fear of marriage « Conscious Transitions

A Moment in My Marriage

By Sheryl Paul, on May 20th, 2018

There are moments in my marriage that take my breath away.

Last Sunday on Mother’s Day, the four of us spent several hours working on my garden. My garden is one of my sanctuaries, but every year the grass from the lawn finds its way into my vegetable beds and by mid-summer they’re overrun with weeds. Last autumn we realized that we needed to make a border around the garden to prevent the grass from crawling over, so my request for Mother’s Day was my family’s help to create this barrier. This required renting a heavy piece of equipment to cut the sod then transporting twenty, sixty-pound bags of rock from the store into my garden. I’m all for women’s empowerment but I knew I wouldn’t be able to manage this one on my own. My husband was more than happy to help.

We worked all day together. While my … Click here to continue reading...

Anxiety: A Portal to Serenity

By Sheryl Paul, on February 1st, 2015

On the other side of anxiety lives serenity. When you walk into the forest and face the fear-vines of your mind – swashbuckling at first then sitting down in the glade and simply watching – you eventually unfold into an open field. You cannot know this until you walk through it. Fear is the test. It’s the revolving door. On one side is anxiety and on the other side is the peace and tranquility of your true nature.

It’s difficult to realize when you’re in the stronghold of anxiety that what lives on the other side is serenity. In fact, until you’ve walked through the revolving door of anxiety and greeted serenity on the other side, you don’t realize that anxiety and serenity are, in fact, two sides of the same coin. Just like darkness and light share a sector of psyche and grief and joy share a chamber of … Click here to continue reading...

Why a Healthy Marriage can Give you Wings to Fly - HuffPost

By Sheryl Paul, on January 5th, 2014

One of the most common and debilitating fears among my female clients and e-course members is that marriage means the death of their freedom and independence. While marriage certainly requires a death of the single identity and lifestyle in order for the transition from non-married to married to occur on a healthy foundation, this very foundation can then provide the springboard from which women can more securely explore new areas of passion and possibilities.

In other words, it’s the support of a loving partner that allows newly married women to launch into areas of their career and interests that they would not have felt confident enough to explore otherwise. While during their engagement they fretted that marriage would mean the end of their life, most women are invariably and pleasantly surprised to learn that the exact opposite is true.

This truth has been corroborated recently in the research shared in … Click here to continue reading...

A Watertight Marriage

By Sheryl Paul, on June 2nd, 2013

As I wrote in my post “What if I Have an Affair?”, an astonishingly high number of people who come my way express a fear that they’re going to cheat on their partner after marriage. The topic came up in a recent session with a client:

“It seems like everywhere you look, people are having affairs,” my client said.

“Yes, the media certainly does depict a world where married couples seem incapable of remaining faithful to each other. It’s quite rare, in fact, to see a portrayal of a couple who are happily married and faithful for the duration of their marriage. But, while people certainly do cheat on each other, we also know that Hollywood isn’t the best source of reality.”

“My fear-mind says that I’ll see someone on the subway one day and we’ll just have that spark, and I’ll wonder if he would have been … Click here to continue reading...

So Much Love

By Sheryl Paul, on April 15th, 2013

If I had said no instead of yes…

If I hadn’t given him a chance…

If I had listened to the lines of “We’re just good friends” and “He’ll be a great boyfriend… for someone else,” denying the undeniable draw I felt toward him…

If I had walked away from the first man who sounded home into every crevice of my soul…

…I wouldn’t be sitting here sandwiched between the two most precious boys I could ever imagine, a silver kitten making bread on the Berkshire blanket that warms us against the icy April wind, my solid husband painting down below as he keeps watch, his heart my home, the words so much love echoing through my mind.

I feel so blessed: this beautiful life sprouting like magic daffodils in the grass beneath each step; the gift of loving each other and all that has been birthed by our good, … Click here to continue reading...