Maria Shriver Asks – How Do You Handle Transitions in Your Life?

Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted to his wife several months ago that he had fathered a child about 10 years ago with a member of their household staff. Maria moved out, but has not filed for divorce. In the you tube clip above she comments:

“Like a lot of you I’m in transition: people come up to me all the time, asking, what are you doing next?” she said, adding: “It’s so stressful to not know what you are doing next when people ask what you are doing and they can’t believe you don’t know what you are doing.”

“I’d like to hear from other people who are in transition,” she said. “How did you find your transition: Personal, professional, emotional, spiritual, financial? How did you get through it?”

Mrs. Shriver has asked for spiritual input and I personally think that unless she gets the spiritual help that she needs then she will end up in the divorce court. I am starting a series on how a marriage can survive an infidelity. My first suggestion would be to attend a “Weekend to Remember” put on by the organization “Family Life” out of Little Rock, Arkansas. I actually posted this as a response to Mrs. Shriver’s request on you tube.

 I read the article “ Recovering Intimacy After an Affair – FamilyLife.com,”by Dave Carder. I  got the article from Family Life’s website and here is the sixth portion:

Share Your Intimate Self

It’s standard fare for stand-up comedians, but it’s sad when you really think about it. The guy who, for thirty years of marriage would never think of doing anything but drive the same car slowly and deliberately to work and back, suddenly begins to tool around town with sexy young blondes in a new red Porsche!

Yet caricature differs only slightly from real life: one of the common reports from the spouse in an affair is the complete change in behavior in the infidel as expressed with the partner. For example, with the spouse, the infidel never talked; with the partner, he talked for hours. With the spouse, he never read poetry; with the partner, he not only reads it—he writes it! There are dozens of examples: with the spouse, he never took walks, never had bar-b-ques in the park, never spent lazy afternoons in a motel, never bought shiny trinkets for gifts, or planned rendezvous, but with the partner, he does all those things. It’s comical in one way but sad in another.

Usually the illicit partner sees a very different person in the infidel than the spouse had come to see over the many years in the marriage. Yet that side of the infidel’s personality needs to be revealed. It is a part of his psyche and of the marriage relationship that the couple has allowed to atrophy.

It is true that different people bring out different sides of our personalities, but an affair so opens up a marriage and the individuals in the marriage that there is almost unlimited access to the psyche of both mates. In affair recovery, we need to take advantage of that unique view into the other’s needs and turn something bad into a growth opportunity.

One of the ways to reveal who you are and how you became that way is to talk nonstop about yourself for twenty minutes. This self-revealing exercise is usually nonexistent in marriages but extremely frequent in affairs. Talking about who you are is part of the central fascination on which the friendship builds in an affair.

At first, individuals are afraid to initiate this kind of activity with their marital partner. They think it’s boring, selfish, or even narcissistic, but it doesn’t have to be. They also may be uncertain about how they will be accepted, or they may suspect that what they say will be used against them.

Resist those fears and try it. Remember, lack of deep communication is usually part of the message of the affair. We all want to reveal who we are, and we all want to be known by someone who loves us and accepts us unconditionally.

Choose some safe topics. The following list might be helpful:

• Your earliest set of memories
• Grade by grade in elementary school
• My first boyfriend/girlfriend or first date
• My happy childhood memories
• My birthdays—happy and unhappy
• My favorite teacher and all of my memories about him/her
• The first time I drove a car
• My first car accident or traffic ticket
• My first kiss, job, and so on
• The favorite child in my family, why he or she was the favorite, how I felt about that, experiences and feelings I shared with him/her
• My favorite parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, cousin
• All the houses I lived in; my craziest neighborhood friends
• All the schools I attended
• The longest walk I ever took
• The ways I always spent my allowance as a kid
• My parents’ favorite sayings and how they used them; which ones I liked and didn’t like
• Things that I would have changed if I had been the parent in my family of origin
• The favorite year of my life
• The age I would like to remain forever
• Any others you think of

All of those experiences have feelings attached to them. Share with your mate how those subjects made you feel. That is the part that is important to tell at this point in your relationship. Facts are helpful; perceptions are important; but feelings are crucial to reestablishing intimacy. Feelings form the core of intimacy—that special closeness that assures you that, although your mate knows you and sees inside of you, he/she still loves you and accepts you completely.

One of the best ways to do this exercise is for each mate to take turns on successive days talking about himself or herself. The wife might do it one day; the husband the next.

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Requirements to Resolve Conflict (pt 4)

To resolve conflict effectively and Biblically there are two absolutes that both parties must agree on – do you know what they are? Without this framework, you can try all kinds of things to avoid or resolve conflict in your marriage and relationships, but you probably won’t be successful. Listen and discover the common ground that can literally transform even the most challenging points of conflict. Want to learn more? Download the full message from guest speaker Tim Lundy for free at: http://www.venturechristian.org/files/sermons2/t032011.mp3

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The clip above has some material that originally came from a video from Family Life. I have mentioned this organization several times in this post. Contacting “Family Life” (out of Little Rock, Arkansas) would be a great place for Arnold and Maria to begin their recovering. I am hoping that Maria realizes that this family is worth saving. It will take a lot of forgiveness and she will have to turn to Christ for his supernatural help to make it happen.