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 In a relationship, couples weather many problems and issues. For couples where 1 partner is struggling with some mental health issues (e.g., depression, anxiety, Asperger, ADHD, OCD, etc.), they experience additional stressors which other couples do not have to undergo. Many of them, however, do not have awareness about these unique stressors. Instead, blame would often be attributed to the affected partner personally, i.e., being uncaring, selfish, unkind, or even abusive.
 How do you cope with your anger? Do you know that there are 4 predominant styles and with each there are associated ways to change and manage our anger? Come and identify your specific style(s) and what to do.
 For those who had divorced, parenting will have its challenges. However, may be even more difficult is co-parenting your child with other involved adults in the child’s life (be it your ex, new partner, grandparents, etc). Relationship stress often occurs when one or both people can’t agree on who is responsible for fulfilling what needs the child may have. Conflicting co-parents are often unable to nurture the child successfully. Effective co-parenting is required to help your child develop to be holistically-healthy, balanced, socially productive, and reasonably content (happy).
To nurture well, the co-parents need to evolve from their conflicts to having clear goals, plans, priorities, “job description” (roles), and rules based on consensus. Although individual co-parents will have unique goals, most parents will strive for some general, basic long-term co-parenting outcomes.  “For better or worse, through sickness and in health, till death do us part.” Extra-marital affair, without a doubt, would be categorized under the “worse” part in the marital vow. Its damaging effects are due to the fact that it shakes the very foundations of the relationship: Trust and Commitment. The discovery of an affair in a marriage often leads to a crisis full of emotional struggles for all parties involved. Eventually, should a couple decide to continue their marriage, some of the questions that would surface are “Where do we go from here?”, “Will things ever get back to normal?”, etc.
Whether a marriage would survive an affair is dependent on the strength of the couple’s emotional bond, as well as the efforts both put in the recovery process. The tasks facing the couple are two: rebuilding the marriage and personal healing. Here are some tips on rebuilding a marriage after an affair:  Often we seem to be trapped in the repeated cycle of doing unhealthy pattern of behaviours, over and over again, despite the pain and suffering we go through. Sometimes we might even have the insights that these behaviours came from unresolved issues from our past and yet felt helpless in changing them. Here's a poem for us to reflect upon.
 Many of us enter into marriage with this fog of love, passion, and dream. One day we wake up from this fog and start wondering where did our love go? This is often a crisis point for some individuals, and in turn their marriages, where doubts and despair start setting in. The fears that grip them are “Am I able to stay married if I don’t feel love?” and “Must I remain unhappy forever?”
Hollywood movies and romantic novels are culprits in contributing to this crisis, where all these love stories depict the hero/prince and the heroine/princess getting married and hence live “happily ever after”, communicating that just feeling “in-love” is enough to conquer all. What they fail to show is what happens afterward where reality, routine, chores, mundane day-to-day tasks, and other people’s (in-law, children) presence set in.  Alcohol has become part of the lifestyle of being an Expat in Singapore. For many people, it is not unusual to enjoy a bottle of wine with the meals, it’s a must to add some fun to the parties, and it’s something to do to de-stress and unwind at the end of a hard day. What some people don’t realize is that they have crossed the line from being a social drinker to having alcohol problems. Many people have this stereotypical picture of an alcoholic being someone who needs a drink every day, drinks from the moment they open their eyes, can’t go to work, sleep on the street, etc. What they don’t realize, addiction is defined by control: who has the control? You or the alcohol?
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AuthorMs Ho Shee Wai Archives
April 2017
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