If you’re a guy, and you cheated or had an extramarital affair, chances are that you have found yourself stuck in that place between wanting to be with your wife, and wanting to be with your partner in the affair. A lot of men that I talk with find themselves in that very space once they started an affair, and through avoidance and denial, tend to keep themselves there to not have to make a choice.

Cheating men now find themselves in a compromising position: do they try go back to their wives and children, or do they leave their family for their mistress?

Some guys don’t want to deal with this all. They get stuck between two women, and don’t know how to get out. Some guys I talk with want to keep treading water for as long as possible, until one of the women in AA in your decision for them. This is avoidance, and it’s making a decision by not making a decision.

What can you do if you find yourself in this position, between your wife and your girlfriend?

• Start to be honest with yourself: really do some soul-searching inside of yourself and see what is motivating you to stay in a the relationship. Are you staying because you want to try the keep the semblance of a family going? Are you too afraid to tell your wife the truth? Are you doing it for your children, and not for yourself?
• Consider your family of origin: did your parents not provide you a structured environment, so you may be trying to seek out the creation of structure within your family? Did your parents cheat on the other? Was it hard to work through problems or issues verbally or emotionally while growing up? I think these are all questions to consider when trying to come to a decision about to do.
• Try to be clear on your values: if the intimacy and sex with your mistress is just that, why do you continue to do it? if you have strong values, and your behaviors are not aligning with those values, there is a disconnect that will lead to indecision. Do you choose the instant gratification, or do you choose to invest in your long-term happiness and those things that are more aligned with your values.
• If your marriage is bad, come to the table and talk about it: you and your wife may need marriage counseling, or it may be too late. Maybe it’s better to start talking about separation or divorce, but really consider your motivations in continuing to not talk about it or breach the topic with your wife.

Cheating and infidelity are complex, and these bullet points don’t profess to get you to where you need to be. Ideally, you’ll invest some time and energy into counseling, whether that’s with your wife or alone. Like I wanted to counseling alone, and don’t really want to start to deal with talking about the issues with their wife quite yet. It’s important that you start to consider making some decisions, even if their minor, for your own happiness and everyone else’s.

People pleasers are more interested in pleasing others than in taking care of their own needs and concerns. They usually say ‘yes’ when they really mean ‘no’, because they’re afraid of letting others down or upsetting them.

Plenty of guys that I talk with fall into this category of people pleasers. They’re the ones that usually are so attentive to the needs of others, most especially intimate partners, that they neglect themselves. People pleasers who spend their time and energy trying to make others happy – to the detriment of their own happiness – are on a crash course for unhappiness.

People pleasers usually end up stuffing their anger, or intermittently exploding on others, or both. Anger and frustration builds up, and, over time, it needs an outlet. It usually comes out periodically, when it should have a ongoing release valve in the form of good communication with others.

Learning to say ‘no’ is essential for people pleasers. This is the hardest part. Saying ‘no’, for people pleasers, risks a rejection by others who people pleasers think don’t want to hear their ‘no’. It’s a risk. In the mind of the people pleaser, it can be terrifying to say ‘no’. But, like many other things, the reality is often quite different from our fantasy. Usually, people can accept the ‘no’ you give them, once you summon the courage up to finally spit it out.

Here are some more tips to stop people pleasing:

1. Draw a line in the sand: Develop healthy boundaries, and learn what you will do, and what you won’t. Assert those boundaries without compromise.
2. Spend less time with people who drain you: “Takers” are attracted to “people pleasers”, and vice versa. Part of recovery from people pleasing is renegotiating friendships that function on you giving and them taking. Relationships need to be about mutual giving and receiving, and if you feel like it’s only one way (going their way!), it may be time to drop the friendship or spend less time with them. Why hang out with takers or energy vampires anyways?
3. Learn what you want: So you can be firm with others and take a stand to get what you want.
4. Don’t be afraid to say ‘no’: You probably won’t lose friends if you try, and if you do, don’t worry – see Tip #2.
5. Communicate more effectively: You don’t need to get angry to communicate to others what you want or don’t want.
6. Know this cycle can be broken: It’ll take time, effort, and a commitment to doing things differently from now on, but it’s changeable.

We learn how to people please at an early age, and just because we’ve been dealing with this for most of our lives, it certainly doesn’t mean we have to continue to. There is help, and recovery is possible. I know. I used to be a people pleaser, and not doing it is a hell of a lot better.

Instead of the 40 hour workweek, somehow we ended up extending back quite a bit beyond those boundaries over the last couple of decades. We’ve become accustomed to working 45, 55, 60 and more hours a week. I even talked with guys who regularly clock in about 80 hours on the job a week.

Even though economic conditions have worsened in the last couple of years, and things are tighter overall, there seems to have been a pervasive cultural message to work as much as we can. I think that that’s changing the last couple of years, with people reconsidering their lives and trying to budget time for things that really matter to them, like family, hobbies, and other life experiences. And younger guys seem to have taken this heart: by seeing their fathers worked tirelessly, more and more guys are trying to find what work allows them to apply their passions, and doesn’t kill them in the process.

But, workaholism still runs rampant in our culture today. Plenty of guys they’re either head in the sand and press ahead robotically to get ahead. Some are so driven by power, success for money that it blinds them to the rest of the rose bushes that they’re zooming past.

Usually, the first thing that materializes as a problem is marital or relationship problems. I hear a lot of women complaining that their guy works too much or too hard, and doesn’t have time for them. They complain about not having regular date nights, not having sex regularly, or just generally feeling unattended to emotionally. Many guys don’t see this until it’s too late, and then come in to count and try to help to patch up what’s already broken beyond repair.

Is this you? I know I’ve been guilty working too hard sometimes, but moderation is definitely the key. Do you find that you’re able to create the kind of work life balance that’s needed to create an optimal life for you?

Here’s four things to think about if you may be a workaholic:

1. You probably aren’t attending to your self, whether it’s diet, exercise, sleep, or your own emotional state. Forging out a life in balance means investing some energy in those areas of your life. Start small, and make commitments each week to modify one or more areas.

2. Get feedback: ask those closest to you how they see. Are you accessible for people when they need you? Do they feel like they’ve “got” you when they need you, or is there experience that you’re always attending to other things?

3. For dads: to consider if you were own father was a workaholic, and if he wasn’t there. Ask yourself if you may be re-creating the same cycle each over again, and if so, take preventative measures to stop it. You wouldn’t want your son or daughter to grow up feeling like you weren’t there, even if that’s how you felt growing up. Would you?

4. Identify why you’re working so hard. Is it for the money? Is it because you’re avoiding something, such as wanting to be home? Are you a perfectionist, or just hungry to climb the ladder at work? Identifying your motivations is really the Ground Zero for making changes to your life, and understanding why you’re doing something is key. It may not be easy, but if you spend enough time meditating on this issue, you may come up with some surprising results.

Plenty of men turn to work to provide a variety of needs: sense of identity, sense of purpose, money, power, prestige, for since a family, whatever. But, like anything else, if you lose moderation and a work/life balance, it may be easy to get lost in work and not be able to find your way out.

When it comes to dealing with others, learning how to communicate effectively is the single most important tool you can use. Whether it’s with coworkers, service providers, your wife, or your friends, saying what you want to say in the way that you want to say it is critical. In intimate relationships, communication between partners can deepen your relationship together, or it can disrupt it to the point of a breakup or divorce.

For men who have a difficult time accessing their emotions, communication can be difficult. Usually, if were not in touch with our emotional state at the time we’re speaking, words come out wrong, and we usually end up acting in ways we don’t mean – reactively and mindlessly. Learning to access our emotional state in the present moment can transform poor communication skills to superior communication skills. This requires training, and development of personal awareness, about the fluctuating moods and experiences one has from moment to moment by checking in with their body, feeling state for their mood.

Speaking from the “I” perspective (as in “I’m moody for irritable, and I need personal time alone.”), as opposed to blaming or criticizing others, including your wife or girlfriend, turns the table around and automatically creates a better trajectory for delivering the words that you really mean. I can’t think of a quicker way to shut people down than by blaming, scapegoating, criticizing, shaming, feeling superior, or generally attacking other people, whether that be your brother, mother, wife, boss, or best friend.

Lastly, having a really clear picture of what you want – whether it’s where you want to eat on Friday night or how much of yourself you want to share in a conversation – is really important. A lot of men struggle in this area, and many guys simply don’t know what they want in terms of short, medium or long term goals. If we don’t know what we want, it’s going to make it impossible to communicate those desires to others, and we  may end up getting frustrated with ourselves or others because we can’t spit out what it is that we want, sometimes, we don’t even know what we want and expect that others will. This is a false assumption, and it can impede good communication between people.

Developing better communication skills takes time. Have patience with yourself, but keep working towards developing the skills that you need to get the point across, get what you want, and learn to help others get what they want. Communicating with others is a two-way street: communication is just as much about empathy, understanding and listening as it is the above suggestions. Best of luck, and know that developing better communication skills is well within your reach.

Jealousy and insecurity go hand-in-hand: when were feeling insecure about ourselves, it usually is expressed in the form of jealousy about our partner. We may fantasize that they are cheating on us, not in love with us, or seeking out affirmation or attention from other people. In fact, we may go to great lengths to legitimize those irrational concerns, by checking phones, e-mail accounts or the like. But, the bottom line is, we have to learn how to take responsibility for our own fears and insecurities, and open up to them to be able to forge a deeper connection with our partner.

How can we deal more effectively with jealousy in our relationship? Here’s some ideas to consider:

1. Take responsibility for our own fear and insecurity, as well as anger
2. Identify points in the past where our relationships have burned us, and where we are currently stuck in the mud.
3. Communicate with your partner about some of your deeper fears about losing them, having them leave us, finding another mate that might be “superior” to us in some way
4. Understand that all men deal with this, and most guys struggle with this in one way or another.
5. Realize that your partner has a will of her own, and that if there are problems in your relationship or marriage, it’s her responsibility to come to you with those problems and not cheat on you.

Jealousy is as old as human existence. We fear “mate poaching,” or someone coming in and swooping up our partner. Aside from the evolutionary function of this fear, this type of thinking is irrational and can distance ourselves from the ones we truly love and want to be close to.

If you’re like most men, it may take you a while to come around to the realization that there are problems in your relationship or marriage. some couples think that if they don’t fight, all is well. But is it? Are you both really okay, or is that what you’re telling yourselves?

For guys, the thought of going in the couples counseling is comparable to getting a root canal. The thought of showing up in the counselor’s office and starting to take a look at the problems, and ultimately, their role in the problems, is no picnic. Added to that, most guys think that the therapist is going to side with their wife or girlfriend, and end up attacking them.

Most of the myths that we generate about couples counseling are false. The right counselor can understand these things, and work with you to help you feel comfortable and not like you’re on the hot seat. The right approach to couples counseling is also critical for the successful goals you want to accomplish with your wife or girlfriend.

One extremely effective orientation to marriage counseling comes in the form of what’s known as EFT, or Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples. The success rate is quite high: studies are coming out that show couples have a better than 70% repair rate from EFT.

Developed by Susan Johnson, Ph.D, a Canadian psychologist, Emotionally Focus Therapy looks at the attachment bonds between couples. This is an approach that looks deeper than just building better communication skills or developing more effective negotiation or coping skills. EFT helps couples connect in an emotional way. And yes, men do want to connect with their wives in the emotional way, even if they don’t say so. It’s this emotional bond between partners that is sustainable, and many of the reactive behaviors and emotions that result are part of a complex “dance” or chronic negative cycle that emerges between partners.

The idea is to bring awareness to that negative cycle, and all work together in therapy to help couples stop fighting, reduce conflict and connected and more animate an emotional way. The negative cycle becomes the problem, and therapist and couple work towards understanding and reducing the negative cycle together.

Even guys who are hesitant to dive into their feelings talk about really making progress with this form of marriage counseling. a lot of guys really enjoy it, and not only turn around the destructive path of their relationship, but are able to improve it in ways that they never thought that they could.

Here’s a free worksheet on identifying your negative cycle with your partner. Download this and do it together to begin the process of identifying how you both get stuck in your own relationship patterns: http://phoenixmenscounseling.com/clinicalforms/negative-cycle.pdf

You don’t have to feel hopeless and trapped in your relationship or marriage situation. There is help, and options for you to explore instead of a breakup or divorce. You might be really surprised with the results.

For couples already in relationship crisis, alcohol can fuel the fire pretty quickly. If there are problems already underlying a relationship or marriage, alcohol can surely make everything worse.

For men, who can often binge drink for drink to excess, alcohol takes the lid off of our emotions, which are usually held in check in our sober lives. Men have a difficult time dealing with emotions already, and alcohol has an effect of drudging up those negative emotions, bringing them to the surface, and amplifying them under the influence of alcohol. If we have repressed emotions or thoughts concerning our relationship partner, alcohol gives us the freedom to express those in a big way, often to the dismay of our partner.

What’s worse, when those unexpressed emotions or thoughts do come out at a relationship partner, it’s usually in a social setting, such as at a party, a bar, or another place that would generally be inappropriate to hash it all out. Furthermore, we are not in the right state of mind to have an argument–were not thinking clearly, and were inebriated and irrational. There can be no good that comes from an argument or fight under the influence of alcohol, yet most couples get into fighting when they’re drunk. This is making a bad situation worse.

Being able to communicate and talk about the problems between you and your partner is very important, so as those issues that have been repressed or not talked about don’t spring open when you people been drinking together. The point of drinking together is to enjoy each other’s company and have fun, not to open up the powder keg and start drunk fighting in front of all your friends. learning to identify and work through the problems in an ongoing way, so they don’t build up and come out only when you both were drinking, is certainly a way to help de-pressurize the relationship problems between you and your loved one. Limiting the amount of alcohol that you both consume together is also going to help, or simply having an understanding before you go out drinking about how much you’re going to drink so there’s no surprises.

“Does frequenting strip clubs count as cheating?”

“What if I communicate with ex-girlfriends on Facebook, and not tell my wife?”

“ I didn’t think getting a happy ending in my massage was all that big of a deal, so I didn’t tell her.”

Especially with the introduction of online communication and social media, cheating and infidelity have new modes of transmission in recent years. And for some men, the line that constitutes cheating has becomes blurry, and for women, presents even more reason to worry.

So what counts as what? Does communicating with other women, especially those you’re interested in, over social media counts as cheating, when you’re in a relationship? Does ogling and flirting with other women at the restaurant while you’re enjoying a meal with your girlfriend count? the answer might lie in how well you can develop empathy for the one that you’re dating.

How well you can put yourself in her shoes to answer these types of questions may clarify some of them for you. Also, identifying your true intentions and values will go a long way: how much do you value your current dating partner and the idea of an intimate, monogamous relationship with her? How do your behaviors reflect that commitment to her?

To indulge in these behaviors, sometimes guys compartmentalize and deny. Our minds have a way to compartmentalize those unacceptable behaviors, and push them away. For example, if you started up an online conversation with someone of the opposite sex, it’s easy to legitimize that as a simple online chat, or as a nonthreatening interaction. We use denial as a way to stave off the reality of the effects that it might be having on our life, our relationship or on our significant other.

The hurt, distrust and confusion that cheating, or cheating-like behaviors, cause wives and girlfriends is underestimated by a lot of men. Men don’t think about those effects on their women, and have a hard time developing true empathy for what their wives or girlfriends must be going through. One female psychologist that I spoke with asked, “How would you feel if your wife was talking to her old college boyfriend on Facebook?”

Men do have sex on the brain quite a bit of time, but acting on those impulses or thoughts is certainly another matter. Behaviors are different from thoughts, and while normal sexual fantasy is left to the minds pleasure, acting on those can cause your relationship a lot of damage. The behaviors are different from the impulses, and this is an important thing to think about when looking at cheating.

The difference is that the behaviors are usually an expression of some crack in the marriage for the relationship. As studies have shown, sex is a factor in cheating and infidelity, but it’s the lack of intimacy, communication, and appreciation and affection that men miss most. When guys aren’t getting this in their current relationship, they are more prone to activate those cheating impulses and turn them into behaviors.

A lot of this boils down to how well you and your partner are communicating. Are you comfortable sharing sexual fantasies with each other, or telling her about non-sexual run-ins that you have had with former partners or lovers? How well do you trust each other to talk about these things before they turn into big problems? If the trust and the communication aren’t there, it may be more likely that cheating behaviors will happen.

Thinking about this topic, I know we’re heading into murky territory, but I’ve been talking with a ton of guys this season where that big question has come up. I think it’s something about the holiday season that makes us look back on our past year and assess both the good and the bad. Do we look back in happiness and success, or do we look back in regret?

The holidays seem to drudge that question up for a lot of people, because I think a lot of otherwise unhappy people want to be able to make a change for themselves with the new year. Relationships are no different. Many people who are unhappy or unsettled in their current relationships start to ask themselves this question around this time of the year, and start to ask themselves if they need to make a change.
This is one of the most difficult questions to ask -  “do I stay or do I go in my relationship or marriage?” This article is not going to answer that question for you, but it’s been a bring up some points for you to think about.

There are some things that make answering that question easier, such as direct physical abuse, a partner who is mired in substance use, or other immediate response needs. I think those types of things need into serious inquiry into the “do I stay or do I go” question.

But, for a lot of men, they ask this question of themselves out of sheer reactivity and hopelessness. Many kind of choose to stay stuck between a rock and a hard place, and never seek out the help that they need, such as couples counseling. For some, it’s more comfortable. For others, it’s just denial.

A lot of times, the question “do I stay?” really means “ can I continue to deal with the problems that I am experiencing currently?” We often end up blaming our partners and creating a certain storyline about them and our relationship, and how it’s going to hell. If we get stuck in those types of thoughts, we’re toast. A lot of relationships and marriages that can be worked on, aren’t.

For men, it’s a little harder to take a look at the things that we are doing to our partners, and to take responsibility for the negative things that we do to them. I think the “do I stay?” question reflects a little bit of this, as well as “can I continue to deal with the negative emotions that come up inside me?” Sometimes, enough suffering drives people out of their comfort zone, where the pain of a bad relationship had become more than they can sit on.

For the guys who are emotionally avoidant already, the next logical question to start asking is “do I go?”. For men who avoid their emotions, and often avoid conflict situations in general, the desire to end a relationship or marriage is logical. It’s just easier to do it that way, and to start over from scratch. Problems are too difficult to work on in this relationship, you might tell yourself. She’s not open to a change, you might tell yourself as well. Or, this is just too much work, and I’m not up to the task, you might end with telling yourself.

I think the biggest question you need to consider is are you asking yourself if you want to flee the relationship based out of reactivity and emotion, or is this a rational, well-thought-out plan? For a lot of men, it’s acting out of reactivity and impulsivity, and that might work briefly in the short term, but not in long-term. We are bound to have to deal with this dynamic again, whether we get back together with our partner, or develop a new relationship with someone else. It’ll still be there.

And then, there is the “I should stay for the children” dilemma. I see a lot of couples wanting to hang in there, despite really difficult problems, for the sake of the kids. Some drudge through miserable marriages because they don’t want to expose their children to break up or divorce. Many times, it’s these guys who were those children in the past, and don’t want to do to their family what it is their parents did to them.

Really making a commitment to hang in there and work on the relationship issues, especially if you feel strongly about your partner, is really the first step. Identifying whether you’re wanting to end the relationship out of the emotion, or whether this is a well-thought-out plan, is one question that you could consider.

A lot of times, even the most hopeless situations can improve with some emotional connection, but it can be difficult for men to both connect to their feelings and to be able to listen to some of their partner’s issues with them and not want to fix those issues (which women often don’t respond well to, but do when you’re present and listening).

Is your relationship or marriage worth saving? Do you feel strongly enough about it, and about her, to start to do the heavy lifting to get your relationship back on track? Some guys do; others don’t. I’m not going to lie to you: it does take some work. But, your relationship is worth it, isn’t it?

Like no other time in the year, the holidays demand that we get quite gluttonous. Starting with gorging ourselves with turkey and stuffing, to im-bibing on New Year’s Eve, the holidays make it easy for us to push rationality aside to indulge in the joyful holiday spirit.

For most, overindulgence happens all across the board, from eating to drinking to spending. Learning how to reduce some of your holiday stress might lower the post-celebratory hangover in January (your relationship and your wallet may thank you later).

Spending too much is pretty much a given for most people during the holidays, but use these tips to help you deal with your holiday money stress:

1. Plan your spending early: Whether you’re trying to decide how much to spend on gifts, eating out or traveling, getting in touch with how much you figure on spending, or setting a budget, can help you deal with some of the post-sticker shock experiences of the new year. Try to get a sense of how many people you’re spending on, plan what events or functions require you to shop, or pick up wine,or get a sense your specific travel expenses may be. Planning early, and setting a budget and sticking to it, will help you not get caught up in the mad consumerism of the holiday season.
2. Understand your reasons for spending money/saying “no”: Gifts and holiday expenses are normal, but going over the top may not be, especially in today’s economic climate. For some, especially people pleasers, the tendency to buy gifts for people so they’ll be happy with us may be going too far. Also, if you are going to holiday parties or events where you feel obligated to, don’t. There may be the obligatory work party that everyone needs to go to, but if there are parties or dinners you’re invited to and you don’t really want to go, and where you can reasonably decline, stay true to yourself and say ‘no’.
3. Communicate with your wife or girlfriend about spending: Talk and plan with the one you love about what the financial expectations are for the season. Are you both on the same page about how much you are wanting to spend, say on the children’s gifts, on each other’s gifts, eating out, etc.? Do you both have the same ideas about how much you think is reasonable to spend? Talk and get on the same page.
4. Use Mint.com: This is one of the best websites out there, for tracking your expenses, setting short term goals, or getting a sense of what parts of your life you spend most in. There are pretty color pie charts and line charts to help illustrate your spending and saving, so you can feel like you’ve got a nice hold on your holiday spending. They’ve got a pretty handy iPhone application to boot, so you can track while you’re shopping.
5. Don’t “emotionally spend”: Emotional spending is probably the majority of what we end up consuming up holidays, whether that’s the impulsive peppermint latte at Starbucks, or that quick $50 photo shoot with Santa for your kids at the mall. Christmas and the holidays have a way of stoking our emotions to open up our wallets, so just be careful that you don’t end up spending out of emotion instead of logic and planning. The retailers and businesses depend on our emotional spending, this time of the year more than any other, but as far as stress goes, it could be better to just leave the house with a firm list.Don’t give into those merry Christmas tunes piped into the store you’re browsing, and buy just on impulse.
6. Watch That Debt: If you can, leave the credit cards at home completely this holiday season. Debt is lessen vogue now, after the chilly economic recession we’re trudging out of. Adding more debt is going to leave you more financially stressed and may push some into depression or anxiety. Debt will make you stress, and why would you want to have more stress to an already stressful season? Leave that credit card of home, and pay with cash. To take it one step beyond, try shopping this season with just a planned wadful of cash. Decide early how much lump sum to to pull out, and use that strictly for your gift shopping this season.

The men who are firmly centered this holiday season are the men who are mindfully spending. Reckless spending’s not good for anyone, except for the credit card companies and retailers. If you’re in a relationship this holiday season, try to use these tips to help you and your partner stay the same page about how you’re both spending money. This will add to a lot less relationship stress, too. Dealing with holiday money stress can be difficult, when we get swept up in the good times and tidings of the holiday season. Watching your money may help you start the new year in a much less stressful way.