THE CHESTNUT HILL INSTITUTE

Wrap your mind around this, if you can: women who try to help men get out of supposedly bad marriages by having affairs with them.  Shocked?  Surprised?  Sadly, I’m neither shocked nor surprised.  I see it happen all the time. 

This may well be what happened to John Edwards, based on a Newsweek piece by Jonathan Darman.  (more…)

This is a relationship blog; so what does Alzheimer’s disease have to do with your relationships? It should be clear to you by now, my faithful friend, that almost everything has to do with relationships. Check it out: (more…)

Is forgiveness possible after an affair?  YES!  And how do you find it?  For some good answers, read this article about our new book When Good People Have Affairs.

(This is the first of a series of blogs on affairs: why they happen, and what to do if you’re at any point in a love triangle.) 

“I would have sworn on a stack of bibles that we had a happy marriage, that my husband was a good man, and that he would never cheat on me.  Never.”  Janice was an attractive woman in her late thirties.  “So when I found those emails on his computer (I wasn’t snooping, honestly; he asked me to do some work for him and they were just there), I was devastated.  I was physically sick.  It was like every time I thought about it was like a kick in the stomach, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  It was so humiliating.  Things like this don’t happen to people like me.” 

But of course affairs can happen to anybody.  There is a 40 to 50% chance that a person will be affected by an affair over his or her life.  If this were a disease, it would be the most common painful, life-altering disease we know about. (more…)

Well, it’s happened.  You love your mom (or dad), and you want the best for her.  You’re committed to helping her any way you can.  But now she’s living with you, and it is a very mixed blessing.  Your needs and her needs (what to do, when to do it, how to do it) are often in conflict.  Sometimes you find yourself fighting with the very person your good heart has wanted to care for. 

So how do you make caring for a sick, aging parent work?  (more…)

             Well, Mother’s Day is almost upon us.  A day filled with roses and restaurants and…a lot of BS.

Let’s for once tell the truth.  Our relationship with our mother’s is one of the most difficult relationships in our lives.  Yes, sometimes it’s uncomplicated.  Sometimes it’s really true that your mother is your best friend. 

But too often the relationship between mothers and their adult children is filled with resentment, regrets, and recriminations.  “How could you have…?”  “Why didn’t you…?”

And then what do we do?  Mother’s Day is too often an empty exercise in empty demonstrations of phony feelings.  And we’re left with a feeling of sadness.  In other cases Mother’s Day is the time when all the anger and disappointment come flying out of the closet, and when it’s over everyone feels even worse. 

Let’s just admit the truth, and I speak as someone who is both a mother and a daughter myself.  Mother’s aren’t perfect.  If your mother wasn’t perfect, GET OVER IT.  OK, she let you down, maybe even hurt you.  So what?  Most mothers aren’t perfect.  Your mother’s imperfections don’t mean she didn’t love you or that she wasn’t doing her best.  Trust me: as a mother or father yourself, you will be imperfect and will let your kids down too.  Imperfect people shouldn’t judge their mother’s imperfections. 

And let’s face it: we weren’t perfect kids either.  Yeah, I know that children are innocent, but they can also give their parents a really rough time.  And very few parents are prepared to deal with awful difficulties their kids present them with. 

So let this Mother’s Day be different.  No empty phony sentiments.  But no pointless recriminations either. 

How about this Mother’s Day we celebrate our capacity for forgiveness and acceptance?  Try it.  You’ll be glad you did. 

Some of you have done this already.  I’d love to hear from you.  Please, tell me your stories of how as a mother or adult child you tried to heal things by introducing the theme of acceptance and forgiveness in your relationship.  Your stories will help a lot of people. 

Please check out my latest podcast that I did for RevolutionHealth.com.  It’s all about romance — which we all need more of!!  You’ll enjoy it!   Love, Mira

When is the last time you ran out of gas?  I don’t mean your car.  I mean you.  I’m talking about a time when you just ran out of fuel, coughed, sputtered, gasped, and slowly drifted to a stop.  It might have been a job, a volunteer commitment or a hobby that sparked this feeling.  You’d given and given and given and suddenly you had nothing left to give.

This lapse in emotional energy can happen to us in our relationships, too.  And it doesn’t always take much to bring it on — maybe just a period when you’re busy, irritated, distant, and disappointed with each other.  Suddenly, cough, gasp, sputter, and the emotional energy you’ve had for your relationships has gone.  Uh oh.  Where do you go for gas when a relationship has run out of fuel and is just stuck there at the side of the road?  (more…)

Hey guys — please check out this great, new review of one of our books. (more…)

I know what you’re thinking. Here comes another new year, and there are those things you don’t like about yourself or your life (and who wants to think about that!). And sure as winter brings cold and snow to us up here in Boston, you feel a determination bubble up within you to change things. “This will be the year…” And like lots of us you feel on the verge yet again to make a New Year’s Resolution.

DON’T! Unless … well, how have your past resolutions worked out for you? (more…)