Today, men are facing choices in relationship that they have never had to before in past generations.
Women want presence, engagement, and curiosity from their partners in relationship.
This newfound awareness is gaining steam.
Men are at a real crossroads to ‘clean up their act’ or leave the relationship.
By clean up their act, I mean that they are being required to decide to choose their partners each day or let them go. For men, telling their partners that they love them each day is just not cutting it anymore. Words are not enough.
Big questions that need truthful answers are…Where is your attention mostly, qualitatively spent? Is it spent on leaking sexual energy elsewhere besides steering it consistently towards your partner? Is it on a treadmill of more money? Allowing the quest for money to consume you?
It can be easy for men to get caught up in this culturally supported grip which can become their survival strategy. Unfortunately, this leads their partner to take the backseat in their life and this is very painful for couples who are in love.
This way of life is doomed. It isn’t sustainable. So if you are with a partner caught up in this rat race it may be up to you to set the kind of boundaries for yourself to turn this whole thing around.
When you’re prioritizing relationship, you’re really taking a stand for what you truly believe is needed for your life. You can tell your partner you have decided to change your life, are you onboard or not?
After the discovery of my husband’s sex addiction I needed to make a clear distinction between what I thought should come naturally through true love, committed partnership, and marriage. At one point my husband told me, “I have to leave you because you know all my tricks.” It was starting to sink in that this was his belief system. As much as I knew that he loved me, his belief that women needed to be manipulated was in the driver seat.
When addiction is present there is going to be a tough turnaround for someone that has lived with these deep-felt beliefs there whole lives.
I had to learn all of this the hard way…but you don’t have to.
When your partner is suffering from sex addiction you don’t need to take it personally. The addiction along with their accompanying beliefs are theirs, not yours.
At some point there will come a time when you may have to tell the one you love most in the world, ‘if you aren’t willing to learn how to control yourself then I will have to leave you.’
This is the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. It was also the best thing I have ever done in my life.
Choosing to honor yourself when you have lived most of your life bypassing your true needs isn’t easy. And it may come at a price.
We can all see best in hindsight but while you are struggling in relationship it can feel like you are slowly dying. That is the mainstay of these type of relationships. When a partner is cycling it can feel like your on a yo-yo string. Some of the time he comes back to a type of presence that feels loving and it reassures you once again ‘Oh this is where I DO belong’. Then the disconnect and abandonment swings back around and you begin to doubt yourself, the love, and your reality all over again.
Some men will be at the place in their addiction where they will be ready to own up and get the help they need to learn how to control themselves. Others, not yet. Maybe not ever.
Their personal journey of recovery is just that theirs and there isn’t much you can do except set the boundaries you need to live the life you deserve!
Once you have uncovered what is necessary for you to thrive, the answer will become clear if it is time for you to pull the plug!