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Thứ Tư, 18 tháng 5, 2011

What happens after infidelity


(CNN) -- It's been said that the only people who know what goes on in a marriage are the two people who are in it, and sometimes, even they're not sure.
The news that the Arnold Schwarzenegger-Maria Shriver 25-year blissfest ran afoul of the former governor's decade-old dalliance and subsequent child from said dalliance makes the pair likely headed toward an uncertain hell.
So it was that marriage counselors across the continent sighed deeply Tuesday and said, "Welcome to our world."
"This is so very, very, very common," said Dr. Laurie Moore, a licensed marriage and family therapist from Santa Cruz, California, speaking about the number of married couples who struggle through a partner's confessed infidelity.
Dr. Steve Solomon, a La Jolla, California, therapist and author of "Intimacy After Infidelity: How to Rebuild and Affair-Proof Your Marriage," said the vast number of couples coming in to save their marriages after infidelity is the reason he wrote his book in the first place.
And it's not just because people don't like their sex lives at home.
"When people marry, they have this ideal of eternal fidelity," said Beth Hedva, a therapist and psychologist from Alberta, Canada. "A breach of that ideal can be cause for great injury, yes."


But, Hedva said, a man or woman can love his or her spouse very much and still be capable of an affair. Such infidelity is not as uncommon as we like to pretend, she said. Its acceptability varies with cultures. Its tolerance varies in our own circle of friends.
"This is not about condemning or condoning that behavior, but what is true," said Hedva, author of "Betrayal, Trust and Forgiveness."
How common is infidelity?
Go to the Internet and to something calledinfidelityfacts.com/infidelity-statistics.html. Right there it says that the percentage of marriages where one or both spouses admit to infidelity, either physical or emotional, is 41 percent.
"The Monogamy Myth" author Peggy Vaughan famously reported that 60 percent of men and 40 percent of women will have an affair at some point in their marriage.
Yet, according to a National Opinion Research Center study on American Sexual Behavior conducted in 2006 by the University of Chicago, researcher Tom W. Smith wrote: "There are probably more scientifically worthless 'facts' on extra-marital relations than on any other facet of human behavior."
Smith went on, excoriating everything from "studies" done in Cosmopolitan and Redbook magazines to those done by Dear Abby. "These studies typically find an extremely high level of extra-marital activity. (Pop-sexologist Shere) Hite, for example, reported that 70 percent of women married five or more years are having sex outside of their marriage."
Smith was dismayed. Scientific surveys, he wrote, indicate that it's more like 15 percent to 18 percent of married people who commit old-fashioned adultery. That may be, but everybody you talk to says nobody tells the truth on those surveys.
The truth is out there but who has it?
Who cares who has it, what should I do first if this happens to me?
Solomon, who is also co-founder of The Relationship Institute in La Jolla, California, gave this advice:
1) Don't rush to make any big decisions, especially irreversible ones.
2) Don't tell your children. Especially if they are small.
3) Take care of yourself. This will ensure the patience and calm you will need.
What will I feel?
"Marriage has many obligations," said Donna Bellafiore, a licensed clinical social worker in private practice in Delray Beach, Florida.
"Sexual fidelity is a fundamentally important part of that trust that has been broken, but the whole has been affected. Everything is questioned, then, about the marriage, if the faithfulness was not kept. What was real? Was I a fool? The impact is like a death. The grieving is like a death. Nothing was what it appeared. That is what has to be healed."
Admittedly, the couples who want to save their marriage will seek help. The ones who cannot see past the infidelity will seek attorneys.
If the decision is therapy, the one who betrayed the other should expect some fury, said Solomon, and to stand ready to take responsibility.
But, after some time, the victim should be prepared to go beyond the fury and to build toward the future.
What will we will say?
"There is usually sadness, anger, hurt, betrayal and a lack of self-esteem on the part of the one betrayed," therapist Moore said. "But there is also a lack of self-respect and self-esteem and a sense of remorse for the betrayer. Lot of work there."
Who has to be healed, exactly?
Both parties will have to take an active responsibility to say what they want, Moore said. "We ask: What do we want to create? What do we want to release? What do we want to transform?"
Post the revelations, what are our chances of staying married?
This is an opportunity for deep healing, Hedva said. In her practice, she said, one-third use the infidelity to clean their conscience and to re-engage as a couple.
Another third use it to get out of the relationship. And the last third is trying to regain their trust, and their potential is quite good.
How long will healing take?
If you work hard, expect a two-year miracle.
Finally, what should we do about Arnold and Maria?
In marriage counseling, Moore said, it helps immensely if the victimized partner realizes how imperfect they are, as well.
"When we offer ourselves up with some humility," she said, "we apportion less blame to others."

Gotta Watch: When volcanoes erupt


In today's Gotta Watch, we're looking at the awesome power of some of the planet's most active volcanoes. From the easy-to-pronounce Mount St. Helens to another whose name you best not try to utter unless you're sitting down.
Mount St. Helens - On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted, becoming the most destructive volcano in United States history. An earthquake and subsequent landslide triggered a series of eruptions and a massive ash cloud. The blast was reportedly so powerful it was felt as far away as Canada. The eruption claimed the lives of 57 people and injured many more.
Eyjafjallajokull - Often refered to simply as "the Icelandic volcano" due to its tongue twister of a name, Eyjafjallajokull wreaked havoc for international travelers for the better part of a week back in 2010. At its peak, the crisis affected 1.2 million passengers a day and 29 percent of all global aviation, according to the International Air Transport Association, becoming the worst disruption of air traffic since the September 11 terrorist attacks back in 2001.
Merapi - The Merapi volcano's most recent eruption began on October 26, 2010. It killed hundreds of people and displaced more than 200,000. The Indonesian volcano's recent eruptions released about 140 million cubic meters of magma, the National Agency for Disaster Management said.
Mount Vesuvius - Just short of 2,000 years ago, the city of Pompeii was wiped off the map by a historic eruption that buried an entire city in ash. Pompeii is now a major tourist attraction and is considered one of Italy's most important archaeological sites.

Tick tock goes the doomsday clock


(CNN) - For months they’ve been spreading the word, answering the biblical call of Ezekiel 33 to sound the alarm and warn the people.
Their message, which they say the Bible guarantees, is simple: The end of the world is near.
And now, it’s suddenly really near - so near that if these folks are right, you should probably pass on buying green bananas.
Perhaps you’ve already noticed, what with the billboards and signs dotting the landscape, the pamphlets blowing in the wind and the RVs plastered with Judgment Day warnings weaving through cities. Or maybe, as the birds chirped outside and you sipped your morning coffee, a full-page newspaper ad for the upcoming mass destruction caught your eye.
May 21, 2011, according to loyal listeners of Family Radio, a Christian broadcasting network based in Oakland, California, will mark the Day of Rapture and the start of Judgment Day (which, they say, will last five months). Those who are saved will be taken up to heaven, and those who aren’t will endure unspeakable suffering. Dead bodies will be strewn about as earthquakes ravage the Earth, they say. And come October 21, they’ll tell you, the entire world will be kaput.
It’s the kind of belief that riles up churchgoers who insist no one can know when Judgment Day will come, and the sort that many say does a disservice to Christianity. And it’s the kind of message that delights the types who are planning tongue-in-cheek End of the World parties and are responding to a Facebook invitation to attend a post-rapture looting. Rapture events, including one at a tiki bar in Fort Lauderdale, are being hosted by American Atheists. News outlets, comedians and even Doonesbury can’t seem to resist a good end-of-the-world prophecy.
Earlier this year, CNN traveled with a team of believers - all of whom had walked away from friends, families and jobs - as they set out to share this serious message aboard a caravan of Judgment Day RVs. These ambassadors or co-laborers in God’s work, as they see themselves, let us into their world. Along the way we met other supporters, as well as a sea of skeptics, many of them drunken pirates gathered for an annual festival in Florida.
With only days to go, we wanted to know how the ambassadors are feeling now. Are they making special plans and saying goodbyes? Have their convictions stayed strong, or have doubts crept in? Are they at peace, excited or maybe afraid?
“We’ve been a little busy, as you can imagine,” said Fred Store, the team leader on our journey.
Reached at a motor home park in Providence, Rhode Island, Store spoke of the surge of support he’s seen in recent months – the 60 like-minded people (including someone who works for Homeland Security, he boasted) who joined his small crew on the Mall in Washington, and the hundreds who gathered in Times Square in New York.
But at the same time he said resistance from those who don’t believe has grown, too. The more people heard about the May 21 warning, the more they discussed it with their pastors and came prepared to argue.
And the media, while they’ve helped spread the message, will be turned away in the coming days. CNN hoped to be with Store and his team on doomsday, but the members said they needed that time to focus on their relationship with God. Perhaps that’s just as well, as an official at Family Radio headquarters pointed out: “What makes you think you’ll be able to get to them? The roads will be a mess," he said, referring to the expected earthquakes. Plus, Store said, even if we got there, there would be no time to edit and publish, so what's the point?
Store’s faith remains unwavering. Come Saturday, he and his team will be in Boston, standing in a spot with heavy foot traffic, passing out their pamphlets – which they call tracts – and doing what they believe God called them to do until the very end.
No longer with the team is Darryl Keitt, who ditched his caravan on May 6. He said his time on the RV was a “gift from God,” but he decided he needed to spend the last couple of weeks focusing on his non-believing family and friends in New Jersey. It was a decision he prayed about for several weeks.
His Elizabeth, New Jersey, apartment is pretty sparse, seeing as he gave away most everything before hitting the road.
“I was able to get my old place back,” he said. “But we only have four days to go, so I don’t need much.”
He’s reaching out to old friends and hoping his family will come around and believe what he says he knows to be true.
“I have not seen any signs that they are believing the message,” he said. “But I can’t read anybody’s heart; only God can. And I’m still praying for them. All I can do is continue to share my convictions.”
Tisan Dawud may not share his older half-brother's beliefs, but he supports the positive nature of what Keitt's doing and is awestruck by his dedication.
"He's trying to spread what he believes is the word of God, and I can't knock him for that," Dawud said Tuesday evening. "I became Muslim when I was very young, and he remained Christian. But I've always had respect for his beliefs, and he always had respect for my beliefs."
And rather than criticize or ridicule his brother, who he said isn't hurting anyone, Dawud wishes people would focus on those who deserve examination and condemnation - those selling drugs, molesting children, raping women or embezzling money, for example.
Keitt spends his days in prayer, reaching out to people on Facebook, listening to Family Radio and walking around his neighborhood in his Judgment Day cap and T-shirt. He ran out of tracts some time ago, and at this point it’s too late to order any more, he said. As for where he’ll be on Saturday: “It’s a good question," and one he's still considering.
He doesn’t like goodbyes, he said, and only told two people in his caravan team of 10 that he was leaving. He gave those two men, one of them Store, a quick hug and that was it.
“Preferably we’ll meet each other again,” Keitt said, “in heaven.”
Dennis Morrell was driving through Jacksonville, Florida, pulling his Judgment Day billboard trailer, when we reached him on his cell phone. He wasn’t part of the caravan of RVs but was among the Floridians who joined in to help Store’s team when they were in the city.
Morell and his wife quit their jobs to focus on warning others, a move that’s left their four kids – ages 17 to 24 – thinking “Mom and Dad are crazy,” he said.
He still hopes God will “open their spiritual eyes,” he said. “But they’re at an age where they love their lives. They don’t want this world to come to an end.”
His faith, though, is as firm as ever, and he wishes others would open their minds and hearts to this possibility.
“Why would you wait to see if this is actually going to happen? You have that option to cry out for mercy,” he said. “I don’t want to die and go to hell. Do you?”
He plans to spend the last days praying, up until the early hours of Saturday - when he’ll both pray and wait for 16 hours.
Why 16 hours? Morrell explained that the massive doomsday earthquake will start at the International Date Line before moving west. New Zealand, he said, will get hit first – at 6 p.m. local time. And then that wave of destruction will roll around the world, wreaking havoc at 6 p.m. in each time zone.
While Morrell expects he’ll reserve Saturday for private time, Benjamin Ramrajie of Ocala, Florida, doesn’t have any special plans.
We met Ramrajie in Tampa after his 7-year-old daughter issued a doomsday warning about how the sun would “turn red like blood.” He stood by and nodded his approval as she spoke about dead bodies and her fears of dying.
“Most of my family doesn’t agree 100 percent, and I don’t blame them because it is far-fetched,” he said. “I strongly believe it’s going to happen. But I just figure I’ll relax, maybe watch TV. If that’s the day we get raptured, great. If not, we’ll move on.”

Thứ Ba, 17 tháng 5, 2011

Busquets cleared to play for Barcelona in Wembley final


Barcelona midfielder Sergio Busquets can play in the Champions League final against Manchester United after being cleared of racial abuse.
Uefa has dismissed claims by Barca's Spanish rivals Real Madrid that Busquets racially insulted full-back Marcelo during their semi-final tie.
A statement on Barca's website read: "Uefa has rejected the complaint filed by Real Madrid."
Busquets is now free to line up against United at Wembley on Saturday 28 May.
European football's governing body said via a statement on its website that it had "decided to dismiss the complaint lodged by Real due to a lack of strong and convincing evidence".
Real posted a video on their website before the second leg showing Busquets allegedly calling Marcelo "mono" (monkey) during Barca's 2-0 win at the Bernabeu.
The incident was one of many in an ill-tempered match during which Real player Pepe and coach Jose Mourinho were sent off.
The second leg at the Nou Camp ended in a 1-1 draw, with Barca going through to the final 3-1 on aggregate.

Thứ Hai, 16 tháng 5, 2011

Shuttle Endeavour launches one last time


Its thunderous rise into a bright morning sky over the Kennedy Space Center in Florida was watched by hundreds of thousands of spectators.
Among them was Endeavour commander Mark Kelly's wife, Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona politician shot in the head by a gunman in January.
Doctors were satisfied enough with her recovery to allow her to travel to Kennedy to see her husband's departure.
"This mission represents the power of teamwork, commitment and exploration," the commander said in a radio call to launch controllers moments before lift-off. "It is in the DNA of our great country to reach for the stars and explore. We must not stop."
Endeavour cleared the pad just after 0856 local time (1256 GMT; 1356 BST).
It is now on a path to rendezvous with the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday.
The ship will deliver a $2bn particle physics experiment, known as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), and a tray of critical spare parts.
On Endeavour's return, the only active ship left in the US space agency's (Nasa) shuttle fleet will be Atlantis.
It should undertake its final mission sometime in in July.


Mark Kelly (far right) and crew greet the crowds before boarding space shuttle Endeavour
"Today's final launch of Endeavour is a testament to American ingenuity and leadership in human spaceflight," Nasa Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement.
"As we look toward a bright future with the International Space Station as our anchor and new destinations in deep space on the horizon, we salute the astronauts and ground crews who have ensured the orbiter's successful missions.
"The presence of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords at the launch inspired us all, just as America's space programme has done for the past 50 years."
On completion of the 30-year shuttle programme, America will use Russian Soyuz capsules to fly its astronauts to the ISS.
A number of US national commercial carriers are expected to enter into service around the middle of the decade.
Nasa will then buy seats in these astronaut "taxis". The arrangement will represent a major change in the way the agency does business. No longer will it own the vehicles it uses to go to low-Earth orbit.
This servicing plan should free up resources for Nasa to build an astronaut Space Launch System capable of travelling beyond the station, to the Moon, asteroids and to Mars.
Endeavour was built to replace the Challenger ship which was lost, along with her crew of seven, in a catastrophic accident in 1986.
This final flight is the vessel's 25th overall, having already clocked a cumulative distance in space of 166 million km - an expanse just greater than that which divides the Earth and the Sun.

Notable highlights in the ship's career have included the first construction mission to the ISS by a US orbiter, and the first servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. The latter carried up the equipment to correct the flaw in the observatory's vision, enabling it to take breathtaking images of the cosmos.
Nasa is hoping the payload inside Endeavour for its final mission will deliver equally astonishing science.
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) has taken 17 years to prepare for launch. It has been constructed by an international collaboration of researchers across 16 nations.
The machine will be fixed to the top of the ISS where it will undertake a comprehensive survey of cosmic rays.
These are the high-energy particles that our accelerated in Earth's direction from all corners of the cosmos.
Scientists hope that in characterising these particles they can address similar sorts of questions to those pursued in particle accelerators in Earth laboratories - how did the Universe come into being and how is it constructed?
But AMS principal investigator Professor Sam Ting told BBC News his space experiment would explore domains beyond the reach of ground technology.
"The highest energy particles are from the cosmos," he said. "No matter how large the accelerator you build on Earth, you cannot compete with cosmic rays." These particles are absorbed by the atmosphere and the only way to study them properly is to get into orbit, he added.
AMS-02

The AMS machine will:
  • look for clues to the nature of "dark matter", the material that shapes galaxies and makes up most of the mass of the Universe
  • hunt for evidence of the existence of antimatter, the mirror of the material from which stars and planets are made
  • try to catch strangelets, or strange matter, which is built from a slightly different mix of sub-atomic particles to that of normal matter
  • characterise the space radiation environment so that the dangers for astronauts and satellites of being in space is fully comprehended
Kelly's crewmates on Endeavour's final mission are pilot Greg Johnson and mission specialists Mike Fincke, Drew Feustel, Greg Chamitoff and Roberto Vittori of the European Space Agency.
This is the first shuttle flight for Fincke and Vittori, although they are both very experienced astronauts having flown a number of Soyuz missions to the ISS. Indeed, on his return, Finke's cumulative time spent in orbit will be 381 days - a record for an American.
Vittori becomes the last international astronaut to fly aboard a shuttle.