</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by frozen1229:
<strong> </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">You need to reign them in</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">How. I would appreciate any suggestions on methods to use.
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> That is a character issue and needs to be dealt with </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I hate to sound redundant, but...how does this need to be dealt with?
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> Please tell me about what is good in your life</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I have two very beautiful children. My DD17 is an artist and has the most beautiful soul of anyone I've ever met. My DS(almost 15) is a genius. He has a 4.2 GPA and is ranked 28th in his Freshman class of 588 students. He wants to go into engineering. I'm very proud of both of them.
I own a business. I started it myself and it's very successful. I'm proud of it, as well. I'm proud of the fact that I started out as a teenage mother on welfare and now, at 35, I have two teenagers who make terrific grades and are rarely in trouble and a stable business that enables me to provide for them. </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Hi frozen. I am going to cover several posts in this one. I will get to the above quote, last.
First, I want to second what PEP says about what she likes about you. In particular, I love it that you are a survivor. I have been "rode hard and put up wet' as well. That is also why I speak to you so strongly. You have the strength to handle it. What is good about that, is it means that it likely won't take as long for you to deal with your marital issues as some or even most.
Secondly. This is to both frozen and patriot. Frozen, considering the difficulty of your situation, consider giving patriot the 'benefit of the doubt' on his rough handling of you. But only once, this time and this time only. Patriot. if you mishandle your wife again, I am encouraging her to immediately get the police involved and press charges HARD. You know what that means to you from a civilian perspective and militarily. Don't rough her up again.
Patriot. I want to encourage you to start posting here. Start your own thread. We want to help you through this. I want to help you if you will let me.
Thirdly. Frozen, slow down with Patriot. You are not going to fix this overnight. It is going to take time. Patriot. YOU CALL your wife from work. Let her know that you love her. Tell her where you are and how long you think you will be. My wife and I still do this, and have for 29 years. It is a basic marital kindness.
Fourthly. Expect that you will both play the push-me/pull-you game while you work at achieving a new balance in your relationship. This marital 'tug-of-war' is normal in a normal non-affair traumatized relationship. It is greatly exacerbated in a traumatized relationship. This is also normal, and as long as BOTH partners are trying for recovery, it WILL GET BETTER.
To answer your questions from above.
The first thing to learn in reigning in your emotions, is that if you DON'T act on a particular feeling, the world as you know it will NOT be affected adversely :-)
Practically, for starters, whenever you 'feel' that what you are about to say or do is in direct and immediate expression of how you feel RIGHT NOW, pause, wait a few seconds. Play through your head what you would have said. Ask yourself; "Do I really need to say this? Is this going to help or hurt my situation? Is this going to escalate or calm matters?"
Apply the same rules for emotional speech, to emotional reactions.
Once you have mastered that, I can tell you how to set clear emotional boundaries.
On to Patriot's character issue. There are several things that must happen to change that. Those changes will take time. He must first realize the full extent of the damage done. That will take time. He must eventually find what he has done distasteful. He must 'turn away' from the part of himself that was weak enough to allow the behavior. There is more to it, but this is a good starting place.
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have two very beautiful children. My DD17 is an artist and has the most beautiful soul of anyone I've ever met. My DS(almost 15) is a genius. He has a 4.2 GPA and is ranked 28th in his Freshman class of 588 students. He wants to go into engineering. I'm very proud of both of them.
I own a business. I started it myself and it's very successful. I'm proud of it, as well. I'm proud of the fact that I started out as a teenage mother on welfare and now, at 35, I have two teenagers who make terrific grades and are rarely in trouble and a stable business that enables me to provide for them.
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And that, dear lady, appears 'good enough'. No wonder Patriot fell in love with you.
In the movie, "As Good as it Gets", Nicholson asks "What if this is as good as it gets?".
For my life, love, family, and accomplishments, if I were asked that question, I would have to say that it is 'good enough'.
Once the affair issue is resolved in your situation, how do you think you will answer the question then?
All the best,
Gimble
