Originally Posted by Hilltopper1972
Yes it was helpful to find out some of the feelings I have because "playing in the game" I'm not always sure what they are if that makes sense. I know I feel bad, but I can't always tell why. Its like a big confusing haze that is hard to navigate.

No we were not using the workbooks to track LBs.

I wouldn't call it "wallowing in the past", I am making an honest effort to try and comprehend what the hell is going on in an effort to express myself which is the first problem. I tend not to. I bottle up. After 38 years of bottling up, it is hard to just change the next day you know? Many of my efforts of expressing myself are misguided or full of "guesses" as to how something makes me feel. When it comes to asking for EN's to be met, I just don't know how to handle the rejection, so I typically get upset and don't ask again. I told my wife I might want to meet with a therapist or SH to help me express myself better and not take rejection so hard.

Hill, YOU ARE NOT ALONE IN THIS. It is more common than you realize, and more common that most people want to admit.

I especially emphasized in red.

Let me tell you what drew me to MB (primarily through Dr. Harley's articles); I found things on the page that resonated exactly with what I was feeling, but had no words for.

I don't give a flying hoot what anybody says, it's OK.

But, you fouled up - big time - with this article and how you handled it.

It was a gamble even introducing MB to your W. Luckily, that gamble paid.

This last gamble did NOT.

When you find something like this, and shell it out, you are basically throwing raw emotion at your W. She has agreed to, and is working on, viewing things through an MB lens. Whatever you do from here out needs to be filtered through that lens so that the two of you are speaking a common language.

The next time you hang yourself up on something like this, STOP. Print it out. Read, and reread it. Highlight and note.

THEN; get out your MB materials, and work on translating what you are getting out of that as to how it fits with THIS LANGUAGE.

If it does NOT fit in this language, DISCARD IT. PERIOD.

Once you have translated your feeling into MB language, use the framework provided by Markos.

"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field." - Niels Bohr

"Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons." - Michael Shermer

"Fair speech may hide a foul heart." - Samwise Gamgee LOTR