Will Maria Shriver’s marriage survive Arnold Schwarzenegger’s admission of infidelity? I hope so (Part 21)

Schwarzenegger’s Love Child Bombshell

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.

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Below is a portion of the article, “Infidelity’s Warning Signs:
Be on guard for your spouse … and yourself,” by  Nancy C. Anderson:

Kate found out her husband was having an affair the same week he asked her for a divorce—she didn’t see it coming. She told me, “My ‘gut’ was telling me that things weren’t quite right, but Bob had convinced me I that was just paranoid and insecure. I had no idea he was such a good liar. He talked me out of my suspicions.”

I asked her, “Could you make a list of his unusual behaviors? New actions that weren’t necessarily bad—just odd. But now, looking back, you see them as signs that he was having an affair.” Here is Kate’s top-ten list:

  1. About six months ago, he started working longer hours and having more “client dinners.”
  2. When he was home, he would seem restless and often claim he had “work” to do, so he spent a lot of time in the den—with the door closed.
  3. He started some new patterns that I thought were wonderful. He took the dog for long walks, and offered to run errands for me in the evenings. If I commented that I wished I had some cookies for the kids’ lunches, he’d say, “I’ll be happy to go to the store for you.” I found out later that he’d call his mistress on his cell phone while he was walking or running errands.
  4. He gave me a goofy, silly card for my birthday instead of his usual romantic, sentimental one, and he only signed his name—not Love, Bob.
  5. Our sex life lost its sizzle. On the rare occasions when we did make love, it felt awkwardly cold—just a physical act, not an emotional connection. I think he may have felt as if he was being unfaithful to his girlfriend by sleeping with me.
  6. He started referring to a person at work named Pierce. He would tell me how funny and talented Pierce was. That was his mistress’s last name!
  7. He started to skip desserts and be very careful about what he ate—he lost weight and started exercising.
  8. He dyed his hair—to cover the gray. “She” is twelve years younger than he is.
  9. He seemed more short-tempered. Things that didn’t usually bother him suddenly did. He was especially impatient with the children.
  10. After I saw the way he reacted to “her” at a company party, I asked him if there was something between them, and he lied to my face. Looking back, I know he lied to me about credit card and cell phone bills, and that most of the new clients he’d been taking to dinner were not clients at all.

Kate summed it all up: “I wish I’d been more alert. I just didn’t put all the pieces together until it was too late.”

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Chip Ingram – Three Ways to Improve your Conflict Resolution Skills (pt 2)

Why is conflict so hard to resolve? Whether in your marriage or other relationships – conflict can be a huge barrier that most of us would rather avoid. I want to share with you some common mistakes in conflict resolution and three important realizations that will bring fresh perspective to even the most difficult conversations. If you want to learn more, you can listen to the full message on conflict resolution from our guest speaker Tim Lundy here: 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 them 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.

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