First off, know that you are in good company. Some 40% of women have a problem with orgasm at some point in their lives. Also it is much more common for women to be able to orgasm by themselves than in their partnerships. That being said, many couples struggle with this reality and long for a solution to sharing intimacy and pleasure. One way to start changing your thinking about this issue is to feel grateful that your partner is so invested in finding ways to make you more comfortable and able to enjoy your intimacy. This is not the case for many couples, where the pleasure of both is not the issue.

Understanding a bit of the brain functioning when it comes to orgasm might shed some light on what happens when the arousal process turns off in your intimate times. One important study of the brain’s process during orgasm shows that when a woman reaches orgasm, something unexpected happens: much of her brain goes silent. Brain regions responsible for everything from her sense of self control, moral reasoning and judgment all get turned down in the moments of intense arousal.

“Fear and anxiety need to be avoided at all costs if a woman wishes to have an orgasm; we knew that, but now we can see it happening in the depths of the brain,” said researcher, Holsteger at the 2005 meeting of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Development: “At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings.”

While some brain areas get shut down, others are activated. The production of oxytocin, the love and bonding hormone levels jump fourfold at orgasm. The researchers also found heightened activity in the critical part of the brain’s reward circuitry that may mediate orgasmic pleasure in women. Such activity may connect a female’s sexual pleasure with the emotional bond she feels with her partner.

Getting your brain to release you for this remarkable experience is more of a surrender activity than it is a push. As you have seen from your own experience, trying only makes it less available. Use your boyfriend’s interest to your advantage, rather than making your time centered on the orgasm, spend the time exploring what feels good.  Oral sex is usually one of the first doorways for many women to experience orgasm with a partner.  Even mutual hand stimulation can open your eyes to what feels really good.

Like most things when you take your eye off the goal and get really involved in the process, the goal ends up to be just part of the journey.  Investing in a few good books for the exploration

 I just started dating a new man and although I know that there aren’t really any hard and fast rules about how long you should wait to have sex,  I don’t know if you can tell me any kind of signs to look for that tells me that it’s too soon or for that matter too long to wait?   What kinds of precautions should you take before you open up your relationship to physical intimacy? 

This is an interesting question to receive in the midst of the hook up culture that seems to dominate male-female relationships of late.   Although social norms have all but erased the protocols that lead to physical intimacy, there certainly are signs of readiness in relationships that are worth considering, especially if you are interested in building a lasting relationship.

I often describe a relationship as a container for all the experiences that happen between you and your partner, so you want to make sure that the container is strong enough to hold the mystery, passion and sometimes pain that accompanies physical intimacy.

Making love for the first time, even when both partners are steeped in biological drive is not always the makings of pure pleasure.   Sometimes different sexual needs and styles have to be worked out, even at the beginning which is easier when you have spent time building the container of the relationship.

One of the single most important signs that a relationship is ready to move to the next level of intimacy is that both partners have a feeling of comfort and openness in discussing sexual issues.   If you can’t talk about it or ask questions, then there is a good chance that the weight of any issues that come up, might be enough to break the fragile beginnings of the relationship.

Getting to know someone well enough  to feel safe to do justice to naked connection only makes sense if you want to benefit from the power of intimacy to cement the foundation of connection that deep physical intimacy offers a relationship.  It is hard to imagine how you could wait too long  to share the most intimate of acts although I have heard of a woman married for several years that had not yet consummated her marriage.

Early phases of relationships have so much electricity and biological energy that they benefit from waiting because just like holding out for an orgasm, cultivating attraction and sexual energy in your relationship enhances communication and the fun of getting to know each other.

Learning about your partner’s sexual health history whether through testing or discussion is a necessary evil, but insanity to not practice.

I had the weirdest experience while making love to my partner the other night.  I was literally transported out of my body and felt like I was flying and in some other universe entirely.   I  was connected through him but also barely there.   I don’t know how or why it happened and even as I tried to explain it to him, it sounded ridiculous as the words came out of my mouth.   Have you ever heard of something like this and what does it mean? 

The experience you describe is referred to as both transcendent or sacred sex.  A research study on the phenomenon by Jenny Wade PhD is recorded in her book  Transcendent Sex: When Lovemaking opens the veil.   Earlier studies suggest that as many as one in twenty individuals have a transcendent experience and that over 80% of them keep the experience a secret even from their partners.   All of the people in Dr. Wade’s study had no previous experience or training in transcendent practices and most had no real language or framework to understand their experience.

Interestingly the variety of experience was as vast and unique as the survey sample itself.  The range of experiences sited in the book cover everything from the shift of space and time as you described, to a sense of electric light filled bodies,  or transformation of self and other and a sense of timelessness and vast emptiness.   All of the experiences all carried a transformative recognition of the intersecting paths of spirit and sexuality.

For many people this spiritual awakening is life changing.   It reorganizes their beliefs about sexuality and god.   In fact, of all life experiences that open the doorway to intensely spiritual experience, sex is the most common and ordinary, which is to say that it is available to ordinary people through the act of physical love.

Perhaps it is because sex provides the most intense and immediate experience of the divine that most if not all religions have distanced the practice from its followers.   Even historical Tantric texts teaches to move beyond orgasmic sexuality as soon as possible.   In the garden of eden, the forbidden fruit is the orgasmic experience that eve shares with adam, because this is how they come to an immediate face to face experience with god.

The French term for orgasm is “le petit mort”  which means the little death.  In many ways this transcendental sex, is a death of sorts.   We lose touch with our smaller ego driven self as the truth of our connection to each other and the universe is known.

This is probably the element of our sexual selves that drives the mystery and fear that is associated with our sexual selves.

Finding the doorways to meaning in our lives are a rare and precious opportunity.  Wade’s book provides some instruction on the techniques and practices you can engage in to create more opening to these experiences as well.

Your descriptions of your relationship certainly qualify for many of the definitions of a toxic relationship which means that the relationship instead of helping you to live your best life, the relationship actually diminishes your sense of self worth and ability.   Being with someone who has no respect for you and belittles what you do, say or think makes living a satisfying life incredibly difficult.

Often both people in a toxic relationship have low self esteem and little sense of their own self worth.   Many people grow up in families where these kinds of relationships are the norm and creating them in our adult relationships is easy because they are so familiar and often because we continue to try to resolve our childhood issues in our adult relationships.   People often hurt each other in relationships to ease their own pain and don’t even see that they are doing it.

People accept these kinds of relationships as normal because they don’t believe they are deserving of anything better.

Although all relationships go through difficult periods of conflict and disappointment, relationships that weather these difficulties share some important qualities that toxic relationships don’t.   Mature and growing relationships are a reflection of the well being of each individual in the relationship.   The process of working through problems does not start and end with blaming and belittling one partner.   When each person brings their own self -respect to the conflict, there is an opening to look at the problem not point the finger at each other.

Fear is a driving force in many if not most toxic relationships and often the fears that are driving the relationship live between the partners unnamed.   Whether the fear is of not being good enough, or losing control or of change,  the unwillingness or inability to look at and name what is happening between you can become the elephant in the room which can consume the relationship and both partners.   Having the courage to bear witness and describe your experience with your partner is crucial to any chances that you have of redefining how you relate to each other.

The truth about all relationships is that when either partner decides that they are no longer going to participate in the relationship as it exists, both partners are forced to shift or the relationship will end because there is no more room for it.  It is easy to get caught in seeing your partner in just one negative way.  Make sure that you have a realistic view of both the positive and negative aspects of your partner and relationship and acknowledge both as you approach your needs to have the relationship change.   Seek out a unbiased third opinion about your relationship so that you know your views are grounded in reality.

By taking responsibility for your own feelings and your participation in the toxicity between you, you will be more able to do the challenging yet satisfying work of setting firm boundaries around the way you are willing to relate and communicate.  Know that the heart of any relationship begins with your relationship to yourself and honor it.    By remaining focused on your own inner work and keeping your commitment to your own self worth, your relationship will adapt or find it’s end.

I have been with the same man for a couple of years and have always had some sensitivity with sex. We always use lubricant but even with that product, it still hurts sometimes when he comes in me too soon. The only thing that I know for sure is that when I have an orgasm before penetration, (which sometimes takes some time) I don’t have pain and can sometimes even have another one inside. Is this normal? 

Congratulations. You have hit upon one of the cardinal rules of female sexual pleasure, which is normal and yet remains relatively unknown. The clitoral orgasm is one of the easiest and most immediate sexual pleasures available to most women. Exploring the many different kinds of stimulation on this part of the body is both fun and rewarding. Consider the range of sensations available by mixing up soft, medium or hard pressure, vertical, diagonal or horizontal strokes and varying degrees of speed. Learning what feels good and can bring you to climax will not only open the door to understanding your sexual identity and preferences but will improve partnered activities for life.

Having a clitoral orgasm before penetration serves to open and relax all the vaginal and pelvic muscles. While lubrication is an essential aid to enjoying longer and smoother penetration, the preliminary O, gets the internal juices flowing, as well. By that I mean, not only internal moisture, but the imagination and the nervous system gets primed for discovering greater levels of pleasure.

Biologically, we now bear witness to this connection through the new and updated understanding of the clitoris as an organ. The orgasmic release at the clitoral head traces its way down the clitoral roots into the vaginal wall, culminating at the g-spot. It is difficult, if not impossible for most women to connect with this internal pleasure center if they have not experienced a preliminary external orgasm first. As the walls of the vagina soften with pleasure, the actual sensation of penetration changes.

Applying this rule of cultivating an external clitoral orgasm before penetration has the added benefit of increasing the amount of time a couple spends in intimacy. Statistically, a woman is much more likely to orgasm with longer foreplay including both oral sex and manual stimulation and the subsequent intercourse is generally more pleasurable and painless.

I have been talking about this idea for a long time as I have had similar questions from many of my customers who wonder about pain with intimacy even after application of lubricant. I always ask them if they were ready to be penetrated when they had sex. If you are not really ready to have someone enter you, even the best lubricant in the world may help, but will not prepare you for the deepest connection you share with someone. That requires some work and letting go inside.

Taking the time to discover and cultivate your own pleasure before penetration is my way of thinking of love hygiene. It also works to even the timing out for many couples. I think it may have been in France when I learned of this technique in the context of a conversation about the difference between French and American men. I was told, “In America, the men say to each other: ‘How far did you get?’ In France, the men say, “How long did she scream?” Go figure.

I have been out of my relationship almost as long as I was in it but I can’t seem to go on. I have dated a little, but am so afraid of being hurt again that I find some excuse to break it off before anything can happen- good or bad.  I feel like I am just going through the motions in my life. Why can’t I just accept my husband leaving me and move on?  Any ideas about how to re- start my life?

Thank you for sharing this very personal and challenging question that I believe is experienced by millions in one form or another.  Perhaps the most normal and least helpful response that we humans have to our emotional pain and fear is the habit of looking away or trying to suppress our feelings. Most of us are not trained or adept at dealing with the fear, rejection and pain that life and relationships often present. Emotional injuries from childhood that were never processed become silent filters that impact how we perceive and understand our entire lives.

Our feelings can seem so large and overwhelming that they threaten to consume us whole. When we refuse our emotional experiences, they grow into demons that become the lifeblood of our identity. The demons that run our lives become an infinite number of manifestations… They are as unique as we are in personality yet universal in the needs we all share. The problem you mentioned of broken-heartedness can include everything from conflicts with people we love, to anxiety about communicating, discomfort with our appearance, the terror of being abandoned, or the shame of feeling worthless.We demonize our emotional experiences by our inability to attend to them. Anything that calls for our attention and is continuously rebuffed will become an active demon inside of you.

The issue of demonizing our fears and pain is as old as recorded history. It was first recorded in ancient Buddhist practices one thousand years ago. The practice has been translated and modernized for our times in an extremely user friendly version called Feeding your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict. Written by a former Buddhist nun, Tsultrim Allione, the book provides a helpful five step process to identifying and attending to the experiences and emotions that prevent us from joining life.

Although the idea of feeding and nurturing our internal enemies flies in the face of the conventional approach of overcoming and eliminating our weaknesses, getting intimate with the parts of ourselves that we generally unsuccessfully cut off from ourselves makes great sense.  Instead of battling with the places that scare us, we invite them in, take a good look at them and try to find a way to give them what they need. If ever a Buddhist path offered a way to true liberation, this is it. And you don’t even have to sit, you just have to be courageous enough to embody your feelings and listen.

Dismantling and integrating our internal demons has the added benefit of developing the skills of attending and turning towards our feelings before they become the monsters that can control us.

The Fix Magazine

Gay men find it impossible to stay sober. They relapse again and again. The reason is clear: sex. Sexual addiction. I am not suggesting that all gay men who claim that they are alcoholic are in fact sex addicts but most gay men who can’t stay sober cite sex as the primary reason for relapse.

The simple fact of the matter is that most of the time, readily available anonymous hook ups quickly take the place of alcohol and drugs. When a sober man walks into the apartment of a super hot man doing crystal meth, sobriety is quickly flushed down the toilet along with HIV status.

I hear the story over and over again. Yet, as a community, we think we can get away with this risky behavior. It is an arrogant vanity.

Gay AA is a sad affair. I go periodically—mostly when I flee the super charged straight stag meetings because I find the straight, young newcomers too triggering.

While many straight sober people create a new life with AA that involves abandoning bars and other locations that might lead to relapse, gay sober men often want a sober version of the life they had before, complete with dance parties, bars and gogo boys. Any reason to have a party will do—including the absurd “three-month anniversary.” Or, as one galling invitation I received said, “Help Joe S. celebrate his one-month anniversary.”

Forgive me if I’m wrong but anniversaries are a yearly celebration.

Many of these sober parties are indistinguishable from their non sober equivalent: scantily clad men line up for espresso machines manned by disco short-wearing super hot straight guys more used to shaking cocktails than dispensing coffee to gay guys jacked up on caffeine. Unable to attend drug-crazed gay circuit parties, many gay sober men in LA flock to the sober circuit parties, such as Hot ‘n Dry, which is held annually in Palm Springs. These events are more likely to take someone out than any other reason I’ve ever heard in gay AA. Yearly, after this event, bedraggled gay men turn up at meetings, their eyes blazing from excessive drug use, taking newcomer chips. Should I be surprised? After all, the Hot n’ Dry ticket salesman had assured me that it would be “a sex fest from the moment you arrive at the Ace Hotel.”

The absurd idea that we can behave like we have always behaved as long as we have a deluded and lackluster understanding of the 12 steps just doesn’t work. Two years ago, after I appeared on Sex Rehab With Dr. Drew, I suggested that within the gay community, we might have a sexual unmanageability problem and was flooded with vitriol. But that’s not going to stop me from sharing what I believe to be serious issues.

The other serious issue within gay AA, in my opinion, is the resistance to God or a Higher Power. Most of my gay sponsees are understandably wary of God. The Christian God—the religious God—hasn’t made them feel very welcome in the past and has actually steeped them in shame and misery. To find that at the heart of AA is a God—even if it’s one of their own understanding—is anathema to most gay men. From what I can determine, most gay men just ignore the God part of the 12 steps—a relevant fact when the God part, in my estimation, accounts for roughly 90% of recovery. Working through the God options with gay men can be excruciating. Why bother looking for spiritual validation when they can get immediate validation on Grindr?

I used to love AA in LA; my love for it was actually the reason I first moved to LA. Now I hate it. It’s like a cult—sober grandees ruling over desperate men, the film industry providing the sickest of backdrops: men flaying themselves before agents and film executives in the hope of catching crumbs from the sober table I see this everywhere from the straight stag meetings, where misogyny and homophobia are expressed freely, to the sickest meetings of all: Gay AA in LA.

For all of these reasons and more, last November, after nearly 16 years, I stopped going to AA meetings. I was exhausted, disillusioned and utterly miserable. My last meeting in LA, at the iconic Log Cabin on Robertson in West Hollywood, was a gay meeting attended by 300 gay men.

I couldn’t walk away fast enough.

And yet yesterday, after a nine-month hiatus, I walked into a co-ed meeting in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I was an hour early. I helped set out the chairs in ten neat rows and then I made the coffee. During the meeting, I shared my resentments and my fears and afterwards, a tiny woman called Dianne came up to me and let me have two full barrels of her tough love wisdom.

“It’s time for you to get fucking humble,” she said. “Come back and do fucking 90 in 90 like a newcomer.”

She was right. After months away from AA, I felt spiritually bankrupt. I stopped fighting and did what we are all meant to in the rooms of AA: I gave in.

Later that evening, the young man I helped set up the meeting took me for dinner. We talked recovery. This morning, we had sex. There I was, doing the walk of shame, doubled down. I had once again fucked a newcomer, counting days. It’s my story in AA. The younger men find my honesty irresistible and I can’t say no.

When I first got sober in London, the only gay men I met in AA were old queens at the Eton Square meeting. I met a couple of gay men in NA but within the deluded gay community, at that time, there was a mantra I heard over and over that “quitting was for losers.” Several years later, after celebrities like Boy George got sober, the rooms of AA and NA filled quickly with what we now recognize as gay recovery.

Back then I was accused, by my drinking friends, of being a contrarian—of rocking the boat and spoiling it for the others. As it happened, I was in the vanguard. I remember being hounded by drunken gay men who were outraged that I might, just by being sober, challenge their powerlessness and un-manageability. Of course those very same men now thank me for introducing them to the 12 steps.

After a few months away from AA, I am ready to start again but, as Dianne said, I’ve got to get humble, forget all those years of sobriety and do 90 meetings in 90 days. For the first time in a long time, I value my life. I should have left LA years ago but I’m a tenacious old queen; I didn’t want to let go. Just one more meeting might fix me. Just one more line, one more Vodka Tonic and the crazy opera playing in my head might stop.

Walking back into AA in New York was a relief, a joy—just like it used to be. I want to be sober. The only problem getting in the way of that is me. But I know that if I’m going to be able to do it, I’ll have to learn how to say no to sex. As a single gay man, the consequences are dire if I don’t.

Duncan Roy is a filmmaker whose movies include AKA, Method and The Picture of Dorian Gray. He appeared on Sex Rehab With Dr. Drew in 2009, and has written for The Sunday Times, The Evening Standard, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, and The Daily Beast. Roger Ebert has praised his blog as “a moving and evocative chronicle of modern gay life.” This is his first piece for The Fix.

Conflicting sex drive questions from both male and female partners may well be one of the most common problems that couples face in long term sexual relationships.  Sexual drive, a Freudian term, which is more commonly referred to as libido by sex therapists today is a complex and changing life energy force.  Freud considered this drive as a primary motivator of not only sexual instincts but passion for life in general. Couples who struggle with conflicting sexual drives will often look to professionals to prove what is normal and recently issues of low libido has been circling the psychiatric manuals as a new form of pathology.

Although the debate continues about whether low libido is something that should or needs to be treated,  most sex therapists and researchers would agree that the individual sexual drive that people experience is a complex interpretation of biological, psychological and social factors that is as unique as our finger prints. Finding yourself caught in a conflict with someone you love about how much sex, who wants it and who doesn’t is a deeply challenging and hurtful issue that has no winning side. Neither partner in this dynamic is walking away happy about the conflict they are in and working through it requires a willingness to open up conversations about your whole relationship, not just the sexual part of it.

I have long believed that our sexual conflicts are mirrors into other unexplored parts of our relationship. While this issue of mismatched sex drives may well be one of  the most long lived issues in coupled relationships,  finding resolution to it can shed light on other issues in the relationship that the partners are unaware of or have been unwilling to look at.  Conflicts about family, money, life/work problems often play out in the sex life of couples.  Not wanting sex is another way of saying that the relationship doesn’t feel safe and accusations of withholding sex out of spite only confirms this lack of safety.

Another common problem  associated with low libido that often goes unnamed  is the lack of information/education that most adults have at their disposal in their sex lives. Early mixed messages about sexuality can sometimes prevent one partner from being willing to explore their sexuality, experiment or open up at the same pace as the other. Not knowing or being able to discuss our discomfort or shame about sexuality can easily turn into a dying libido.  Sexual shutdown can and often does lead to hopelessness and the belief that change is not possible. This feeling of being stuck in a prolonged dead end often leads many couples away from each other in other aspects of relating as well.

For some couples,  the issue of different sex drives  is no more complex than recognizing and being willing to work with the baseline differences in the focus and importance you each place on sexual activity in your lives.  This is not a pathological problem as much as it is a problem solving situation where both partners need to become committed to exploring compromises and establishing agreements so that the gap between your drives is met on a bridge you build to each other.   Developing the art of negotiating and compromising in the whole of your relationship translates well into the bedroom.

The first step towards dealing with this issue is opening up the conversation about what is going on in your relationship.   You may need the help of a qualified therapist to explore the conflict.   The AASECT website is a great place to research resources.  Having the courage to explore the sexual aspects of your relationship will do wonders in building the trust and openness in the whole of your relationship.   Thinking of this conflict as a passage that will redefine your commitment to each other  is a good start.

I had the weirdest experience while making love to my partner the other night. I was literally transported out of my body and felt like I was flying and in some other universe entirely. I was connected through him but also barely there. I don’t know how or why it happened and even as I tried to explain it to him, it sounded ridiculous as the words came out of my mouth. Have you ever heard of something like this and what does it mean?

The experience you describe is referred to as both transcendent or sacred sex. A research study on the phenomenon by Jenny Wade PhD is recorded in her book Transcendent Sex: When Lovemaking Opens the Veil. Earlier studies suggest that as many as one in twenty individuals have a transcendent experience and that over 80 percent of them keep the experience a secret even from their partners. All of the people in Dr. Wade’s study had no previous experience or training in transcendent practices and most had no real language or framework to understand their experience.

Interestingly the variety of experience was as vast and unique as the survey sample itself. The range of experiences sited in the book cover everything from the shift of space and time as you described, to a sense of electric light filled bodies, or transformation of self and other and a sense of timelessness and vast emptiness. All of the experiences carried a transformative recognition of the intersecting paths of spirit and sexuality.

For many people this spiritual awakening is life changing. It reorganizes their beliefs about sexuality and god. In fact, of all life experiences that open the doorway to intensely spiritual experience, sex is the most common and ordinary, which is to say that it is available to ordinary people through the act of physical love.

Perhaps it is because sex provides the most intense and immediate experience of the divine that most if not all religions have distanced the practice from its followers. Even historical Tantric texts teaches to move beyond orgasmic sexuality as soon as possible. In the Garden of Eden, the forbidden fruit is the orgasmic experience that Eve shares with Adam, because this is how they come to an immediate face to face experience with god.

The French term for orgasm is “le petit mort” which means the little death. In many ways, this transcendental sex is a death of sorts. We lose touch with our smaller ego driven self as the truth of our connection to each other and the universe is known. This is probably the element of our sexual selves that drives the mystery and fear that is associated with our sexual selves.

Finding the doorways to meaning in our lives are a rare and precious opportunity. Wade’s book provides some instruction on the techniques and practices you can engage in to create more opening to these experiences as well.

by Dr. Tammy Nelson

You are still hiding the affair. In fact, as you lay in bed with your lover you think about your husband and how much it would hurt him if he knew. You don’t love this other guy, but the sex; well… the sex is great. But you love your husband and you’ve been together for so long. And the guilt kicks in. You get up, throw your clothes on, apologize and rush out the door to get home before your husband knows you’ve been gone.

Or you are sitting across from each other in the therapist’s office. You’re both hurt. She’s crying. You feel lost. Instead of wanting to leave her and end your marriage you’ve decided that the whole affair was a big mistake. But in your heart you know that the affair isn’t over. You’re not sure how to end it. And you’re scared.

How do you end the affair?

There are three steps to ending an affair and really making your marriage work. For all the great advice your friends, family and even well-meaning therapists will give you, these are the three things you need to know to move on and help your marriage survive.

Number one: Let yourself grieve. Know that it’s not easy. Cheating is based on lies and deceit and there are usually feelings involved, even if the feelings are guilt and fear. You may have had a vision of how things might have been different with your affair partner. Maybe you had a fantasy that this relationship would work out better than it did. You are grieving that right now. Just like a death, ending the affair means you have to feel all the feelings that an ending brings. And endings can be complicated. Most people don’t come back from an affair saying “That was awful!” Instead, they come out of an affair feeling like they had a wonderful experience of passion, aliveness, intensity and fun. It can hurt to let that go. The guilt and remorse over hurting your spouse or family may be very real at the same time. And your affair partner has feelings too. They’re not just someone you cheated with. They have a life and a heart and they have a whole story to grieve as well.

Number two: End the affair with integrity. Unless you’re still in high school, don’t act like a teenager. Walking away and never looking back might feel nice at first, but don’t underestimate the impact you have made on someone else’s life. I’ve had clients who had affairs with people they work with. When they get caught or they go back to their spouse, they decide they want to end the affair and cut the affair partner off as if it never happened. They stop returning phone calls; they don’t answer emails, and don’t make eye contact in the hallway. While this may be at the request of the spouse or of a well-meaning therapist, how can you maintain that you are doing the right thing by your spouse when you can’t end this relationship like a grown-up? Clean up your mess, treat your affair partner with dignity, and end the affair with integrity. Make amends if necessary; apologize for hurting them, leading them on, or getting them into this mess in the first place. Let them know you are empathetic to their feelings and that you take responsibility for all of the consequences that have happened as a result of your actions. Make it clear that the affair has to end, but do it with care and respect. Your spouse will never believe that you are really done with the affair until you can end it with true remorse. Ignoring it and hoping it will go away just drives the feelings underground. Most likely they will pop back up someday and you may even end up going back in order to resolve your feelings.

And Number Three: Accept that you became a different person in the affair. When you were with the affair partner, a new part of you was created. Perhaps you were more charming, sexy, engaging, and maybe you really liked that part of you. Your affair partner may have brought out qualities in you that you never knew you had or that have been dormant for a long time. When you end an affair, you may feel that you have to give up not only that other person but the new person that you have become. Giving up that part of you is now no longer realistic. If you try and cut yourself off from the good feelings that new part brought you, it will only force you to hide those parts from your partner or push you back into the affair to allow you to be that person again. You have to acknowledge that this new part of you exists and find a way to integrate him or her into your marriage. This will take work with your partner and you may need the help of a therapist as well.

These three things, grieving the affair, ending the outside relationship with integrity, and integrating your new self into your marriage, are the best ways to end an affair and move on. If you want to stay married to your current spouse and make things work, sit down and talk about these three areas and how you each feel about them as you work them through.

Share what it is like for each of you on either side of the experience. You may gain some insight and understanding of your own behavior and feelings through this process.

If you are ready to put as much energy into your married life as you put into your affair, you may find that can have a new marriage — now.