The aging process

Many of our close friends are over 50 and going through the different changes brought about by this aging process. Personally, I have the comfort of looking back on those “turning 50” years and can honestly realize they were a time of tremendous yet positive shifts in understanding. 

Sometimes this new change in life can be a time of pain as individuals consider all the life previously taken place and how short the future may be. In reality, during the first fifty years we generally have a truly productive time of about twenty years. This is based on the knowledge that we don’t comprehend the totality and complexity of life until we approach thirty.

Developmental Psychology demonstrates between ages twenty-eight  to thirty-two there are major paradigm shifts from a time of gathering information about maturity into the ability to use this information to become productive.

From thirty to fifty we attempt to live our life, using the information we accumulated in these early years in order to build something worthwhile. With this aging perspective as a guide, imagine what we can accomplish the next twenty or thirty years after we turn fifty. It will be a time when we will have a lot more understanding and maturity and can now build a life we truly enjoy. 

When moving into the fifty's, imagine you are sitting in a chair. If your chair is turned around so all you can do is look back with regret, then despair and disappointment with be the energy of your life. However, if you turn the chair around so you can look forward with confidence and excitement, then life will be good as long as we don’t let stupid thoughts rob us of all the fun. Just think, by the time we hit ninety we won’t really have anything to worry about!

Our journey is designed to evolve from the simplicity of childhood into the pragmatic wisdom of maturity. The key is using each day to find more reason to be thankful for the opportunity to celebrate the journey of life.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below and if you want to be part of our blog family fill out the request in the upper right corner of the blog.

My book about finding balance in relationships is called FOREVER YOURS. It is the fictional story of a man and women who fall in love in the 60's, raise a family and learn how to overcome the challenges of life in order to truly find their own relationship together. You can find out more at Amazon (click here). Or go to my website for more information. (Click here)

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I am stuck!

We previously talked about staying in relationships where trust was broken (click here forblog on ‘Loss of Trust’). When we are in a relationship that is unsafe, why do we stay?

First, let us set some concept of what is unsafe? Any relationship in which we lose our identity (Click here for blog on “I vs We”.) or lose total trust in the other person is an unsafe relationship.  

The purpose of a loving relationship is to provide a safe place for our partner to grow and experience their journey. Obviously, the relationship will work better if our partner provides the same safety to us as we do for them. If I have to conform to someone’s demands, and I lose my identity, then this relationship is no longer safe for my journey.

But why do I stay? The old adage is “The devil I know is better than the devil I don’t know”. There may be a fear about leaving the security of a relationship, because we have no idea what will happen outside of the world we have formed. So even if our known world is unsafe, it may be better than what we may find outside.

Another reason we may stay is because of religious or social dictates. Once again, the pain of others disapproval is too hard to bear, so we stay in an unsafe place to avoid it.

Whatever the reason, it is important to remind ourselves we are never stuck in a relationship, it is simply our choice to stay where we feel best, even if best is not safe. We are never stuck; we are never victims; we just make choices. This is difficult to grasp, especially when we are seemingly caught in this relationship trap, but is it really a trap or is it a place I stay because of fear?

What are your thoughts? Email us at nyccc1@aol.com or comment below. If you want to be a follower of the blog, click on the “Follower” Box.

My book about finding balance in relationships is called FOREVER YOURS. It is the fictional story of a man and women who fall in love in the 60's, raise a family and learn how to overcome the challenges of life in order to truly find their own relationship together. You can find out more at Amazon (click here). Or go to my website for more information. (Click here)

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The Loss of Trust

Email from reader: “This new year will mark one year since my husband cheated on me. We have stayed together, but I still don’t trust him. He says I never will, and maybe that is true. How do you rebuild trust?”



Two ingredients in rebuilding trust:

1. It takes time

2. It takes desire

How much time it takes depends on the depth of desire each person has toward truly rebuilding. 

When trust is lost the first question to ask yourself is, “Do I really want to continue with this person who broke trust with me?” If the answer is no, then leave. If yes, then be aware of every thought that may lead you to a place of feeling hurt or wronged by your partner.

If a choice is made to stay, it has to be a decision to move forward and not focus on the past. If I continue to feel sorry for myself about what happened, then I have not made a choice to stay with this person, I have decided to become a victim.
(Click here for our blog on Choices and Victim)

The victim may think: “Poor me, he/she hurt me so, I just don’t know if I can forgive him/her.”

The person working on recovery with say:
“That was a difficult place in our relationship, but I chose to be with this person and believe they will not break trust again.” 

These are two different approaches to the same problem.

The next obvious question is “But what if they do it again?” The answer is; how much do you respect yourself. 

If you continue to choose to stay in an unsafe relationship, you will most likely find it difficult, but there is a good chance you are staying because the choice to leave is even more difficult. If you stay you are predictably so enmeshed in this dysfunctional relationship you may be lost in your journey and operating out of fear rather than self respect. Next time we will focus on some reasons a person stays in a painful unsafe relationship and potential for their recovery.

 Let us know your thoughts in the comment area below. If you want to be a follower of the blog, click on the “Follower” Box. 

My book about finding balance in relationships is called FOREVER YOURS. It is the fictional story of a man and women who fall in love in the 60's, raise a family and learn how to overcome the challenges of life in order to truly find their own relationship together. You can find out more at Amazon (click here). Or go to my website for more information. (Click here)

The opposite is also true

The other day I spent some time with a person who just didn’t like anything. I mean anything. Didn’t like getting up, going to bed, walking, riding, etc. She just thought life sucked. It is sad when you meet people like this, but sometimes you just need to leave them alone before they pull you down in the mud with them.



Over the years I’ve learned to try to balance my thinking by going to the opposite thought. Looking around me I realized life has a harmony about it. 

If there is a right, there has to be a left. 

If there is up, there is going to be down.

 Front, back; In, out. You get the picture.

So if I am feeling down about something, I need to balance it with an up thought. For example, I messed up something the other day and proclaimed to myself, “I’m an idiot.” At the moment, the statement had some merit, but it was only half the story. My balance statement was “I’m smart.” 

Both statements are true, so why just dwell in the negative? There are probably a lot of things we have done wrong in our life, so isn’t it refreshing to know we have done so many good things too. The journey is one of balance and harmony, we need to consciously be aware of this interplay in our daily activities.

We have suggested to people a conscious making habit. If the person is right handed, wear a tight rubber band on the left wrist for a day or too. It will be irritating but it will also consciously remind us we have an opposite side that is as functional as our primary side. The same will always be true of our thoughts. If we have a negative thought, a positive is also available, it is simply our choice to use it or ignore it. 

Wanted to share this with you. It is our new video about our internet counseling services. If you want to be part of our weekly blog on Relationships, Romance and Reality, just join with your email in the upper right corner of this blog. 

Our Internet Counseling Services

We are so happy with the number of people who we have been able to reach using our Internet Counseling Services. This is a short video about this part of our counseling center. More information is on www.NYCCC.org.