Your body experiences suffocation when you’re not taking in the oxygen you need. The suffocation experience leaves you feeling panicky, desperate and strip away your confidence.
When this happens in a marriage, you also feel panicky and desperate. It’s a sign that the relationship is in need of help. It’s out of balance and needs are not being met in a healthy way.
So when suffocation happens, what should you do?
The Suffocating Marriage <<– listen to the audio here
Hello, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio. I’m glad that you’re with me today. I appreciate you tuning in and the topic we’re going to be dealing with today is the suffocating marriage. This is one of those topics that people posted some inquiries about, and I responded to them.
When you’re dealing with the phenomenon of the suffocating marriage we’re going to have to take a look at the whole topic of suffocation. What happens is that your body experiences suffocation when you’re not taking in the oxygen that you need.
This suffocating experience can leave you feeling panicky, desperate, and strip away your sense of confidence.
If you’ve ever been at a loss for breath or suffer difficulty breathing, it not only keeps you from doing a lot of activities, it takes away a lot of your confidence.
Suffocating…takes away a lot of your confidence
When this happens in your marriage, you may find yourself also feeling panicky and desperate and feel like you’ve lost your confidence, your ability to do a lot of things. The phenomena of having difficulty breathing, that can also happen in relationships where you feel like somebody’s got this blanket over your head, or maybe a choking sensation there in your throat area.
It’s a sign that your relationship, your whole marriage, is in need of help. Something is out of balance.
In real life, where you’re having that suffocating feeling, you’re not getting enough oxygen. And likewise in a relationship that suffocating feeling, that are needs that are not being met. Or they’re not being met in a healthy way.
When they’re not met that way you experience that sensation of suffocation.
When suffocation happens what do you do? One thing I can tell you is that having an affair is not an acceptable solution. So let me go ahead and get that right off the bat.
What is the solution?
The solution is removing the constrictions and breathing. That’s as simple as it gets.
Now, how do you do that? Well, we’re going to deal with that.
1. Physical suffocation is not acceptable. I mention that because although some of you may use suffocation or near-suffocation as part of your sexual routine, it’s not acceptable.
If you use it for a control it’s not acceptable. This is one of those safety concerns, because I know that some spouses literally try to choke their partner. That’s not acceptable.
If this is going on in your relationship you need to stop it. You may think that well gee, it increases the intensity of what I feel. Well I’m sure it does, because we tend to feel very alive and feel sensations very intense when we’re near death, but that creates an unsafe situation for you and your spouse. You want to stop that.
So physical suffocation is not acceptable.
2. Relationships need to breathe. By needing to breathe spouses need time together and apart. You need both space and time. An illustration that I use, or I guess what you would call a metaphor, is that of two porcupines on a cold night.
If they get too close it’s painful. If they get too far apart it’s too cold. And so there’s this constant moving of the two to find out, or to get to that place where they feel comfortable with each other.
Many times in relationships, even healthy relationships, you go through times together and times apart, times together and times apart. Much like breathing, in and out, in and out, that’s going to happen. And that is a normal thing in relationships.
It needs to be there. When it’s not there it can leave you feeling suffocated. It can leave you feeling too controlled, to where there is not this ability to breathe. You can feel choked out.
That’s because something’s missing with that give and take in the relationships.
3. Reduce the panic, then consider your options. Because if you’re experiencing that suffocating sensation and you’re panicking and you’re lashing out, that’s not the time to do it. You want to get where you’re breathing first.
Then look at your options. Because your options are very different when you’re feeling suffocated or you’re in a panic mode, because your choices and actions during panic are seldom good ones.
This is a phenomena, like for instance, rescuers when they rescue people that are drowning, a lot of times the drowning victims will start fighting them. Because they do all that flailing. Firefighters will also tell you about that.
That’s not the time to do things. Because when you’re in that suffocating mode you’re just lashing out, like someone who’s flailing, and you’re not making good choices then.
You want to wait till you’re breathing, till you have recovered. Then you look at your options. Then you can see things for what they really are.
When you’re being starved for affection, starved for emotion, you’re not making good choices. When you’re having that suffocating feeling you’re not making good choices.
You want to get to where you reduce the panic, then consider your options.
These are different ways of removing the constrictions. Of course the first one that I dealt with is the safety issue of the physical constrictions. That’s not acceptable.
Some spouses really do try to control their spouses by like, for instance, taking away the car keys, not letting them out of the house. This is not where you’re physically choking them, but space-wise that creates that same kind of sensation.
Although that’s not necessarily a safety issue in that case it is definitely an emotional safety issue. Because people will have that same kind of panicked feeling when they’re held in too much control. That’s not acceptable.
Relationships need to breathe, both in and out. And in the case of relationships there’s times that you’re close and times that you’re far apart. And the two of you are going to give signals to each other as to when you need to do those things. You need to recognize that relationships, healthy relationships, need that back and forth time.
You also want to reduce the panic, then consider your options. These are all different ways of removing the constriction so that you can breathe.
And these are things that you can do, or start doing, right here and now. And I encourage you to do so.
If you need more help in turning your marriage around, consider the ‘30 Days to a Better Marriage Program’. In the program, you’ll receive daily direction in taking steps that improve your marriage.
Best Regards,
Jeff
