I believe the forum members are too harsh with SW.

As a former BH I love the insight of WWs and what they have to say to other BHs.

It is difficult for me to watch the adherence to dogma 100% of the time.

Its difficult to watch a falling down drunk ignore sound advice ["dogma"] that would help her if she would just listen.

People really do want to help her but it is not helpful to enable her fogged out mindset. Might feel good, but helps no one.

And I havent seen anyone here who is as "harsh" and hostile as this poster. If it takes a few 2x4s to wake her up, then so be it.

EXACTLY!!!!

and to quote Dr. H directly from SAA.....

pg. 65..."The conditions are not a punishment for teh unfaithfulness; they are CRUCIAL building blocks that form the foundation for a strong marital recovery."

Go back and re-read pages 59-65, Counselor. It is everything Dr. H outlines for EP's.

I would pay special attention to #2...Blocking Communication with a Lover, since it was your refusal and excuse of "its a great number" on why you WON'T change your cell phone number that started this round......

Not2fun

Stan-ley, SW is lecturing forum members and it's offensive when she has not even begun to work MB yet.

Read the forum introduction, there are no hidden suprises, nor is it dogma, it's just good common sense.

I don't negate the importance of MB principles------they are fabulous.

However, I see this as a form of a Plan A.

BSs are encouraged to use Plan A with lunatic foggy waywards that are out of touch with reality. Correct?

As WWs go SW is not psychotic and she has a very good understanding of the situation. But, I am afraid the 2X4s are sometimes too harsh. Why not sprinkle some of those 2X4s with a little bit Plan A from the audience? Nothing wrong with being a little nice.

I know my own FWW use to take any 2X4s as a personal insult and she would often want to quit the forum. Afterwards, she would return when someone gave her some words of encouragement.

I love the insight of FORMER WWs. But the only insight WWs offer is the inside of their colon. I don't love that so much!

So until the cranial-rectal extraction takes place, I'd rather they not share their "insight".

Then offer some encouragement.

YOU can be those encouraging words between the 2X4s.

Stan-ley,

I like SW..... she has some spunk, but she needs to temper it down and receive the help in the manner that it is intended. If people didn't care about her and her M, they wouldn't reply...... Soooo....Basically, I'm sayin' she needs to adjust her perspective.

Most of the posts to her are kind and encouraging right up till she responds with the defensivness that she relishes.

SW is in love with the IDEA of change, but wants the change to be happening in her husband, when the change really must happen within herself.

I think the testimony of a foggy WW that wants guidance is valuable. It can be dissected in a not threatening manner.

Giving 2X4s 24/7 without allowing any testimony from WW may not always a positive thing. That is why I like JLs style so much.

My FWW loved the subtle 2X4s by JL and ran away from the harsh judgmental remarks. And she was highly motivated to saved the marriage (no different than SW).

I will agree that SW tends to be more intellectual and likes to challenge the posters, but I don't think that is a big deal at all.

Stan:

I can agree with your viewpoint.

I want as many folks here posting and getting help as possible.

But when SadW states that she can not find a post here about a WW who came and got beat up like she has?

Sorry. It doesn't take long to find THAT type of post around here. They ususaly only get to 5-10 posts, so SadW is MUCH better than most.... She can click on "MrsWondering" name, and go to her first posts. She would see some co-relation to the treatment that they both got when they arrived. There are others, please suggest those threads for her..

SadW is getting it. Slowly. She has to let her Lawyer brain get out of the way. Her lawyer brain is trained to look for inconsistencies, and differences to what is the "expected" answer. She has pointed all those out. But she was standing in the wrong place when she pointed out the inconsistencies and expected answers.

She is getting it.

LG

I used all the Plan A engeries on my WH.....don't have reserves left for a stranger. Sorry but that's me.......

Stan, Plan A's are tools for betrayed SPOUSE'S .......she isn't MY wife......

Not2fun

BSs are trying to build Love Bank balance's deeply in the red to the Romantic Love threshold - the advisors on this forum don't have that goal. Their goal is to impart their wisdom and personal experience to help rebuild a marriage.

And there is a stick to Plan A - to be used on the AFFAIR. The Carrot is to build a relationship (or the promise of one), the stick is to end the affair and wayward thinking. As there is no need to build a Love Bank balance here, guess what SW is getting - the stick... just as much a part of Plan A as the sweet, nicey nice stuff.

SW - you seem so eager to leave the affair in the past, but to do that you must also leave your husband's treatment of you in the past as well. You can't have one without the other.

You had a house, you and your husband trashed it, and then you dropped a wrecking ball on it. You need to rebuild. However, your original foundation was faulty, and you still had your valuables in the house - there may be things there you want to keep.

You're so rarin' to rebuild. But you can't yet. You are looking at tile samples for the bathroom, while your home is still in pieces.

You have to look at your foundation. See where the cracks were. You have to sort through the mess you have made, see what needs to go and see what you can keep.

There is a process of evaluation. As you dropped the bigger bomb, right now you need to focus on what you've done. But part of recovery is also for your husband to look at what he's done as well. But guess who was standing under the wrecking ball, in the house, when you dropped it? Yeah, your husband. Triage, think triage. You need to patch him up first. Then together survey the wreckage you've made. Clear out the rubble.

Then you can rebuild. They key to rebuilding and also, incidentally, patching up your husband are Extraordinary Precautions. They're going to shore up the cracks you had in your previous foundation.

There has never been any infidelity in my marriage. Not a hint of it. But I don't go to lunch with my coworkers unless DH is going. Because a few times some coworkers didn't show up and I was left eating lunch alone with a male coworker I'm close friends with. I used to talk about my marriage with this coworker. But I told him I would not anymore. I've seen too much damage here from others who have walked that road.

EPs aren't PUNISHMENT. They are structural necessities if you want your future house to stand. They are a safety net (to mix metaphors). Until you cling tightly to your EPs for the security they provide your marriage. As long as you see EPs as PUNISHMENT and punitive, you are WAYWARD.

When I sent my friend/coworker the steps to an affair, and we saw where our friendship could go, we both immediately stopped any behavior that could further that process. We both recognized that we needed precautions to protect our marriage, because no friendship, no behavior, no CELL PHONE NUMBER is worth a risk to our marriages.

So, heal your husband through honesty and humility, reassure him and strengthen your foundation with EPs, clear the rubble of your destroyed house. Then, and only THEN will you be prepared to start rebuilding, together.

You have a lot of work to do - both of you. It will take at LEAST 2 years, and it will be hard. Your hands will be sliced up as you pick through the pieces. You'll get frustrated and irritated with each other. You'll want to blame your husband for this mess. But the longer you stand around yelling about how you've been hurt, the longer it'll take before you can get back to looking at that tile sample. Pointing fingers wont help. Rolling up your sleeves and getting to work is the only thing that will help.

So, instead of standing over the mess trying to assign blame, why don't you get to work?

Her "testimony" is fogbabble and is useless. We already know how to screw up a marriage, anyone can do that. If she wants to learn to save hers, then she needs to put a sock in it and listen. The blind can't lead the blind. At AA meetings they escort drunks to the DOOR.

As far as "Plan Aing" a fogged out wayward, I would remind you we are not married to saddestwife. No one here is trying to fill her lovebank nor should they. If you are trying to fill her lovebank, I would caution against it.

Obviously I am talking about courtesy and cordiality with the poster despite her WW status.. That goes a long way even for those that are not our spouses.

I am just restating that some of the words seem harsh. Like I said one could give 2X4s like JL does.

SW,

Actually many BH, myself included, really appreciate frank disclosure of how WW's feel, because that's the only to really understand someone else. A fool wants people to say things they themselves want to hear.

Because of what I read here I was able to ask my wife the kinds of questions I never would have thought of had I not an understanding of her state of mind.

In fact it was Mrs_Zonies posts, spelling?, that really shook me up and made me realize what I was doing to my wife.

You have your formula but ask yourselves if in the end it is wise to run us off -- we have wisdom for you too.

Just looked and there are 34 registered users and 65 guests on line right now. Some of those 65 guests will be helped by your truthful postings, but are too ashamed or shy to ever say a word. Your postings have an effect on more people than the vocal minority who object so strenuously.

This is an anonymous forum for goodness sakes!

God Bless
Gamma

SW,

I really want to stay out of your thread but somehow I keep looking in. I do have a few things to offer and I have done that. I would suggest, following LG's post to find WW threads where they got beat up pretty good, that you also look at the threads for GreenMile, my FWH. He was a lot like you, lots of intellectual argument and a nice award from Mel for one of his babble statements. He finally got it but it was a long haul. There may be something of value in those threads for you.

That is it. I will leave you to the masters. They are right and it is a narrow path for you to follow. I think you can do it but it may still be a while before you finally get it. BTW, it is not only waywards who get 2x4's here. Us BS's, if being stupid or not thinking get them too. This is too serious to mess around with. Nobody is willing to let you mess up more by being overly kind to you, it is because they know how this goes and that it is imperative that you get this under control soon.

Good luck, you can do this.

Stan-ley come on - I'm not interested in swinging 2x4's the way JL does it!

I tend to swing the bat a little different. Sometimes I strike out and other times I hit a home run. Doesn't mean I don't have the right to step up to the plate and give it my all!

Frank Gunzburg's Three Phases of Recovery:



Phase I: Individual Healing - Understanding and sorting through emotional problems.

Phase I is all about YOU whether the betrayed or the betrayer. While the betrayed spouse most often has the most emotional turmoil to sort though, the betrayer as well has a lot of emotional baggage to deal with as the result of the affair.

When a person is affected by infidelity, whether cheater or cheated, the first thing they do is look for reasons why it happened. They want to know the details of the affair. They want to know why their loved one cheated or why they themselves became unfaithful.

But this is really externalizing the problem, that is, it seeks to explain our feelings and emotions and even actions in light of something outside ourselves. It is looking outside ourselves for answers and solutions to the turmoil within us.

But we need to stop looking outside for answers to what lies within us. We need to stop trying to figure out the other person and start trying to figure out our own emotions. We need to look, not without, but within. We need to be honest about our own emotions and pain and thoughts concerning the affair.

Phase I is all about developing strategies to deal with your own emotions, thoughts and feelings about the affair. All the rest can and must be addressed, but each of us must first deal with our raging emotions and learn how to deal with them so we can act rationally without a desire to inflict pain on the other. This is especially true for the betrayed spouse, but applies to the wayward spouse as well.



Phase II: Healing as a couple - Working together to identify and resolve key issues and problems.

Phase II which can only begin after Phase I has been dealt with is where you begin to work together to identify what was wrong with the marriage in the first place. It can help identify what it was that was lacking or that should not have been present that contributed to the climate that led to the affair.

The critical components of the relationship are examined in this phase to establish a set of requirements needed by both of us in order to build a marriage that will address both of our needs while avoiding the pitfalls that led to the affair in the first place.

This is also the phase in which you will examine what is required by the betrayed spouse as to details of the affair. Some may want to know every single thing that happened with a time-line and minutia that even the cheater may not be able to recall immediately. Others might not want to know much of anything because they can't avoid replaying the scenes over and over in their minds. Suffice it to say that what is required is that the cheater is willing to provide as much detail and information as the cheated spouse desires. As long as they are asking, the questions should be answered.



Phase III: Negotiating a Renewed Relationship.

In Phase III is where we get down to the really hard part of rebuilding the marriage. It is this phase that really must continue forever, or at least as long as you remain married to each other. This is where we get to the application of Marriage Builders methods and create a marriage that makes us both happy and fulfilled. Since needs, desires and emotions can and will change over time, this phase can never really come to an end. It is really what we should have been doing all along.

Both the betrayer and the betrayed needs to communicate openly the truth about their emotional state and their ever changing needs so that it gives their spouse an opportunity to fulfill those requirements. It means always communicating honestly, both positive and negative emotions and feelings so that neither of us can ever again use resentment over something that is missing or something that we wish were not there as grounds for justifying going outside the relationship for what we seek.

It requires spending time with your spouse and becoming transparent so that you can fully trust each other to not only remain faithful, but to provide that which each of you needs from the other.

It is really a contract that you both must accept that spells out the details of what the marriage is to become in order to make it the marriage you both want.

Acceptance of the terms of this contract is what will give you protection against infidelity in the future. BOTH of you need to accept this contract for it to have any value.

The above is from my Musings thread linked in my sig line.


I recently addressed this idea from the view point of the betrayed spouse, but my analogy also applies to the wayward spouse, so I will repeat it here.

It's as if your house burned down. While you both were able to get out safely and your family has been saved, the fire is out and you even have a check in hand from the insurance company that will give you the funds you need to rebuild, you still stand before a burned out mess that was once your home. Not much seems to be left and the task of rebuilding seems daunting.

The first thing that needs to happen is you both need to begin to heal. But there is a difference in the types of injuries you each sustained. In the case of your betrayed husband, his injuries came as the result of something he wasn't even aware was about to happen. He was sleeping soundly when the fire began and while he might have contributed to the poor condition of the house that led to the fire, he wasn't the one who lit the match. That, SW, was you. He got burned while he slept.

He failed to take out the trash, maybe for years. He didn't fix the things that needed fixing, again, maybe for years at a time. But it was you, SW, that poured gasoline on the pile of trash and struck a match to begin the fire.

I am not minimizing your pain and suffering, SW. I understand that you too have been hurt by all of this. But you are the one who set fire to the marital bed, no matter what condition that bed was in when you did it. Now people are asking you to remove the possibility of ever setting another fire ever again. They tell you that the way to do that is to rid yourself not only of the gasoline but the matches as well. If your affair partner were to contact you while you were having a momentary lapse in resolve, it would require that will power alone be what you rely on to avoid restarting the fire.

But something else is working here as well. You got burned just as surely as your husband did. But because he was unaware that the fire was about to begin, the fire nearly consumed him before he was aware it was happening. You lit the fire and then woke him up but because he wasn't prepared to escape the flames, he got 3rd degree burns and his very life was in jeopardy. His future is still in question, SW. He still might never recover from this and even if he does recover, he will carry the scars, as will you, for many years and probably for the rest of his life.

What people are asking of you is that you set aside the gasoline, stop carrying matches and focus on trying to help your husband heal first. He needs to know, not just trust but actually KNOW that you will not start any more fires.

Yes, you need to heal too. We get that, but your husband is still in intensive care and trying to get him to start rebuilding the house, or more to the point of the analogy, trying to negotiate the layout of the kitchen or the color of the carpet in the living room while the debris is still smoldering will not result in having your dream home. You can't talk about landscaping till he is ready and focusing on how his ideas of what to plant or the fact that the old things he planted were not good for you will not get you a new house or marriage.

As far as this posting or not posting to newbies...

You don't even have to be recovered to post to those who come along. But you should understand the difference between the principals being taught here and your own best thinking and opinions. It was after all, your own best thinking and opinions that brought you here and got you to where you currently find yourself. Your best instincts are what resulted in the fire that has consumed pretty much everything you ever had.

Your husband was 50% responsible for the condition of the house, SW. But you were the one who struck the match. Please focus right now on healing for both of you and worry about what the new house will have in it when the rebuilding begins.

Mark

That is funny!

I swing a Texas 2x4, not a JL 2x4!