mel can you be more specific

Yes, I am comparing the OW to a rapist. Just as Dr Harley does. Adultery is WORSE than rape. If your H does not admit what he did was as bad as raping you, then I question his sincerity. Dr Harley uses that very analogy when discussing continued contact between an OP and a BS. radio clip where Dr Harley says tha...your rapist to Thanksgiving dinner"

here


Which is always a very bad idea. Like Dr Harley has stated, it is like inviting a rapist to Thanksgiving dinner. He advocates finding an intermediary to handle any communication. NC is always a viable option.


I have no doubt that you do perceive the difference between your H and the OW, otherwise you wouldn't have ensured he is not in contact with her. If you don't understand the threat she presents to your marriage, then you are in grave danger. But I suspect you do.


This sounds to me like your marriage is probably not affair proofed if there is still a whole big world out there that presents a threat to your marriage. You do understand that is a big part of recovery, don't you? Did your H change his lifestyle in order to prevent a repeat affair? What is your protection against that "whole big world?"

That has a very specific meaning. And since you have been here for as long as me, I have no doubt you know what it means. I am recovered by Marriage Builders standards.

i am asking you to describe in your own words what that means

pops, how does Dr Harley measure a MB success? That should tell you exactly what I mean.

4eva- girl I wasnt trying to be sensitive until the whole rapist comment came into play to be totally honest. I can read just like everyone else and I get why NC can be so benifical to a marriage and an entire families recovery.

Melody- I "invited" all this into my life I guess simply because I felt God was leading us here. And I know not being NC has caused issues in the past. However that is not the case. We often deal with just oc unless it's about scheduling visits etc.

As far as the rape comment he said "some" view it as worse than rape but I guess for me when I think of my rape and I think of this,the rape hurts much more.

I said their is a big wide world because there is, fact.

My husband has sincerely apologized and has been consistantly working on keep our marriage in a good place for some time now. We both are working to meet each others needs and fill our love banks as oppose of deplete it with lb.

And my protection from the world is believing and praying that God cover us as individuals and as a couple to help us grow where needed and to prune areas we need to work on. That and take steps to constantly work on our marriage.

What do you guys to to protect yourselves from the world?

What we do is change the environment that led to the affair, as Marriage Builders subscribes. For example, opposite sex friendships are eliminated, transparency created, no overnight travel, passwords and bank accounts opened and shared, etc. Our WS's open up their lives so that the secret second life that led to the affair is not possible. While nothing is 100% guaranteed, it is much harder to carry on an affair when your life is an open book. And that is part and parcel of recovery. Harley covers it in this article:

Requirements for Recovery

The next part is to create a romantic relationship using these concepts.

thanks anyway mel,

i wasn't asking for dr harley's words i was asking for yours. what they meant to you

i know his words as i remember reading HN/HN back in the mid 80's and the info on this site 10 years ago

i will drop the question

What that means to me is what I have already told you: I am recovered according to MB standards. Those ARE my words.

I know we have moved on in this but I wanted to say something about OC because my wife from my first marriage came back pregnant when she had an affair at 20.

I knew it probably was not mine, but the fact that it was an innocent child weighed more on me and the effect it would make upon W and current DS3 we had was more of a concern. The questions and embarrassment and the obvious difference because of the race also would be something to deal with. We were very young, (me 21 and wife 20), and this was an innocent child like any other being brought into the world.

After the child was born, because of the difference in skin color, the doctor said he was going to treat him for jaundice the next day if it did not clear up. I went right to the doctors office and told him what was up and explained why my W was so embarrassed and how she wanted to believe it could be hidden from everybody but how that his color was normal. Surprised I was when the Doctor treated me coldly after that when he had been the family Doctor for years, but no skin off my nose the baby was the important one.

My wife did not bond with the boy, and I am sure that between post partum depression and everything else it overwhelmed her. I was still/allready reeling from the emotional effects of the affair but wanted to do the right thing. Adoption was suggested, we gave him up for adoption, and I have never forgave myself for allowing him to to be seperated from his mother. It did not matter that my Mom and me after work were the only ones who showed him affection and that FWW was a mess, that would have changed in time if we really cared.

Giving him up for adoption which was supposed to help keep us together had the opposite effect. It was another wedge of inability to forgive and appreciate that prescious innocent life and even our own frialty that eventually made it seem the smart thing to do to seperate. I sent her away with my son to figure things out. Justified sure she had no reason really to stray, I was a good hard working and faithful H. It took me years to figure out that running away was the mistake not staying and sticking. Thats what I figured out but had a new wife and more children and first W had moved on by that time.

Strange thing tho, all the forgiveness that I should have shown first W, and my justification for leaving her because of her affair, I gave in spades to the second W who was in way worse shape and cheated much more than the first.

But where does that leave the innocent child? I am sure that in time like I have heard from so many people in the world I would have become who would be his father to him as I got to care and know him. The sperm donor would have to rise above himself at some point to be a real father anyways. I consider giving him up for adoption a great mistake and injustice to this boy, and also backward blamed my FWW at the time for her inability to rise above and love her son reguardless of the circumstances. She left me and the son we allready had to play and create another son, and come back to a marrige and say she got raped, but yet where,,where does that leave the little baby..

It takes more than making a child to be a father, or a mother, or a parent. Thank God for those who love those innocent little lives and rise above to raise OCs, or adopt, they are truly the parents.

Oh BTW, I wasn't making the rape comment based on any posts, my WW at the time later admitted that she made that up and she had slept with some guy that she worked with after she left.

Just wanted to be clear.

Melody -we do much of the same. Like you guys we both are very transparent. I think it helps a lot.

ConstantProcess- I am sorry you are hurting and that you were hurt in both marriage relationships. But you seemed to have learned from them. I hope if you are still married to your second wife that things are in a better place now.

CP

thanks so much for sharing your story

interesting you said that the adoption was another wedge in your marriage

my w and i also discussed adoption and i gave up on that path b/c i felt it would have done exactly that to us

Accually I am widowed now, and my W is in that better place. But I came here 6 months after her death to see how I let such an awful thing happen to this beautiful woman who at one time wanted to serve God and have a happy marriage with me and the children for the rest of her life.

One of the things I learned through my experience, through our false recovery in 1990, and from reading the basic concepts and the stories of so many good people here also, is not to put your marriage in jeopardy and run it on a tightrope. That at any time even things you thought you had conquered and were in the past could raise up thier ugly head, and that marriage, like people, was fragile.

So I agree with Mel that it should be protected. as a matter of fact that was the very words my W used in the beginning of recovery in 90-91, when I had been gone for two years and she had done the work and realized how important it was. My story is still out of my grasp of making it short but the principles here on MB were followed almost to a tee. I say almost because if I had been here and listened to my gut I would have insisted on AA for my wife as part of reconciliation. Something BTW DR H has great experience in, addictions. He wont even counsel someone for marriage if there is substance abuse or a history of it unless they have recieved treatment. He ran clinics for years, he knows about peoples brain chemistry.

So almost fully complying does not cut it, and she eventually relapsed into substance abuse and well, yeah, I thought she would NEVER fall to THAT again!

Don't fool yourself into thinking that this woman was a dummy, she knew everything except how to help herself, she helped many people see things they never understood before. She was a teacher of people and a warrior and could be tough and stubborn and a force to be reckoned with. But in this was a blindness also she would/could not deal with. Well I will go on and on.. but she died after relapse and falling into very heavy drugs from cancer which was contracted from smoking and useing respitory system depressing drugs.

The following depression I felt because I was her husband and wanted to find out what happened brought me here 6 mo after her death because I needed some answers. I did a search on google and found DR H.

So the advice about not pushing the human limits and valuing you marraige above all is good advice I completly agree with.

Thank you for your kind wishes and my three children are doing well all things considered.


Yes Pops I realize I was young when I made that decision, and I did not do what I really believed in either in my better nature. My Pastor had said those very words, "You know it takes more than making a child to be a father". But I had been away from the church for years and until I met my second wife at 26 I did not even start to listen to God again. Honestly I feel God is the one true Father, and all good fathers model or plagurize him as a source, whether conscious of it or not.

But you had the wisdom to understand forgivness and grace was absolutly nessesary in your marriage, and that if you couldn't give that protection to a little child, it would probably be lost on each other also.

I had allready turned down what would have been a promising career in the AF,(They wanted me because my scores were high ), because my W had decided to secretly not take the pill and get pregnant against my wishes,(I wanted to wait cause we were going in the service together and I knew we needed financial stability), and i did have the wisdom to know at that age if i went in and left her home it would probably tear us apart. Maybe I was still frustrated because we were still behind the 8-ball even though I worked and did well and then she submarined me with an affair..

I don't know but by that time I was totally lost, and young and afraid. Like many things in life hindsight is 20-20, and we can understand what happened, but we still have to deal with every consequence to our actions regardless of our intentions at the time.

Counsel, cool headed and humble thinking, supportive friends and reality, and oh yeah lets not forget faith in God and his guidance when we are in doubt of what is right with dealing with his children of any age. You just can't be too careful when it comes to those things.

I do not dislike you. I enjoy reading your responses and felt that it has been help to others.

What if you would of/could of convinced yourself that NC was best and you did not want OM money/CS, that it would of been best to have NC from back then?

I'm not going to search and look for your post where you said that NC would of been better now looking back.

Was that a moment of weakness, frustration?

road yeah sure, maybe "if". i will never know that. but what i do know is that at "that" time where my head was at, right or wrong nc was a deal breaker for "me"

yes you are right i have said since that time that nc would have been better due to the rough time my w was going thru at the time. "but" like i said at "that" time it was a deal breaker for me

i agree with it now also.

"but"

i do support and will encourage those who have found themselves with some form of c due to the oc situation. as an example - cali, ff, delean, and want should her om work his way into there life.

i will not write her off

and yes if op has some form of visitation the ideal solution is to have a go between to handle all that "but" again as in my case we have no one who is willing to take on that responsibility for 18 years and the court would not appoint one.

A reminder that the purpose of this forum is to support posters in protecting and restoring their marriages using Marriage Builders concepts. It is not for the promotion of personal philosophies!

Please keep that in mind when posting. Thank you.

Hi cali, nice to see you again!

Folks one of our best examples of a recovered M with C is our beloved Delean-de (Kimmy) and she came on her very recently advocating NC. Kimmy has custody of the two OC as well and she still cannot stomach the slightest bit of C with the OW.

We are in C for over two years now. My life will never be the same. My H could not walk away from the OC due to his own guilt. He often wishes he had though. Having the OP in your life is unhealthy for everyone but especially for the health of the M.

I was traumatized over and over by false recoveries because my H gave into the OW's demands of not having the evil BW in her precious OC's life. Two years into C and she realizes how wrong she was. She goes on with her life happily having it all. Her OC, free weekends to do what she pleases and CS. We get less money, more responsibility and the constant reminder of the A.

I am not saying there are not rewarding aspects of having C. I love OC and we do make a small difference in his life but it is NOT WORTH the continued C with the person who for 3 plus years did everything she could to destroy me and my family.

I am a strong advocate of Dr. H's principles and NC.

I think it's interesting that this warning was written in response to me, when the last thing I wrote on this topic last night was a direct quote from Dr. Harley himself. Please explain why I am being singled out here for a warning for posting quotes from Dr. Harley himself?