My bf of 4 months just informed me he has been noting the last few fights we have had. He said we have been fighting a little more lately and he just wants to keep track of some sort of pattern so we can look at it and see where the issues are. The two of us are day and night. I feel very threatened by this and he tells me I am taking it as a personal attack. I have introduced him to marriage builders and he has really dug his heels in and says he isn't listening to some quack on the radio. We can go to counselling to fix our issues. Issues being that I am extremely insecure, that we want to communicate but neither one of us can understand the language the other is speaking. My love bank is filled easily but it depletes extremely fast and makes me question if we can work or not? Dating is new to me as my marriage of 16 years has recently ended and not even finalized.

Did you meet him while you were still married?

When he says you are being "insecure," what is he referring to?

Yes we met while I was still married. NYE I told my hubby I was done with our marriage.i moved into a different room of the house and started to distance myself from my husband in everyway possible.

I am insecure about me never being good enough. There is always someone better who can offer more, that will catch his attention. Not just with him, with anyone I have ever been with. More the fact that I am over thinking his actions on taking notes. I have suggested that maybe we need to take a step back as this makes me feel like it is a situation where after so many fight/arguments there is a finish line. If that makes sense?

Were you dating this man while you were married? What is the status of your marriage? Are you divorced? Do you still live together?

Is your BF married?

This man and I became friends while I was still married. My marriage status is seperated. I spend every night at my bfs but have not officially moved out of the home with my husband for financial reasons. I cannot afford my own place right now. So the choice is to stay at my bfs or stay at the house with my husband.

So you left your marriage for this OM?

If your boyfriend continues to maintain opposite sex friendships, then the problem with that is not that you are "insecure." The problem is that he is engaging in relationship wrecking behavior. "Insecure" is just a name-calling tactic to distract from his need to change his behavior and to try to get you to put up with it.

You'll always wonder if he has someone else unless he's willing to take precautions that would preclude him from starting a relationship with someone else. You can't fix that - only he can fix that!

In other words, you are a married woman who is having an affair.

Needy,

I think a real problem here is you need to get some help to build an income so that you can survive without having to have a man provide for you. You are dependent on your husband or the next man, or the one after that, right?

My suggestion would be to end your affair and bring your husband here. WE can fix your marriage if you are both willing. But we can't fix an affair. Your affair is doomed. 98% of affairs crumble inside of 6 months because of the traits that made adultery possible: dishonesty, selfishness, deceit. Just ask yourself what kind of guy would sleep with a married woman...

Needy, welcome to MB and I am sorry for the reasons that have brought you here.

The reason you are here actually, is not really the reason you state. It is because you have a very new (4 month) relationship, an affair while you are still married to your husband, and the affair is not the exciting thing it once was. It has left you feeling pretty low, it sounds.

The problem with affairs is that nobody wins. Certainly not your betrayed husband at home, but even you lose deeply. Regardless of what kind of marriage you come from, having an affair is a sneaky thing. Unless you are an uncaring person with no morals or values or care for hurting others, it will leave you as the adulterer feeling very bad about yourself, even as you insist that you are entitled to 'be happy.'

You are entitled to be happy, but not at the expense of others. Affairs are very sneaky callous events and whatever happiness you find in them (short lived, not real) is at GREAT expense to others. Any decent human being who knows right from wrong knows that, and I am guessing you do! Not only has it made you feel bad about yourself, but it has made you 'insecure.' This is a RESULT of your affair.

This new relationship is doomed. As MelodyLane pointed out, it has almost no hope of survival. And even if it wasn't an affair, we would advise you to end a 4 month old relationship where you fight day and night and need counseling End this affair. We can help you fix your marriage if your husband is willing!

I am not legqkky separated so I suppose I am.

My husband is a good man but I truly was unhappy. We had followed the MB plan and guideline. I was struggling with him not meeting my needs I suggested counselling and he said he didn't think he needed to go given that my issue was sexual. In 16 years I don't recall him ever telling me I am beautiful or how much he thought of me. I was always telling people how proud I was of him etc.... I truly feel as though I have no desire to make our marriage work. This man was told we were seperated. As we were

You are a married woman who is not "separated." That is a lie you have told yourself to justify your affair. Stop your affair FIRST. Even if you are "separated" [which you are not] you are still married. Saying you are "separated" does not entitle you to commit adultery.

It sounds like you are headed towards the same problems with the man you are with now, doesn't it?

Exactly ^^^^^

Stop your affair and work on your marriage.

Separated does not equal single. And if it did and all it took to 'seperate' was to say the words, then are you saying I could tell my husband tonight we are seperated and then go to the bar and meet a guy as if I am single???

Is that really how little you respect marriage, that you could theoretically end it and behave like a single woman just by saying 'I'm seperated.'

Thr reality is you are in a garden variety affair. It has made you overdramatize the unhappiness in your marriage. That is standard protocol for someone in an affair. I am not saying you were happy, just that your wayward mind is playing tricks on you. It is also making you irrational to believe that saying you are separated makes you available. It does not, and you are not. If you are really so unhappy, then move out and get a divorce before you cat around. Move out and get a divorce instead of putting your husband who is a 'good man' by your own words through hell.

DING DING DING

Correctomundo

I'd encourage you to approach this with an open mind, Needy, because people here are honestly trying to give you the information you need to find yourself in a great romantic relationship, even if it stings.

I think you're actually lucky to have encountered issues with this BF so quickly because it should illustrate to a point that even with a partner substitution you are unhappy. Many people get further into their affair (past the point of divorce and remarriage) before they realize that.

I agree with the others you need to go back to your husband and try to fix what's going on there first, and if he refuses to work on the marriage, then we'll help you navigate that too. The program here is thorough enough to provide a plan of action for that situation that will take care of you well and set you up for success no matter what your husband decides to do.

This stuck out to me:

I can tell from what you've wrote elsewhere on this thread that you are familiar to a degree with MB concepts like the love bank. You also said this:

Sounds like you guys didn't, actually. Maybe you did and he didn't, maybe neither of you did. But MB is you being radically honest with him and complaining in a respectful way that he isn't meeting your needs in certain areas...and then him agreeing and working to meet those needs. And vice-versa.

If you're not doing that, you're not doing MB, even if you're talking about other parts of it. Negotiation is a critical part of this program and if you're not doing it or one person refuses to do it, it can't work.

Even IF you were divorced I'd say the new guy isn't worth the trouble. If you're only 4 months in and the problems are this serious, time to start over with dating. But as the others alluded to...the issues here stem from the fact that it's an affair.

Not sure if you've made this connection but your fear of being dumped for greener pastures might (probably?) be a projection of what you just did to your husband. If you know that deep down inside of yourself, you are willing to do that to someone, why would others be any different? What reason would you have to believe in other people's monogamy if you don't see it in your own actions? Just something to think about, I mean no offense. It probably also makes your BF nervous, he knows this about your relationship just as well as you do! Check out this:

http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2332882

Are you a buyer? If you were willing to be a buyer, and your husband agreed to be a buyer, you wouldn't have that insecurity. Buyers don't leave people for the reasons you stated. You're insecure because you KNOW you are a renter, and you're justifiably worried your boyfriend is too (he is...buyers don't participate in affairs, sort of antithetical to the mindset). Renters have every reason to be worried about someone leaving them for better options!

Given that you aren't divorced, I would definitely say new guy isn't worth the trouble. Speaking as a man, he doesn't respect you nor himself to be in this relationship, and that probably informs a lot his decisions about your relationship.

He's not going to invest in you enough to do a program like MB because that means he'd have to change, and that's a steep price for a guy like him to pay for low-hanging fruit, which is exactly what he views you as. It's what every man who gets involved with an unhappy married woman views her as.

He knew you were vulnerable and if he was going to do the kind of work MB involves he would have started with a single woman. I'm only speaking as a formerly single man.