Perhaps you are right MUlan, maybe i don't understand the difference.

Wouldn't blind trust be letting her go out, but not asking her about what she did after? Not checking her phone to make sure she isn;t having extensive frequent conversations with someone i don't know? Wouldn't me letting her email another man to discuss innocent stuff be ok if i then looked at the emails as i did before to watch what was happeneing. i think thats what i need is for her to face tests and prove by her actions she means what she tells me about our love, marriage and family. Without that all i have is the same words she used on me the whole time she was doing her thing against our love and family.

regular trust would be saying ok, I am going to trust you to go out with your friends, but you must fully realize the consequences of your actions when i am not around. only you can proive your character to me , yourself and all those around you. if you are truly rpentant for past actions it will be as easy to avoid EA's and PA's as it was for 12 years. In fact it should be easier as you have valuable experience now to judge these stupid actions by and have seen the damage wreaked on your family.

As i have always said "character is what you do when noone is around" not what you do when someone is watching.

I don't think i wopuld be comfortable with her meeting any old boyfriends out for drinks or at shows for a long long time. But i think trying to forbid any male friends seems a bit over kill to me and is likely cause resentment.

I don't see our 12 years as blind trust, i merged with her about 6 months after my previous marriage which was a 8 year rollercoaster of adultery and abuse from my wife. I was extrenely hyper sensitive to anything like infidelity.
Several times i gave my trust freely to her and watched carefully what she did, she passed every test with flying colors. From time to time over those 12 years i was a little supsicious maybe about stuff but i could always draw on a large bank of trust to look and see without anger blinding me. Now of course anger blinds me into seeing every hint or clue in the most negative way.

HAVE YOU READ THE BOOKS?????

It makes so much sense if you read it as Dr. Harley writes it.

V'x

Boundaries are YOURS not your wife's. She can do as her conscience allows, boundaries are what dictates if YOU stay around to endure her behaviour. Thats all.

If you are happy for your WW to drink with men, or even bang them on the kitchen table that really is QUITE OK.

Whats proven to be NOT OK is if such things happen that you will not tolerate.

My own boundaries after Squid's affair are :

* NC for ever
* Transparency in accountability
* Investment in an dprotection from hurt of me.

If Squid persistently and deliberately violated any of these I would not stay in a relationship with her. This is not a threat. It is a boundary.

Squid knows there is no cage on our marriege and she can leave any time she feels unable to treat me with the respect I desire.

Please understand without boundaries your requests of your WW are basically wishes.

Your assertion that men with boundaries are anti-feminist is drivel. BW on these boards effect boundaries in their relationship just as I do. Recovered spouses BOTH effect boundaries and they are respected enthusiastically by each other.

There is no "male control" regarding personal boundaries, all people shuld have boundaries for all of their relationships IMO.

BTW I trusted my wife to much too. Many of us do, Harley says we must never trust blindly in marriage even when not troubled. That is not sexist either, its good advice garnered from counselling thousands of couples in crisis.

Finally I think you need to study and learn about affairs. Folks are vulnerable to affairs especially with old flames howebvr innocently contact is initiated.

All blessings

Hmmm, this thread is interesting to me. At first I thought "you're crazy, I wish my W would talk to me about boundaries". But now that I think more about it I also see your point. A year ago my W had some kind of affair that I never found the full details about but right after D-Day, we both poured our hearts out and said we wanted to stay together. She changed her cell # since that was the way I knew they were in contact and promised to not contact him again. For the next year, I basically worked by a** off trying to fix the things she said she was unhappy about. I tried to be the model husband and since she wanted trust soooo badly I forced myself to trust her. I was so impressed because she voluntarily started checking in with me so I always knew where she was and what she was doing.

Fast forward to this year and I find that she had a secret email account that she contacted him through and also has multiple other "friends" through this account. So for this whole time she was still sneaking behind my back.

I understand your frustration, when I found out about the latest things (which I probably only know the tip of the iceberg) The first thing I thought is basically "how can I ever trust her", "its pointless to snoop, she can always find another way", things like that. And I still feel that way sometimes. You basically feel like its hopeless, you can't and don't want to have to "force" her to be faithful.

We're in counselling now with MB and that is improving things. She has to have a change of heart and decide that she wants this marriage and is willing to protect it. She has said things like this and her treatement of me is excellent now. I'm still pretty depressed about it all right now but I'm trying to just follow the counsellors advice. We have not had any talks about boundaries or anything like that yet, just working on meeting each other's ENs.

My wife survived many tests over many years in our marriage, she passed them all. She only got close to me becasues I saw this ability to trust her. I was traight out of a horrible marriage with a cheater.

To know have to accept a wife who is nothing like what i married doesn;t seem productive to me, shouldn't i be instead working on profivding the EN's she needs to love me again as stringly as she did for 12 years with no incidents. Suddenly demanding no male friends, no nights out, no mignling with freinds who are hostile to marriage will just build resentment eventually, even if she accepts and agrees with the action of being a father like figure to her now.

i don't want another child i want my wife back, the one that i could trust anywhere. frankly iwould rather trust her and have her fail again ans us break up than for me to simply lock her down so she never gets the chance to do anything. It would just be a matter of time before she found some outlet.

I understand the boundary issue, we have boundaries, she has been aware of the boundaries since day 1. There is no need for me to have to say "no having sex with other men"
But the issue is she doesn;t love me enough for those boundaries to be important and self enforced like they were for 12 years. I feel like me locking her down is simply slapping a bandaid on the wound when what i really need to work on is the feelings she has for me. if they were present as stroing as they were before these infideltiy issues would disappear.

i can't force character on her, if i married her for her charachter then how am i supposed to adjust to the new characterless wife concept?

We've given you our recommendations on how to proceed...you don't agree with them.

So what's YOUR plan to solve this problem?

let me put it this way, my wife married me becasues I am that rare breed of male who is monogamous, even during my dating i only handle one woman at a time. I am essentially the type of guy you want to marry. She was essentially the type of woman that men want to marry. Devoted to the family, committed to the union of love between us and protecting it at all costs for better or for worse.

Now if i suddenly became an abusive husband would she simply be content to avoid saying anything that might make me hit her? I don't think so.

If I suddenly became a rabid adulterer would she simply be content to lock me down, limit any opposite sex contact, keep me away from male friends who are hostile to marriage, not let me go out etc etc etc. But gees how would she stop me at work?

I don't think lowering our standards is the answer, i know what a horrible cesspool opf selfishness America is when it come to relationships, i see the scumbags cheating on thier spouses all the time, we all do. But i also see all the people keeping thier love strong by respecting it.


Simply saying NO WOMAN CAN BE TRUSTED is not acceptable to me, this sounds more like adice to never marry or have a relationship not a method for saving a loving relationship.
i understand that right away i cannot let her go for a drink with an old boyfriend, that would be too much too soon and we would have to work up to it, but simply sounding the alert and locking all the windows and doors seems like a temporary fix.

But eventually why shouldn't she be able to see an old boyfriend when she is out with friends and have a damned drink with him and chat, there is no harm in that if her love is squarely aimed at me, if its not i can lock her in my basement and she will find a way to have an affairi with the lawn guy or something.

In the end the only way to build Love bank points is by acting loving correct? Yelling or lying is a love buster correct?

So how does not trusting build trust bank points, only actually giving out the trust will put the thing to the test, within reason of course. If i never give her the chance to be trusted i will not actually be trusting her will i?

I don';t want to simply stay together for my kids, without a strong loving marriage at the core our family is doomed anyway. i would rather find out sooner than later that she simply just doesn't love me the same way anymore and nothing i can do will change that. But if anything will change that its not gonna be acting like a bodyguard its going to be acting like we did when we were happily together, ewnjoying each others company, sharing everything and providing the EN's

you have no desire to 'get' the concept therefore you never will.

believe me, no matter how unique you think your realtionship was, it wasn't.

You only had 12 years of a faithful wife before this- I had 23- many other on here had more.

It has nothing to do with the first 12 years. It has everything to do with NOW.

What are you going to do with NOW?

You can not live in the past.

Have you read the books?

Well rather that treating the symptom of the relationship problems i would rather treat the cause. Creating resentment will not help i think, proving daliy that i do not trust her will not be good either. Giveing her the chance to stand up and prove herself will

My plan is to work the EN's, provide whats been missing in our relationship, demand total honesty in all aspects of our lives together, remind both of us that character is what you do when noone is looking.

We are seeing a therapist MC who is very good, but he also advocates a strong boundary concept, but like many here when i bring up the details of what that means its not so easy to say it will work. I think differtent marriages might need different solutions. Young marriages need that sort of thing and you usually find it out pretty quick, but older marriages often just need things to be massaged easily back into the old feelings, to let go of the resentments for the affairs and for the causes of the affair.

Trying to suddenly lock down someone you have lived with for 12 years seems a bit extreme to me. I know you guys want to look at me as another example of Feminism destroying marriages, but my wife married me exactly for that reason. It may be a joke to you but thats why i don't cheat, becasues i not only respect the marriage but thw woman behind it and i know that love freely given is much better than love demanded , same with trust.

Who's saying NO WOMAN can be trusted?!?!?

GET OFF THE GENDER KICK ALREADY!!!!!!

No WAYWARD SPOUSE should be trusted until they've learned how to protect their marriage, and demonstrated that trust to the betrayed spouse.

The trust is rebuilt by DEMONSTRATING TRUSTWORTHY BEHAVIOR. That means SHOWING you (the BS) that they ARE trustworthy. That they're willing to do things to ensure the safety of their marriage. Like becoming transparent, enforcing boundaries, etc...

If you don't check...you'll never SEE that she's being trustworthy. And after checking over a period of time, that trust is rebuilt and the checking is less and less.

I don't check on my wife anymore...trust is rebuilt and restored.

Again...will you PLEASE quit trying to make this sound like a discussion of women's rights. It's got NOTHING to do with that subject. AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It would be the same if YOU had strayed.

So...could you PLEASE...come to terms with the fact that it's NOT about gender.

I don't care if your wife was a squirrel instead of a woman...THAT IS IRRELEVENT to this conversation!!!!

It's about PEOPLE...not gender.

Can I possibly make that any clearer to you V??????

WOW! you just set some boundries- thougt you din't want to do that?

Owl, I think maybe it is true that he has no desire to 'get it' and there for never will.

pity, isn't it?

v6, you're still not getting it.

You don't say, "You can't go out for a drink with an old boyfriend!"

You say, "I do not want to be married to a woman who is happy to ignore me so she can drink with an old boyfriend. That is very hurtful to me. I want to be married to a woman who wants to go out for drinks with ME."

Do you see the difference?
Mulan

wow yes, i see what you are saying Mulan. That makes perfect sense.

i guess i am harping on the greater details of the boundaries issue. I fail to see how to implement these more draconian issues, but as you say its dealt with on a case by case basis when stacked up against the needs of the marriage.

And i do agree that some boundaries are needed if they are removed in time, i am just against suddenly becoming something i am not and staying that way forever.

i don't mind enforcing some sensible boundaries until we get over the stress of this period, i am tired of freaking out about stuff and it would be a welcome break to not have to get stressed. But if i stay that way forever i am just going to be a pain in the [censored], becasues everytime i get suspicious it turns my mind dark and i turn into this jealous monster who sees everything negativly and is filled with anger.

The mere act of suspecting my wife makes me feel ashamed, for me and for her. I know it takes time to get back to trusting, but i think the sooner the better for the health of the relationship.

I think that V must have me on ignore.

I've not seen a single response from him indicating that he does or does not understand that this is gender non-specific.

I don't have anyone on ignor owl

i don;t think it is gender specific either, i know that men or women can cheat.

But i am saying that the way i always treated my wife is why she is with me, how does me not treating my wife that way make her stop this?

the way she treated me also is why i was with her, i want her the way she was as i am sure if she still loves me she wants me the way i was not as something else i am not.

Owl, I must be on ignore, too. I have asked at least 3 times if he has read Harley's books.

Makes sense V. Very similar to my relationship with my wife.

Realize that things have changed in your marriage. There's nothing either of you can do to 'take it back'. Your marriage won't be the same thing again. This is something that all of us BS's have to deal with.

I'd like to make an observation for you tho...you said:

"But i am saying that the way i always treated my wife is why she is with me, how does me not treating my wife that way make her stop this?"

What you need to seriously stop and recognize is this...how you treated your wife also created the environment that allowed the affair to happen in the first place. That the same "blind trust" was the very same situation that fostered the affair...that made it possible (perhaps even probable) to happen.

That's not saying her choice to cheat was your fault. It means that the environment of your marriage was such that it enabled it to happen. Again...same as in MY case. I'm not bashing you.

The dynamics of your relationship with her have changed over the years. This is NORMAL for marriages. You both change as people. You are NOT the same person you were 12 years ago...neither is she. You've matured, grown, changed.

Your relationship needs to go through these same steps, or it fails.

And finally...the boundaries should have always been there. The fact that they weren't is what led this to occur in the first place. Putting them in place now will shore up your marriage...protect it. Not doing so leaves it vulnerable to the same thing happening again.

If you still feel so strongly that these boundaries are damaging your marriage, I heartily recommend you seek guidance from a skilled and gifted marriage counselor. Why not schedule some MC time with SH to go over this exact subject with him??? Get it from a professional.

Realize that your way failed...just like it did in my case. Time to learn a new way.

Hey V6,

Read your quote above and tell me why you think things are working for you now as they did before??? [color:"red"] PYHOYA!!!!!!!!! It is also why she is cheating on you NOW!!! She no longer wants you the way YOU WERE!!! Taht is also why she is cheating on you!!! Hello is anybody home in there??? The lights are on, but no-one's home! [/color]

[quote
Hey V6,

Read your quote above and tell me why you think things are working for you now as they did before??? [color:"red"] PYHOYA!!!!!!!!! It is also why she is cheating on you NOW!!! She no longer wants you the way YOU WERE!!! Taht is also why she is cheating on you!!! Hello is anybody home in there??? The lights are on, but no-one's home! [/color] [/quote]

You are making this into some form of political statement if you ask me, like she has had it with her liberal husband and just wants a Rush Limbaugh to set things straight.

She tried to cheat on me because a man who she felt very strongly about came into her life, she looked into our relationship for some reasons to let her heart go.
For 12 years she had no problem with me.

Now once she has done this and failed i think she may have come to some form of realization about her feelings for me that now have been overshadowed by someone else.

What you are saying eagle is that noone can be trusted and this is simply not true at all, so what if 65% of marriages have affairs or attempts? that means 35% don't.
I have seen just as many marriages ruined by over bearing spouses as affairs. Spouses either male or female who are so insecure they drive the other person to actually escape by cheating. Cheating is a form of disrespect but so is never trusting your partner.

Its not weak to trust, its strong to trust, its weak to never trust and assume all people are untrustworthy.

For every lying spouse on this forum there is someone like me who never lied or cheated on thier spouse.

i haven't read the books no, i have read all the stuff on this site however.

I cannot live with a wife i cannot trust, it is unthinkable to me to accept this as a normal relationship. I want to work on my marriage but there has to be some standards of what that is. i don't want to work towards creating more mistrust and resentment simply to make me feel secure and in control.

Love , trust and honesty are basic standards. You have to give and get them to have a good relationship.