Why don't you write Dr. Harley and you guys can pool data?

Markos, that would be presumptuously premature at the present time.

Out of how many hundreds? It should be noted that this immediate repentance of a WW is not typical. Most Betrayed Husbands must spend quite some time in Plan A winning their WWs back.

In a similar vein, Prisca, I don't have data on "hundreds"; my time here has given me some view of "dozens" at the outside. Given some cooperation and good will, that might just give me traction for a start.

While we're on that point: As I understand the past, it was your EA which "rocked the boat" of your marriage. Evidence being that your marriage is now strong and vital, and having read many of your postings, it seems superfluous to verify that you, at some time, "bought into" the MB recovery plan. Unless you care to correct me, I will proceed under that assumption. If you would care to give me a sense of the time-frame of your "enlistment" I would thank you.

Yes, she did agree to participate in the MB program, albeit reluctantly, if I remember right. She certainly was not immediately repentant or remorseful. That is very RARE when it comes to wayward wives. If we waited around for them to be remorseful, we wouldn't have many success stories around here. We don't need to collect any data; Dr Harley has done all that over the past 40 years. Using that data, he designed a program that represents best practices for both genders.

Markos' main complaint about me for 3 years has been that I was not following the program.

I agreed to the program in 2010 even though I was not a very willing participant. We had 14 sessions with Steve, the Marriage Builders Weekend in the Twin Cities, the online course with Dr. Harley and our coach Kim, and I drug my feet the entire way. You could say I was not "bought in" until much later -- this year, in fact -- when Markos quit lovebusting me and started meeting my needs.

Whenever Markos demanded that I get on board and start following the program by meeting his needs, it pushed me further away. His demands that I meet his needs may have gotten them met short term, but it was detrimental to our recovery. Any time he threatened divorce, it sent me further into withdrawal.

Plan A is what won me over, not demands to follow the program and meet his needs. By the time he pushed me over the romantic threshold, I was more than willing to meet his needs and our relationship was recovered.

Recovery hinges strongly on the actions of the husband (whether he be the BH or the WH). Recovery does not depend on whether or not the WW is repentant and has bought into MB. Sounds sexist, but most women respond to being pursued and won (whether BW or WW). As Mel said, most WWs are reluctant and non-remorseful -- If these things were necessary for recovery, success stories would be rare.

Markos, and his relentless pursuit, is the reason we are in a recovered marriage today. Not me.

Thanks for explaining it so articulately, Prisca. Your experience is exactly what I have observed over the years. The approaches that work with a WH are very different from a WW. This is why we are so hard on BH's to be diligent in cleaning up their side of their street. That is what it takes to save those marriages. Completely different strategy with a WH.

what is the best strategy for a WH? is there a link I can read on this. thank you!

Dr. Harley says that a WH must return "hat in hand" before a BW should consider reconciliation. It is very difficult for a BW to pursue and win her WH back -- unlike women, men do not typically respond to being "wooed."

It is best for the typical BW to draw a very firm line as far as recovery is concerned. The WH must step up to the plate and do what must be done from the get-go, and if he doesn't, the BW should go to Plan B.

This is the thing that just about killed me.

However, I really believe that this can be greatly impacted by how you handle the situation after dday.

Looking back, us living apart for 9mo's was a huge mistake.

It took those 9mo's for her love to grow for me again. I realize that it took a long time for her to fall out of love with me and took a long time for those feelings to return especially if a WS is in love with someone else.

Most people follow their feelings not their brains.

People are not wired to be able to flip the switch to instantly be in love with someone. It is very much a process. I had to prove to her that the changes in me were real and long-term sustainable.

I remember when I was on the radio show, Dr. H commenting that my remorse (as a FWW) was very unusual. I don't think I can qualify as a case for your dataset though, NG, since we didn't find MB until nearly a year after my A ended. My A did end on D-day and I immediately knew I wanted broken & our M, but then followed four months of trickle-truth which, likely more so than the A, shot my chances of saving our M all to hell. I was a screwed-up mess until I found a plan and developed empathy for what I had put broken through. Actually I have been a screwed-up mess ever since committing adultery, regardless of having any kind of plan.

I know what Dr. H says about WW's not being remorseful/repentant, but I don't understand how one could NOT feel remorse/repentance for committing adultery and subjecting their spouse to such immense pain. In the end, remorse and repentance made little difference to the outcome of my situation.

Interesting data to me would be the percentage of recovered BH/WW marriages vs. recovered BW/WH marriages. You would have to be pretty clear on the definition of the "recovered" variable to use in the general population, but I think the dataset of posters here is more heavily weighted along the lines of recovery. I'd think that factors such as the duration of infidelity and extent would also be strongly correlated with success. Maybe society's perceptions of a BW vs. BH, WW vs. WH.

As a note and perhaps more to Neverguessed and what he is analyzing, I am going to paraphrase a friend of mine

"True recovery and a true romance afterwards takes AT LEAST ONE of two things:
One, a BS that has the ability to "forgive" and love freely again,regardless of the crime. Someone who is forgiving by nature, not resentful.
Two, a WS that is deeply remorseful and willing to move mountains to heal their spouse.

If the first is present and not the second, the BS can be the driver, put the effort in,and as long as the marriage is in future affair proof even though their spouse was not remorseful, the BS seems to be able to forgive and move on and live in the present.
If the second is present, it is possible IMO for a
truly repentant WS to turn around a very resentful and unforgiving BS.
In cases where NEITHER are present, Recovery will never happen.

XXYH, you allude to the long time it takes for a WW, having grown "out of love" with her BH to "grow back" that affection and devotion. It appears that the preponderance of evidence supports that premise. Equally obvious is that the MB Program can (will?) work, if followed, to bring that about.

Where I'm fumbling about is the step prior to that - compelling (incenting? convincing?) the WS to earnestly and honestly commit to following the MB Plan 100%. Too, too often, after exposure, after NC, the BS ignites a Plan A (as well as he can) and the results are NOTHING! For every Markos there are presented here dozens of GJMs, TDs, D2s, RQs, UWs, etc, etc, who in the middle of the path they've chosen, have NO leverage to cause WS to join the fight, with results spanning the panoply from "terminal" to merely "bad".

The "scorecard" so far is merely a 2 x 2 matrix, with "Buy In" and "No Buy-In" across the columns, and "Success" and "Failure" labeling the rows. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of cases land in two of the categories, with only Markos in one, and broken(WPG) and SQ in the other.

I will continue to investigate.

If I had waited until prisca was committed 100%, I'd still be waiting. And from what I hear listening to Dr. Harley, that is typical for withdrawn wives, wayward or not.

As for leverage -- what leverage? I had none, so far as I can see, and believe me I would've wanted to use it.

The only way to get my wife to that level of commitment was to get her to fall in love with me. I had to do so pretty much without her cooperation. And this is an extremely common scenario, which Dr. Harley is usually pretty optimistic about. I've got to tell you it drove me nuts hearing Dr. Harley constantly assure me to keep at it and assume good faith on my wife's part even though she was breaking every rule in the book. But once we crossed that romantic love threshold, it made all the difference in the world.

You've got betrayed wives and betrayed husbands mixed in there, which is obscuring a lot and missing out on Dr. Harley's insight that men and women are different and a betrayed wife has almost no potential to win her husband back, whereas for a betrayed husband it is the exact opposite.

Egalitarianism is fine as a moral premise and when it comes to recognizing what rights people deserve, but everything Dr. Harley has written since he penned the title "His Needs, Her Needs" focuses on the fact that men and women are very, very different.

I can see where you are going with this and it is an interesting topic to explore.

Why does Plan A work in some cases and not in others? Great question. Too many X factors to list. (I do have my own opinions!)

However, the one flaw in your data collection is going to be 'the human factor'.

With each case, without knowing the back-story to the history of those who land here looking for help is seldom known to great detail. Therein are the clues to help understand what makes a couple relatively ready to accept MB and R or not.

One of the reasons I think so many people respond well to Dr Harley on the radio program is that he approaches the topic of adultery with both the H and W with a very clinical attitude. He separates the logic from the emotion. It is very effective.

I would venture to think that most people lead their behavior from their emotions and not their head. 'do what they FEEL is right'

During our lowest of lows, we kept reminding ourselves that �feelings follow actions�. This is a very basis of Dr Harley�s plan for R but VERY difficult concept for people to really buy. Truly, I believe this is a large factor why most people may not make it through R.

edit: I think it is possible that a lot of people convince themselves they will never 'feel' a certain way about their spouse and just give up. Therefore, they do not put forth the 'actions' to get to the 'romantic feelings' they want for their spouse.

Here's just about the most relevant data point I know:
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/radio_program/play_segment.cfm?sid=03324
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/radio_program/play_segment.cfm?sid=03325
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/radio_program/play_segment.cfm?sid=03326
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/radio_program/play_segment.cfm?sid=03327

The forum probably would've told this guy to start telling his wife what she needed to do to fix her marriage after her affair. But, according to Dr. Harley, the forum would've been wrong.

I think you are absolutely right. It is extremely hard to put aside what your emotions are prompting you to do and do what it takes to recover. I know that when I felt despair, I focused on the unfairness of it all, and how much damage I felt was NOT caused by me, and felt extremely unmotivated to do anything.

So, I followed Dr. Harley's advice for such a situation and took antidepressants. And with my emotional highs and lows evened out, I was able to think logically and realize that, fair or not, my only chance was to keep meeting needs and avoiding love busters. And it worked. I secured my wife's buy in by sticking to the program on my side. When she fell in love with me, she bought in 100%. Prior to that, there was indeed lots of disrespect, independent behavior, etc., and when I complained about it it usually led to a fight.

The BS's ability to forgive does not factor into recovery. Dr. Harley does not recommend forgiveness. Recovery can happen without forgiveness.

This is only true with WH, not WW. Recovery can happen with a WW who does not feel remorseful. Case in point: Me. I have not felt deep remorse until July 4 this year. While reading Dr. Harley's Revised SAA, strong emotions hit me for the first time: What did I do? I have never felt such deep emotions before now, and yet we are in a recovered marriage.

Dr. Harley says that some WW will never feel remorse for their actions, and the marriage can still recover. It is very, very common.

Sorry, Prisca, you are completely right. This was spoken in regards to WH's and not WW's. Thanks.

5 days after dday (pre-MB) we started some very ineffective marriage counseling.

However, there was 1 single shred of a thought process which was very helpful.

The counselor had 1 session with us together and then we went individual. Her words were that �this is still very fresh for you Mr. BS. Your WW has been living with this reality for quite some time now. Your perspectives on this situation are very different�.

See what she was saying is that WW had been living with this reality for months and when I found out, it was ALL NEW information to me.

These 2 different perspectives create 2 distinct points of view. WW had a lot of time to come to grips with what she had been doing and me?? WHAM �ton of bricks.

I became cognizant of the fact that I needed time to process this where she HAD BEEN processing this for a longer period. She was ready to move on with her life without me and I had not considered it at all.

2 totally different points of view. Mentally, I was forced to �catch-up� with her line of thinking and prepare myself mentally to what was going on. An exit A is much more difficult for Plan A to have its desired effects.

What percentage of newly BS�s on this forum just found out that day or just days before? Most. Therefore, there perspective is Fresh to the situation and their WS has been working with this knowledge sometimes for years.

I really believe there is something to this line of thought and how MB can help the couple. It gives them a plan when your mind is going in all directions.

Whoa.

Whoa.


Bravo for Markos to be able to R without you being remorseful..

I for one would not be able to without it. No way. Dr Harley has said it is possible but I don't get it.

I would want nothing to do with Clearmind if she was not TOTALLY remorseful. Her remorse (to me anyway) is an indicator of empathy.

You were not remorseful that you hurt him in the most cruel of ways?