Do You Have a Roommate or a Spouse?

Do you feel like you're living with a strange roommate instead of a spouse? Someone you really don't trust, can't relate to, and can't seem to feel anything for? It happens sometimes when the going gets tough and marital infidelity strikes. Kids, life, jobs, parents, everybody wanting a piece of you and vying for your time. How do you reconnect and make a marriage come back together? Do you want to? How do you get rid of the roommate feeling and quit crying yourself to sleep? Ever wonder who that person on the other side of the room really is now?

If you're feeling emotionally abandoned and wonder how you can survive, know you are not alone. Every day people just like you are having the same thoughts. People who may think their spouse is having an affair. Women who are sure there is another woman but can't put their finger on it and yet aren't really sure if they want to know. But at the same time aren't sure if they can live with the not knowing.

Take a few minutes to yourself today and try to center yourself to really focus on you. Take care of yourself first. Yeah right, everybody says that but how do you do it? Kids need picked up, dinner to fix and clean up, homework to attend to, practice to run to, laundry never ends, the dog may have chewed up the garbage and heaven knows no one else can clean it up! Stuff like that always happens when you're stressed to the max, doesn't it just about bring the tears every time? It does for me.

After it's all over and done and everyone else is in bed, escape in a book. Take a few minutes for yourself, lock yourself in the bathtub and relax. Take that walk at lunch, all by yourself or with a very special friend and enjoy yourself. You need the reassurance that you as a person are still you - stressed to the max, but you can function and escape for a few minutes and relax. Breathe deep and know you are letting yourself heal just a little.

You have to take care of you before you can tackle the world or even your relationship. Sometimes taking a few minutes and writing out your personal thoughts or feelings will help clarify things, it usually makes you feel better. Just write and write for about 10 minutes. Often in anger I will rip it up and destroy it after writing and reading what I've written. You will be surprised how freeing that can be.

In one of the best manuals for saving a marriage from divorce I've ever seen, they talk about three phases of surviving a marital crisis. The first step we've talked about today. Taking care of the yourself.