All,

“Safety 1st” was my first lesson in counseling with SH. What Safety 1st means is that before ANYTHING else can work – I must make “me” a safe person for my husband to be with. SH was very clear but had to tell me many times that unless I protected my husband from LBs, there was absolutely no way any other MB Principles could work.

SH, wouldn’t let me proceed with another word or thought about recovering my marriage until I committed to this initial philosophy. And I had to be reminded often. Fortunately over time I proved his theory correct. And seeing the results of practicing “Safety 1st”, I was further inspired to not forget it on my own without having to be reminded as often.

The reason I mention this is I’ve been puzzled reading different threads on MB these days due in part to the conflict and controversy about “how” we post (talk) to each other. Discord seems to be on the upswing. The safety 1st concept popped into my head. It still makes sense to me, and I think it applies to how we treat each other in the forum. If we don’t LB the posters, might they feel safe enough to stay, and give us a real opportunity to make a difference in their life? And like my husband, if I fail to keep other posters safe from my LBs will it impede someone’s recovery? I suspect so. So I wonder if we practice some the MB principles on each other won’t that help us to use them in some form in all of our relationships? Wouldn’t the world be more civilized if we did?

Pondering these thoughts, I went to the Basic Concepts of this web site and re-read them for the first time in a few years. I’m sorry to say that I had forgotten the true meaning of some of them, because so much time has passed since I read them last, and at the same time had read versions of the concepts posted by fellow Mbers more recently. I won’t post them all here, (unless you all want me to!!) But here’s part of Dr. Harley’s introduction about them.

Love Busters
The love you and your spouse have for each other is directly affected by almost all of your behavior. This is a point that I will repeat in most of my remaining concepts and Q&A columns. Until now, I have focused attention on behavior that will meet each other's most important emotional needs. When you behave that way, you are caring for each other. But the resulting Love Bank deposits will not do your marriage much good if other behavior leads to Love Bank withdrawals. So to help you gain control over your behavior so that you can learn to avoid making Love Bank withdrawals, I will introduce you to my next basic concept, Love Busters.

Why would any of us hurt the one we promised to love and cherish?

Lack of empathy is at the core of the problem. I was struck with what we are all up against while watching a Star Trek episode. Spock had volunteered to be possessed by an alien presence so that it could communicate with Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise.

As soon as it entered Spock's body, its first reaction was, "Oh, how lonely you must all feel."
You see, in the alien world, they were all connected to each other through telepathy so that each one could feel what everyone else felt. They were all emotionally bonded to each other. But as soon as the alien possessed Spock's body, it realized that we humans are all cut off from each other emotionally. And it viewed our state as incredibly isolated and lonely.

One of the most important consequences of our emotional isolation is that we cannot feel the way we affect others. And that creates the temptation to hurt others because in doing so we don't feel the pain we cause. If we were connected emotionally to others as the aliens were, we would be far less tempted to do anything thoughtless, gaining at someone else's expense. That's because in so doing, we would be hurting ourselves as well.

And that's what I always seem to be battling when I try to encourage one spouse to avoid doing anything that would hurt the other spouse. I cannot seem to trigger empathy. Each spouse complains about how thoughtless the other spouse is, without much awareness of his or her own thoughtlessness.

Lack of empathy helps makes thoughtlessness possible. Since we don't feel what other's feel, we tend to minimize the negative effects we have on others, and consider our thoughtlessness to be benign. An angry outburst is regarded by some as a creative expression. Disrespect is viewed as helping the other spouse gain proper perspective. And a demand is nothing more than encouraging a spouse to do what he or she should have done all along. None of these is seen as one spouse gaining at the other's expense, because the spouse who is inflicting the pain does not feel the pain. But whenever one spouse is the cause of the other's unhappiness, one thing's for sure -- Love Bank withdrawals are taking place.

I call the all the ways that spouses are inconsiderate of each other's feelings Love Busters because that what they do -- they destroy the love that a husband and wife have for each other.

I've found that the most common Love Busters in marriage fall into five categories: Selfish Demands, Disrespectful Judgments, Angry Outbursts, Annoying Habits, Independent Behavior and Dishonesty

<small>[ December 09, 2004, 10:45 AM: Message edited by: CSue ]</small>

kudos and thanks for this post!

Seems to be another thread worthy of being sticky.

<small>[ December 09, 2004, 11:00 AM: Message edited by: greergan ]</small>

Csue -

Are you talking as the former BS? Do you mean "safety first" as in the WS is made to feel safe?

What if the WS doesn't make the BS feel safe from the possiblity of further pain? No matter because the BS is still trying to save the marriage alone?

Can you expound a bit. I think I understand but I want to feel safe too, not just make the BS feel safe from my ridicule and LB's.

This post made me realize that I do not always make my ww feel safe, but I think I'm getting better at it. Thank you for a wonderful post.

Weaver,

I was the BS in my situation. Like many of us I was one of the ones who thought THIS could NEVER happen to me. I was so enraged, and had so little self-control that everytime I opened my mouth to my husband it was an LB.

Steve was adamant that since my WS was so remorseful and agreed to NC right away that he felt that my marriage had every chance of recovering.

SH also changed my focus from "what happened" to what my responsibilites were in the situation. I was practically out of control in my outrage, so he said that if I didn't make it "safe" for my husband to be with me, there was no way any of the other MB principles could possibly work.

I also had to be told several times not to "coach" my husband that by doing so that would impede our progress.

I think it was SH's way of getting me to focus on my behavior of which I have control over, and to leave my husband and his behavior to him. In a sense to mind my own business until we had a chance to work though coaching.

Goal being - that my husband and I would be in recovery and learn to become each other's coaches.

Happily I have to say that we're going down this road quite nicely. Recovery is going well, but we still get out our notes on POJA, and use MB principles in daily life. In a sense we are beyond recovery - because the affair doesn't come up hardly anymore, and we're left with the new skills we've learned as a result!

Ms,

Glad you're getting better at making your WW safe. Honestly, we didn't even begin recovery until I was safe. Because by not being "safe", our conversations were going nowhere, and I got into this cycle of getting further enraged as a result.

Until we were able to talk recovery wasn't going to happen.

Greer, glad you like the post....it was a great reminder for me especially this part.

One of the most important consequences of our emotional isolation is that we cannot feel the way we affect others. And that creates the temptation to hurt others because in doing so we don't feel the pain we cause.

My husband and I just had this discussion this past week. We both acknowledged that we forget this and in fact it's a common weakness we share.

We got a good laugh out of it because we both agree that if we weren't equally bad about this when we met years ago, we probably wouldn't have been as attracted to each other. So it's nice that we're growing in this way.

CSue:

Thanks for the reminder.

So often, it feels 2 me like we MBers, the side of the M that are posting here, get wrapped up in the expectations that grow as a result of trying 2 follow the methods and timelines 2 a tee.

We feel like we fail because we're "in plan A for years" or "aren't on the same page" or whatever, when "everybody else" seems 2 be on track following the plans as instructed...

When I realized that my M can't recover if I don't do a lot of self-recovery first, I was better able 2 empathize with my W's viewpoints (even though I don't agree with them) and stop "requiring" her 2 come on board with MB or SYMC coaching, or even 2 accept it as useful.

But the biggest improvements in the past several months have come when I was better able 2 let go of constantly rehashing the past and dropping the LBing. It was interesting reading what SH wrote. LBing isn't just avoiding pain by causing hurt for the WS, it's an insideous "self-preservation" mechanism that we aren't necessarily consciously aware of. But I guess that's just a different way of saying the same thing.

That kind of behavior just has 2 go! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Cool]" src="images/icons/cool.gif" />

-ol' 2long