Here is a link to a post that shows some posted success stories.

Scroll down a bit to find them ...

Success Stories.

Trust me when I say that is just a very small sampling of those that have been helped by MB.

Jen654, I just have to chime in here and say that I totally understand how you feel. I, too, don't think I've ever truly been "in love" with my husband. From the get go, I think I liked/loved him, but I'm positive that he never met my needs enough to make me fall in love with him. On the other hand, I DID meet his, so he fell in love with me. And like these other women on this thread, I lacked the self esteem to think I could ever find something better and it seemed good enough at the time. I wanted children and a family more than anything (apparently even more than being "in love"!)

So I think it is VERY possible that many, many women feel this way. We want to have children, our biological clocks are ticking, and we "settle" for someone we have very good feelings about, but aren't "in love" with.

Now that I know about MB, I realize that most likely ALL of these cases are cases where the husband just wasn't required to learn to meet the woman's emotional needs. Whether that is because we had sex with him too soon, making him feel like he was doing a better job than he was, or something else. It is now not surprising to me that many, many, many women feel this way. We want to marry and have kids, and we women KNOW that men need sex, but do men realize that women NEED affection and conversation just as much as they need sex? Likely not. Our culture isn't set up that way and when a woman leaves a man because he never filled her need for conversation or affection, she is looked at with scorn. But when a man leaves a woman because she refused him sex all these years, EVERYONE understands. So if we go ahead in the relationship and give to our husband's and meet their needs, then they don't HAVE TO learn to meet ours. They think everything is fine. We marry and think it will get better...that they'll take BETTER care of us once we're married, but we've essentially accepted their lack of meeting our needs, and still given them their #1 which is sex. So they just keep doing whatever they are doing that ISN'T making us fall in love. I actually think it's a sad story that happens ALL THE TIME. I actually think our society has set men up to fail by not teaching them about what will actually make a woman feel loved.

It sucks, but I TOTALLY get what you are saying about feeling in love before. I, too, had been in love before my husband and had that heart pitter-patter feeling. Unfortunately for me, and my heart, he didn't feel the same way about me, and the relationship didn't work out. But for me, I feel like that was the one that got away. And now I know why! He made massive LB deposits, naturally, and I fell head over heels in love with him. However, he didn't want marriage and kids and my husband did. So I chose to continue with my husband even though I've never had that pitter-patter feeling with him. I don't feel like I "lied" to my husband, he could have easily found out how "in love" with him I was, had he asked or paid attention. But he did neither because how HE was feeling was all he cared about. He never actually seemed to want to know how in love with him I was. He never, ever asked. He assumed that if I slept with him, I was in love, and that's as far as it ever went for him.

So right now I'm pretty much in the same situation with you, not in love with my husband. And unfortunately he's not on board with doing ANYTHING at all to make me fall in love with him, and thinks I should just love him as he is. It's a tough place to be, so I get it. I do think if your husband was motivated to actually meet your needs though, that everything could be turned around. My dilemma with getting him to become motivated is that why should he? He's done the same thing all along since the start of your relationship, so getting him to see the necessity of the change is going to be hard. Not impossible, but hard. I wish you luck!

Right now, this is the situation your husband is faced with:

If I do nothing extra, I still get to keep my wife and the situation which makes me happy.

or

If I do more for my wife I get to keep my wife and the situation which keeps me happy.

Which is obviously not much motivation for him to do more. If I said you could eat at my cafe for �10 or eat there for free, you would obviously choose the free option. You wouln't make the extra effort to pay me �10 just because I said I would prefer it.

You are the one responsbile for outlining what you will put up and what treatment you require in order to stay married.

Letting your husband believe that you will stay married in return for NO care on his part is nuts. You won't get a caring marriage that way any more than my cafe would turn a profit giving away free meals.

Dr Harley would recommend someone in your position to start Plan A and then Plan B.

In Plan A you meet all his needs, not expecting him to meet your needs back any time soon. But you regularly remind him that eventually you will want your needs met too. This is kind of like a 'trial offer'. To stay with the cafe metaphor, I would show you how good my food is for a set period, and get you used to having it, my trial period would get you hooked on the food I offer. But I would remind you that when the offer is up, you will need to pay your share.

Plan B is a controlled separation. Without warning you disappear and refuse to communicate directly with your spouse. You leave him with a love letter informing him that you would love to come back and shower upon him all the attention that he has gotten used to. But before you will agree to come back, you need him to commit to meeting your needs too.

It's not a divorce, it's a loving way of letting them know you won't stay in a loveless marriage. A separation where you state you are longing to return - but to the right conditions.

It's risky - as are all separations. But all you risk losing is a loveless marraige.

One of the top 10 Wayward Spouse sayings.

VERY hard to believe and usually means you are trying to justify your bad behavior.

**edit**

ETW, Really? That doesn't sound like MB advice.


Dr Harley would say it can. We fall in love with people that meet our needs and avoid doing things that annoy/hurt us.

Also FYI I�m quite certain Jen654 is long gone. Her original post on this thread was over 2.5 years ago.

You write this as if it is your husband's fault. Look at it from his perspective. You have trained him that that what he was doing was good enough. You agreed to marry him. You had sex with him and so forth. That sends the message that he was meeting your needs.

Now you want to blame him for not meeting your needs after sending the message that he was meeting your needs.

Why should he believe you?

I am not saying he was meeting your needs. I am saying it will be difficult for you to deliver a credible message after years of conditioning provided by your behaviors that indicated he was meeting your needs.

I don't think society gives men a pass. After all, women choose divorce two to three times more often than men, yet there is still this misconception that men are the ones abandoning their familes and are afraid of commitment.

Even our pastor, when he learned of my ex-wife's affair asked me what I did to force her to have an affair.

So there is plenty of blame the victim when it comes to men who are divorced by their wives.

We hear that men are clueless. I wonder how much of that is because we are told one thing, while our wives are feeling a totally different thing. Somehow, it is our fault we trusted our wives and took them at their word when they said they were in love with us, and wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, when really they are simply thinking we are simply the best option.

It is difficult to have a clue when we are not given total honesty

Good points.. I will say this I think part of it is what society and/or the church has trained us to do. I was taught that to be a good Christian wife I should do whatever I can to make him happy. That to love like Christ means ignoring your own needs and fulfilling the needs of your spouse. You think there is something wrong with you for being unhappy.. And so yes, then you train your husband that what he has been doing is good enough. Why would he want to change and this is my problem, how can he believe you when you tell him you are happy or not happy when you lied for so long that you were....


After 25 years it just isn't worth the effort... So now I give all of Dr. Harley's books to every single newlywed that I know. I tell them to be radically honest and put these principals into practice. It is too late for me, but not for them.

Of course it is not too late for you, TW. You just aren't willing to follow the advice Dr. Harley gives for wives whose husbands aren't on board. That is very sad to see.

Dr. Harley is very clear that if the husband is simply not on board, no amount of need meeting / love buster fixing on the part of the wife will drag him back. A wife should not spend years trying to deal with that - she will end up in a terrible emotional state, probably with a serious physical toll taken on her immune system as well, and often suicidal.

I've seen enough women end up in that state after blogging for years here on the forum. I'm here to sound the alarm: not only is it not too late for you, but if you continue like this with no change on his part things are going to only get worse. The time to make preparations is NOW while you feel better, not later when you feel worse.

It is very much worth the effort. We have people here who have been married longer than you who are in completely recovered, passionate marriages. All it takes is willingness. The tools are lying there waiting for you to pick them up.