TIPS FOR SURVIVING A BREAK UP

Whether you were dating for a few months, in a long-term relationship or married, breaking is hard to do. The good news is that life does get better.

Below are some tips to help you get over him and move on with your life.

·        Get it all out:       Cry, scream and feel sorry for yourself. Wallow in self pity. However, while you are wallowing, you will suddenly say, hey, I don’t feel like wallowing anymore, I think I deserve to be better. Believe me you will feel better and each day after, you will even fell much better. Soon, something amazing would happen, you will rediscover your smile and actually laugh at who you were back then.

·        Focus on today:  Take things one step at a time, one day at a time. If you start looking towards or thinking above next week, next month or next year, you will feel overwhelmed. Don’t look at the broader picture yet, temporary limit your view, so to speak.

·        Think positively: If you think you are bitten, you are and vice versa. Success begins with your own will, its all in your state of mind. Life’s battles are not always won by those who are stronger or faster. Sooner or later, the person who wins is the person who thinks he can.

·        Don’t stay bitter: People differ a lot both in character and otherwise. After my divorce, I became extremely bitter and angry. I did not trust anyone, particularly women, isolating myself, says a divorcee. Hey why not! No contact, no pain and no gain. Hear this, if you isolate yourself, you create an Island, but in the end, Island sinks. Being bitter is normal – its simply a stage you are going to go through. But move past it quickly.

·        Have no fear:      Don’t let your fears cripple you. Most times, what we are afraid of never come to pass. Other times, our fears are exaggerated. The more we worry, the bigger and the worse the fear or hurdle seems.

·        Do something new:       Slowly get involved in something new, be it a new job, volunteer work, anything you can think of. By keeping busy or focusing yourself on something makes you an independent being, the healing process will be a healthy process.

DO NOT IGNORE THOSE SIGNS

Flora swallowed everything Desmond told her about working late, being on night duty and occasional business travels. She had no course to believe or doubt him. They were the closest couple in their neighborhood and their friends have always admired their closeness. It was a joke shared amongst their friends that should Desmond ever cheat on Flora, he would be the person to confess or die of guilt. Those talks were words of assurance to her  until that evening when a young lady visited with a baby strapped on her back. Flora was the last to know even though her mind often warned her to look more closely. She should have taken the recent signs more seriously.

When you get suspicious that your significant other is cheating, be careful not to ignore the signs but you have to walk a fine line. You don’t want to make false accusations. It’s hard to be sure if someone is cheating, but protect yourself: be vigilant and pay attention to your mind and spirit within the relationship. At the same time, be careful not to let anxiety lead the way because unnecessary paranoia will just drive your lover away. There are a lot of indications that he is cheating. For one thing, he will make less demands sexually.

In a perfect world, we would be open about sharing our correspondence with our significant others. Most times, we trust that we don’t have to worry about who is texting or calling them, but if you notice that he is getting protective and/or nervous when he gets a call or text, it may be cause for alarm. Suffice it to say that there are hardened men who are not moved by their partner’s presence when the other girl is at the other end of the phone. You know that exhilarating feeling you get when you meet someone new; you want to tell the world about him.

A friend Charles recalls that one of his exes began talking about a guy a lot near the end of their relationship. “He just always seemed to be at her social gatherings that I didn’t happen to attend. Sure enough, after she dumped me, she began dating him”.

Even though relationships ebb and flow naturally, if you are sensing that he is drawing away from you, then there may be someone else. Emotional disconnect should be investigated regardless of whether it is caused by cheating. There’s a problem if he is not laughing or seeming as passionate as usual. It’s hard to spread love/passion between two people, so the person who used to have it will feel it slipping away if it’s being given to someone else. If he is disappearing, traveling or unavailable to the point where you are starting to wonder, then he could be cheating. Also, these times tend to take on a pattern because it is tough to synch up schedules, especially in secret. His friends will certainly remain loyal to him in most cases.

They will not let you know what’s going on, but they will definitely be racked with guilt, and their behaviour may change slightly when they are around you while protecting his secret. If you catch him in a lie, your trust will naturally be damaged. Do not hold a grudge – forgiveness is a good thing. If he consistently breaches your trust, its establishing a pattern of behaviour that leads to cheating. Do yourself a favour if he continues lying: get out while you can and don’t let him talk his way back in. its often said; once a cheat, always a cheat. If he’s done it before, he is capable of doing it again. It has nothing to do with you, which is why you can’t say he cheated on his previous lover because she didn’t keep him happy. Cheating is a self serving act in which the cheat(er) doesn’t take his significant other into consideration. If someone is upfront with you that he’s made mistakes in the past, maybe give them a chance but make it a long probationary period before you let your guard down.

Do not ignore your sixth sense, people are gifted to sense when something is not getting right. Whether there are red flags in your relationship that are clueing you in or not, if something feels off, don’t ignore this feeling. Usually that feeling is right and something intangible may have led to you figuring it all out.

Do you have any red flags that you’d add to this list? Would you say that you are generally good to at figuring cheaters out or do you seem to find yourself getting cheated on more often? What sorts of behaviours do you think are characteristics of someone who could be a cheat? Look closely, that red flag could be a sign of something happening elsewhere.

DO NOT ALLOW MONEY DESTROY YOUR MARRIAGE

Secret bank accounts, hidden documents, fore closure notices, couples around the world are discovering shocking signs of financial infidelity.

Stephanie Cules, a successful career woman has got two kids, acquired landed properties and a production company built around her creative collaboration with her husband, their glamorous fast-paced life was the talk of the town until the night she took the dog out and grabbed her husband’s jacket instead of hers.

The coat felt strangely heavy and stiff, when Stephanie looked inside, she discovered the lining had been cut open and stuffed with a mail. “Out of this jacket comes out somebody else’s financial nightmare, except that my name was all over it: years of tax notices, eviction notices, repossession notices, tuition overdue notices, health insurance cancellation, we hadn’t had health insurance in eight months, and we were about to be evicted from our apartment,” she says. “We were three weeks away from living out in the apartment. It was horrifying.”

When she confronted her husband, he offered no explanation-shut down completely, she says.

Throughout their thirteen year relationship, Stephanie had managed their corporate business while her husband handled their personal finances. But while she signed their tax return every year, he apparently never filed them. “I had no idea I wasn’t paying taxes”, she said. Stephanie eventually learnt that their debts exceeded $100,000. she wondered what was wrong, but a few months later, her husband abruptly left her, and she found he had been having an affair. She is now getting a divorce and struggling to make sense of what happened.

“My life as I perceived it wasn’t my life”, she says. “All I thought we had and were wasn’t true at all”. Stephanie still can’t get over the fact that her husband never shared their financial troubles or let her help deal with them, a choice that left her feeling deeply betrayed.

That reaction is a telling sign of the times; in previous era, wives often had very different expectations. Back when everyone assumed that men made the money and the decisions, women didn’t necessarily believe they were entitled to share information, let alone power. But today, marriage is typically viewed as a partnership based on mutual trust, and when one partner violates that trust by keeping financial secrets, lying or making unilateral decisions that threaten a family’s welfare, the other partner can feel profoundly betrayed by a transgression that may be even more destabilizing than an affair.

Women are victimized more often than men. According to a study, 80% of women said their partners had lied to them about finances or debt. Among those who were deceived, more than 40% said it damaged the trust in their relationship, and for others, it resulted to divorce. It is not a one way thing though, men also fall victim to things of this nature.

Money is this massive pink elephant in some bedrooms and the problem had been heightened in the economic downturn, which is a painful backdrop for dealing with an issue that nobody wants to talk about.

The reasons for financial infidelity can vary. Some men conceal financial assets because they are secretly preparing to leave their wives, while others lie to their partners even as they remain committed to the relationship and expect it to survive.

MARRIAGE: A DIVINE ORIGIN

 

The coming together of a man and a woman in a holy matrimony, was not born out of a man’s idea, but it has God as its foundation. After God made Adam and put him in the garden, the Bible records in Genesis 2:18-24: The Lord God said, its not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him…Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man…The man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman’, for she was taken out of man. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife and they become one flesh.

Marriage is not a cultural thing, neither is it a man-made programme; it came directly from the mind of God. Lack of this understanding is the cause of many troubles that many are experiencing in their marriages today.

Before you venture into marriage, make sure you commune with God, and let Him choose for you. Do not choose by sight or allow someone’s advice influence your decision. It is only God that understands what is in a man and can choose for you aright. He is a God of priorities, sets up marriage before coming before coming down to fellowship in the cool of the day. Marital unions invite the presence of God on earth.

God showed his interest in marriage by personally fashioning the woman and delivering her to her husband. It is therefore untrue to assume that the union of a man and a woman in marriage is man’s idea, or a cultural and traditional affair. To enjoy God’s best in your marriage, you must make Him the centre of your home, you must be ready to accord him priority, recognizing him as the foundation for a successful marriage.

The problem with many couples is that they push God aside and yet expect to enjoy divine benefits. They ignore the word of God, and just as the Bible says; if the foundation be destroyed, what can the righteous do?

God is the foundation for success in the home. Marriage and family are the oldest institutions in the world; they must not be toyed with. The right place to begin from is a personal relationship with God.

MARRIED BUT LIVING SINGLE

It is the dream of every woman to find her own prince charming and Mr. Right, get married and be called Mrs. It is a dream they have harboured in their hearts since they were little. And when that husband comes in a package wrapped with success, the promise of life abroad and access to the good things of life, many women are likely to throw caution to the winds. Unfortunately for some, reality may sometimes be different from dreams and they find themselves trapped in between two worlds, neither married nor single. The story as reported bothers on distant marriage.

 My younger sister called me one day to tell me she had something very urgent and important to discuss with me. When she arrived, she looked very worried and heart broken. She told me I must believe whatever she tells me because she is my sister and will never deliberately hurt me. She said she had fought seriously with the story she was about to tell me on our behalf. However, they have been able to prove their case beyond any doubt to her and she had no choice but to let me into it.

“She began by asking a barrage of questions, what did Cole tell you he was doing abroad? Why did he say he has never been married? What would you say if it were your brother who said he had never been married at that age, would you not ask questions? She finally concluded that Cole is a big liar and has been lying all along”.

She said her friend who is a friend to the younger sister of Cole’s friend told her that Cole is married to another woman. They also have two teenage children; a boy and a girl all living together. All I have been told is a lie and Cole married me just to please his mother who insists he marry someone close to home, she continued. At this point, I felt the blood drain from my head, face and body growing limp. I didn’t know I had slumped until I woke up to see my sister standing beside me. My blouse and hair were soaked with water, I was told I passed out, I felt my life has been ruined.

I asked my sister if she had told anyone yet and she said she wanted to tell me first before telling our parents. So I begged her not to tell anyone just yet, I needed to do my own investigations. It was then that some of the things I had seen started making sense to me.

One day, Cole and his mum were discussing on the phone and when she wanted to hang up, she started talking about greeting the children and their mother. I concluded she must have been referring to his younger brothers and their families. It never occurred to me that the children she used to ask about all the time were Cole’s. If their mum is a foreigner, it would mean also that I have a good guess of who these children could be. Several times, I’d seen pictures of some foreigners in the family album but I never thought to ask who they were. Come to think of it, I had seen pictures of the same kids on Cole’s phone and he told me he is their Godfather but people know them as his children because they spend a lot of time at his place. It made sense because a bachelor’s apartment could sometimes be very conducive for almost any activity, especially for young people. Within me, I had concluded that they were going to be part of the people I would have for company when finally I move to my ‘so called’ husband’s house. I never knew I was fooling myself.

I couldn’t hold back my anger and anxiety that night. He would always call but I put the call through that day and it was the first question I put to him. He asked if I am crazy and who had told me such bogus stories. I didn’t know how I answered him but I know I was shouting and calling his name. By the time I finally asked what he was planning to do with me and my daughter, I didn’t hear anything from the other end only to realize he’d hung up.

This could be similar to what is happening to some so called foreign husbands-look before you leap.