Ok I have an issue I feel strongly about and want some opinions.

Why when marriage is going bad alot of times the WAW or BS does not sit the other spouse down and give them the ultimatum: IF WE DO NOT SEEK COUNSELING OR WORK ON US THEN THE MARRIAGE WILL BE OVER AND I WILL SEEK A DIVORCE!
We are not mind readers and do not own crystal balls......but yet you kick us there <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" /> (nice pun) , by not telling us to change or we will lose you and break up our family. My W is a BS & a WAW. She planned her escape. We never resolved the issue of EA adequately with help of professional.

My W still tells me she tried. Well I believe this to be true....in her own ways....that me, being the idiot, did not pick up on. So now she can justify her actions, because I was blind to what was going on. Sometimes WE DO NEED HIT WITH 2x4 to work on marriage. DIVORCE/LAWYER talk would be that 2x4.

SO PLEASE HIT YOUR SPOUSE WITH ULTIMATUM 2x4 BEFORE YOU DO THE ULTIMATE. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Mad]" src="images/icons/mad.gif" />

I feel it is owed to your spouse, children, family, yourself and God.

Just me venting. I'm sure others will argue this.

hmmm...well...if you know that you're seriously unhappy with the marriage, you might do this. Of course, often you can't really tell when the marriage is in serious trouble or just normal stress time which marriages continually have off and on.

Now...if I was thinking I wanted out of my marriage because I was unhappy enough to think about the advantages of no longer being in the marriage...then yeah, I might speak up...BUT...to be honest, I would have been speaking up for however long I'd been unhappy...and if he hadn't listened to all the other times...by the time I announced I was unhappy enough to get a divorce...it might already be too late for me. I would not bring up the "D" word unless I had pretty much already thrown in the towel. jmho

Could that be unfair to my spouse? Maybe. But...he's in the same marriage as I am...if it's so bad that I want a divorce...I'd be sure that he would have been aware of it, right along with me. I'm not a conflict avoider...I wear my feelings on my sleeve...and let the cards in my hand be known by all.

As for your situation, I'm not all that familar...so I won't comment rather your W did try or not.

BUT...if you have an affair...one of the risks you freely choose to take was the possible loss of your spouse. jmho

I can't make any judgments about your marriage, but my H told me several times 10-12 years before my A that he knew I was just waiting for the kids to grow up before I left him. If that's not knowing the marriage was in trouble and I was unhappy, what is?

I feel sometimes no matter what we approach our spouses with when we have seen a slow, indifference towards working on relationship issues with our mates occur, it just does not seem to ring true with them after pointing out that there are problems. I tried over and over to have it thrown in my face. I always heard about bills, his job, school, and that if love was strong , relationship could take the backseat til all of his plans were accomplished. Now, being a rational human here, I felt it was my place to say to him, "You know if you do not lend effort today on "our" relationship, how could there be a tomorrow"? And of course, when you put your relationship out of mental thought as he did, it leads to emotional withdrawal and makes it easier for them to become emotionally attached to anything or anybody that does not have anything to do with their "practical life matters" such as paying bills, dealing with sick ones, fixing things that break. Some people can not remember that love,(real unconditional love) is based on all these things and when we work as a team, there is nothing that can not be accomplished. But some feel the "wild abandon" and carefree, floating feeling that "romantic love" is the real thing for them, and so they must choose that, hence the fog and everything in the "practical matter relationship, is no longer real to them, I feel that is why we look at them as aliens!! Some just do not get it until life sends them some hard lessons to WAKE them up. They always believe that you can not have the abandon and practical matter relationship in one because "THEY" have chosen to only live the practical life and make it an albatross around their neck, they forget that you can have both at the same time if they make the effort, and also if one does not always try to be the victim of life. If you feel like the victim, and not an active participant, then life will not be anything but a burden that you will want to run away from mentally!!! Hence the good ol' affair....but geesh...will it not bring the same results for them in one way or another when it's all said and done? I think so, if "they" finally wake up and address the issues deeply within themselves. Yes, it's true, everyone learns something from affairs (BS, WS, OP, OPS, and all the others involved) isn't it funny that 2 people can make so many others learn "what they themselves can not get a grasp on and so we must learn right along with them what we already know. These are just some of my thoughts, sorry if I babbled. Thanks for listening.

You can know everything is not peachy, but not realize how bad they are... also, your husband could have said it, but not really meant it as well (kind of an angry words thing; or a testing your feelings scenario). My husband, when he was still interested in a healthy, happy marriage started crying when I told him I had all I could handle and that I wanted a divorce. He said he had NO idea I was so unhappy. It was all I could do to not say,"Duh!!! How could you NOT know after I've put up with your OW, your porn and then if that wasn't enough I threw out all values and had an affair! Happy people (unless they are sociopathic) don't run out and have affairs!"

Unfortunately, even though my husband understands where I'm at, he says he doesn't have the capacity to be what I need him to be. There are always excuses for why he can't change his behaviour patterns and none of what has happened in our marriage seems to bother him very much. In our (as he called it) marriage of convenience(which, by the way, I think is the most idiotic thing on the planet, marriage is NOT convenient, that has nothing to do with it... marriage is a LOT of hard work) we have really done better in the sense that we talk more now than we ever did when we were "trying" (and yes, it burns me up sometimes when I think that I see two different counselors and I'm in counseling every week and I'm still tying; to hear him say we're not trying).

Anyway, I'm rambling. The point is, according to my S anyway, that sometimes you can know something is off, but not know how bad it really is.

I knew my marriage was having serious problems and I regret NOT seeking individual counseling after my wife declined joint counseling - because we didn't have the luxury of working on this while fighting my son's illness. I consciously chose not to try to solve two problems at once. After his death, I consciously chose to allow some time to grieve before tackling re-building our marriage. She chose NOT to wait by tackling our marriage problems and her grief simultaneously by running away. Oh well.

I disagree with the 2X4 approach. IMHO, a spouse should not threaten divorce or deliver other ultimatums. We cannot force anybody to do anything. If given the chance again, I would have seeked individual counseling and looked for my contributions to the poor marriage environment. I'd try to suck her into improving the marriage, not force her.

SO PLEASE HIT YOUR SPOUSE WITH ULTIMATUM 2x4 BEFORE YOU DO THE ULTIMATE.
Unfortunately, it's not so easy & straight forward.

The ws feels that they have done EVERYTHING they could for years & years. Then someone, for whatever reason pops into their lives. A new co-worker, the peson at the mall, etc.

Usually an affair is the FARTHEST thing from their mind. In fact, they may go out of their way to avoid it. But we (the bs) do not behave any different than we did last week (or last year) and the ws sees this new person as exciting in some way (meeting an emotional need.)

Then the bs starts to look at the marriage relationship in a different light. It has been studied and something like 90% of people who have an affair acknowledge their view of the marriage deteriorated only AFTER the affair started. Before the affair, the state of the marriage was okay. But as we have all (most) seen, with the things the ws does/says, we know this to be true.

So back to your statement, "HIT YOUR SPOUSE WITH ULTIMATUM 2x4 BEFORE YOU DO THE ULTIMATE", it's usually too late for this.

Sorta like rafting on a lazy river. At the last moment, you notice the falls, but by then, you are caught in the current and all the back paddling won't help.