This question comes from a woman who's been married for 12 years and wants to keep a man whom she calls a good-looking womanizer. She's upset because she found unmistakable evidence of his sexual relationship with another woman in their apartment while she and their 11-year-old daughter were away on a five week visit to her parents. She says she loves him. I say it's a fatal attraction. Let me explain.

This isn't about love at all! It's about addiction! If I were telling her directly I would say this. You love him the same way an alcoholic loves alcohol or a drug addict loves heroin. You don't know what love is. All you know about is the temporary high that comes from your contact with him. He's a habit and even though every encounter with him leads to worse and worse feelings you keep coming back for more.

There is no way you can save this marriage. He is obviously a narcissist or a sex addict or both. If you're honest with yourself you know that you're dependent on him. You might have loved him once with the kind of falling in love energy that comes more from your hormones than anything else. He might even have been attracted to you then too, but I rather doubt it. In any case, he's been seeking other women since the honeymoon was over 11 years ago.

The question now is can you save yourself? Recovery from any addiction is a long and difficult path. The first step is to give up the addictive substance. That means ending this marriage! It won't be easy to do on your own so get help where ever you can. That can be from parents, friends or a safe house depending on your resources. At the very least you need to do this to protect her daughter.

Instead of focusing on how to control your husband's behavior which is impossible short of putting him in jail, you need to focus on your own. You can start by reading "Is It Love Or Is It Addiction?" by Brenda Schaeffer. You will need psychotherapy or counseling. Many women's shelters allow women who are living in the community at large to attend their programs. If you can't afford private therapy, look for help at a community mental health center.

Hey, by the way… Here's something I think will really interest you. It's a *very* meaty Free Special Report all about 5 frequently asked questions about troubled relationships. It's titled "How To Save Your Marriage: Insider Secrets For Anxious Wives and Frustrated Husbands " and you can grab it for free here www.BeingHappyProgram.com/getmarriagereport1.htm

Read Kirsten's complete letter here:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111231200443AA54i96

I told her this:

Kristen,

You are married to an alcoholic. Whether or not he's drinking he is still an alcoholic. Alcoholism can be viewed as a progressive disease. It doesn't go away. Before you can make any kind of a decision you need information about this disease and what it's like to live with someone who may always be one drink away from serious trouble.

The place to get this information is Al-Anon. This is a group for people who are in relationship with an alcoholic. It's free and meetings are available almost everywhere.

Website description: “The Al-Anon Family Groups are a fellowship of relatives and friends of alcoholics who share their experience, strength, and hope in order to solve their common problems. We believe alcoholism is a family illness and that changed attitudes can aid recovery.” 

Be clear that recovery that does not mean cure, but it does mean that people with this disease can live rich and rewarding lives as long as they pay attention to certain guidelines. If you decide to stay and he decides to follow the guidelines, there can be a lot of growth for both of you.

Talking to other people who are facing similar challenges will help you de-stress and think more clearly about your situation. Get to a meeting as soon as you can. You won't regret it.

Here is a link to the Al-Anon website description. www.al-anon.org/meetings/meeting.html  Look on the bottom of the box for the link "How to Locate a Meeting"

If you decide to stay married, you will find information about building your marriage at http://www.BeingHappyProgram.com

Deciding To Leave A Problem Marriage

She's wondering whether it's wrong to leave this problem marriage.

She married him because she was in love, pregnant, Christians were telling her it was the moral thing to do and she was bribed. During the past seven years she has tried to get him to go to counseling, repeatedly asked for a divorce, been lured back to the marriage after she's left, and now he's promising to change — one more time. She says her kids are being put in harm’s way.

I don't have details, but from the rambling description she wrote, I strongly suspect that the mistreatment she alludes to should be called abuse. Read her words http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111225084126AAsPF4q and decide whether you agree with my answer.

It's never wrong to leave an abusive relationship. I'm reading between the lines here, but after 40 years as a marriage counselor I see too many signs of a cycle of abuse to ignore them. It sounds as if you had been in an emotionally abusive relationship that has degenerated into a physically abusive one.

The signs I am reading are that you have tried repeatedly to leave this marriage and being lured back by promises of good behavior that have never really materialized.

You said, “He knows he screwed up but he still wants to try and work on it. He said that 2 years ago and he said that last month. He has never shown signs of truly changing…”

I can't tell you how many abused women I've heard say the same thing. Every time an incident happens and you threaten to leave, he promises to reform. The reform lasts a very short time and then the negative behavior resumes and gets worse. You seem to be describing exactly this cycle.

It often takes women many tries to get out of a relationship like this. Some never do and wind up that badly hurt or even dead. Leaving can be dangerous, so take precautions for your physical safety. Check out the National Domestic Violence Hot Line www.thehotline.org for help.

It isn't wrong to walk out an abusive seven year marriage. Get out now. You owe it to yourself and your children.

A narcissist is a self-centered person without a normal conscience who believes and acts as if he (or she) is the only person in the world who is important.

This is a problem women are sharing in my upcoming book, “99 Things Women Wish They Knew Before Saying I Do” and I recently posted this answer to the question on a website.

This is an incredibly important question and a very challenging problem. If you are in this kind of relationship you have been torn down and made to believe all problems are your fault. Besides that, the charming narcissist may have separated you from your family and friends or convinced them that he is perfect and you're the problem.

Your physical safety is a primary problem. If he has made threats, take appropriate precautions. You'll need all the support available from friends, family, professionals and even a Women's Shelter. 

Don't get discouraged. Many women make several attempts before they actually escape.

Dr. Laurie

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Negativity as he describes it includes any expression of anger toward your significant other. He believes that most anger comes from a deep and unrealistic sense of entitlement. It reflects the belief that your partner should make you the center of his or her universe and meet all of your needs before you even express them.

This is taking to extremes my own belief that problems with your intimate partner can only be resolved by taking into account three important things. You must include your own needs and feelings, your partner’s needs and feelings, and relevant aspects of the situation.

My husband and I have a long history of trying out new ideas in our own relationship. However, we disagree with Hendrix’s view that anger is entirely based on the belief that the world should revolve around you and it doesn’t. We generally include three other types of anger:

1. Current anger, which is about something that just happened.

2. Archaic anger, which is about something that happened long ago. This can include anger at the world does not revolve around you, but also includes anger about abusive and inappropriate treatment that happened to you.

3. Racket anger, which looks and feels like an attempt to manipulate others. It’s usually about imagined rather than real situations. We have long recognized that expressions of archaic and racket anger only damage relationships — including our own. But we have allowed the expression of current anger in our own relationship as a prelude to problem solving.

Nevertheless we decided to experiment with Hendrix’s ideas and allow no negativity at all to be expressed in our relationship. This doesn’t mean that we don’t experience angry feelings — we do! Humans are wired from birth to experience frustration as increased energy and we identify that experience as "anger." We’re human and we experience that frustration with each other.

The difference lies in how we choose to express it. This has turned out to mean looking more deeply into why we may be annoyed with each other. It’s usually not about what we think it’s about at first.

Here’s one example: I may feel angry "because" he’s watching sports on TV again. When I look more deeply it’s because I’m feeling unappreciated. If I complain about the TV I may get myself some negative attention, but it won’t solve the real problem.

When I take the time to think it through, I can realize what I actually want or need and ask for it in an appropriate way. Another subtler example involves creating a negative atmosphere by complaining about something outside the relationship that you’re frustrated about but can’t control.

Jonathan used to routinely express anger at other drivers while I was sitting in the passenger seat in the car. Now this rarely happens, but if it does I say "this feels like negativity" and he honors our agreement and apologizes.

We have agreed that it’s fine to report feeling frustrated — just not to express it indirectly. It’s not perfect. We’ve been married for over 49 years and have an excellent relationship, mostly because, since our first major crisis, we’ve never stopped paying attention to what works and what doesn’t.

This is a refinement. It’s a subtle change but it’s making a very positive difference in how we feel when we are with each other.

Try having a talk with your partner about what negativity means to you and how you would like to change. Experiment for a week and then reevaluate. Decide if that’s the way you’d like to proceed with your own relationship.

This isn't much of a problem when we’re at home. We share a great deal of responsibility for food preparation. I am the chef and he is the sous chef. However, when I tell him to take care of himself, he does.

It's a bigger problem when we're traveling and we travel often. When he is hungry he assumes that I am hungry too. He approaches me as if I am already thinking about what he is thinking about. And I respond angrily. It's an instant response and I keep thinking that by now he should expect it.

I usually want breakfast about an hour after I wake up. He wakes up ravenously hungry and wants to eat right away. I like to read, write, or just fiddle around when I first wake up. I try to solve the problem by getting up much earlier than he does.

Often though, I'm deeply involved in something when he wakes up and says something like, "What are you thinking about breakfast?" Dammit, I am NOT thinking about breakfast at all! I'm thinking about something else and you're interrupting me! I often succeed in not saying that aloud — but not always.

When this happens, neither one of us is thinking about anything except how we feel and what we want for ourselves. We're usually feeling a little vulnerable, in an unfamiliar situation and trying to make ourselves comfortable. We're not thinking about the other or the external situation much at all.

Solving problems generally involves an awareness of your own feelings, the other person's feelings, and the external situation. In this case we were creating problems instead of solving them.

It would be easy to turn this into a bigger fight. We could each easily justify our positions and claim to be misunderstood. However, after many years of marriage, we've come to the conclusion that lots of things are not worth the effort to fight about. We usually recognize the pattern as soon as we see it, shrug and move on.

Much as we would like to be perfect, we're not and we’re not ever likely to be. Most of the time we consider each other’s feelings and most of the time things go pretty smoothly. We can relax and let good enough be good enough.

If you enjoyed this article, Being Happy Together: How to Have a Fabulous Relationship With Your Life Partner in Less Than an Hour a Week will provide you with much more information that I believe will be useful to you.