Yes, Markos...
I understand what you are saying...
And, I would be most interested in hearing what Dr. H has to say in regards to TRT's "revelation" about him being pissed at the world due to something that happened to him in his past!
I guess it comes down to "conflict resolution".
Until the conflict is resolved, won't TRT continue to be angry & abusive?

In this fairly recent article, Dr. Harley suggests the use of a biofeedback device to learn to control anger, such as a galvanic skin response meter. He suggests purchasing one on Amazon. He mentions the GSR2 Biofeedback Relaxation System is only about $75.

I bought the GSR2 Biofeedback Relaxation System yesterday. We have Amazon Prime, so I paid no shipping, and we'll get it tomorrow.

Previously, I'd also been eyeing the Stress Eraser and the Emwave2 biofeedback devices. I may still get those at some point. They measure heart rate variability (HRV) instead of galvanic skin response (GSR). The science associated with the Emwave ("Heartmath") sounds a little flaky, but it sounds like HRV is an accepted meaasure of stress/frustration.

Dr Harley specifically advises against trying to resolve the past, because, by definition, that cannot be done. We cannot change the past, no matter how much we examine it. The only thing that we do by revisiting the past is keep the issue alive in our minds, when in fact it needs to be dead and buried - which it apparently was for you. That's good. Re-bury it.

If the polygrapher asked you a question that required you to be truthful about childhood sexual abuse, for example, then all that was required as that you be truthful about it. The polygrapher of all people is not qualified to to to you about it or help you realise that it was "actually alive and kicking the crap" out of you.

None of what happened in your childhood should be taken into account when working on your marriage. Your wife isn't responsible for anything that happened to you in childhood. It is your job to be a good husband today. Put the past back in the past where it belongs.

He would say to leave the past in the past. He was written and spoken on this extensively. Markos is exactly right. TRT's anger comes from a sense of entitlement and the death of his addiction.

In Marriage Builders parlance, a conflict is when each spouse wants different things.

Dr. Harley says he and Joyce experience a conflict once an hour! (In fact, he says so in the article I just linked, between your post and this one.) But he hasn't had an angry outburst in decades.

If "conflict" refers to a problem of the past, Dr. Harley's take is that you can't resolve all the problems of the past. All that happens when you do that is that you bring those problems into the present, and you get worse emotionally. Dr. Harley has referred to the practice of trying to resolve problems of the past as job security for therapists.

Bringing past unpleasantness into the present makes the present unpleasant. It causes harm and is only a distraction.

I don't think that's what LIAC4M (whoa...long name) was saying at all. I think the basic message was just as you said: Don't let your past consume you. It's a complete waste of time.

We've all got skeletons, that's for sure. So how the heck do any of us lead normal lives and maintain healthy relationships? Because we don't spend time on the skeletons.

You could either spend years in therapy trying to learn exactly what it is that makes you angry, or you could just understand that your anger is killing your wife and stop the AOs. Either way, you're going to eventually have to suck it up and stop having AOs. Which of those two scenarios do you think would be better for your chances with AI?

Children throw tantrums when they don't get their way. It's about time you manned the #$@#% up.

AJoseJake, she is suggesting that he resolve the conflicts of the past:

That is the kind of a thing a wayward will latch onto to avoid taking hard steps. It is a wayward's dream to be able to change the subject by going to "counseling" to work on his childhood for a few years. What better way to avoid some hard work for a few years!


yup,yup!!

Of course, whatever this big dark secret from the past is, AlmostInvictus should know all about it, and any issues it causes in the present should be subject to the Policy of Joint Agreement.

For example, supposing the issue from the past is that AlmostInvictus's husband has fathered a child by another woman. In that case, he shouldn't see the child unless she is enthusiastic about the idea and enthusiastic about the way it is done.

But most issues of the past that people typically talk about resolving don't have a component in the present.

Sorry, one thing before I get the kids dressed and go about my day:

I never said I had to overcome any past anything in order to make AI feel safe or become the man she deserves. I merely mentioned that curious observation in passing.

Also, I do acknowledge the fact that I har a HUGE sense of entitlement. This is a problem I'm confronting and working towards killing.

My past is exactly that: my past. Not AI's. We both know that. It doesn't bleed into this at all. It's not the source of my anger. And it's not an issue here.

Markos, I'll be looking into the device you mentioned. Sounds like a worthwhile purchase. Also, I haven't been a daily listener. I don't know if I ever will be, but it's worth a shot.

Thanks for the 2x4s, folks. Keeps things in perspective.

I'll PDF and read the articles linked. Thank you.

Bingo!


Exactly! My anger management therapist also said the same thing about angry men using therapy to get out of actually fixing their anger.

This is a problematic approach, LoveIs. I would go so far as to say that this is the road to horror.

Let's suppose that the thing that happened to him in the past was some form of abuse that happened in childhood or young adulthood. How can that conflict be resolved? I would contend that it can never be.

If his father beat him, TRT can confront him and tell him why that was a bad thing to do, but he cannot undo the beatings. The same is true if someone took advantage of him sexually.

Can TRT can get an apology from this person? Is the person still alive? Still contactable? Is the person even sorry? Would an expression of sorrow from an elderly person today compensate for the fact that this person, as a younger adult, wilfully abused an innocent child?

I went to four counselling sessions with a typical individual therapist when I was going through many D Days with my H, before I found MB. The therapist was from a school that believed that many issues that we face today are due to our childhood experiences, and that we need to understand those in order to cope with the present. In practice, this meant that when I went there crying for someone to help me make my husband stop lying to me and screwing OW at every opportunity, and to find a way to make him stop telling her daily that he loved her (via work) while at home telling me that he loved me and that the affair was over, when i went for help to stop all this without separating (which I now see I should have done)...

...when I went there for that help, I was made to talk about the infidelity that my mother suffered from my now-dead father and to realise that I had chosen a man who would treat me as my father treated my mother. I was made to see that I had a deep need to volunteer for the adultery - this wasn't my fault, though, this was all in my unconscious - and that I needed to grow strong and tell my H how badly this was affecting me, because of my childhood. That would stop the affair.

If you can understand any of that then you are better than I was, because I stopped going to see her. I would leave her office with not just my H's affair on my mind, but my childhood wrongs weighing me down even more. That was so counter-productive, because as I became an adult and left home, found employment that I enjoyed, bought a house that was all mine to make of it what I wanted, got married and raised two wonderful children, I had found it beneficial to STOP thinking about my childhood when my thoughts strayed there. I focused instead on the privileges that I enjoyed today.

A couple of months after my last consultation with that therapist I told my H I was leaving and he stopped travelling on the spot, and a few months later, when I found MB, I exposed to OWH, and between us we made it impossible for the pair to meet again. In all honesty, those measures alone did not stop the EA, and it took exposure to my children and H's family to bring the spotlight of shame on to the affair, and it also took H's retirement to cut off the route of workplace contact.

We signed up for the online programme and now use behavioural methods to meet each other's ENs, stop LBs and prioritise UA time. We do not spend any time whatsoever discussing either my or H's childhoods.

It took concrete, verifiable actions to stop the affair, and it is the actions that we practice every day that will rebuild our marriage.

I think that TRT's anger at us here on the board is because he is ashamed and embarrassed at the lies he has been caught in TODAY, and at the spotlight being shone on his abuse of his wife. A group of strangers is sitting in judgement on him and he does not like it or us.

Well, that's understandable. I don't expect him to like feeling ashamed. But he can cut the bull about his childhood because it isn't relevant to anything that he has done to his wife.

Right! I did notice that! We just don't want anyone to hand you any ammunition to go off and take an unproductive route.

Even if LIAC4M meant something entirely different by her post and I am just misreading it, I don't want you to misread it the way I did and go off on an unproductive route.


Good. No demands. Nothing that can even be perceived as a demand.

The rule is: if she says you are demanding, you are. I always find that one hard to follow, but it works.

By the way, "working towards" is red flag language for me. Do you know how long I "worked on" angry outbursts without actually doing anything? People like you and me can "work on something" for years without any progress. "Working towards" is remarkably non-specific!!!


I am going to be extremely frank with you: I don't know if you'll ever make it if you don't listen daily. And I don't know how much I'll continue to help you if you are unwilling to take this easy and free step.

What is the point of saving up/selling/getting a loan to raise money for Marriage Builders coaching if you don't value the free help Marriage Builders offers (the radio show)?

I do not believe my marriage would have made it if I hadn't listened to the radio show. And I never had an affair. I seriously don't believe you will make it if you don't become incredibly familiar with these principles. You say you want to become a good husband: this is FREE good husband class.

By a quick envelope calculation, I've listened to about 640 hours of Marriage Builders radio. I guarantee I could not have afforded 640 hours of any type of counseling or therapy in my lifetime. I am so utterly dense that it takes a lot of repetition to get this stuff into me. Maybe you have suspicions that you might be the same way.

This is the easiest thing in the world and you don't have to read anything. Sit in class with the expert teaching. I promise you still have a lot to learn.

As an unqualified psychotherapist of the Freudian naval-gazing school of thought, I will say that there is no such thing as making an observation "in passing". You spoke about the childhood thing kicking your [censored] in response to a question about why you are so pissed at the world and us. You gave it as a reason; in other words, as a justification.


Oops! Anyone who saw this reply pre-edit will see that I misread TRT saying "keeps thing in perspective" and hit him with a 4x8! Sorry, TRT. I've got my reading glasses on now.

rightthing, Prisca and I talked a lot about this post last night.

Here's a couple of observations for you.

First of all, Dr. Harley's approach doesn't always agree with other therapeutic approaches, or with conventional wisdom, or with popular psychology. BUT, it is proven to work when followed! While regular marriage counseling has an 84% failure rate.

Next, some of us know Dr. Harley's program very well including lots of special cases, and when we see someone offering advice that contradicts his, we tend to jump in there and post (and sometimes notify the moderators) to let people know why Dr. Harley thinks conflicting ideas won't work. We've seen in our own marriages how Dr. Harley's approach works (and we've also often seen how other ideas do NOT!!) and we want to help other people get that.

Compare this morning (posting about resolving issues of the past) with Prisca's post about swearing. You didn't see a bunch of people debating Prisca's comment on the subject. That's because they know it's good advice! But you casually dismissed that. Interesting. Then when a paid expert told you otherwise, you were open to listening to this good help.

Finally, let me tell you that I spent over $5000 on Marriage Builders coaching and materials. 14 sessions with Steve Harley. Plus the Marriage Builders seminar and accountability program. Plus books. And that's not counting another $1000 spent with an anger management therapist, and buying his books.

Some of us have been reading and listening and learning this stuff for years, at great expense, and are here giving our time to pass on the same information for FREE. I really encourage you to listen to it. We are usually somewhat self-correcting as a group around here and if somebody says something that bothers you or you want to reject, but everyone else seems to agree, you might want to take a second look.

Of course, right now, my contention is that you have no framework to tell what concepts to accept or reject, because you are not really picking up Marriage Builders. That is why I want to encourage you to go to class: listen to the radio. You know how some college classes, you could read the book and skip the lecture? And some classes, you could skip the book and just attend the lecture? Around here I believe many of us need both the lecture and the book.

there's not much to say here that hasn't already been said.

i just want to add that you better brace yourself for the LIFETIME of work in front of you.

you're probably a little high right now, from becoming more honest and passing the poly. i bet on some level you feel pretty self satisfied right about now, even though your wife is completely and totally traumatized (and you know you SHOULD look remorseful, so you're doing your best).

you have an inkling of feeling good about things, like a typical game player, you think you've turned things in your favor and are putting on a great show of remorse and being helpful, etc. do you have any real EMPATHY for all the people you've wounded in your selfishness? i'm not convinced.

this is going to be a long haul. i don't think anyone here cares what you have to sell to generate resources to clean up YOUR mess. don't expect any pats on the backs.

i get the wayward mind because i lived it. go check out my post to renter about distraction because that's what you've been doing with all these disgusting dalliances. you just haven't wanted to show up to your real life.

it ain't going to work anymore. not if you want to stay married to your lady.

i'm hoping you can really start to understand the damage you've caused because if you can't, this isn't going to work.

Hey all,

Thank you for posting more advice and the massive amount of "get it straight or this ain't gonna work" messages you've posted here. I'm reading EVERYTHING (especially yours, Markos). We're working on being together and making AI feel safe and protected, right now. I know this is going to be a decades long job that I'm embarking on in order to fix the damage I've caused, but I also know its not a "job" - its a privledge.

I didn't have a single AO yesterday. I almost did, but I caught myself every time and did something else instead of blowing up. How long will this last? No idea. But I'm working on the "forever" goal.

Thank you for everything, guys. It means a lot to me (even though I get angry sometimes) and it means a whole heap to AI, as well.

I'll post more later if I get the chance. For now, helping AI and concentrating on defeating my terrible inner voice is my main priority.

I have great plans for fixing what is broken in both of us. And honestly, they're easier to accomplish than the SSL I've been living.

Yes ... I see this as his pattern. It is like the criminal who commits his crime, gets caught, but they only find out he stole $1000, but he knows the real truth he actually stole $1million, but they didn't catch that part. So he is high as a kite because he walks on a misdemeanor and not a felony. 1 year probation, and $100 retribution. The criminal knows he is still lying by omission, but he doesn't care because he just got that high again .... the high of "I just saved my [censored]".

I feel eery about your posts because your pattern of behavior mimics this criminal. Anyone who is high of the fact he was forced to do a polygraph to verify truth raises serious

Usually one is embarrassed, shameful, and completely broken because being forced to do a polygraph suggests you are extremely untrustworthy. A normal reaction is shame...tears...and humiliation.

My suggestion for you is to volunteer your time to people with disabilities, homeless, the elderly ... go to a place you can humble yourself. You need to get out of yourself.

Duly noted. And thank you for your honesty.

This I believe.

(Speaking figuratively) the devil is a notorious double crosser. When he gives you a gift in return for a sin, its never a worthwhile payoff.'Want people to like you? Just lie!' he says and shrugs. Its always a much heavier penalty than it seems at the outset.