Advice
Should I divorce my husband for the hot new guy in our building?
Debating whether to leave or stay after the sex goes cold

Dear Michael,
Iāve been with my husband for 10 years and the sex is pretty much gone. It stopped being exciting a long time ago and pretty much the only time we ever do it is with the occasional third.
A really hot guy moved into our building about a year ago. We would see each other sometimes in the elevator or at our buildingās gym and we started talking and really hit it off. Mark is 15 years younger than I but we seem to have a lot in common. We started hooking up and the sex is amazing.
I havenāt told my husband because itās breaking our rule about no repeats. I have to say that the secrecy is hot. Itās kind of a thrill to take the elevator upstairs when I say Iām going on an errand. But itās more than that. I have a connection with Mark that is far more amazing than what I have ever felt with my husband. Not just the sex. We just enjoy being together, talking about anything and everything.
My husband went to visit his family last weekend and I spent the whole time with Mark. Since then I canāt stop thinking that I want to leave my husband and be with Mark.
Part of me thinks this is a crazy mid-life crisis. I mean, this kidās in a totally different place in life. But we have mind-blowing sex and a fantastic connection. Iād like your thoughts on how to proceed.
Michael replies:
Youāve got a lot to consider.
First: Sex with a long-term partner changes over time. It tends to be less about erotic heat and more about the connection with a person whom you love. In other words, itās being with the person youāre with that makes the sex meaningful and even great. Having a good sexual relationship with a long-term partner comes far more from a heart connection than from a crotch attachment.
Second: You seem ready to throw your relationship under the bus pretty quickly, without addressing other problems in the relationship besides sex. When you are sneaking around, lying, and rule-breaking , I donāt see how you can look your husband in the eye; and if you canāt look him in the eye, you certainly canāt have even a half-way decent relationship.
Yet another point to consider: Affairs pretty much always seem more exciting than marriage. The partner is new, which almost automatically makes the sex hotter; the secrecy is a thrill; and you donāt have to deal with paying the rent, house chores, and all the petty annoyances of living up-close with someone day-in, day-out.
You are bringing lots of energy to your affair, and everything about it is exciting. You are bringing no energy ā at least no positive energy ā to your marriage. You get what you put into a relationship.
Divorce is not something that should be entered into lightly. Be aware that if you leave your husband for Mark, you will no doubt find over time that the sex becomes less exciting and that the connection is not always fantastic. No surprise, 75 percent of marriages that begin with affair partners end in divorce. While I donāt think statistics predict what will happen to any particular couple, believing that you will have a significantly better relationship with your affair partner than you did with your husband sets you up for likely disappointment.
Many gay men focus on “hot sex” as the big draw, pursuing a lot of sex with a lot of men, and/or pursuing an ongoing series of relationships that last until the sex cools. If thatās what you want, thatās fine. But itās a different path from pursuing a close and loving long-term relationship, which involves knowing someone well and having him know you well; collaborating on getting through the hard stuff life throws at us; finding ways to make peace with disappointment; and consistently striving to be someone worth being married to.
How to proceed? While you are the only person who should make that decision, I would suggest that whatever your choice, keep in mind that marriage can be more than what youāve made of it, so far.
Michael Radkowsky, Psy.D. is a licensed psychologist who works with couples and individuals in D.C. He can be found online atĀ michaelradkowsky.com. All identifying information has been changed for reasons of confidentiality. Have a question? Send it toĀ [email protected].

Hi Michael,
Iām in a relationship I think I donāt want to be in.
Ed is very sweet and thatās part of the problem. He is always solicitous of me, caring, kind, agreeable. I donāt want to hurt his feelings, which I certainly would do if I dump him.
Weāve gotten into what is now a serious relationship because of him, not me. He kept asking me out on one date after another, and I kept saying yes. He proposed being exclusive, and I said yes.
I was lonely, Edās cute and a nice guy, and it felt good to be cared about.
Ed is great at planning a fun life. Dinners, vacations, socializing. My life is way more exciting than it used to be. Ed takes the initiative on everything and heās very good at it.
But I feel smothered, like I donāt have a say in how I live and what I do. We spend all our time together. And my friends are now āourā friends because he always joins me when I get together with them.
I canāt talk about this with him because I don’t think he can handle it. If he sees the least sign of me being upset, he says, āWhatās wrong? Are you mad at me?ā with this vulnerable tone in his voice. Heās told me heās afraid of losing me when Iāve shown any unhappiness.
Iām no longer attracted to him. I donāt know why, heās as cute as ever.
Sometimes I wonder whatās wrong with me. I have a good-looking, caring boyfriend. So many guys want this. I should be happy. But Iām not.
On the other hand, Iām afraid that if I break up with Ed I will be lonely all over again and maybe never find such a caring person.
Any guidance you have would be appreciated in how to think about this and sort it out.
Michael replies:
This relationship is giving you all sorts of opportunities to become a more solid person.
First point to consider: If you canāt set boundaries, you will spend your life twisting yourself into a pretzel to accommodate others. Thatās what is happening now with Ed.
When we are struggling to succeed at an important life skill, as you are here, itās helpful to think how our personal history may be contributing to our being stuck.
Some possibilities for you to consider: What example did your parents model? Perhaps they had trouble setting boundaries in their relationships, so you didnāt learn how to do so. Or perhaps when you were growing up, you didnāt have much say about what you could or couldnāt do, so you didnāt learn you could speak up about what is important to you.
Iām painting with a broad brush here, just to inspire your own thinking. While our lives arenāt rigidly determined by our pasts, the ways that we learned to relate as we grew up do have a powerful influence on how we live in the present. Having some sense of what has shaped our operating system can help us loosen up and try new ways of behaving.
Second (and related) point: You cannot go through life without ever disappointing anyone or you will (as noted above) start to resemble a pretzel. Yes, youāll likely upset Ed when you tell him that youāre unhappy in the relationship. But if Ed is going to address his clingy and needy behavior, he needs to hear this.
At their best, relationships challenge us to grow. This relationship is pushing you to tolerate disappointing someone you care about, in the service of saying what you need to say. And guess what? Your letting Ed know where you stand will challenge him to work on his own relational wobbliness. Very cool.
Third point: Why are you not stepping forward with your own ideas about what you want to do and how you want to live? You are letting Ed do all the work. What is up with that?
One obvious explanation: Your difficulty setting a boundary is stopping you from asserting what you want. In other words, your inability to say ānoā is leading you to feel stifled in this relationship. Good news: you have the power to change this.
Another possibility: Maybe you donāt actually have much in the way of interests or ideas for what you would like to do, and Ed is merely filling the void so that the two of you have some kind of life together.
If so, I encourage you to start thinking about what is meaningful to you. Developing a selfāfiguring out what is important to you, what you care aboutāis one of the great tasks and great joys of being alive. If you just keep doing what others around you wantāboyfriends, friends, familyāyou may keep feeling resentful and will squander your life.
I donāt know if you would actually enjoy being with Ed if you do the work to become a solid person who speaks up about what is important and brings his own agenda to the relationship. While itās your decision to do so or not, I urge you not to decide based on fear of stepping outside your comfort zone.
And please consider that this work would help you in any future relationship, if you end things with Ed.
One more point: Itās no surprise that youāve lost interest in having sex with Ed. Being enmeshed with someone as tightly as you describe your fusion with Ed is a desire-killer. Perhaps this would change if you give yourself some room to breathe.
Michael Radkowsky, Psy.D. is a licensed psychologist who works with couples and individuals in D.C. He can be found online atĀ michaelradkowsky.com. All identifying information has been changed for reasons of confidentiality. Have a question? Send it toĀ [email protected].
Advice
Navigating these uncertain times
You have no power over others, but you have a lot of power over yourself

For Valentineās Day, I was planning to write a column about shifts we can make in our attitudes and behaviors to strengthen our love relationships and deepen our connection with our partners.
Then, over the past few weeks, as Iāve been listening to many of my clients express their concerns about the state of our country and our world, I realized that much of what is required to have a great relationship can also help us get through the difficult times we live in.
So here are some principles that I hope will help you to navigate both the challenges of being in a close relationship and the challenges of uncertain times.
These principles overlap because they are all components of an approach to living that focuses on developing and maintaining agency over your life, and working to strengthen your resilience. The more solid you are, the better you can get through the hard stuff.
Strive to behave with integrity, in a way that you respect. You are likely to feel a lot better about yourself if you do what you believe is right, rather than betraying your values out of fear or to please others. The playwright Lillian Hellman, pressed to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1952 and āname names,ā said it well: āI cannot and will not cut my conscience to suit this yearās fashions.ā (Of course, only you can decide how to balance possible consequences with the importance of honoring your principles.)
Stand up for what you believe in. Being quiet out of fear or concern for what others will think leaves us feeling like helpless victims. And you cannot have an intimate relationship when you donāt let your partner know important parts of who you are.
Strive to be non-reactive. Do your best to not let others (or circumstances) press your buttons so that you lash out, rather than responding thoughtfully and with deliberation, based on your values.
Strive to always soothe your anxiety. The philosopher Viktor Frankl wrote: āBetween stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.ā When someone or something is starting to make us crazy, the best first move we can make is to quiet ourselves. Doing so allows us to think how to best respond.
Thereās a great saying from Twelve Step programs: āIf you want to have self-esteem, behave in esteemable ways.ā You are more likely to do so when you first calm yourself, rather than exploding with anxiety or rage.
Strive to tolerate discomfort: Sometimes we canāt do much about what is making us uncomfortable or causing us distress. Our partner may not change in ways we would like; our job situation may be rough; we may face hostility in the outside world. Identifying how we can deal with challenges and difficult circumstances in a way that helps us become stronger and more resilient can often help us to weather them a bit more easily.
Strive to tolerate uncertainty: There really are no guarantees about anything important in life. Thatās the way it goes. We canāt know how things will turn out āneither our relationships nor our lives nor the fate of humanity. So if we are to construct a meaningful life, we have no choice other than to keep putting one foot in front of the other, doing our best to respond thoughtfully and to have an impact when and where we can, without knowing the outcome.
Strive to stay anchored in reality, not lost in feelings. When we let our feelings run the show, itās easy to get spun up and reactive. While our feelings are a source of information, they are not reality. All sorts of thingsāour pasts, the distortions of social media, what people around us are doing and sayingācan contribute to how we feel about a situation.
Yes, itās always a good idea to be aware of our feelings. But before acting on them, calm yourself, get some clarity about why you may be feeling what youāre feeling, and think about how reality lines up (or doesnāt line up) with what youāre feeling. In other words, aim to keep the big picture in mind.
Remember that you cannot change others, but you may at times be able to influence them. For example, when I first became vegetarian, I wanted to push my friends to adopt a vegetarian diet by āenlighteningā them about the misery of factory farms and the environmental cost of raising animals for food. I soon realized that lectures and judgment are not a great way to change minds. Serving delicious vegetarian food for a dinner is more helpful. So think about how you can reach out to someone or to others with different views, in a way that they are more likely to hear you.
Obviously, there are limits to this approach. There may be times when you arenāt going to be heard, no matter how you say what you have to say. The point at which we shift from reaching out to someone to taking a ādonāt tread on meā stance can be tricky to discern, and the decision to make that shift should be taken thoughtfully and with appreciation of possible consequences.
Keep your focus mainly on what you can do about a situation. Focus less on what the other person is doing wrong, or not doing. While you have little or no power over others, you have a lot of power over yourself. Thinking about what you can do to effect at least some of the change you would like, in your relationship or your community or our world, is an antidote to feeling powerless.
Michael Radkowsky, Psy.D. is a licensed psychologist who works with couples and individuals in D.C. He can be found online atĀ michaelradkowsky.com. All identifying information has been changed for reasons of confidentiality. Have a question? Send it toĀ [email protected].)
Advice
My partner wonāt come out to her parents
How to cope when you love someone whoās closeted

Dear Michael:
Iām having a terrible communication problem with my girlfriend. She just isnāt hearing me on some issues that mean a lot.
Nicki doesnāt get why itās important for me that we be out to her parents as a couple. Iāve explained my position over and over. Iām not willing to hide or pretend, and doing so makes things way more complicated down the road, if we stay together. Eventually weād have to explain our lies. Itās crazy to imagine hiding our marriage, or hiding children. More than crazy!
How can you be believable about anything if you arenāt honest about who you are and the nature of your relationship?
Nickiās whole response boils down to her being afraid that her parents will reject her (theyāre deeply religious, conservative). Me trying to explain to her that you canāt let fear run your life just doesnāt penetrate her brain.
As a result I havenāt met her parents yet, and our relationship is a lot more tentative than I would like it to be at this point.
Besides this ābiggie,ā there is one other issue that she just doesnāt get, no matter how much I explain my position: She makes fun of me a lot ā especially when weāre out with friends. About all sorts of things. How I dress (too stereotypically lesbian in her view); my interests (same criticism); my supposed inability to cook; my bad driving; my loving my dog too much. And more.
Nicki either says sheās not making fun of me, or says that sheās just kidding around and I am too serious. The more I ask her to stop, the more she tells me to ālighten up.ā She just isnāt hearing me.
Aside from communication issues around these big topics, we have an otherwise great relationship that I would like to last. However, this stuff isnāt acceptable.
What more can I do to communicate more clearly in a way that she will hear me?
Michael replies:
It sounds like youāre both making your points loud and clear. You criticize Nicki, and Nicki criticizes you.
Communication means that you say what you want to say to your partner, and you listen when she wants to share something. It does not mean that you get your partner to agree with you or behave as you want her to.
Even if you think that Nickiās not being out to her parents is crazy, she doesnāt have to come out to them.
Is Nicki open to the idea of eventually coming out to her parents? Mustering the courage to do so can be a slow process. If Nicki would like to work on this, and you are willing to wait, then stay in the relationship and work on being patient and accepting. But if this is a deal breaker issue now, Nicki is not for you.
While you can continue to try to change Nicki, this tactic doesnāt seem to be getting you anywhere, except annoyed. You have a lot of power over your own behavior, but little power over how your partner behaves. In other words, you get to be with the person you are with; not a hypothetical āimprovedā version that better suits you.
With regard to the teasing issue: I believe that if someone you care about tells you that you are hurting them, itās a good idea to listen. I donāt get why Nicki wants to keep behaving toward you in ways that you find painful. Could it be that all of this is linked?
Perhaps Nicki is hurt or annoyed or angry that you wonāt accept her not being out to her parents; and is getting back at you for your ongoing pestering by torturing you with criticisms and insults. Or, perhaps your hurt, annoyance, and anger over Nickiās ongoing teasing is leading you to retaliate by continually criticizing her closeted status.
Think of your relationship as a system: When one part of a system changes, it impacts the entire system. If either one of you changes your behavior for the better, you will likely have a positive impact on your relationship. Do you want to make the first move, and see what happens?
You might also begin an ongoing discussion with Nicki about the benefits of being respectful toward each other, listening to each other, striving to understand each otherās points of view, and tolerating that you sometimes see both minor and important issues differently.
But only start that discussion if it makes sense to you that having a decent relationship depends on your continually striving to do these things.
Michael Radkowsky, Psy.D. is a licensed psychologist who works with couples and individuals in D.C. He can be found online atĀ michaelradkowsky.com. All identifying information has been changed for reasons of confidentiality. Have a question? Send it toĀ [email protected].
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