how do i encourage my BS to communicate openly and honestly about the past affairs?

Shouldn't YOU, the spouse who betrayed your husband be the one concerned about being open and honest.

Sure, the BS has to communicate O&H. But right now, your affair is the largest rock in the jar, and it's 99.4% on you to prove that you are a safe spouse.

So I'll turn it around. What is your plan to prove that you are 100% open and honest with him about your affair and what you are doing to rebuilt the trust you've destroyed?

It is easier to follow your issues if you will keep it on one thread. Ask the same question on your original and I will answer.

Obviously you are the betrayed spouse and you are dealing with your BF (Boy Friend) who has all sorts of maturity issues.

You might want to tell us what part of the world you live in.

Larry

sorry. i meannt ws- wayward spouse. everyone is giving me alot of crap on my other thread because i am not actually married just have been in a relationship for 11 years with the same man with 3 kids. he may be immature, but a lot of married man are too. and he tries.

there, larry. DOUBLE space, not just one. i learn fast. and the"it i wanted to work on in the other thread is -my real-ationship. i would do anything to make "IT" better.

also, you seem sorta racist. i can assure you i live in the U.S. so no need for jingoism.

oh- if you read my other thread- i have stitches in my right hand(i'm right-handed) this week so typing isn't perfect. sorry.

also, i don't get much time to type. so if i don't answer for awhile, i will get back to it.

i never even got to write on my other thread because everyone refused to give me advice because i am not actually married. just feels like it

How would you know what it feels like if you haven't been married, mamasita? The basic problem is that there is a huge difference between being married and just living together. You can "feel" like that is not true all day long, but feelings are not truth.

I can pronounce myself "Queen of England" because my feelings tell me so, but it doesn't mean its true. It just means I am nuts. Saying that living together is a "commitment" because you feel like it is the same as me going down to the Ford dealership and proclaiming my "commitment" to a new white truck [we are in Texas after all] but never paying anything or signing any papers. How "committed" am I in reality? Not much. Test driving a car does not = commitment.

Look, no one is trying to be mean to you, just trying to point out some basic flaws in your thinking that are the foundation of your problem. This is not going to get any better if you refuse to correctly id the problem and make corrections accordingly.

Like I suggested earlier, go get the book Buyers, Renters and Freeloaders and jump to the chapter about the "Curse of Living Together before Marriage..." It will be a real eye opener and may hold some solutions for you. But Dr Harley treats living together situations very different from marriages, because they are not the same.

Mamasita, folks here on MB will be slow to give you advice, and critical of your relationship, because you are not married. The simple fact that you would live with someone for over a decade, and have children with them, yet NOT commit to marriage, is indicative of a reluctance on your part or his part. With that very basic reluctance underlying everything, it's hard to feel enthusiastic about giving any suggestions or advice.

MB principles work 100% IF both parties practice them. If you are familiar with Harley's concepts of buyers, renters, and freeloaders, you will see that your relationship is missing a very fundamental commitment. Hard to get excited about giving advice to someone that is in a relationship that clearly lacks a commitment at some level, for whatever reason.

Imagine giving advice to someone who said they wanted to be a professional dog trainer for police or protection dogs (highly trained dogs requiring many long hours of hard work and commitment), and they'd been working with dogs at the shelter and the local boarding place for 11 years, but they had never owned a single dog. How enthusiastic would you be about that person's commitment to really and truly make their dream come true?

That's what's going on with lack of advice here. It's as if you like the idea of marriage, but not the reality of it, at some very basic level.

Regarding how to get a WS to be open and honest... NEVER react with love busters!!! No angry outbursts, no snide remarks, no sarcasm. If what they say hurts, thank them for being honest, that you know it must have been scary for them to be honest knowing how much it would hurt you but saying it anyway, and that you appreciate it. Then excuse yourself and go have a good cry, take some deep breaths, hit the pillow, get yourself together, and go back and resume from a position of calm and self control.

You need to lose the defensive posture if you're going to learn anything from us. First of all, you are not married. Saying it all day long will not 'make' you married. There are certain steps that need to be taken in order to be married. You skipped those and cut straight to the chase of living together. You skipped the effort/commitment part of getting married. Coming to a marriage building site without being married will certainly cause you frustration because you're asking marriage builders how to help you as an unmarried woman. It's simple. It's the truth. You are NOT married.

Larry is not racist. Have you not read his other posts? Go back and read those to understand why he is asking you questions about your background.

huh? Why did you call Larry a racist?? What is your evidence for that??

i think youre analogies have holes in them.

with melody lane- i already told you i didn't buy my car off a lot and i paid for it and own it fully. i repair it. it is mine. my realtionship can be compared to my car. you may have a new car and that is fine. but iam not you.

as for turtlehead- saying that i worked in an animal shelter and never LIVED with a dog is not the same thing as this. do i have to be married to the dog?

i live with this man. we have lived together everyday for a long time. if i just went down to the courthouse today and got the stupid liscence would you then have treat me as a equal deserving respect. people who have been together less than a year but have terrible troubles with their new marriages get productive advice here. can i too? we are very serious about our relationship.

the affairs stopped as soon as i found out about them 3 years ago. i told all of our family who avoided the conflict. i feel alone in this. and now i feel denied help here because of legalities.

larry keeps insinuating i am not a u.s citizen
in my other post too

BTW, the word 'jingoism' means 'extreme patriotism'. It doesn't have anything to do with race per se. Larry was not practicing jingoism in his posts to you. Just thought I'd let you know.

Not that I'm accusing you of not being patriotic, Larry.

Back to the topic at hand...

But you didn't pay for your relationship, mamasita, that is the point of the analogy. If you didn't pay for your car it wouldn't be yours and they wouldn't take you seriously. It is the same with your shack up situation. You have signed no papers, made no committment.

Calling someone a "racist" is a vicious personal attack and I would like to see your evidence.

Look mama, I am not a racist, I am a realist. I observe cultures, here in the US and around the world. This has been my main hobby for 40 years. You have obviously read my other post to you and didn't like my comment about God has no color. I believe that, so stick your racist card somewhere else besides in my face.

Sometime during your life, you bought into a rejection of the values that sustain our society. You admit it yourself. This is the same thing as the rejection of learning in our public schools by those who beat up other kids for acting like "Whitey." And now you pay the price for buying, probably at a young and impressionable age, what the snake oil salesman was selling. The demigod whose beliefs you purchased with your future, went on to stick a guilt gun in the face of corporations and got lots and lots of nice money. What did you get other than hard times?

On the other thread, you confessed your boyfriend's sins. Now you defend him and compare him to others you see complaints about in this forum. Excuse me? Can you not identify the problem? Telling me that it is ok for someone to be a jerk because there are other jerks in the world is insane. A jerk is a jerk, is a jerk.

What I am trying to do is ask you to take a look at some of your core beliefs and make some changes in the way you look at the world. If you don't, no advice given here will help you in any way, form or fashion. You have a relationship problem. Your boyfriend (common law husband) has cheated FOUR times. He acts like a jerk, thinks like a jerk and talks like a jerk. You don't like it at the same time you defend him. Hello? What is wrong with that picture you are painting?

There is no magic wand. Nothing will change until you change and he changes (or not). If you will climb off your high horse or knock the chip off your shoulder and embrace the simple fact you need to do your business in some other way that works better for you, I might be able to help. If not me, there are others here.

There is no color on this board, only relationship problems, so take your attitude out with the garbage, please.

Larry

Mama

Let me just say one more thing in an effort to get you to understand something that is obviously not in your world view.

You do not need to defend yourself from the advice given here.

You can ignore it.

And how would that work for you?

You know, because you would NEVER have posted, that you could use some advice. And you will get it.

I cannot give you advice how to solve your problems because a large part of your problem is your attitude. It is as simple as that.

Let me give you an example. I recently posted to a lady who is from an Asian country who married a person from Europe. Until I knew her country of origin and his, I couldn't help them because different cultures have different social rules.

You have adopted a different social rule, one that rejects a formal marriage. And you are having problems. Yes, some of the same problems that people have that have actually chosen to have a formal marriage.

So you reject those who tell you to actually get a piece of paper that says married on it. After all, the ones who have that paper have problems too, right? It isn't as simple as that. When someone has a piece of paper, it gives us a starting point. When someone does NOT have the piece of paper, we have to start at a different place.

It is all about social rules, the ones that countless generations of people all over the world have developed. And marriage is one THE most widespread of social rules, for a reason. Billions of people over thousands of years have adopted marriage because it works. It has problems, but it works.

Living together is not a marriage no matter how much mental effort you invest to make it so in your mind. But it is a starting point. Because NONE of us are immune from social pressures no matter how hard we try, marriage flips a switch in almost all of us when we get that piece of paper.

Point blank, you have more problems than are found within a traditional marriage. You may not like that fact, but it is a fact, period. And that is ok too. I can work with that.

What I cannot work with is a defensive attitude.

I now have enough information to identify your culture. Want me to give you an example of attitude: You know women who go to restaurants after Church who almost always send some of their food back. They also don't tip. It is about attitude.

Understand?

Larry

Mama:

Been thinking about your cultural point of view a bit more.

See, you demand help. You believe you are entitled to help. And you want that help to solve your problems. You believe it is your right as a person to get the help you want and you are skilled at pushing the emotional buttons you think will get what you want.

When it comes to relationship help, that doesn't work. And you don't understand. After all, someone must be able to wave a magic wand and give you the help you demand, right?

The start of getting relationship help no matter if there is a piece of paper or not is that you MUST change yourself to find the relationship you want. You must change YOURSELF FIRST before you can work on changing your significant other, to use a PC term.

Do you really want help? Or do you just want to complain?

Larry

No, of course not. I never intended to imply that.

I want to fix my relationship problems with a guy I've lived with and had three children with but not been (for whatever reason) inclined to marry. We live together, we have children, isn't that enough?

I want to be a leading trainer of highly skilled jobs but I have never been (for whatever reason) inclined to own a dog. I work with them at a boarding place, I volunteer at the shelter, isn't that enough?

My point is you have a *desire* for a marriage but for some reason have not thus far shown a deep enough commitment to bother getting married. Your situation makes it look like you want the starry outcome without the dedication to your goal. THAT is why folks are having a hard time offering you advice.

I answered your question about encouraging honesty in a WS. What did you think of my suggestions?

I don't know what your other thread looks like, so I will only comment on what I see here. In this thread you've posted three times mama (four including your initial question).

Every single one of those posts (save the initial question) is dedicated to defending yourself and attacking those who are trying to help you. NOT ONE of your entries has a thank you, a "you may be right" or a "could you clarify?".

That looks, to me, like an unwillingness to be helped. Can you see how it would look like that?

It has nothing to do with your marital status, by the way. Just your style of interacting with others in this thread.

My intent is not to attack. My intent is to help you develop a more productive thread.