It can be difficult to decide to get a divorce when you are afraid of what will be going on with your children when they are out of your sight. Sometimes it is unfounded fear that has to do with control issues. Other times though it has to do with the history of the other parent that has lead up to the divorce.
If a parent has problems with alcohol or drug abuse the children may be in danger. There is enough evidence to suggest that the behaviors of such individuals are often unpredictable. A history of violent behavior is another reason to try to keep the children from being alone with that parent. Even if the children were never physically
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No one except an individual can determine whether or not a divorce is right for him or her. However, there are some general questions which pretty much apply to everybody. Thinking about the following issues may help them evaluate whether a divorce is right for themselves.
What specifically is making someone think of divorce?
Physical Abuse
When a spouse is violent to someone and/or their kids, this is a safety issue. No matter what someone may have done, noone deserves to be physically hurt. Spouses may try to justify their actions by casting blame for all marital problems. A marriage requires effort by both persons to make it work.
Ask the following questions:
a. Has your spouse tried to isolate you from your friends and
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I often come across sad examples of the powers of self-delusion that the narcissist provokes in his victims. It is what I call "malignant optimism". People refuse to believe that some questions are unsolvable, some diseases incurable, some disasters inevitable. They see a sign of hope in every fluctuation. They read meaning and patterns into every random occurrence, utterance, or slip. They are deceived by their own pressing need to believe in the ultimate victory of good over evil, health over sickness, order over disorder. Life appears otherwise so meaningless, so unjust and so arbitrary…
So, they impose upon it a design, progress, aims, and paths. This is magical thinking.
"If only he tried hard enough", "If he only really
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Some of my clients have come to me feeling like their worlds were not under their own control. They felt as though everyone else ran their lives and had some aspect of control in everything that they did. I asked them to note some specific situations in which they felt this way and how they felt "out of control" of the situation. It’s interesting to note that in every circumstance, there was some aspect of "guilt" or "second-guessing" involved. Indeed, these are the purest signs of self-relinquished control.
There are many ways that people can feel "loss of control" in their lives. We can lose control through frustration and burn-out, living in a rut, stagnation, illness,
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I wrote a novel about a family group that shucks off civilization and goes to live in an ancient cliff dwelling in Arizona. It seemed like a fun concept. Don’t we all sometimes dream of a simpler life? Doesn’t the past look good through a long lens?
My story’s wife and mother, Leah Ellis, isn’t wild about the project. It’s her husband who is enamored with the past, not she. Their son thinks the idea is cool; their daughter is too young to have an opinion. Leah’s best friend signs on, along with the group’s leader, a renegade archaeologist who holds strange sway over them all.
For years I had been an advocate for victims of domestic violence, not happy work.
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The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), passed into law in 1994 and amended in 2001, provides hope for immigrant domestic violence survivors. An abused immigrant who is married to a U.S. citizen or Lawful Permanent Resident or who divorced her abuser in the past two years may now petition on her own for an immigrant visa and green card application, without the abuser’s knowledge or consent.
In this confidential process, CIS (formerly called ‘INS’) agents cannot legally contact the abuser and tell the abusive spouse anything of the abused immigrant’s attempts to obtain a green card under VAWA. The process can often be completed within a year for those married to U.S. citizens. This process also provides renewed work authorization to
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When starting a new relationship, many women (and men as well) tend to overlook some behaviors in their new partner that do not bode well for the future. Then, down the road, comes the exclamation ‘If I had only known…’. As a Psychotherapist who has worked with mostly women and a few men in the field of Domestic Violence, during counseling sessions we can always trace back unpleasant and also dangerous character traits to the very start of the relationship.
Here are some ‘Red Flags’ to watch out for in a new partner.
He makes decisions about where to go with little or no input from you.
He belittles your opinion when the two of you are alone and may call
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Have you ever found yourself in a repetitive and negative pattern of behavior in relationships? Have you consistently gotten unhappy results, but felt clueless as to how you got them? Have you believed that "they" were tricking or deceiving you? Have you suffered and been unhappy every time you’ve repeated the cycle? Do you wonder how to break free? There is a way.
The first thing to do is to realize that there is one common factor among all those experiences…you. Even though, seemingly, you made great efforts in your selections so as not to make the "same mistake" again, you got the same results. Even though you took great care to behave differently this time, it turned out
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Common thinking is that domestic violence is a ‘women’s issue.’ While it is true there are more reported abuse cases involving women, it is a fact that men are abused by their domestic partners as well.
My belief is that there is indeed a gender factor when we think of abuse in the ‘general sense.’ By general I mean all forms and manifestations of abuse: reckless conduct, competitive violent aggression, abuse associated with lowered inhibitions, excessive stress reactivity, underdeveloped interpersonal communication skills, and the abusive conduct that can be a byproduct of drug-seeking behavior and the like.
However, I do not believe there is as much a gender factor when it comes to the abuse characteristic of ‘intimate partner violence,’
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