Emotional Infidelity

Book excerpt: What’s holding you back from a great marriage? “I don’t believe in ‘okay,’ ‘decent,’ or ‘solid’ marriages. I’m against them,” says M. Gary Neuman. “I believe only in great marriages, and that you should expect and reach for no less.” In the last fifteen years, M. Gary Neuman, marital therapist and architect of the Sandcastles Divorce Therapy Program, has helped thousands of couples in crisis. Couples who fight. Who’ve grown apart. Who are stuck in relationships that run more on routine and rancor than love and understanding. What he’s found is that, contrary to popular belief, the problem is usually not poor communication. It’s the failure to put most of your focus into your marriage. You’ve only got so much energy. Are you spending it by being emotionally unfaithful? Take a quick check: Do you send that funny e-mail to your friends at work—but not to your spouse? Do you chew over all the problems on the job so thoroughly with your colleagues that by the time you get home, you just don’t feel like going into it all over again? Do you get a secret thrill out of flirting with coworkers—thinking it’s safe because you know it’s not going any further? If so, you’re committing emotional infidelity—and you’re draining your marriage of the energy it needs to be great. Learning how to break this cycle is one of eleven secrets M. Gary Neuman shares in his provocative new book. Based on the ten-week program he’s developed in his successful couples counseling practice, the book offers guidelines that are often counterintuitive, even outrageous or shocking. But they work. Dare to limit contact with members of the opposite sex. Dare to need each other. Dare to put in writing the nitty-gritty realities of a marriage plan. Dare to put your marriage before your kids or job. Dare to make love in a whole new way. Dare to change your focus: make the commitment to focus on each of the eleven secrets (ten plus one bonus secret) for one week apiece and you’ll reap the rewards of a transformed marriage and a reconfirmed relationship. M. Gary Neuman’s program is guaranteed to challenge you and make you reexamine the myths holding you back from true happiness and satisfaction. It will change your marriage forever.