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Originally Posted by allgoodthings2
you asked
What specifically is he asking of you that is "controlling?"

When he asked me how I felt about moving I told him I will move but I also expressed my reservations. Big city, starting all over at a new job, etc.
His words where that this marriage will be how he wants it to be. I can't demand anything or disagree with anything because from now on he will do what he wants and I will do what he tells me. There is no room for negotiation.
Basically every time I disagree with something he brings up the affair and how I've been and I have no right to have my way.
I totally understand how he feels. But if we are going to follow this program we both have to make concerted efforts. Every conversation ends up about the affair, the lies and that I'm a b*** and a piece of s****
He says he forgives me but things are going to be his way.
He's probably right. They should have been his way. I violated his trust and with that any privileged.


That isn't Marriage Builders.

Read the basic concepts and the articles (first on how affairs should end, then the others).

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Originally Posted by allgoodthings2
His words where that this marriage will be how he wants it to be. I can't demand anything or disagree with anything because from now on he will do what he wants and I will do what he tells me. There is no room for negotiation.

That won't work. And I hope you don't give into that, because it will make things worse. Is he trying to drive you away? Sounds like it to me..


"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt

Exposure 101


apples123 #2858780 06/26/15 10:13 PM
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Marriage builders is about creating a marriage that makes both partners happy And protects both from the possibility of an affair.

It would help your marriage greatly to do the coaching program, because what y'all are doing isn't marriage builders.

Click the Coaching Center tab at the top to learn about the program. Its is a class plus coaching.

Last edited by apples123; 06/26/15 10:14 PM.
apples123 #2858781 06/26/15 10:13 PM
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I just spent hours reading the whole thing and making notes. It helped me recognize some of the behaviors I have to change and address.

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Good, the next step is getting the book, Surviving An Affair.

apples123 #2858784 06/26/15 10:25 PM
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I will order that right now.

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Quote
He says I need to get on this forum and do everything I'm supposed to do. Follow all the steps and leave the old me behind. I deleted my Facebook page today but I don't know what else I'm supposed to do.
This program takes two. If he won't do his part, then this marriage cannot be saved and you are better off moving on without him.

Is he willing to work the program with you?


Markos' Wife
FWW - EA
8 kids ...
What to do with an Angry Husband

Prisca #2858786 06/26/15 10:40 PM
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Originally Posted by Dr. Harley
I'm convinced that what's kept the resentment of S.R.'s husband alive for so many years is that he has found it to be an effective way to control and punish her whenever she doesn't do what he wants. Whenever they have a fight, he brings it up, and it causes her such guilt that it gives him a decided advantage in winning the argument.

By this time, I don't believe that her affair is the problem that she thinks it is. Instead, it is an issue that her husband is using to get the upper hand in his relationship with her. It probably shows up the most whenever she has been reluctant to have sex with him. It throws her off balance whenever he mentions it, and makes her feel guilty, wanting to make it up to him somehow. He may also bring it up whenever she is winning in a power struggle he is having with her.

What she describes to me in her letter is abuse, pure and simple. There is no excuse for the way her husband keeps bringing up her moment of weakness she experienced years ago. He is disrespectful and abusive.

I suggest that she look him right in the eye and say to him, "Listen Buster, do you love me? Do you want me to love you? Do you want to spend the rest of your life with me? If the answers to any of those questions is 'yes' you sure are going about it the wrong way. You are not doing things that I admire, you're doing things that I find disgusting!"

What if he says, "Fine, then lets just get a divorce and end it all."

To that I would say, "It's up to you. I married you for life, but if you want a divorce, it's your call. If you want to be in a love relationship with me, however, you're going to have to treat me much better than you have been treating me. You must never again bring up my affair, and if you are upset with me, you will have to treat me with respect until we can solve the problem. If you are upset with our sexual relationship, I want us to discuss it as adults and solve it with mutual respect. I refuse to be treated like this, especially by the man I love."

My advice to her husband is to never mention her affair again. It's a good example of one of the enemies of good conversation, dwelling on past mistakes. Whenever you keep bringing up your spouses past mistakes, you not only make your conversations incredibly unpleasant, but it cannot possibly lead to a resolution of a conflict you may be discussing. And as soon as his resentment doesn't pay him any dividends -- no longer helps him get his way -- he will find that it hardly ever occurs to him.

Hanging on to an unpleasant thought because it helps us somehow is what psychologists call "secondary gain." It means that even though the thought is unpleasant, it gets you something you need, so your mind keeps it around for its usefulness. There are many unpleasant thoughts that have this characteristic, and I have helped many people let them go by helping them destroy the usefulness of the thought. Making sure that S.K.'s husband never gets what he wants by bringing up her affair will help him overcome his resentment.

From here: Coping with Infidelity: Part 4 Overcoming Resentment

Will your husband join you in a program of recovery?


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What to do with an Angry Husband

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Originally Posted by allgoodthings2
He's probably right. They should have been his way. I violated his trust and with that any privileged.

Have you read Dr. Harley's Basic Concepts? If you read about the Giver and the Taker, you will see why this can't work. If you let your Giver be in control like this, eventually your Taker will wake up hopping mad and will urge you to hurt him.

So if your goal is to make him happy, this is not the way to do it.


If you are serious about saving your marriage, you can't get it all on this forum. You've got to listen to the Marriage Builders Radio show, every day. Install the app!

Married to my radiant trophy wife, Prisca, 19 years. Father of 8.
Attended Marriage Builders weekend in May 2010

If your wife is not on board with MB, some of my posts to other men might help you.
markos #2858788 06/26/15 10:45 PM
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Are you listening to the Marriage Builders radio show, daily?


If you are serious about saving your marriage, you can't get it all on this forum. You've got to listen to the Marriage Builders Radio show, every day. Install the app!

Married to my radiant trophy wife, Prisca, 19 years. Father of 8.
Attended Marriage Builders weekend in May 2010

If your wife is not on board with MB, some of my posts to other men might help you.
markos #2858789 06/26/15 10:53 PM
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I just downloaded the app.
The problem is that my taker is the one who's been in charge all this time. And keeps getting in the way. I haven't been listening to the giver.

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Originally Posted by allgoodthings2
I just downloaded the app.
The problem is that my taker is the one who's been in charge all this time. And keeps getting in the way. I haven't been listening to the giver.

Have you read the Basic Concepts? Have you read the page about the Giver and the Taker?

This is not a subject where you want to go by what you think - read what Dr. Harley says about it.

Here's the deal: inside of you are both the Giver and the Taker. Both of them give you a stream of ideas.

The ideas the Taker gives you follow this rule:
"Do whatever makes allgoodthings2 happy, even if it makes other people unhappy."

The ideas the Giver gives you follow this rule:
"Do whatever makes other people happy, even if it makes allgoodthings2 unhappy."

In between, listening to both of these streams of ideas, is you, allgoodthings2.

Between those three things:
* Giver
* Taker
* allgoodthings2

Which one of the three do you think we want in control?

allgoodthings2 needs to listen to the ideas offered by the Giver and Taker, and needs to filter out a lot of them. You need to filter out the ideas that make your Giver unhappy. But you also need to filter out the ideas that make your Taker unhappy. You should not be listening to one or the other and just blindly following what they say. Both of them are SHORT SIGHTED and can lead you to disaster.

You don't want to be led by mere emotion - you need to be led by sense, thinking, intelligence, and rationality.

IF YOU LET THE GIVER RULE, EVENTUALLY THE TAKER WILL RISE UP AND DEMAND THAT YOU DO WHAT IT WANTS FOR AWHILE. There is no way to stop this. I want you to read what Dr. Harley actually says about this so you will understand it. Dr. Harley is a trained psychologist, knows what he is talking about, and specializes in marriage and infidelity situations, so what he writes about this is crucially important.

If you want to get to a happy outcome for your husband, it can't be by just letting your Giver be in control and sacrificing your own happiness. Not only will that be unfulfilling for him, it will eventually result in your TAKER WANTING TO BREAK HIS KNEECAPS.


If you are serious about saving your marriage, you can't get it all on this forum. You've got to listen to the Marriage Builders Radio show, every day. Install the app!

Married to my radiant trophy wife, Prisca, 19 years. Father of 8.
Attended Marriage Builders weekend in May 2010

If your wife is not on board with MB, some of my posts to other men might help you.
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I don't feel there is any hope here. I see the same gaslighting and twisting I've been seeing throughout the course of this marriage. This is unfortunately serial. I was just too naive and in love to see it before. This phase will last about 3 days, and everything will go back to "normal." This is the same old pattern.

The husband.

Fate #2858792 06/26/15 11:28 PM
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Fate, why don't you start your own thread?

Since you encouraged your wife to post here, you seem to be a bit knowledgable about the program. It would be great to hear your story and try to help you work through this using Dr Harley's concepts. But you need to do it on your own thread.

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He's right. I've developed this mechanism of defense early on in my life and I've been constantly protecting myself, never letting the guard down, preemptively striking before I can get hurt myself. Psychopathic behaviour if you will. I need help!!!! I need guidance. I don't know where to start. The only person I've been completely selfess with is my son and I want to transfer that to everyone else. As soon as my mistakes come up and I'm confronted with them the Taker takes over and I get very defensive causing the result to be catastrophic for my husband. I want to change, I want to do the right thing. I want to make deposits into his love bank. I was listening to the radio show today and Dr Harley was saying that depression is very damaging to marriages. I've always battled depression especially after my dad passed away so I formed this crust around me to stop the hurt from happening again. In reality I'm weak, I have emotions but I hide them. I thought I was unlovable and when I found myself loved by someone I couldn't believe it was true. I was sure he was going to hurt me and I put up a barrier hurting him first in the process.

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I always thought when faced with a deception like an affair you have two options: forgive and move on or call it quits. I didn't realize the first option not only takes a very strong person but also a lot of work. I guess I figured since he decided to stick it out he should just trust me and not doubt anything. How stupid is that? I know I wouldn't be able to do it. I'm here because I can't do this alone. And even if our marriage doesn't work out I need to become a better person.

Fate #2858799 06/27/15 06:36 AM
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Originally Posted by Fate
I don't feel there is any hope here. I see the same gaslighting and twisting I've been seeing throughout the course of this marriage. This is unfortunately serial. I was just too naive and in love to see it before. This phase will last about 3 days, and everything will go back to "normal." This is the same old pattern.

The husband.
Recovery takes both spouses putting in a total effort to restore a marriage. I can tell you from first-hand experience that it is possible. But for me, it was the most difficult thing I ever had to do. However, if you think that all is due you; that all you should have to do is sit passively and watch her change, then I agree with you that it is hopeless. Cut your losses and get a divorce.

You see, the thing is that I too can see an entrenched pattern in your marriage. I just isn't the same pattern that you see.


me-65
wife-61
married for 40 years
DS - 38, autistic, lives at home
DD - 37, married and on her own
DS - 32, still living with us
mrEureka #2858804 06/27/15 09:06 AM
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Originally Posted by mrEureka
Originally Posted by Fate
I don't feel there is any hope here. I see the same gaslighting and twisting I've been seeing throughout the course of this marriage. This is unfortunately serial. I was just too naive and in love to see it before. This phase will last about 3 days, and everything will go back to "normal." This is the same old pattern.

The husband.
Recovery takes both spouses putting in a total effort to restore a marriage. I can tell you from first-hand experience that it is possible. But for me, it was the most difficult thing I ever had to do. However, if you think that all is due you; that all you should have to do is sit passively and watch her change, then I agree with you that it is hopeless. Cut your losses and get a divorce.

You see, the thing is that I too can see an entrenched pattern in your marriage. I just isn't the same pattern that you see.

When you say it was the hardest thing you've had to do, how did you overcome it? How did your wife reassure you?

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Originally Posted by allgoodthings2
He's right. I've developed this mechanism of defense early on in my life and I've been constantly protecting myself, never letting the guard down, preemptively striking before I can get hurt myself. Psychopathic behaviour if you will. I need help!!!! I need guidance. I don't know where to start.

You can start by stopping. Just stop doing it. We will work with your husband, but you have to start by stopping with the defensiveness. When your husband says something true to you, don't fight it and make excuses, just say "this is true, and I am sorry for that."

THAT being said, we will work with you both to start focusing on the solution, rather than the affair. The affair needs to be put to rest and never brought up again.




"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt

Exposure 101


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Originally Posted by allgoodthings2
I always thought when faced with a deception like an affair you have two options: forgive and move on or call it quits. I didn't realize the first option not only takes a very strong person but also a lot of work. I guess I figured since he decided to stick it out he should just trust me and not doubt anything. How stupid is that? I know I wouldn't be able to do it. I'm here because I can't do this alone. And even if our marriage doesn't work out I need to become a better person.

You may have hit upon the problem, you believe in forgiveness. Asking your husband to trust you is an unreasonable request that won't solve the problem. Trust has to be EARNED.

Dr Harley advocates a third option: just compensation. That is what will turn your marriage around.


"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt

Exposure 101


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