What attitude? I don't get it. Yes, I do disprove of her talking to my father. It dissapointed me about her. Why did I have to be cheerful about that, but it was done, past, and on we go. I think it was a lousy advise from MB, that's all. That doesn't make me resolve my temper. What was the point anyways? My father has nothing to do with our marriage. All it did decrease my love bank, but far from that, I still feel connected to her and the resentment over the affair is actually fading. There are parts of me that still love her.
I was honestly posting a simple question. I did listen to all the links on anger topic, and given there are no clips on this other topic, it will be up to us to discuss and set up a plan.

ProChoice, I didn't say anything about wanting to like you. What I wanted was to understand your post. I take it you post here for people to understand you, and give you help?

"After she called father, I was ready to end the relationship. I was very upset, sad, mad, confused and I thought I knew her better, even after the affair, I thought she would never reveal some past incidents that were already over which I had already apologized.
But I promised my father everything would be alright, and then I decided to promise myself,"

So, exposure DID have a benefit. You are now being held accountable by your father. That is the point of exposure. Your wife is no longer struggling with this secret by herself. If you continue to behave in your angry, impulsive way (including, recently, threatening to kill her, let us not forget), she will tell your father again, and what will he think of you?

You seem to want to him continue thinking of you as a good husband and father, which up until now you have not been. What is wrong with him knowing the truth? Are you ashamed of it? If so, GOOD! You should be ashamed, and you should strive to do better.

"I went to get her to come back home" - So she is back with you now? This is a grave mistake, and here is why:

"Now, as we start building our relationship, everything is disrespectful judgement for her. I am impatient, I am sarcastic, I get easily irritated, that is who I am. that is my perspnality and how I was when she decided to marry me and now I realize there is nothing really about me she liked. At the moments I was purposely being a jerk I see how I have to change that, but I come to realize this goes for the moments we are having a good time as well. Everything is a disrespectful judgement."

Despite what you should have read in Dr Harley's writings about changing your behaviour, you have no intention of changing, because you do not think your wife is justified in wanting change. You don't see why you should have to change. You don't even want to change, and you don't think you can. You have always been the way you are; sarcastic, impatient and irritated is who you are, you were that way when she married you, you've been that way ever since, and you don't see why you should change. She should change her expectations, and stop complaining.

All your talk on this thread, when she was away, about how, when you make up your mind to change, you change...was just hot air. When she was away, you were willing to promise anything. You begged us to tell her to go home, based on these promises.

Now that she is home, your attitude is the same as it always was.

Your wife should not have gone back to you.

Prochoice,

listening to your wife's complaints and changing are in your own best interest. If you are impatient, sarcastic and easily irritated, that stems from your inner unhappiness and inner anger.

Impatience is really the thought that things should go as you wish. Sarcasm is aggression with words. Irritation is anger that things don't go as you want them to.

You may not realize that, but every time you listen to the angry 3-year-old inside of you (inside all of us by the way), you are making this angry part of you stronger. The angry part is also the part that makes you dissatified in general.
Once you let go of the behaviours that stem from the anger and replace them with calming yourself and distancing yourself from these thoughts, you will start to change.

You have had these habits for many years and of course it will feel off in the beginning, not like "yourself". But in a few months of diligently practising, your inner world will slowly start to change. Just as you grow a tree by cutting the branches that you don't want, it will change its shape, but it will still thrive. The same goes for you. It takes real determination, but if you do the work and put real effort in it, your inner self will change and become a happier person.

Only when you lay off your inner anger, you will start to experience that people will react differently to you. It may not be obvious to you, but people will subconciously pick up you inner feelings. You will make many positive experiences once you lay down this burden of anger you have been carrying. By letting it go, you will not lose any "rights" or "power". You will be free at last, to choose how to live your life without being dominated by subcouncious aggression.

My husband has been complaining for years about my drinking directly from my water bottle. He just does not like it. To be truthful, I do not see anything wrong with it and frankly did not take his POV seriously, because... well, I have no problem with it. This year I made a new-year's resolution to drink from a glass and at first it was a hassle. After 5 months now, it has become a habit and I don't ever think about it anymore.

You should change your inner anger for yourself to be able to have a happier life. If your wife complains about things though, it is sensible to change them. I assume, that being easily irritated etc. is not a characteristic of your personality that is very valuable to you. If it bothers your wife, why not change it?

You will be a happier person for it and if your wife is happier, you will benefit from that as well and so will the children. It may even have positive implications for your standing in the workplace.

Just think about it for a minute, if the things your wife complains about are really valuable to you and if it may be worth the trouble to change yourself for the better.

An unwillingness to have your deeds exposed and to be held accountable does not bode well for your recovery.

You should welcome her to tell anybody she wishes to tell.

I agree with the others that transparency is not your enemy, and if you find it to be your enemy, you are setting yourself up for problems. Hiding things from your family means either you, or your wife (or in this case, both of you) have been behaving in ways that you KNOW are wrong because the people closest to you would be ashamed. To keep those things secret is to make those actions have no real consequences, because it's either CYA or enabling of a destructive spouse.

So really, there is no value to hiding things, nor any reason to be angry that someone has revealed things you actually did to your family. You don't have to be cheerful about it, just realize that your actions are the cause of your embarrassment. If your wife wasn't exposed, that was a mistake, not a favor, by the way.

Still a lot of thinking here about what is fair and frustration on what your wife is unhappy about. Neither of those are attitudes that are capable of addressing your problems here.

Do you have any MB books?

The fact that you did not expose her affair does not make her exposure of your behavior "wrong". It is disturbing that you would think it does. Dishonesty in marriage is poison. Covering for each other via mutually-agreed lies is inherently dishonest. That fact that you believe you should be entitled to such a pact and are now angry that it didn't work out that way is very disturbing. Unless you embrace radical honesty, your marriage doesn't have a chance. You shouldn't be angry that you were exposed. You should welcome it. It means that your wife "gets it". The problem is you, because you don't get it.

Oh, my wife's affair was exposed, not by me. That is the point. I gave her the choice to expose herself and send all the e-mails herself, and I was behind her during her exposure, or I do the exposure myself. This way, it wasn't done behind her back. If my father had to know about these other incidents, I would have rather talked to him myself than having my wife talk to him. But, exposure behind the back is what is taught here, so I won't argue anymore. It's done, it's past, and I want to move forward and not talk about it anymore.

We have His Needs Her Needs and Love Busters.

The current problem is this and I will explain from the start my question about disrespectful judgment. My wife had a PERFECT SAT math score, was class valedictorian, has a scientific patent, is an author of THREE (not one) scientific books, so, I always tell her to please don't tell me she doesn't remember something, can't concentrate or pay attention to our current surrounding:

We are out dating, I am talking to her, and she is smiling and looking at me, and then I ask her what I was talking to her about. She was lost 30 seconds ago. That is a frequent scenario.

Then, the incident she talked on the radio show. This is what really happened. I told her to grab the documents. As I was walking out the door, I saw her hold them so I went to the car. When we arrived, she hadn't brought them. Off course that is frustrating. What happened with the folder she was holding? She had laid it on the table as she put on her shoes. Again, lack of concentration. But this isn't an isolated event. This happens time after time in different ways, almost in a daily basis.

Just last night, she took out the garbage, and then, late at night I heard a noise. I went straight to the garage. She had left the garage door open.

She has left her purse so many times in the restaurant. She frequently looses the keys, her cellphone, her wallet, her debit card, forgets something I asked her to do. This happens on a regular basis.

I will do all my best regarding the disrespectful judgments, and seriously, if there are links about how to do this faster, I'd listen. I never said I was unwilling to try, but she needs to work on that forgetting and not concentrating habit too. I've already told her so. She is extremely bright. She can solve logic problems at incredible speed, therefore, she is more than capable of concentrating on her surrounding. She chooses not to, as I can see by all this theory, you can change your habits and re-wire your brain as to how to behave.

I don't like my thread in the affair section. I don't want to think about that anymore. How can I move it to the recovery section?

Your wife's forgetfulness can be dealt with once you have eliminated your angry outbursts and can address the problem respectfully. Right now, you are very angry and disrespectful. These other problems you have brought up can not be solved in that environment.

ProChoice, you are being very disrespectful to your wife about her forgetfulness.

I too am college educated and had a promising career before choosing to be a SAHM. But I am also VERY forgetful. Call it adult ADD or whatever you would like, it is certainly not something I would choose and I struggle with it daily. Forgetfulness is not really a 'habit' IMO, because you don't choose to forget something or be absent minded. I have worked hard to find ways to cope with this, by taking vitamins and natural remedies to inspire concentration and focus, by creating habits that help me to remember, like keeping notes and lists on my iPhone so I always have them with me, etc. This does not change my forgetfulness, but it does create an environment that helps cope with that.

My H was very negative and disrespectful about this for many years. He has always had a very sharp memory. He could not understand how someone so easily forgets from one moment to the next. About 8 years ago he became ill with a chronic illness that affects him in many ways, one of which is memory. Suddenly, I was reminding him of things. It was very frustrating for him but for the first time, he understood what this is like for me (we have one son who is like this too). In the past, he would give me a verbal list for something, and I would say 'write it down' and he would be very disrespectful about that, why do I need to write down a list of 5 simple things? Now he fully understands why.

I would tell you to approach this forgetfulness with your wife in a different manner. I do not see it as a 'habit' that can be fixed. But there ARE habits that can be embraced to manage and cope with it. You should work together to find ways to cope instead of disrespectfully judging her for forgetting papers on the table.

But as Prisca has said, none of this matters or can be resolved unless you change your attitude. Your anger and negativity is evident in every post you write.

Prisca is right. Until you make significant progress with how you react when frustrated, you can't address your problems with your wife's behavior.

Your most recent post clearly shows how you react to your wife's shortcomings. A habit of reacting with anger to your wife's annoying behavior will automatically obstruct solving the problem. Right now, your contemptuous attitude is the most significant obstacle to a great marriage. This way of relating is unsustainable for both you and the marriage.

If you can learn to stop judging her brain differences and start calming yourself, you might get yourself to a position where you come to the relationship having goodwill. Your complaints are valid but you are seething with contempt and anger. It is pouring out in your posts.

Dr. Harley told me once that I should be so able to control my physical response to frustration that opposers could spit on me and I would be able to instantly calm myself and not get upset. (He has had that experience personally while testifying in congress.)

When you are in the habit of being frustrated, your brain needs to build new relaxation pathways instead of using the same angry ruts. It takes lots of practice to not get upset when your spouse offends you over and over with the same stuff. Trust me, I know. And getting angry essentially diverts the attention away from the problem and onto your lack of composure.

Just because your wife has "absentminded professor" tendencies doesn't give you the right to allow anger. There are other options like immediate relaxation in the moment of stress and frustration

FYI this is incorrect and a disrespectful judgement. This is like saying all people with 'focus issues' (ADD labeled or otherwise) are not bright. There is absolutely NO evidence to support that self created theory.

You mean the incident when you locked her outside in the rain to punish her, yes we know. Dr Harley said it didn't matter what she had done - he was focused (rightly so) on your reaction.

You DO NOT have the right to treat your W this way, PERIOD. It doesn't matter what she did. That's Step 1 in managing your lovebusters. I am amazed you are here still trying to get us to "see" what she did and still trying to justify your behavior.

Your W should expect more of the same (AOs and DJs).

Is your wife back living with you now?

You realize that you are speaking to many BSs who have Plan A'd their WS for a period of weeks and sometimes months and years??

That means no lovebusters in the face of an active affair being flaunted right in your face at times, among other really crazy wayward behavior.

We are not ignorant to how difficult it can be to reign in AOs and DJs in the face of really frustrating behavior. We GET it.

What you don't GET is that you don't have an excuse for your lovebusters. As long as you believe that, you are not going to get this marriage-wrecking behavior under control.

Yes.


Not really, I haven't had a single AO in a week, and working on identifying DJs. I wanted to know alternatives to approach this because this takes enormous amount of re-emphasis and effort.

I don't understand what you mean. Did you come to MB hoping to find an alternative to MB methods?

That probably is not what you meant, so perhaps you can give me a clue about what you meant by "alternatives". Such as what?

First, I'm glad to see you sticking around and actually reading the posts here. It shows that you are concerned about this on some level.

On the books, you had asked about more reading on Disrespectful Judgements. This is covered in the book "Lovebusters" so I would study that if you want to learn more there.

On the affair exposure..."behind the back" is not the right way to describe it. Things like affairs or threats/abuse are situations where the spouse on the receiving end of the misbehavior requires outside help and support in order to address the problem. It's a big enough problem that the spouse who is doing the misbehaving is not a reliable source of help in resolving the situation, so their consent (or lack thereof) is basically meaningless. Besides, most of us here confronted our spouses on some level when we were being cheated on (many BSes are suspicious before they have the smoking gun) and heard nothing but DENIAL. Your wife did not go behind your back because I'm certain that she had communicated her unhappiness with your behavior to your face and you didn't stop it, so it wasn't going to help the situation to continue asking you for help with it. The problem was bigger than she could fix on her own and she sought help. That is not betrayal, that is desperation.

On the forgetfulness....

There are many forms and areas of intelligence, and just because she excels in some does not mean she will excel in all. Nobody does. Just look at the whole left brained-right brained concept.

As some others have chimed in, you can be very smart and also absent minded or less bright in another area.

I write computer programs, design and audit computer networks, etc....and I lose my keys (among other things) fairly frequently or lock them in the car like an idiot. Both of my parents have graduate degrees and are very successful in their careers, but my dad can't even change his own oil in his car, and my mom would get lost trying to find her way out of a parking lot.

I know a lot of people who never lose anything, but couldn't even begin to have to focus or concentration required to write a computer program from start to finish or fix networking problems the way I do. And that's what they tell me themselves when they've watched me work. Nonetheless, I am certain they are skilled in many areas I am not. My dad is best guy I know to take anywhere you have to navigate by map (which I am terrible at), but I can take car engines apart/put them back together and he wouldn't have the first clue. We're all different.

So it's a huge DJ to say "she is capable of X and she's not doing it...I know." Not your place to say that. Not a winning strategy for that problem, so drop it.

Some of what you're describing with her behavior that bothers you I think falls into the category of an annoying habit which is a Lovebuster, but you can't respond with another Lovebuster (DJ). If you feel hurt by her behavior, you have a right to feel that way, but you need to communicate that without being disrespectful.

To do that, do not:

- Tell her what she's thinking or make assumptions about her (motivations, capabilities, etc)

- Make comparisons or use metaphors to create an INSULT, which is inherently disrespectful

- Make assumptions about how she would react to something or what she would or wouldn't be doing if she cared for you/loved you/was concentrating/insert your expectation here. This goes back to not assuming what she is thinking.

- Exaggerate or be sarcastic.

Instead, just tell her what she did that bothered you, and how it makes you feel. That's it. No games, no punishment, no hyperbole or one-ups-manship. You communicate the facts to her in a composed manner and leave out all of the other junk.

A week is progress, but it is not a long time by any stretch of the imagination. You cannot consider AOs eliminated just yet.

Identify a DJ each time it happens and speak out then immediately vs Write them down without a word and discuss all of them once a week.

And Axligster95, off course I am concerned. I have a promise to keep plus I recently chose to forgive my wife for her affair, which by the way feels like taking the rocks off your heart, so I am not posting because I want to make friends, specially in a forum where I have been attacked by some posters (not all, some have been helpful). I'll read that chapter again.