy for you to think the relationship is much better than it is because you don’t spend consistent quality time together. Your goal becomes trying to see one another again, rather than really taking a close look at the relationship.

There are three major problems in long-distance relationships:

1) You don’t get to see what your partner is really like.

You know that if you have three days to spend with your lover, you are going to be on your best behavior and so is he. It’s easy to hide the difficult parts of your personality for seventy-two hours, and leave feeling wonderful. But you never really get to know one another, because you don’t see your mate under pressure, in a crisis, when he is ill, when he is frightened. All of these situations reveal a lot about someone’s character, an essential part of determining compatibility. You need consistent time to discover these dimensions of a person.

2) You avoid dealing with problem areas.

Let’s imagine that you haven’t seen your long-distance lover in two months, and he’s flown in to spend the weekend with you. Over dinner that night, he says something that annoys you. Now you have to make a decision: Do you confront him on what is upsetting you, and risk ruining your weekend, or do you forget about it? Most people choose to avoid the confrontation, fearful that by the time they get through the argument and hurt feelings, half of the weekend will already be over. The problem with this habit is that you and your partner never learn to problem solve together, or advance the relationship to deeper levels of communication and harmony. The unresolved issues and the unexpressed resentments just sit there like Emotional Time Bombs, waiting to explode. It may look like you have a great relationship on the surface, but you haven’t allowed it to move through the transition stage every healthy love affair must experience.

3) You have an unrealistic view of your compatibility.

Long-distance lovers often don’t even know how little they have in common because they are too busy entertaining themselves. If you only have three days with your partner, you will treat it like a mini-vacation—you’ll spend all your time together; you’ll go out to restaurants, movies, shows, etc.; you’ll have lots of sex; and you’ll avoid friends and family. This gives you a very unrealistic picture of your relationship. You may actually enjoy the excitement of the fun weekend more than you enjoy your partner and not even know it. Many couples find themselves extremely disappointed when they finally move to the same city or decide to live together. “It doesn’t feel like it used to,” they often complain. Of course if doesn’t. It’s not a twenty-four-hour-a-day party anymore. It’s a real full-time relationship, and if you and your partner aren’t truly compatible, you’ll find out real fast.

For a long-distance romance to evolve into a healthy, lasting relationship, both partners will eventually have to live in the same place. That’s the only way you can truly know if you are compatible, and develop the level of intimacy you need to sustain your love. But while you’re still apart, the most successful long-distance affairs are those in which the couple treats the relationship like it is a full-time romance. So:

 Don’t try to make every moment together special, but do normal things together

 Don’t try to hide difficult parts of your personalities, but be yourselves

 Don’t edit how you feel, but allow yourselves to communicate honestly and deal with conflicts as they come up.

19 How important are cultural differences in a relationship?

My fiancée and I are from very different cultural backgrounds—hers is much more traditional and strict, socially and spiritually, than mine as an American. We’ve always told ourselves that our love was more important than where we were born, but we’re starting to run into some very big problems as we discuss wedding plans, having children, and other serious issues. Am I making a mistake in telling myself the differences don’t matter?

Don’t kid yourself … differences always matter—it’s just a question of how many there are and how much conflict they create in the relationship. Love is not enough to make a relationship work: you need compatibility, and as you’re discovering, cultural differences aren’t just about where you were born. They spill over into most areas of your life, from your spiritual beliefs; your social, intellectual, and emotional style; your values; your choices about child-rearing; customs; and on and on. It’s not that you and your partner have to agree on everything and have gone through the same life experiences. But there’s a point beyond which too many differences will create too much tension, and make a harmonious relationship next to impossible.

You’re experiencing what many engaged couples go through—you’re just now confronting some big issues between you that hadn’t fully surfaced before. I’ll bet you both avoided seriously talking about some of the cultural differences while you were dating because, intuitively, you knew they would be “hot buttons.” So here you are engaged and Pandora’s box is opening!! And I can hear that you’re having some serious doubts. That’s what an engagement is supposed to be for—a period of time during which you can really take an honest look at all of your remaining issues, and hopefully, come to agreement on how you will blend both of your cultural backgrounds together.

I know what’s scaring you … it’s possible that as you confront these topics you may discover that your values and beliefs are just too different for you to live compatibly together. As uncomfortable as it will be, find the courage to talk about everything that’s bothering you. After all, if it’s not going to work, isn’t it better to find out now, rather than waiting until after you are married and have children?

20 Is it damaging to a relationship when one partner is still controlled by his parents?

My fiancé is thirty-three, but he might as well be three years old, because his parents still control him, especially his mother. He talks to her on the phone every single day, and she calls here at all hours, with no respect for our schedule. Now that we’re engaged, she is pushing all of her ideas about the wedding on him, and we end up fighting about her constantly. I’ve tried to get him to look at his relationship with both of his parents, but he says they’re just a close family, and that there’s nothing abnormal about it. My childhood was very unhappy, and I have a very distant relationship with my own parents, so I wonder if I’m judging him unfairly. Help!

Why are you asking me this question? You already know the answer. You can’t marry someone who is emotionally married to one or both of his parents. You can’t marry someone who hasn’t grown up. Well, actually, you can marry someone like that, but you’ll be miserable. You have every classic sign of coming face to face with what I call “Toxic In-Laws.” Toxic in-laws do not respect the boundaries of your relationship and the boundaries between them and your spouse. They will interfere in your life, become time and energy vampires, and even refuse to acknowledge you or your relationship, because to them, you are an outsider. They haven’t let go of their son and will resent you for taking him away from them.

Do these things sound bad? Well, there’s nothing compared to how toxic in-laws will drive a wedge between you and your partner by creating dissension in your relationship. It sounds like that’s already happening with you and your fiancé. You end up feeling unsupported and misunderstood by him, furious at his parents for manipulating him, and everyone starts thinking you’re a real bitch! And if you think it’s bad now, wait until you have children!!

In spite of what you may believe, your fiancé’s parents aren’t the problem—he is. If he took a stand with his parents and set boundaries in their relationship, it wouldn’t make any difference how much they tried to interfere. He needs to make you number one in his life. You need to be his first priority; your marriage has to come first before his relationship with his mother and father.

The children of toxic in-laws need to communicate the following information to their parents if they want to save their relationships with their partners:

1. I have chosen my spouse to be my lifelong mate, and I expect you to treat her (him) with total respect, courtesy, and warmth. We are a couple, and when you criticize or hurt my partner, it is the same as hurting me.

2. If you cannot bring yourself to behave with respect around my spouse, then I do not wish to see you. You will either see us together and treat us with love, or not see us at all.

3. My home is mine, not yours. When you come over, you will call first, and if we want to see you, we will tell you. When you do come over you will not tell me or my wife how to run our lives, raise our children, arrange our furniture, etc.

4. You need to respect our time and privacy. That means I do not wish you to call my house five times a day. Give us the space to want to call you. Naturally I will be here for you if there is a real emergency.

5. I know this may be difficult for you to understand, but that’s the way it is. I want you in my life, but not if you cannot accept my marriage and respect our relationship.

If you discuss this with your partner, and he repeatedly refuses to confront his parents, you can try suggesting counseling so he can get a third opinion. If he refuses that, you need to ask yourself why you are staying in this relationship. It isn’t going to get any better, and you know it’s already tearing you apart. Do not get married unless this is resolved!!

21 Why do I always fall in love with people who need rescuing?

I’m presently dating a woman who’s basically a mess. She has major financial and emotional problems, and I spend a lot of my time playing “Daddy,” trying to help her. I can’t believe I’m in this kind of relationship again—it’s the third time in a row I’ve gotten involved with “victim-type” women. Why am I doing this, and how do I stop?

Why are you doing this? Because you like rescuing women … you like feeling strong, important, superior … you like being in control. Rescueholics are drawn to wounded, fragile, unloved partners like flies to honey. These relationships suck you in, and once you’re in, boy is it hard to get out!! The good news is that you’ve finally recognized the pattern, and sound desperate enough to change it.

Remember—in all codependent relationships, the rescuer needs the victim as much as the victim needs the rescuer. If you are an “emotional Robin Hood,” always finding partners in need of your help, you may in fact be completing unfinished business from childhood, acting out your little boy’s unfulfilled need to fix or rescue Mom, Dad, or another family member. Or maybe you’re attempting to rescue yourself as you felt when you were small. The problem is that like all rescuers, you are mistaking sympathy for love.

You already know from experience that this sort of relationship is doomed. You end up acting like a parent, tiptoeing around your partner in order to not upset her, and making excuses for her behavior. Ultimately, your resentment grows and although you want to leave, you feel trapped, too guilty to leave and hurt even more this poor wounded person you wanted to heal. When you do inevitably leave, you feel like you’re abandoning your lover, and beat yourself up for “failing.” Sounds like lots of fun …

You asked me how you could stop. My answer: Just stop. End this relationship before it gets any worse; encourage your girlfriend to get help dealing with her need to be rescued, and take some time to look at your own issues and needs that have addicted you to this kind of unhealthy love pattern. Make a list of all the qualities you want in a woman; make a second list of all the warning signs that someone is a potential “victim-type” mate. Read these lists constantly. Put copies everywhere. When you go out on a date with a new woman, read the lists before, during, and after the date if you have to. This will help you resist the temptation to get involved with another rescue job again while you’re healing on the inside.

22 Can a big age difference between two people hurt the relationship?

I’m in love with a great guy who happens to be twenty-two years older than I am—I’m thirty-one and he’s fifty-three. He’s been married and divorced and has children not much younger than me. My family thinks I’m making a big mistake, and have come right out and told me that they don’t approve of the relationship. Am I being naive to think our age differences don’t matter?

Yes, you’re naive if you think your age differences don’t matter. They do, but so do all the other differences in your circumstances and personalities. So ignoring this issue, or any issue, won’t work. The more you insist that there aren’t any problems, the more you are probably suppressing your concerns for fear that they will sabotage the relationship. Both you and your partner need to honestly and directly face and discuss all the various problems that have or could emerge around your age difference.

Significant age differences between partners can cause serious problems in relationships. The word “significant” is important here: If your partner is four or five years older or younger, it won’t make much of a difference. However, if your partner is ten or more years older or younger than you, it can cause difficulties depending on your ages and other aspects of your personalities. I’ve found that age differences mean less as both partners get older. For instance, a fifteen-year age difference between a thirty-five-year-old man and a twenty-year-old woman will probably create more potential hazards than that age span in a sixty-fiveyear-old man and a fifty-year-old woman. The age difference will affect the first couple more, since their maturity and experience levels are usually much more dissimilar than the second couple’s.

Here are the most common issues couples face when there is an age difference:

IF YOU ARE THE OLDER PARTNER:

1. You can become impatient with your mate.

If you are significantly older than your mate, you may lose patience with his level of immaturity, lack of life experience, and learning process. This will be especially true if your mate is between twenty and thirty years of age. After all, you’ve already gone through a lot of what she’s dealing with; you’ve realized it’s not the end of the world when you go through a crisis, because it always works out in the end; you’ve made mistakes and figured out how to do things the right way. So it’s not easy watching your younger partner stumble through these same life experiences.

2. You have a tendency to act like a parent to your mate.

When you have ten, twenty, or thirty more years of life experience than your partner has, you will find it next to impossible not to offer advice, correct, and direct him or her. After all, you’ve been through this before—you know the best way to do it. Of course your intentions are loving; you’re only trying to help. But the effect can be very destructive to your relationship. YOU BEGIN ACTING LIKE A PARENT AND TREATING YOUR PARTNER LIKE A CHILD. Naturally, your mate feels as if you don’t trust her, you don’t respect her, and responds just like a rebellious teenager would—she becomes resentful and pulls away. And this parent-child game will quickly destroy the passion in your sex life, since your relationship starts taking on incestuous overtones.

3. You may be much more financially successful than your partner.

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