Can Your Relationship Be Saved After Your Partner’s Midlife Crisis?

It is hard enough recovering, healing and regaining trust with your partner when he or she cheated on you but it becomes even harder if your partner has a midlife crisis and has left you for a period of time to be with someone else.

During the time of the midlife crisis you feel betrayed and abandoned, your partner doesn’t seem to care judging by his or her actions, everyone around you is mortified that your partner is doing this to you and your friends and family are hell-bent on making sure you don’t take your partner back ever.

The whole mid-life crisis seems so dark in nature and irreversible it almost seems impossible to even justify taking your partner back.

Yet there is something in your heart and soul that is telling you to hang in there and keep the eternal flame of your relationship lit.

Yet you wonder is it truly possible to have a future with your partner after so much potential damage has been done?

The answer is Yes – there are couples who have recovered from the mid-life crisis – the partner had to discover for him or her self what was truly in his or her heart and discover what was causing the emptiness in his or her life.

So once he or she is back, your next question will be – so where do I go from here?

The following are some important suggestions on how to successfully repair and rebuild your relationship.

1) Learn About What Causes Toxicities and Deficiencies in Relationships.

It’s nothing personal but a relationship is a mutual fulfillment of needs plus we are unique individuals with unique needs and have unique ways upon how we would like our needs to be met.

So you may have done everything in your power to give your partner what you think he/she needs or your partner may have even told you what his/her needs are or your partner may not even know what his/her needs are but in any case you may have been missing the mark in the area of successfully giving your partner what he or she wants in the way he or she wants it.

So now is the time to learn all about how people are unique and in particular what your partner’s needs, wants and requirements are. You also need to find out how to communicate clearly with your partner, learn creative negotiation techniques to fill in compatibility gaps as well as learn healthy, functional, unconditional love based approaches to having a relationship with your partner.

When all these areas are put in place not only will this help repair your relationship, but maintain and create a foundation for a new relationship to be created for you and your partner.

2) End Your Old Relationship and Start a Fresh New Relationship:

The reality is the original relationship that you had with your partner is never going to be the same and needs to be rebuilt from the ground or foundation up.

So it is best for the both of you to bring you old relationship to a close – all rules, agreements and past issues brought to an end and start fresh a new relationship where everything is created together by the two of you in ways that will work best for the both of you.

You can symbolically end your old relationship by removing, burying, throwing away or burning something that represents your old relationship and/or renewing your vows and deciding on something such as ring or a memento to represent your new relationship.

3) Maintain Your Social Network of Supporters

All because you and your partner are working on putting your relationship back together doesn’t mean that you don’t need your family, friends or support groups anymore.

There are times when you are going to need to talk about unresolved hurts and there are times when you will need to talk to others about how rebuilding your relationship is going so although you may be totally wrapped up in repairing your relationship with your partner, always remember to keep people around in your life to share with other than your partner.

4) Give Each Others Space When Needed

There is going to be a part of you that will feel like you never want to leave your partner alone for a second especially when you are just learning to trust your partner again.

However the reality is both of you (yes, even your partner) has been through a very trying and traumatic experience so if you or your partner feel like you need a little space to breathe it is important to honour these feelings.

Like anything in life, quality time is more important then the quantity of time so when both you are more relaxed and have the freedom to go at one’s own pace much more progress will occur in the rebuilding and repairing of your relationship.

5) Laugh and Have Fun Together

Every new moment is a new gift to create love, fun and happiness together so don’t miss out on opportunities to build wonderful memories of your renewed relationship.

Laughing, having fun and playing together recaptures the innocence of your relationship as well as reconnects the bond that the two of you once shared.

Following these five suggestions will all help to heal and inspire you and your partner towards having a new relationship that is safe and loving and once again the two of you will be able to share your eternal flame together.

Warm Regards,

Melody Chase

For more information on repairing and rebuilding your relationship including learning about your partner’s uniqueness, mutual fulfillment of needs and functional Relationship Mastery Skills such as Communication and Creative Negotiation Techniques check-out our Counsellor in a Box Home Study Relationship Program @ http://www.counsellorinabox.com as well as our Free Relationship Advice and Relationship Video Tutorial Blog @ http://counsellorinabox.com/FreeVideos.html

What To Do When Your Partner Is Having a “Midlife Crisis”

Special Note: To make this article easier to read I will be using “He” when referring to the person having the Midlife Crisis but of course you can substitute with the appropriate gender.

So what do you do when your partner is having a midlife crisis and in particular if your partner’s midlife crisis involves an affair with another person?

LEAVE – Yes, either leave or have your partner leave the premises until he is done his soul searching and figures out what he wants with his life. Stay at a friends, relatives, even a shelter if your partner refuses to leave himself.

Separating is especially important when he is saying things like “ I just don’t see a future together”, “I’m afraid to have sex with you right now because I am confused and I am afraid that that we will get pregnant even though I still find your attractive” or “ I can’t get rid of her because she is my business partner and I have invested 4 years into the business” or “give me time to get rid of her – I just can’t handle telling her right now with all the pressure – oh my high blood pressure” ( And there will be pressure and stress hence why he is having the midlife crisis.)

Be personable and friendly to keep necessary communication about such things as finances, children, business ties etc in tact but otherwise cut all connection to your partner.

No connection includes sex of course but even more subtle things such as kissing, hugging, snuggles, intimate conversations and dating in the beginning.

If you still want to have a relationship with your partner tell him you are still interested and you will wait but at a distance until he sows he wild oats.

The reality is with most midlife crisis’s there is no immediate way to sway him back to having your old relationship with you unless he experiences you completely disconnecting from him.

At first you giving him the cold shoulder will not be a big deal for him and he’ll be giving you negotiation suggestions like “Well, I’ll stop seeing her on a personal basis I’ll just continue being business partners with her” and other utterly ridiculous beyond belief suggestions that will make you gasp in disbelief – but hold firm and do not negotiate at this stage of the game.

This is because whether he admits to still loving you or not – his head is in the clouds and you hold no value to him hence no power for negotiation – it is easy for him just to drop you like a hot potato especially if you pressure him even if you are married and/or have been together for many, many years.

Holding firm and not allowing him in your life until he has done his soul searching will lead to 1 of 2 things – he’ll either snap out of his low self-esteem, fantasy world and “can’t handle reality” phase into a functional, healthy, mature phase of choosing you and rebuilding a new life and relationship with you or he’ll drop you and leave with the new person.

The drop you and leave with the new person route sounds absolutely horrible – I know - your stomach dropped out and landed on the floor when you read this but to save the heart break and disappointment of being hurt, betrayed and disappointed on pretty much a daily basis while he is in his mid-life crisis – it is much easier to cut your “losses” and grieve and go through the 7 stages of loss so you can recover and carry on with your life – with or without your partner – let time and commitment to self-love shake things out for you instead.

The other danger of trying to control the external and trying to woo and/ or negotiate with your partner is that on top of the initial damage done of being caught cheating or your partner telling you that he is not sure about yours and his relationship anymore is your partner letting you think that you have as much meaning to him as used bath water.

If you stay and try to make it work while he’s in the middle of his fantasyland he will hurt you over and over and the repetitive scarring to your heart and soul starts building up and eventually you will become hard and cold.

The Great Dividers of Love becomes so heavy and hard that even when he does return to you, you may be too far gone and even if your heart manages to be resuscitated the damage to the relationship is going to be humongous – rebuilding your relationship is going to be a tremendous undertaking (especially if you are repetitively hurt day after day) - only the strongest can survive.

So you need to come from a state of grace, self-respect, confidence and self-love.

Sure you are going to be all over the map emotionally – raging, crying, shaking from waves of abandonment coursing through your body but just remember don’t hold it in – it is your right to grieve – for your health on all levels including mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually make sure you let it all out on your own time and/or with friends, family, counsellors etc.

As well, allow your emotions to run free because even though your heart may be bleeding, the flow of emotions prevents your heart from getting clogged up and scarred metaphorically as well potentially physically.

Now, during this time period, (once you are over being stunned) is the perfect time to work on yourself and focus on self-love since grief usually puts you into the now and you are very present so you will be able to achieve amazing levels of healing and rising of consciousness, maybe not in the specific area of your relationship because your situation is so raw, but you may learn a lot about yourself and make realizations about your past that will take you to new levels of growth and self-appreciation now and for the future.

Working on yourself is also a great way to fill in the moments when you begin to feel impatient and want to try and force your partner into bending to your wants and needs which when done too early into the separation just pushes him away further.

Just remember hold true to yourself and remain strong.

Imagine you have a daughter if you don’t already have one (or a son) and however you are choosing to treat yourself is how your daughter is learning to treat herself – would you want your child to be a doormat or would you want her to learn about self-respect, grace, confidence and self-love even in the face of possibly the biggest upheaval of her life.

Last but not least, although it may seem really hard to believe right now but have faith that everything will be alright for you regardless of what happens – some people may not like the word surrender but have an intention of what your want but no expectations and you will be fine as well as understand that detachment to your current situation will give you the peace of mind and stamina to remain strong and in a state of grace.

So you need to protect your heart and hold firm, you are holding the flame of your relationship – it is your job to maintain and assure that the flame doesn’t burn-out until you get to the point where both you and your partner can see clearly enough and decide whether to continue tending to the flame or not.

If you and your partner eventually decide to continue your relationship we are here to support you - we have our Counsellor in a Box Home Study Program to help you rebuild your relationship @ http://www.counsellorinabox.com, and for free relationship resources check-out our Counsellor in a Box Blog and Relationship Tutorial Site @ http://www.counsellorinabox.com/FreeVideos.html

You may also email us with any relationship questions @ relationshipcentre@shaw.ca

Warm Regards,

Melody Chase

Want 2 Save Your Relationship? We have a free e-course, free video tutorials & free tips 4 U @ http://www.counsellorinabox.com/FreeVideos.html