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<small>[ June 02, 2004, 11:08 PM: Message edited by: skye ]</small>

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Nellie,<P>Yes, at one time I did wonder if my EX prozac was no longer helping him. He says he is still taking it and still feels great. I often question if he suffers from bi-polar disorder. He used to have alot of highs and lows. Or maybe the plain truth of it is he just couldn't stand being married to me anymore. I can except that as I now know I was feeling the same way most of the time. I sometimes think my fight to save my marriage was a ego thing for me. <BR>Like I've said before I have been doing alot of self analizing lately. But! That doesn't excuse what he did and how he has treated me the past few years. <P>I stick to my guns and hope that the new wife leaves him someday. What goes around comes around.<P>For your sake I hope your EX does get his senses back and leave the OW. It sounds to me though that he ran away from all responsibility and is now living free of everything. Almost like a kid who quits collage because he can't stand the stresses of it anymore and goes back home to live rent free. <P>If he ever comes back have you ever thought about what changes you will make. You have now been the sole provider for the family, could you again live with making joint decisions? Have you looked back and seen what went wrong. What mistakes you made and how to change yourself. <P>I'm still in the process. I don't want my EH back again I just don't respect him anymore. There is only so many times one can get thrown away. I am though working on how to make my next relationship better whenever that will be. <P>I believe in marriage! If I didn't I would not have stayed in mine and fought for mine. But I know that times have changed women can make it on their own now. I hope I do marry someday again but this time I won't be so naive to the problems. What is scarey is that most of the men my age are all in that MLC age. <P>Hugs,<P>Jill

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sad_but_true,<P>Sorry - FOO is family of origin.<P>skye,<P>I am glad for you that you like yourself better now. I am not trying to argue with you, but my experience has been quite different. <P>Unfortunately, I was reasonably happy with who I was before. I am sure there was plenty of room for improvement, but I never felt incomplete in any way. I felt reasonably competent. Our kids were growing up to be responsible adults. Most importantly, they felt loved by both their parents. <P>I understand that life has no guarantees, in the "act of God" sense. I know that disasters can happen at any moment. But if you can't trust someone whom you have known all your adult life, what is the point of putting your trust in anyone? There has to be some predictability in life - otherwise life is completely pointless. If there is no predictability at all, you can not learn, you can not improve. If you lead a good life, you can still get hit by a Mack truck - that is not unfair, just unfortunate. If the police were to arrest you and throw you in jail for a murder you did not commit - that would be unfair. <P>Say you could impart to your children an extensive base of knowledge of how to pick a good spouse, MB principles, etc. Say they picked a spouse based on all the right reasons, treated him as well as humanly possible, etc. Unfortunately, there is, I believe, well over a 50% chance that he will have an affair and leave. As I said once before, a long time ago, would you buy a house that had a 50% chance of falling down within the next twenty years?<P>What is the point of getting married and having kids if you know that there is an excellent chance that their father will suddenly stop caring about them, and that they in turn will have little chance of becoming productive, loving, responsible parents? And even if they are, that they can wake up one morning and no longer care about their kids? <P>Life is basically predictable. Life is all about how if you do something and it has a positive result, doing it again will likely have the same result. That is how all societies, human, gorilla, finch, survive. There is a strong selective advantage to learning from mistakes, learning to repeat what works, learning to trust - trust is essential. There is a biological basis for our need to trust. If that delicious berry over there doesn't make you sick, you learn that you can eat it the next time you see it. If you never knew when a berry that you had been eating for years would suddenly kill you, an animal that was better at learning would hold no selective advantage over one who just ate berries randomly. Species, such as humans, that depend more on learned skills would never have evolved. <P>I am convinced that there has to be a reason for the prevalence of MLC, not that I have a clue what it is. On the face of it, there is no selective advantage to deserting your family at an age when distributing your genes to other descendants has become less likely - although leaving for a younger woman might be an exception. I can not see why there is a selective advantage to depression - that would seem to be counter-intuitive - unless the gene for depression is linked to some other gene, such as a gene for intelligence - which may well be likely. Depression seems to be becoming more common - perhaps it is just not selected against so strongly anymore. Many years ago, if your survival depended upon you having the initiative to get up in the morning to go kill some prey, people who were subject to depression might not survive long enough to pass on their genes.<P>I know we have a basic difference in our beliefs on this, but as someone whose first love (academically speaking) has always been evolutionary biology, I am convinced that there does need to be a certain predictability to life. The prevalence of infidelity and destroyed families is an indication, I believe, of something that has gone terribly awry in our society.

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Jill,<P>I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I could have done differently, what went wrong, trying to understand why I was unable to predict this. Shortly after he left I said something to him about how I never imagined he could do something that would hurt the kids so much - and he just shook his head, in understanding(?). Perhaps he could not understand it himself. <P>With respect to decision-making, one of the many issues now is that I feel so powerless. We used to make major decisions jointly - now I feel I have little input anymore. When he was at home, he was supportive of homeschooling. As an example of the change since he left, he forced me to put one of our kids in school, and indirectly (via financial pressure due to his unemployment) forced me to put two others in as well - where one in particular is absolutely miserable. In effect, an additonal piece of my decision-making power has been handed over to the school system. One of the many things I would welcome if he came back is that we could make decisions jointly, as a team, again, rather than the feeling that I have now, which is more like belong to opposing parties, but once in awhile happen to agree on something. <P>Yes, my H ran away from responsibility. Although I believe that he had felt a sense of failure for several years, and probably believed that I also believed he had failed, I am convinced that something died in him the day of my nephew's funeral - something precipitated a horrible descent into depression. My guess is that it was fear of loss - it hit home how easily and suddenly you can lose a child. I think he tried to close off his emotions completely, to protect himself from that fear.

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There is a finite list of possibilities to explain the behavior of an infidel that lacks empathy and takes no responsibility. I listed the two most likely, in my view, 1) temporary insanity based on the "in-love" state, which can override logic, and 2) character defects within the infidel that prevent him from being objective, taking responsibility, feeling guilt, exuding empathy or becoming introspective. My bet is these two cover nearly the entire spectrum.<P>Some small percentage are impacted by things like ongoing depression, which definitely exists. An infidel that takes no action to address his depression is responsible for its continuance (in other words, it's still failure to take responsibility). Again, I'm not talking about short-term situations, but when it goes on for years untreated, it becomes a choice.<P>There are only two other possibilities I can think of. The first is some sort of mental illness/mental breakdown. It is possible that someone that once could differentiate between right and wrong no longer can. I think it's quite rare, but it does happen. The last possibility is that we (the betrayed) are wrong (or dishonest) in our evaluation of what's happened. In other words, perhaps the infidel has actually apologized or shown remorse but we've denied hearing it. Or maybe we are really so awful that righteously running away from us is a logical choice that any sane person would make, and continuing to punish us is necessary to keep us from further abusing the infidel. I doubt that happens often either, but maybe once in a very long while (this is a major stretch, but I bet there are some infidels that rationalize with this line of thinking).<P>I understand your comment that fear of failure can play a role in the escapist behavior of your husband. This is quite likely, along with the financial motive. But it doesn't explain his lack of empathy toward you or the children for this amount of time. I think that comes back to character.<P>This entire discussion leads me back to the comment I've periodically heard "you have to be insane to commit a murder". To a certain extent, that's true. But how often does the killer lose his ability to distinguish right from wrong prior to the act? Legally, hardly ever. It's possible, but extremely rare.<P>One part of this is crystal clear to me. Whether it's one of the primary causes I've listed or whether it is mental illness, it is beyond the control of the betrayed. After a period of time, the betrayed must let go or his/her life will be uselessly sacrificed as well. As Skye wrote, you have to deal with "what is", then you can become free.<P>You've read my comments before, but I'll reiterate for the many reading this thread, that I don't think the bad behavior of one parent necessarily means the kids will be screwed up. Most kids need only one really good parent. That parent is us. Learning about what not to do is occurring in kids living through this. It's not how we would choose to do it, but it's our reality and not everything about it is bad. I think my kids are in great shape and at this point, so am I.

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<small>[ June 02, 2004, 02:30 AM: Message edited by: skye ]</small>

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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Distressed:<BR>I do think, however, that MANY people rationalize to extremes, especially when in an affair.... Denial is a defense mechanism. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>My experience is bearing this out. My wife, in preparing to leave me, tried her best to convince me that we would both be happier for it. "I'm making you uncomfortable being here" was one thing she said- well, yes, I'm uncomfortable <I>now</I>, but if you'd stop calling your real estate agent, I'd feel a lot more comfortable. <P>I've also heard her say "my friend tells me the kids will be fine. Her kids love going to their dad's house, and love going to her house." Yeah, right, like her friend is going to say "I screwed up my children." <P>My wife is, at core, a decent, caring individual. That core is lost in a fog right now; the only reason I can bear this is the knowledge that the decent, caring woman I married is still in there somewhere, and something may just bring her back to the surface.

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Distressed,<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Some small percentage are impacted by things like ongoing depression, which definitely exists. An infidel that takes no action to address his depression is responsible for its continuance (in other words, it's still failure to take responsibility). Again, I'm not talking about short-term situations, but when it goes on for years untreated, it becomes a choice.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>I guess where we really disagree is about the percentage impacted by depression or other mental illness - I believe that this percentage is very high. Awhile ago I read an article by a psychiatrist who postulated that in cases where a man suddenly left a long-term marriage for an OW, it was close to 100%.<P>I agree that seeking treatment for depression is their responsibiity, but I do think that in most cases they are making a conscious choice not to.<P>It am certain that much of my H's withdrawal from the kids is related to the conflict between what the kids want (primarily to see more of him) and what the OW wants (which usually involves having him spend less time with them and more doing whatever she wants him to be doing). Unfortunately, she usually wins. I suspect he is scared at a very basic level - scared of conflict, and scared of being left all alone. In some twisted way he may even see staying with her as essential to his being able to provide any monetary support to the kids. Obviously I think his lack of response to the children's needs is harmful and wrong, but I do not believe it is merely random meanness.<P>What worries me is not just the children's response now, but the impact that abandonment by their father will have on them throughout their adult lives and on their relationships with other people. There is a lot of evidence for a severe "sleeper effect." I was watching Grease last night - at one point one of the characters says, "The only man you can trust is your Daddy," - it is devastating when even that is not true.<P>

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Skye,<P>I posted to you earlier and then my computer froze. I'll have to look up the book you mentioned next time I go to the library. Even though we don't always agree, I find your posts very interesting and well thought out.<P>Regarding the collapsing house analogy, for me it would be a matter of risk analysis. If there were only chance that the house would fall down, or if I could be reasonably sure that the house would "give some warning" before it collapsed so that I could repair it - which is of course the case with houses - then I would go ahead and buy it. However, if I knew that there was a 50% chance that one morning I would wake up and find myself sitting in rubble, I would definitely not buy it. <P>From what I have seen in my sister's kids, divorce wrecks major havoc with their adult lives. Not one of them was not seriously emotionally harmed, in my opinion, and in several cases the damage did not really show up until they were adults. <P>I agree that the fact that there are few negative consequences to adultery today is terribly damaging to the fabric of society. <P>dabigtrain,<P>My H said something similar - that the children would be "better later" even though he admitted that they were suffering at that time, shortly after he had left. In fact, the opposite occurred. <BR>

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