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Dear Asrianna,

I’m embarrassed to be in this situation and I never thought I’d be this good at lying. After thirteen years of marriage to a good man, I’m in love with someone else. To make it even worse it’s someone I met online. I’m so confused because while my marriage lacked passion and I can’t think of the last time my husband showed any interest in having a meaningful conversation, I know he loves me.

Yet this other man makes me feel so alive. He’s funny, intelligent and we’ve so much in common. For almost a year, we’ve talked every day. I’ve tried to end it but my life feels so empty without him and he always begs me to come back. He knows I can’t just leave my life here, but I feel guilty making him wait for something that won’t ever happen.

I feel awful and I know what I have to do but it’s just so difficult. Can you help me, Asrianna?

Signed, Lying and Hating It

Dear Hating It,

We all have internal measurements we’ve accrued from our upbringing and the passage of years, an inner compass telling us when we’re living with integrity or walking a crooked path. If we travel outside the perimeters of honesty we’ll feel the negative vibrations in all areas of our life, tainting even our most treasured gifts. Your involvement with this other man not only puts your marriage at risk, it spills over into how you feel about yourself and that, in turn, affects every facet of your existence.

Many times we live an inauthentic life, neglecting our needs and letting things like sharing intimate moments of conversation with our mates go, feeling either too fatigued or too rebuked to try yet again. Days turn into years and we become numb not only to the unhappiness of our relationship, but also to its joy. Most of us know all too well how a bad work situation colors our private moments, leaving us to spend leisure time in dread of our next eight to five. The same thing happens when our personal relationships are unhappy; it permeates everything we do.

Your letter makes it sound as if the problem is somewhat simple, but it’s far more complex than a simple question of how to end the extra-marital relationship? The first step in this dilemma is to look honestly at your marriage.

You need to understand why you were susceptible to this situation in the first place. What made you go online to search for someone outside of your primary relationship?

Ask yourself some tough questions about your feelings regarding your marriage. When you think about it, do you feel sad, frustrated, generally unhappy, ignored, minimized, cherished, cared for, listened to? Our emotions are the first signals telling us if something is working or whether the situation needs attention.

It’s easy to put the blame for a lack of passion onto our mate, but ask yourself, what does passion really mean to you because if you don’t know, neither will he. Are you talking about sexual passion? The kind of physical response that makes your stomach flutter and pulse race? Are you speaking about the kind of emotional intensity that motivates you and causes you to reach out and truly experience life? For some people passion means action and involvement, for others it’s a simmering quality infusing their daily living with depth, meaning and purpose. Passion arises through what you desire from the marriage and what, especially, you put into it.

The truth is that any long-term relationship can become predictable and stale if we let it go in the day-to-day busyness of life. We turn our attention to raising children, meeting the mortgage, paying bills and going to work each day. The comfort of knowing your husband will be there for you tomorrow and the tomorrow after that can be a loving foundation that feels secure and safe. Or it can be something you feel is restrictive or that you take for granted, unless you keep in mind the benefits of a lasting relationship.

In addition, I’ve come to believe love is a language and quite often long-term partners speak a different dialect altogether. For instance, your spouse might feel that showing love is all about doing, all about bringing home a paycheck to afford you a comfortable living. He might feel being home each night, doing the house maintenance and taking care of the cars and paying bills is a sign of his love and devotion to you. If he’s a loving, involved father he can feel he’s showing you his love by his care of your children. To him, in other words, love is about what you do rather than what you say.

You, on the other hand, might feel the need to speak about your love, to communicate your affection through words and emotional sharing. It might be meaningful to you to have time to sit and hold hands or to rest your head on his shoulder. Perhaps you want to share your day and hear about his, to speak about how much you care for him and to hear him reciprocate. For you, love is about what you share emotionally and verbally. Crossing this language barrier means understanding his language and helping him to decipher yours.

In addition, one of the first steps is to discover for yourself what your needs are in your marriage. Make a list including everything you feel you currently lack and everything you want. Do you want respect? Do you want him to turn away from the television and meet your gaze when you talk so you truly feel heard? Do you need flowers or other visible signs of his affection? How often do you make love and do you wish for more or less and how satisfying is your love life? The key to having needs met is to know what they are so you can communicate them to your partner.

Find ways to bring love and passion back into your marriage, communicate what it is you need to your mate in other words, work on your marriage first. If you can’t navigate this process on your own, perhaps a marriage counselor can help mediate the process.

You notice I’ve spoken very little about the other man. It’s because he’s truly peripheral to your situation. You honestly can’t know if he’s right for you because you haven’t attended to your primary relationship fully. You’re in danger of demonizing your marriage and looking at this other man with rose-colored glasses.

I’m not saying your marriage will last or be happy. That’s up to you. If you want your marriage to be loving, communicative and passionate, you have to turn your full attention to making it that way. You have to do your share to change the tenor of your relationship. If it doesn’t work after you’ve tried all you can, then you have a decision to make, but it will be made easier by having known you did all you could.

The online relationship lacks substance; it lacks the day-to-day intimacy that allows you to see his faults as well as your own within the context of daily living. I truly wonder about a man who is willing to wait for you a year and more, knowing you’re being dishonest to your husband and without any assurances that you’ll leave the marriage for him. So either you’re not fully honest about all that you’re sharing with him, or he’s not telling the truth and he’s really not putting his life on hold at all.

In every relationship there are highs and lows. The passion of a new love eventually turns into the solid expectation of a long-term relationship along with the familiarity of the other. You say your husband is a good man who really loves you. Know that you deserve to take the utmost care in how you make this decision, for yourself as much as your husband and this other man.

As for how to end it with the other man, you do so honestly, with care and compassion. Be prepared for him to be sad or to be angry and be willing to accept that he has a right to his emotions. There’s no way to end something without saying it’s over, finished, and done. Don’t allow yourself to be manipulated into staying in what doesn’t serve your integrity, and don’t lie to yourself about your part in this. You’ll no doubt feel sad or guilty, both consequences of your choices. Move forward, with a new, firm resolve towards honesty and let the past be something you learn from and then let go of.

Best wishes, Asrianna

Asrianna Dameron is a Psychic, a Spiritual Medium, a Certified Hypnotherapist, and a Certified Past Life Regressionist in private practice. She offers individual and group sessions as well as seminars and speaking engagements on the topics of Psychic Development, Mediumship, Hypnosis and Shamanic healing. Asrianna can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , by visiting her websites at www.shamansheart.com or www.nhshamanandpsychicmedium.com, or by calling 603-892-1268.