Blog

My Ex-Husband Is Manipulative and Mean

How to Get Your Ex to Co-Parent Peacefully without Lawyers
By Kathy Murray, Laura Doyle Certified Senior Relationship Coach

When your ex-husband is playing games, using the kids to get to you and refusing to do simple, reasonable things like drop them off when he says he will, it’s maddening.

Especially if the whole reason you got divorced was to get away from his crazy-making behavior, it can make you feel trapped.

Those getting hurt the most are the kids, and that breaks your mama heart. Why can’t he see what he’s putting them through?

Luckily, there is a solution. It doesn’t involve threats, courts or begging.

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My Mother-in-Law Hates Me for No Reason

How to Get Your MIL to Behave and Give You the Kind of Help You Want

Mothers-in-law can be pushy.

Yours may think she knows better than you how to make a cup of tea, burp the baby or get the spot off the carpet, but it’s your beverage, your baby and your carpet, and nobody wants to be told how to do things.

Sometimes it goes even further and you get the impression that she just doesn’t like you. At all. In fact, you get the feeling she’s rooting for you to fail.

It’s like she hates you, and you’ve never done anything to her except marry her son.

It feels terrible. And as much as you’d like to put her in her place, you can’t because your husband insists she means well and you should try to be more understanding around her.

Or maybe you have had your blow-ups with her and now things are tenser than ever.

But you can’t get your mother-in-law (MIL) out of your life. So you’re stuck with what feels like an enemy in the camp. Forever!

Fortunately, you can solve this.

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My Husband Wants to Separate

The Secret to Recovering His Affection and Adoration
By Leticia Vasquez, Laura Doyle Certified Relationship Coach

Fall 2012

“I look at you sleeping in bed next to me and I feel nothing.”

Those were the devastating words my husband said, staring into my eyes the whole time. As I held back the tears that stung my eyes, I came to understand what the sound of silence was like.

It was a big ouch. As if I had been punched in the stomach and was gasping for air.

How could that wonderful man who had adored me and worshipped the ground I walked on fifteen years earlier be telling me this?

Very matter-of-factly, he went on to say that he wanted to be honest and didn’t want to hurt me. In the same breath, he mentioned that he’d had a look at rentals in our area but couldn’t go back to living like a student.

The rest of that Sunday is a blur.

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His Drinking Is No Longer a Problem

By an anonymous Empowered Wife

When my husband and I met over 20 years ago, I knew he enjoyed drinking beer or whiskey every day. As a hippie chick, granola type, I was more interested in herbal tea and berry smoothies.

I felt a bit nervous about his drinking, but I loved him and thought I could adapt.

Over time, though, I began to consider my husband’s drinking a problem.

When he drank too much, it was unpredictable whether he would ascend into charm or descend into insensitivity and mean-spiritedness. He could get loud, obnoxious, sloppy, dull-eyed, and make aggressive remarks.

I did not like his drinking. I wished he would change. Then I would feel happier.

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5 Tips for Making the Honeymoon Phase Last a Lifetime

What Every Bride Needs to Know but Most Don’t

When it comes to keeping the magic alive for a lifetime, here’s what I know now: Forget about premarital counseling or talking exhaustively about how to parent, where to live and how much to save for retirement.

Turns out that song about how the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return was right–sustained romance is a matter of learning a few simple skills.

But maybe they didn’t offer Relationships 101 at your school, just like they didn’t have it at mine.

I didn’t learn Intimacy Skills™ before my wedding, and just a few years later I believed I had married the wrong man. I dragged my husband to counseling but ended up feeling more hopeless than ever when he didn’t want to spend time with me or even make love to me.

I thought my only options were to spend the rest of my life in a loveless relationship or to divorce. But when happily married women showed me a few of their practices, something magical happened.

The man who wooed me returned.

One of the big secrets they taught me was that women are the keepers of the relationship and that we have the power to make it happy and intimate–or stressful and tense. Just as Spider-Man learned, with great power comes great responsibility. I believe we women have a responsibility to learn the skills that contribute to lasting love and to pass them on to each other.

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How to Share the 6 Intimacy Skills with a Friend

3 Ways to Open the Door without Making Her Feel Defensive

I’ve received a lot of requests for a blog on how to share Intimacy Skills with a sister, mom, daughter or friend.

Seems we all know a woman or two who’s having a tough time in her relationship.

Maybe you listen to her vent or you’re her shoulder to cry on.

You wish you could help her, but sometimes her relationship problems feel insurmountable, or she doesn’t seem open to hearing about what she could be doing differently.

You want to be supportive, but listening to her NET (Needless Emotional Turmoil) is no fun.

You’d love to see her feeling desired, cherished and adored by her man, and you’re wondering how to get the message across without insulting her.

You want to show her some resources, but how?

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Empowered Wives TV

The Inspirational Series About How to Attract Your Husband’s Time, Attention and Affection

You hardly ever get to hear what’s actually going on inside of people’s marriages.

The more serious the problem, the less you hear about it.

That’s why, when you’re in a struggling relationship, you feel like the only one in the world with that problem.

Of course you’re not.

Lots of women have the same struggles as you in their relationships.

They just aren’t talking about it…except on the new streaming Amazon show Empowered Wives.

The show explores the struggles you rarely hear about, and what a woman can single-handedly do to revitalize her boring or broken relationship.

Each guest has a life-changing insight, and many experience radical transformation as a result of a brief but profound conversation.

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My Husband Hates Me

How to Bring Back that Loving Feeling

Recently a woman named Sharon told me that she had no hope of having a happy marriage because her husband hated her.

When I asked how she knew that, she said that he was always scowling at her and that he took every opportunity to say mean things.

It sounded incredibly lonely and painful. I could see why she was feeling so hopeless.

She had plenty of evidence that her husband hated her, and that he hurt her intentionally.

As I listened, I had a hunch there was an entirely different explanation for the way he was acting.

I suspected that her marriage troubles were totally solvable.

Experience told me that her husband’s hatred was more likely a symptom than the real problem.

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How to Save Your Marriage when He Won’t Even Try

What One Wife Did All by Herself that Made Her Marriage Magical Again

One of the most painful things I often hear from a woman struggling in her marriage is hopelessness about her husband being unwilling to work on the relationship.

She’ll tell me he won’t go to counseling. He won’t even read a single book.

She’s already exhausted from all the work she’s done on the relationship, and it’s apparent he just doesn’t care. At all.

And he’s the one who has the anger problem or who doesn’t make any effort to spend time with the family or who wants to separate.

The good news is that any wife can singlehandedly solve her marriage problems.

And don’t worry–he’ll change too.

That’s what Olivia discovered. I’ll let her tell you in her own words:

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How to Get Your Husband to Pay Attention to You

4 Ways to Bring Back the Magic from When You First Fell in Love

Sometimes it feels like everything else is more important to your husband than you are: work, the kids, whoever is texting him. Even the dog gets more of his time than you do!

You’re craving his attention so much it hurts, and yet the whole day passes–and the next and the next–and he has barely acknowledged that you exist.

It’s easy to get resentful and feel unimportant. Him just asking about your day or sitting next to you on the couch would be so simple to do and go such a long way with you.

But he doesn’t. He won’t.

I still remember what that was like.

Since you can’t control anyone except yourself, how do you get him to improve?

Here’s how to solve this painful dynamic:

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