Things are changing rapidly nowadays in this almost Covid-19 post pandemic, or near endemic, world. We are entering a new phase where we are creating the Next Normal… I still prefer the term Better Normal over New Normal and now the Next Normal… Regardless, this is the time to move beyond what was into what could be…
We’ve experienced a lot of upheaval in the past 2 plus years, and as we choose where we go from here we have to let go of the old to fully embrace the new possibilities. Who we were pre-pandemic is at this point beyond outdated. For us to thrive we need to let go of the old first… Here is to embracing a letting go practice…
As most institutions are getting deconstructed, and we’ll see a lot more of this as we go, the key is to let go with ease, not to fight it…
And this applies to everything… The old ways of doing things are just going away… The hustle and the grind, the rules, the structures, the systems, the forcing and the white-knuckling… We are becoming a much more fluid society and world, to be embraced with more ease and grace. The more we resist this the more we’ll suffer, completely unnecessarily. The more we resist it, the more the suffering will persist…
The letting go has to happen at every level… From the way we think, to our beliefs, to our emotions, to our behaviors, habits and tactics. We are amid a big old deconstruction… And the more we hang on to wanting things like the used to be, or try to apply the old rules to the new world, the more we’ll feel out of sync, uncomfortable, and unhappy…
It’s exhausting to go against the grain, and if we are not aware of the new grain and keep going against it, we are in for a rude awakening…
Just last week I wrote about reparenting yourself, self-fathering yourself, by giving yourself more structure and systems to provide the security you need… The key is not to pursue this with a heavy hand and a suffocating approach – structure and systems don’t have to be rigid… I think that this is where we are going as a society and what better place to start than at home…
So, what does this mean on the practical and for our daily lives? This means getting rid of and letting go of anything that no longer serves you. Letting go of anything that doesn’t feel good, give you joy, and support you, your relationship, and the life you want to create.
This means clearing, cleaning and cleansing…
This includes:
What we do first thing when we get up in the morning, letting go of jumping into the day without connecting to ourselves first (energy/spiritual)
Deciding how we want to feel and embracing those feelings, letting go of anger, resentment, shame, guilt, blame, anxiety, worry, sadness and grief (feelings/emotional)
How we choose to look at our life, the world and those in it, letting go of judgement, separatism and polarization (thinking/intellectual)
Choosing what we’ll focus on and setting up the day to flow, letting go of numbing, controlling and forcing (habits/behavioral)
Simplifying everything and going with the flow, letting go of complexity and elaborateness (plans/strategic)
This is applicable to everything! From your daily routine, to your approach to food, to your health and wellness, to your connection with your partner, to your intimacy with your partner, to your parenting, to your finances, to your home décor, to your career plans, to the services you provide, to what kind of life you want…
Once you put on this lens and see the new reality, the possibilities, you can’t unsee it. Once you taste of it, you can’t untaste it. Once you wake up, you can’t unawake…
You can get super creative with where you apply this in your life… You can literally apply this to everything… You can apply this to how you exercise, to how you work, and even to how you deal with an affair or infidelity in your relationship…
We make life too difficult. We make our relationship too difficult. We make feeling well and happy too difficult. How about we start letting go of the old ways, of working super hard for everything, of making everything so challenging, of white-knuckling our life?
How about we start letting go of forcing things and embrace the beauty that our experience can actually be if only we get out of our own way? How about we start letting go of all the superfluous and all the noise and all the shame and pain?
How about we just embrace life at every moment with whatever shows up and go from there…
How about taking on a 30-Day Challenge to help you clear, to let go, to deconstruct, to reprogram, to change your egoic patterns, get out of your own way…
1 ~ Choose your approach – A morning letting go meditation, a 30-Day Challenge, clearing your commitments and calendar, decluttering your home, etc.
2 ~ Implement your approach – Embrace your tactic with gusto, play full out with acceptance, compassion and ease…
Enjoy!!!
A Letting Go Practice can easily be woven into you lifestyle and daily routine… Embrace this for creating more spaciousness, opportunities, flow and joy in your relationship and your life…
Here is to the best Summer Upleveling™ yet!
Wishing you all the joy, connection and love today and always…
With Much Love & Light!
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Copyright (c) 2022 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com
What is an affair? What constitutes cheating? Infidelity? These are very personal definitions. Most people have their own version of what constitutes what. Here is a definition I have adapted from experts in the field that works well: An affair involves one of the partner’s passion being directed at someone or something other than their partner that often includes secrecy.
Affairs/cheating can include making-out with or kissing someone at a club, one-night-stands or flings, cyber sex, or behaviors for getting sexual gratification. They can also include devotion to cars, work, projects, children, etc. If the activity keeps one partner from fully engaging and being available to the other, then the activity can be considered an affair.
For the purpose of this article, the focus is on affairs that involve one of the partners going outside their relationship for sexual and/or emotional intimate gratification with another person(s).
The affair is not the problem in the relationship, but a symptom in the relationship. Affairs happen for a reason. Even if you thought your relationship was great until the affair was discovered, there was still something in your relationship dynamic that allowed for the affair to take place.
Affairs are discovered in many different ways and can be addressed once they are acknowledged. It is more difficult to do any repair and healing work until this happens. Very often one of the partners has a gut feeling their partner is cheating to have the other stubbornly deny it.
This leaves the suspicious partner very disgruntled, confused, insecure, and with a host of other not so pretty feelings. In my own experience and from literature, it is believed that when a partner has this gut feeling it is usually true.
**A note of caution: sometimes because partners have been wronged this way or have experienced other forms of betrayal, they are unreasonably suspicious. It is therefore unfair to say that if there is a gut feeling their partner is cheating for sure.
The suspicious partner’s reality is tentative and questionable if their instincts are denied. If they believe, and can a lot of times prove something, but their reality continues to be denied, they are left with a world that doesn’t make sense. Things don’t add up and the relating with their partner is off, and yet they can’t put their finger on it.
As a result they go on a quest to prove and make sense of things, becoming detectives, nags, interrogators, etc. This situation is not healthy to any of the parties involved, Both parties can’t get their needs met and are not satisfied in their relationship.
When there is a suspicion and/or the relationship is not working, it is better to come clean so some real work can be done. It is risky business disclosing affairs as the partner who went out of the relationship has to face consequences and related fears. My thoughts are that if one wants a genuine and satisfying relationship, works needs to be done and it can’t happen when there are secrets and exits in the relationship.
What’s the point of continuing a dissatisfying situation? It might get pretty heated and ugly in the face of a disclosure, but in the long run, whether one creates a satisfying relationship with their partner or moves on, they are taking charge of their life and meeting their needs.
Once the affair is admitted or disclosed, the offending partner needs to be prepared for the other partner’s reactions. Once the storm settles the couple can get to working. A lot of patience is required here and the offending partner needs to hang in there until their partner gets a grip. At that point the work entails rehashing the details of the affair so the non-offending partner can finally make sense of their world.
This includes admitting lies, filling in the blanks, and answering questions about events, situations and the other person. Even thought this is painful and uncomfortable for the partners, it is very helpful in co-creating history and their reality and establishing a platform from which to build the new conscious relationship. Remember our imaginations are pretty powerful, it is better to have facts out there than to leave our partner guessing.
Then some real healing and rebuilding can start to happen. The partners need to put the affair in context of their dynamic and see it as a symptom of what they have and how they have related. They need to own what they contributed to this dynamic that eventually led to one of them going outside their relationship. This is very hard work, especially in the face of the tumultuous feelings going on.
The aggrieved partner needs to receive a sincere and complete apology and amends need to happen for forgiveness and healing to be possible. The offending partner needs to initially suck it up and be at the partner’s whim in creating security and proving their sincerity. The hypervigilance and micromanaging eventually subsides, hang in there.
While this work is being done, the partners also need to be working on creating changes in their dynamic and healing their original wounds that set this wheel in motion in the first place. Making these changes empowers both partners and serves as a preventive measure for relapse.
Experiencing this traumatic situation in our relationship is not an easy thing to undergo and heal from. Doing the work is worth all the effort and pain. Couples do not go back to how they were before the affair, but create an amazing new, intimate and strong relationship.
There is nothing good to loose by not addressing these lapses in judgment. Tap into your courage reservoir and get to healing!! You can only make things better in your life in the long run!!!
Happy Healing!!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Discuss with your partner how you’ve been absent, emotionally and otherwise distant or unavailable, and your plan of action to correct this lapse. Tell them specific behaviors you will be implementing (i.e., coming home two hours earlier, not accepting out of town projects or meetings unless your partner can join you, not watching T.V. at dinner time, breaking off the relationship with the other person and not having contact with them, etc.).
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Being seen and accepted for who we are is a basic need that specially plays out in our relationship. I find that the driver behind most conflict and dissatisfaction in relationships has to do with the partners feeling they can’t be themselves in one way or another.
Partners impart this message to one another in different ways: Giving open criticism, telling the other how to be and do things, being very helpful and taking over, undermining the other’s efforts, minimizing or dismissing the other’s experience.
Withdrawing from interactions and in other ways, not keeping promises, forgetting or not honoring agreements, refusing to compromise, interrupting or changing the conversation, making digs and I’m sure you can identify others.
This (re)traumatizes partners and has a massive negative impact on the quality, and success, of their relationship.
As human beings we have the Prime Directive to be our Authentic and Unique selves. This is our gift to our world and humanity. It is our reason for Living. It is our job to fully engage our Selves and make a Contribution flowing from our Experience… When partners judge, criticize, control, demean, sabotage and other goodies they prevent each other from embracing their awesomeness, their Legacy, and from (identifying and) fulfilling their Life’s Purpose.
Therefore, there is incongruency for partners between the experience in the relationship and their sense of Self. This is where all the disagreement, not getting along, questioning, ambivalence, turmoil, etc. comes from. Partners fighting is an actual fight for survival – for survival of the Self!
Here is where the balance between security and identify needs comes in. There usually is a gender manifestation around this where the women (more female energied partner) champion for we-ness and togetherness and the men (more male energied partner) champion for individuality and space.
The approach to bridge these seemingly opposing needs is to set up a system that supports and encourages both: Staying connected to our partner while taking time for our Self and our pursuits, or doing things our way…
Bridging Needs System:
Strategy – Set up plans to pursue a hobby, interest, socializing, and the like or doing something your way that includes built-in safety around this for your partner: Sharing the Why this is important to you, details involved for transparency (safeguarding trust), and how to stay in connection or synchronized.
Management – Manage the feelings that come up in making and bringing up the plans; and in receiving the news of your partner’s plans. Fear of some sort usually comes up for both partners for different reasons…
Development – While not together or entertaining your partner’s different approach make the most of your separate time or differences. This is a huge opportunity to learn more about your Self, fine tune your craft, share your Gift, replenish and recharge, connect with others, expand your repertoire, stretch your comfort zone, and invest in your Self in any way that enriches your Journey.
Reengagement – Don’t beat up your partner upon reentry, or completion of engagement! Share any struggles you might have experienced from an opportunity-for-growth place, not as a mechanism to manipulate and control to take care of your neediness… Stretch to share and receive what was learned, enjoyed, gained, etc. Remember: It’s OK to be separate.
Synergy – Stay tuned for how you are growing as a person, as a couple, and as agents of Change…
Employ a Groundhog Day approach to your system – review how you did, where you might need assistance, what could improve, and what to tweak in your process next time. Keep doing this striving for a masterpiece system with the knowledge that it’s a work in progress and perfection doesn’t exist.
Complete the MetroRelationship (sm) Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start experiencing the relationship you want.
Happy Groundhoging!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Take a moment to discuss this approach with your partner and create your Bridging Needs System. Explore which step might be particularly difficult for each of you and why, speaking about your own potential struggle. Do not speak for your partner… Share the why from a Self Development place, not from a blaming your partner place… Support each other in your individual stretch and growth.
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Often times partners share their wondering about how exclusivity, monogamy, and fidelity is possible in a longterm relationship. It is usually the male partners who pose this question when their female counterpart is not present.
I appreciate their honesty, risk and willingness to explore this topic and concern.I completely understand their plight. Unfortunately, this is often chucked to “boys will be boys”, “it is unnatural for a man to be monogamous” and the like making men appear archaic. I would like to believe that we are more evolved than this. That society is not caging an animal with marriage that when let loose it will wreak havoc.
No, not “I would like to believe”, I DO believe that. I believe that the primal impulse to conquer and be “king of the jungle” has evolved and moved to the career and money earning potential realm. This is why men who don’t feel comfortable in their level of success, as measured by society’s standards in this regard, are depressed, dissatisfied, “searching” and managing the associated pain by numbing themselves in some way.
Yes, the “successful” ones experience some of this as well because they still don’t feel as the “king of the jungle” at some level… Their primary relationship is not meeting this need… I hear the uproar from women, feminists and social keepers…
But, let these men loose and they are still not happy… The answer lies in the balance between togetherness and separateness not just when it comes to how much time we spend together, but at an identity and energy level. If we are “too close” we lose our selves, our individuality, our uniqueness. This is a traumatic and annihilating loss.
Women have a higher tolerance level for this as historically and culturally they’ve been taught, and even threatened, to be in this role, and because their brain is wired for “weness” to serve an evolutionary purpose.
Men might experience this more as the caged-in syndrome. They are more likely to experience exclusivity as restrictive and believe that the answer might lie in going elsewhere to find and engage the other parts of themselves…
Sexual intimacy as we know it in relationship, is laden with burden and restrictiveness. Women bring in the caretaking and men the protectiveness (restrained aggression). Neither is bringing their primal and adult-evolved selves, whose basic needs are being met, to their interaction. This creates neediness and apathy. This is boring!
What we usually fail to see is that in absence there is longing. In separateness we can embrace and share our splendor, and herein the “king of the jungle” thrives. Here is where men and women get to be themselves without the burden of stereotypes and other prescriptions…
So, how do we set up security, connection and closeness to meet our security needs, and yet allow for space, separateness and individuality to meet our identity and erotic needs? We think (or react…) through our interactions. We think through our lovemaking.
Thinking creates emotional intimacy (when positive…), but with the caveat of impeding erotic intimacy. We do not allow ourselves to feel and be present. We do not fully express ourselves physically. We do not fully engage our embodied soul. We feel empty and dead.
We might fall pray to believing we’d feel more alive by increasing the number of sexual conquests we notch on our belt, but we are bigger than this! It is instead about how we fully express our Selves in our human dimension in every interaction and every moment. It is not about numbers, it is about being…
So, while we continue to invest in meeting our basic needs it behooves us to be with ourselves, in our body and have a full experience of our Selves that we share with our partner. Yes, reality has its limitations and consequences. It is challenging to achieve this level of Being.
In the mean time the use of fantasy, Imagination, in sexuality is a vehicle that allows for the expression of unmet security needs, unburdened loving, and engagement of our embodied soul. As Esther Perel suggests, “sex is somewhere we go, not something we do” and the goal in our relationship is to have intimacy through sex – erotic intimacy.
Our committed relationship, marriage, is then not a cage but a mechanism for self exploration, development and expression. This marrying of meeting our security and identity needs, eroticism, frees us to transcend our human experience, and the perceived limitations of monogamy, allowing us to embrace our latent Spiritual Being…
At the end of the day, fully embracing our humanity and physical body is our pathway to our Spiritual Self… Complete the MetroRelationship (sm) Assignment to help you effortlessly start implementing this, make changes and immediately experience the relationship you want. There is no need to be archaic – transcend the limitations and embrace the possibilities!
Happy Transcending!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment Find something romantic to do with your partner, your self and/or a platonic someone else… Engage your body and senses… Give from the heart, use your imagination, get creative, be indulgent – savor the giving, savor the moment, savor the love. Enjoy!
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
It’s interesting that we seek “togetherness” in our relationship, but this is exactly what brings about its demise and our general unhappiness … As a culture, we are experiencing numbness, a lack of Desire in our Relationship … Monogamy, exclusivity, our partner-meeting-all-our-needs, marriage for love is a fairly new phenomenon in our society, a conundrum actually.
We set up the institution of marriage to fail by bringing our archaic Being into it. Our un-evolved, wounded, low frequency, disowned Self has the prime directive to feel safe through attachment, and therefore approaches “togetherness” with a reactive balancing act of clinging and distancing for self preservation …
This is an Ego approach to togetherness, relationship, and marriage which creates physical and energetic space, distance and disconnect.
All while remaining psychically fused, enmeshed, symbiotic, codependent, “together” … The death of actual intimacy, excitement and Aliveness …
Our culture’s obsession with individualism, independence and autonomy creates attachment rupture early in life and then tops this injury with inadequate launching of its young breeding the Ego approach to life and relationships and preserving the underdeveloped psyche, Self.
As a result, we buy into the illusion of being “separate” (individual) and attempting to be “together” (close) when the opposite is true. We are fused and distant perpetuating disconnect, detachment, indifference, paralyses, dissatisfaction, stuckness, ambivalence, and apathy. Definitely not Desire and Aliveness …
We mean well. We have the right idea, to pursue togetherness (intimacy, closeness) while remaining separate (individual) but we are going about this all wrong. Our unmet emotional needs prompt us to seek “togetherness” through the clinging and distancing pattern we all know too well eternalizing the status quo with its continuous recreation of rapture and disregulation.
Our psychic investment in getting our emotional needs met tromps our ability to be effectively separate creating a missing the forest for the tree syndrome …
This proximity prevents us from seeing our Partner, from knowing them for who they truly are and vise versa. This proximity prevents us from genuinely showing up, from being who we are … It robs us of the opportunity to see the Man or Woman behind the label (boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, husband, mother, father); to be the Man or Woman behind the label …
There is no faster way to kill Desire than by playing our everyday roles … They are familial, domestic, routine and restrictive. They are not sexy!
Further more, this level of “proximity,” trying to get our emotional intimacy needs met and following societal definitions of our prescribed roles, thwarts curiosity, mystery, and longing elemental to Desire. So, not only do we not get to see our partner, we also don’t get to miss our partner… And, we don’t even know what we might be missing! We just stew stubbornly in our unhappiness …
The key is to ride the uncomfortable edge, to straddle the line between closeness and space, with mindfulness, respectfulness, receptiveness, acceptance, openness, flexibility, compassion, forgiveness, humanity, responsiveness and progressiveness …
No longer be me- or other-focused, just Be. Bring your Self to the in-between … Expand the in-between, Play there … Now this is sexy! This unleashes Attraction, Desire, Passion, Aliveness … And, in this space you are One … Remember to look for the MetroRelationship ™ Assignment below to assist you effortlessly make changes and immediately start experiencing the relationship you want!
Happy Playing!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
What makes you You? What is unique and beautiful about you? What are your interests? What grabs your attention? What’s your philosophy in life? How is your lens different? How does this manifest in your surroundings, opportunities, relationships and how you carry your Self? How do you show this to your partner? Do you show this to your partner? Does your partner get to see you? Make two “moves” that will allow your partner to see you …
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
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Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT has been in the mental health profession in varying capacities for the past 20+ years. She is the Founder and Director of metrorelationship.com a psychotherapy and coaching practice specializing in working with busy professional and entrepreneurial couples who are struggling getting on the same page and feeling connected. The work helps couples create a radiant and successful relationship and meaningful life by becoming a strong partnership and increasing their connection, intimacy, and fun. Emma is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Relationship Strategy™.
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