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.

When our lives don’t turn out exactly how we want them to, men have a certain way of stagnating, or freezing themselves in time. We become like Icemen, psychologically trapped in the confines of our own memories and unable to live in the reality of the present. This inability to contact our lives as they are unfolding now means that life passes us by, and a lot of times we don’t even know it.

Why does this happen Why do we get stuck in time? Is it possible to unfreeze ourselves and start living our lives?

A lot of men stay trapped in periods of their lives that were more glorious: when they were captain of the football team in high school, in their party years in college, in their adolescence. Some guys stay emotionally and psychologically trapped in these periods of their lives because this is when they felt good about themselves and about what they were doing. They were getting acclimated and validation for being a superstar, and the dreary reality of their present lives today doesn’t provide them that same sense of accomplishment or identity boosting.

Who wouldn’t want to relive their glory years? Which guy wouldn’t want to feel good about those points in their lives where things were working well, where they were successful in work or with women, or where they felt really good about themselves?

The problem comes when we stay stuck in this alternate dimension, and never unhook ourselves from those past memories. It’s like we can never make contact with our lives as they are playing out in the present.

A lot of times, our lives are too difficult to deal with, or to even look at. We may be unhappy with our careers or our work, our spouses may be making us miserable, our children may have constantly disappointed us, or we may feel like failures to ourselves. As human beings, it’s to want to avoid pain and suffering, and strive for pleasure. When we get stuck in the past, were living in a faux reality that is out of touch with the present.

The first step to waking up from this disillusionment is to become aware that were actually residing in our memories more than we are in our lives. If we can recognize that, if we can start to shake off the past, no matter how seductive it is over us, we can start to turn to face the reality of our current situations, even if that brings pain, grief, fear or other negative emotions. We may need to deal with people who cause us pain, or with situations, such as work, relationships, or depression, if we start to wake up from living in that alternate reality.

It’s also important to seek out professional help, because it’s difficult to see your situation when you’re smack dab in the middle of it. And, on top of that, if you’ve been living your life in the past, you may need some professional support to help you navigate back to your life.

It’s critical to know that dealing with the pain of the present doesn’t mean you’re fated to live a life of unhappiness and misery. You’re not. Plenty of guys can successfully work through their problems or issues and get to feeling better again while living in their present reality, not in their past. Just because you were a successful student athlete, or popular with the women, or were you stand out in your career, all of those things are fleeting and won’t bring you lifelong happiness. If you start to live more in the present moment, and in your current life as it unfolds today, you’ll learn to ease up on gripping the past four your sense of self-worth and happiness.

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Whether in relationships, at work, or with oneself, there are a multitude of ways to sabotage yourself from getting what you want in your life.

In undermining our own success, we set up scenarios in which we fail, or hold ourselves back unconsciously from what we really want, often out of negative emotions or beliefs that fail to hold up under scrutiny in the real world. In effect, we hold ourselves back, and often don’t know how we do.

If you think you self-sabotage yourself, might any of these things characterize your behavior?

• Constantly beat up on yourself
• Let yourself believe the negative or worst case scenario
• Let others decide for you, including women
• Succumb to and make decisions out of fear
• Prevent relationships from developing because you’ve got walls, armor, or other barriers that keep others out

Lacking in self-support and inner resources, those men who self-sabotage seem to constantly make decisions that are bad for them, or at the least, make them deviate from their own path to success in life.

What does self-sabotage look like?

• Believing you’re no good, or worthless, and then choosing behaviors that align with that belief, like being underemployed, choosing a wife or girlfriend who likes you “enough”
• Not having confidence in yourself and your abilities to have success, whether as successful relationships, good self-esteem, or in one’s professional aspirations
• Attacking others in our lives, and those close to us, because we hide, protect ourselves and fend off from really showing others our genuineness and authentic self.
• Not moving forward, staying stuck, or failing to make good decisions, out of fear of failure, fear of success, low self-esteem, or any number of other reasons.

People are attracted to those guys who are confident and not at war with themselves. Self-saboteurs are in a war with themselves, so it’s going to be difficult to attract healthy, growth-oriented people into the realm or the self-saboteur. Even if we say that we want them in our lives, we may be attracting the wrong kinds of people, whether those be women, jobs, friends or the like.

To want health is different from attracting health: if we’re still at war with ourselves, we end up attracting others (read: intimate partners) that conspire in our self-abuse. And that’s not what we want for ourselves. That’s not how we see our lives as healthy and growth-promoting.

What can you do to stop the saboteur in you?

1. Develop self-support: start a new relationship with yourself by being kind to yourself, getting to know yourself more and work at easing up on yourself.
2. Practice being genuine with others, even if that means letting them inside your fortress a bit
3. Tame the self-critic: Get counseling, journal, channel your anger in other, more productive outlets, get physical exercise, and try meditation to focus the mind. You need to admit to yourself that you and your self-critic are different entities, and that you’re at war with him. most people don’t see this or admit it, and it’s the first step to becoming whole.
4. Understand how you sabotage yourself, Whether through anger, fear, jealousy, insecurity or inferiority. Maybe it’s a mix, or maybe it’s all of them together.
5. Seek out the support of others: Attract heathy people into your life that support your journey of health, not enable it or undermine your health. Yeah, we’ve all got people in our lives that feed the self-sabotaging we do, so reconsider some of those relationships through this process.

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.

1. Stop spending money to impress people, by picking up the tab to impress others, or yourself. Plan on when you’re going to pick up the tab before you even go out, then ask yourself why you’re doing it.
2. Start investing in the things that you value long-term, such as retirement, kids’ college, a trip to Fiji with you wife
3. Agree to make time with your spouse to have a “Money Talk” every month, say on Sunday morning, and talk about not only money logistics, but fears, concerns and stressors associated with money or work.
4. Carry cash: this way, you’ll see your money going out of your hands steadily, and not be divorced from the process of spending money by using a debit or credit card. You’ll have a greater appreciation for the money that you’re making, and parting with.
5. Break the deficiency mentality: This is harder, because a lot of our messages around money we’ve inherited from our parents. If you live in the deficiency mentality, you’ll always feel impoverished and feel like you’re living paycheck to paycheck. Seek out help, such as counseling, to bust up those difficult messages from your family of origin.
6. Before buying a new car or house, ask yourself, “Could I be happier with something less? how will this purchase bring me increase happiness?” Maybe the difference between buying a $35,000 new car, and a $20,000 previously owned car isn’t really all that different. It’s possible that you could be happy with the $20,000 car, and sack away $15,000 into a retirement savings account and achieve a different sense of happiness–one that promotes your long-term well-being.
7. Minimize indulgences: a lot of the time we indulge in things that we don’t really need, simply because we can or we think we should treat ourselves or indulge ourselves. If we train ourselves to buy ourselves things to make ourselves feel good, and don’t really need their own those things, we set ourselves up for trouble. When were feeling blue, or scared, or happy, we then seek out the thrill of buying something new, which only works for a limited time.
8. Remember that people don’t like you or hang out with you for your money, even if you think so. and if they do, it’s probably time to reconsider your friendships. You may be allotting a lot of money towards a lifestyle that is designed more for impression, and less for your own personal satisfaction. Is this you? If so, it may be time to start reconsidering how you’re spending your money, and if the lifestyle you’re living is truly aligned with your own values, or designed to impress others.
9. If she loves you, she’s not always can need to spend money on her. If she’s the right one for you, you will need to bust your ass to buy her things and shower her with gifts. There are plenty of ways that you can show her love, caring and affection that aren’t about gifts, meals, trips or shopping. In fact, most women want you to be able to be emotionally giving, which usually doesn’t require spending money. Guys mix this up all the time. They try to show their carrying affection for women with material things or doing things for them. Save yourself a little the cash and start to tune into what she really wants from you.

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.