While extra marital affairs do involve sex, research shows that sexual drive is not the main reason married men have affairs. You may be surprised what research shows.
See article http://blogs.psychcentral.com/healing-together/2013/09/an-unrecognized-reason-that-married-men-have-affairs/?utm_content=bufferd5ed3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Empty nest syndrome is a time when children leave the home and couples are particularly vulnerable to marital problems and divorce at this time. The structure that has held the family together is now compromised or gone. This is like a bridge that develops cracks and becomes unstable and eventually collapses.
The family system can also collapse if the cracks in the bridge (structure) are not repaired and rebuilt.
This is not a surprising consequence when more and more in the last 10 or 12 years couples are focusing all their energy on the children’s activities to the detriment of their own couple relationship.
This causes resentment and resentment erodes the good feelings in the marriage.
I encourage couples going through empty nest syndrome to get couples coaching or therapy at the first sign of feeling resentment toward their partner to repair the imtimacy in the relationship. If this is caught in time before it gets too far along the intimacy can be reignited, otherwise this situation becomes a breeding ground for affairs and divorce.
There is hope for a good outcome in spite of these changes. You can create a dynamic relationship Right Now!
This is the time to explore what you want your relationship and your life to be right now. With honesty, soul searching and good communication you can create a fulfilling relationship full of connection and intimacy.
Failure to Launch
Many adult children are coming back home to live with their parents after college. Some do this on a temporary to set up their their next job or internship. Some, however fall into a comfort zone and loose their focus on their future. Beginning in the 20’s a child needs to thing about the future and strategies on what path to take for the rest of his life. Having a concept of the future is an important part of development as is taking risks. The failure to do this leads to low self esteem and sometimes depression. The longer it lasts the more hopeless your child may start to feel. What can parents to to help their adult child to launch ?
Above all, don’t feel guilty for making demands on your child because this will help him feel like he can succeed. focus
Since more than half of marriages are now ending in divorce, we have many blended families or step families today. The problem is that families don’t blend all that well. Children and teens have loyalties to the birth mother and often yearn to have their birth parents back together.
What comes out of this unsettling time when families are breaking up and getting” reconstructed” is that the children will “test” to see how far they can influence the family to get their way. This is understandable because they are really searching for stability, even though they don’t consciously realize it. The stability and predictability of what the rules are has been taken away from them. They need strong and enforced limits to feel safe again….that’s right…limits that are consistently enforced actually make everyone feel safe.
If you have a solid structure the family will work because each person knows what is expected of them and the consequences of “breaking the rules”. In order to find out if there really are consequences for breaking the rules the child will test the limits.
The most common way of testing in a blended family is to try to turn one “parent ” against the other. An example that I see working with blended families it where the daughter in a new blended family will try to turn the new woman ,a prospective stepmom ,against the father by telling her things about the father…. things like ” he won’t ever marry you” and things that will make the new woman feel insecure about the relationship.
This is called “triangling” in family therapy speak, where one person talks about another family member when they’re not present and tries to turn one against the other. So you may wonder, Why is this so damaging?
The answer is that by doing this the executive branch of the family ,( the father and stepmom or new woman) is being weakened by allowing a child to be pulled up into that position. Structural family therapy is built on the fact that the structure of a family , like a house, needs to have separate levels. The parents belong in the executive level at the top and the children belong below that level in the child level. Like a house, when you build a strong foundation, you will have a good house. The parental dyad being united in the executive position ensures this structure which makes everyone in the family feel safe because there is a position for the parents and for the children.
Even though we all test limits to see if they are real, we really yearn for them because they make up feel safe and show us where our position is so that we can win in the family. The best way to stop this attempt at “triangling” by a child is to have a hard and fast rule that says ” We don’ t talk abut the other person when they are not present. Just having the rule is not enough, it MUST be consistently followed. This will eliminate many of the conflicts in a blended family.