click HERE

If you are ever interested in reading one of my favorite MBer's ... go to this guy, click on his name and read his old posts...

I like his style

Pep

Ahhh, yes,

2ofaKind

One of my favorites.....

I'm afraid he had just about run his course when I arrived but I read much of what he posted especially his update in late 2004...Really great stuff.

"What is it about NO CONTACT that you don't understand" <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Mr. G

I liked 2OAK...he always seemed to be ahead of me in personal recovery...it usually took me about 6 months to look back a say..."Now I get what he was talking about..."

Besides...the contracture of his username reminded me of where we used to go to buy bootleg liquor when we were kids...lots of good memories...

He is a psycho!! And made me laugh so hard. He made up this list of things a new WS needs to do and one item was something like this:

"looking for space??? Pull your head out of your [censored] and you will find plenty of "space!"

hahahahahahaa I still laugh when I think of that! He was a hoot! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

[color:"blue"] a classic 2OAK rant ... about "closure" with former affair partner ... [/color]

[color:"red"]Short answer: NO!
Long answer: NO NO NO!
Blunt Answer: Not only no but ****** NO!

Why? Because it would be stupid. Once you have no contact achieved is when recovery really starts. The quickest, easiest and most likely way to restart communication between the affairees is to contact the OP.

Here is how it goes -
You call to:
A: Let her know your feelings (she cares, really she does, note how she sends you cards on your birthday and anniversary)
B: Call her a lousy slut (get her emotional and incentized to 'get' you - Nobel prize for judment headed your way)
C: Get closure (note to all... breaking no contact for 'closure' is absolutely the STUPIDEST thing one can do in recovery. When no contact is working the damned door is closed - put a chair against it, nail it shut but for the love of God do not open that damned door to see what OP is up to!!!!)

Ok, I know I am being rude and overbearing but it is for a good reason - this gives the OP an engraved invitiation to call, email or confront your husband in person to (depending on why you called her) her response if she still digs him to each of the above scenarios is:

A. Explain how she cares about him and wants what is best for him and how she loves him dearly.
B. Explain how she cares about him and wants what is best for him and how she loves him dearly.
C. Explain how she cares about him and wants what is best for him and how she loves him dearly.


NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO and damnit NOOOOOOOO!
Never ever ever under any circumstances whatsoever do you break no contact.

Hear me, PLEASE on this - OP in general and OW in particular thrive on emotional drama, MOST (not all) OW's are bigtime into dramatics and this puts them center stage to speak to your spouse... even better, they can make themselves out to be the victim. They positively FEED on the victim role - unlimited drama, low low price!

No Contact is 100% effective if strictly followed and the concept seems very complex but here is what No Contact breaks down to:

No - it means no, none, nada, zip
Contact - it means contact, by either of you, for any reason, no matter what the intent, in any form - written, verbal, electronic, telepathic or physical.

When someone suggests getting 'closure' with the OP so that everyone can get along and sing the freakin Barney song in a circle, here is what you do:

Slap the snot out of them, hard - then slap them on the other side just in case they don't understand your first response.

ARGH!!!! In two years here I have seen dozens, DOZENS of relationships that are going along well in recovery drive right over the damned cliff into a rekindled affair because of breaking this blessedly simple commandment : Thou shalt not contact thy OP.

Locking the door and throwing away the key isn't good enough - you need to throw out the entire damned room.

You may notice that I have rather strong feelings about this and wonder if I have any clue about this - fair question. Put it this way - when a former cheater who bbroke it off with the OW 5 times under the 'just be friends and forget it plan' and once (1) as in final time with No Contact tells you the number one way to rekindle an affair you listen.

Is it me or do the 'closure' proponents never watch the Halloween and Friday the 13th movies??? They have got to be the same people who hit Michael Myers with a spitball, see him fall down and figure it's okay to peek under his mask.

Okay, deep breath: I'm calm now... sorry to pounce on your head but hopefully I have made you think that the whole girl chat with OP idea is not the best idea you've ever had. Understand the emotion, truly I do but this is about TWO people and always has been.

Do I think OPs are evil and deserve harm? No. But when it comes to recovery my attitude toward them is cold, cruel and unsympathetic - they are to be discarded with complete disregard for their feelings, wants, reasons yada yada yada. Sucks to be them but think it over - if they 'borrowed' your car and went for a drive they'd get ten years. If they borrow your spouse and get their feelings hurt then well, I'm sorry but Hallmark doesn't even have a card for that. Tough luck, next time get involved with an available person.
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[color:"blue"]BWHAAAAAAAAAAA [/color] <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

[color:"blue"] more classic 2OAK [/color]

[color:"red"]Let me put a cheater's spin on this one:

A WS who is caught and really goes through recovery, figures out why they did it and works to not only repair the damage but to ensure it doesn't happen again is the least likely person to have an affair. THIS type wants to know why they did it, figures it out and changes their behavior dramatically in numerous areas of their life.

This will sound ominous, but cheaters who brush it under the rug are going to have a real lumpy rug because they will absolutely cheat again. They do their 'time' in the doghouse, promise not to do it again and get better at covering their tracks.

For the ones who change, something clicks. The damage they cause and the realization of what they are going to lose is terrifying and they REALLY go to work on themselves.

The ones who say it was a one time thing but don't change their habits? I'd bet 90% do it again.

Question: Is he willing to put all phone records online? Give you access to his computer and all passwords? Take a polygraph cheerfully anytime you ask? If so - He's one of the changers.

If he says "hey, it was a one time thing, how dare you doubt me!" or "Yes I still see her but not THAT WAY, we are just friends" ....doubt him.

The good news? A habitual cheater and a one time cheater are equally 'curable'. It's that 'lightbulb' moment that does it - when they realize what they have done, the pain they have caused and what they are going to lose that provides the impetus for change.

2 cents from a former repeat lying cheating slimebucket.
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[color:"blue"] this one is really goooood [/color]

[color:"red"] In order to quell an intense desire to strangle the next pop psychologist who puts forth a touchy feely theory about helping a marriage recover from an affair I wanted to put this down on 'paper'.

Old Willard wasn't off the mark in his theories about how to beat an affair and save a marriage so let's remember what they are.

What is the goal?
Simple: First break the affair and keep it broken so that love can be restored to the marriage.
What is not the goal?
Getting even, making it fair, making sure OP lands on a nice pillow instead of getting dumped on their [censored].
What is the prize you are fighting for?
The security, love, joy and strength that a happy marriage provides.

OK, so let's break these down MB style:
How to break the affair
1. Ideally WS does it on their own.
2, If life is taking a day off from ideal, you go to Plan A.
Plan A
Simple goal: break the affair by exposing it and putting pressure on it while being the best you possible. You don't lovebust, scream, call names, throw things. For a FINITE time you try to be loving and kind and ensure that if Plan B is required your spouse is leaving with a last memory of a loving, devoted spouse who cares for them deeply. In Plan A you do NOTHING to assist the affair and there is no such thing as unfair: You reveal it to OP's spouse, family, preacher, plumber and parents - anyone who is likely to exert pressure to break the affair. You MUST remember something here - affairs are all sizzle and no steak. It is infatuation. There are no mortgages, kids needing braces, no real-life and no real foundation. it is easy to be lovey dovey for an hour or two per week. A REAL relationship, one in the public eye, one with a basis in reality has a tough time competing with the affair in terms of the short-term 'intensity' but the affair has one helluva time competing with a marriage and a history once the lights are on and the fantasy ruined. One good push and it generally topples over.
If that does not work you go to Plan B.
Plan B
You can not live with an ongoing affair indefinately and still love the cheating spouse unless your first name is "Saint" and even then it is tough. If exposing the affair and asking the WS to stop does not work then before you kill or divorce them you leave or kick them out. You do so with a letter explaining that in order to preserve your love for them you simply are not able to be interact with them unless/until they give up the affair, agree to no contact and agree to work on the marriage. Plan B is a next to last resort and works a very high percentage of the time. Plan B has very clear risks - WS can decide that they want to go be with OP forever, OP can take them and you can wind up divorced. If so, you were probably headed there on WS's terms anyway. In my experience here and in my own case the WS came around when it occured to them that they were going to lose their marriage, Push comes to shove and OP gets discarded in favor of spouse almost always.
Affair is broken, Recovery has a chance to start
If and when one of the above breaks the affair the work begins. The path to success is painful but not complicated. BS and WS each have responsibilities if recovery is going to work and each has to sacrifice some pride and dignity.
WS - Needs to first of all write a NO CONTACT letter or commit to No contact. Simply put, if there is ANY contact it is through the NC letter.
So what does a good no contact letter say and not say
First off, it gives absolutely no encouragement, caring, sympathy etcetera to the OP. It has one purpose and that is to inform OP that it is over for good, the affair was a mistake and a very cruel, hurtful one that you regret and your only purpose in life is to restore your marriage. If you have writer's block, this will do:
"OP:
Our affair was wrong and I deeply regret the pain it has caused to my spouse. I intend to do everything in my power to restore my marriage and ask you to respect my desire for no contact of any kind with you. This will be my only communication to you henceforth and any attempts by you to contact me will be ignored"

No justifications, no "IloveYouBut" crap, no glimmer of hope and damnit you FOLLOW what you say in that letter to the letter. IF you are stupid, proud or just well, stupid and try to 'be friends' with OP and smoothe it all over you are kidding yourself and being a selfish a-hole and hurting your spouse more. I have heard every conceivable reason a WS can come up with for keeping contact and they all suck. I wrote half of them and they were all lies to myself and 6 attempts at ending it and being friends ended in disaster. On D-day I went to no contact one time and it worked. Do the math - 0/6 or 1/1 any questions?

WS: Your next task is to start repairing the harm you have done through your selfish and cruel behavior. First on the list is to start telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Get it out of your system and you no longer have to live with secrets. Fear of discovery and the stress of knowing those secrets will kill you - purge like a bulemic at thanksgiving. The smartest thing you can now do is to give up your secrets - cell records online, spending accounted for to the penny, NEVER a moment out of contact via cellphone, email account passwords given up and volunteer for a polygraph at any time. Go all out and make it IMPOSSIBLE to cheat, trust me it will save you a ton of arguments, stress and crap and since you are not doing anything to be ashamed of for a change there si nothing to hide. Privacy Schmivacy - your spouse will be the one who takes care of you and changes your diaper when you are 95, privacy is not necessary (and maybe they'll let you sit in a poopie diaper if you piss them off long enough). Sadly you can't make this right, all you can do is never repeat the wrong and not drag out the wrong you already did by holding onto lies. Be French about it - surrender completely and totally and give up the fight.

BS: Your end of the deal sucks. Get used to this idea: "I chose recovery over revenge, retribution and/or divorce and I chose to be stuck with half the responsibility for fixing a mess I did not make". You do not get to use the affair when losing an argument about whose turn it is to take the trash out or drive to soccer practice. You just signed on to be accountable to your spouse for half the work, half the changes and half the responsibility for the state of the marriage before the affair and you did so willingly so live up to it. The affair did not happen in the midst of a perfect marriage - there were problems - hunt those problems down, identify them and kill them.
But, But, that is so unfair - WS got to have all the fun and I get to do half the work fixing it?
Yup, because it ain't about fair and getting even it is about being happy. Getting even won't make you happy and WS can't make up for what they did - ever. There are two winners or two losers in this deal - no middle ground.
So what do you get out of the deal? A happy marriage and family. If that prize is not worth it to you quit now.
So how do you restore love and trust?
Slowly.
Job 1 is figuring out where you lost it. You do not want to recover the marriage you had the day before the affair started. That marriage was badly broken in one or several areas. Do the MB questionairres - I have tested them and they worked for me thereby proving conclusively that they are idiot proof. You WILL learn a lot from those. TALK about them, GIVE first then ask. It is worth it.

Job 2 is figuring out how to fix those areas. In all likelihood your marriage beat the affair in all EN categories except 1-2. That's why WS's come home - selfishly they know that their marriage means more than the affair which met only 2-3 EN's very well or perfectly.

By following the MB marriage principles in the meantime - Honesty and openness, POJA, etcetera you learn to resolve conflicts rather than withdraw and build resentment. Never complain about what you permit and don't permit what you would complain about. I direct this more at WS's - fight damnit, don't hide and then go have an affair. If it takes all night to solve it then make the damned coffee and get comfortable.

If, along the way you are both careful to protect your marriage by LEARNING FROM the things that led to the affair, continuing to be completely open and honest then a repeat affair is unlikely. For us these days it would be a real nuisance - hiding it nearly impossible. Besides - i offered to go on the polygraph box and answer fidelity questions any time, and day, any reason without argument or hurt feelings. if there is nothing to be afraid of such a promise is easy.

Only time will heal the pain of the affair, at the end of that time you can be back to the old bad habits or you can have a new relationship without them. Y'know what? Things were better almost immediately from the INSTANT I knew it was in the open and i was getting a second chance. There is NOTHING in the MB plan that says recovery has to be miserable so make it fun whenever possible. Once you've decided to repent/forgive you may as well make the most of it.

What kills the plan?
1. Contact with OP. Let's do the Cliff's notes version of No Contact - you can't screw someone if you never talk to them or come within 100 yards of them, period.

2. Settling the score and making it fair.
Want to find fair in this process? it comes after "Af" and nowhere else. BS's get stuck in this crack - how can I just let it go when the scales are so unbalanced? Easy - because you ain't doin it for the WS you are doing it because all things considered you want to be happy tomorrow and there is nothing that can make the past OK.

3. Pride - whether it is the WS who is too proud to take responsibility and accept the consequences (no secrets/lies/privacy) or whether it is the BS who is determined to get even before forgiving. For the WS Pride is useful - if you take pride in being faithful and honest and acting from integrity. For the BS Pride is useful when you can say "I could have divorced you, I could have gotten even and instead I CHOSE to love you and forgive you and I am happy now that I chose to do that" There is nothing weak about giving a second chance - you do it because you would rather do it than lose your spouse. YOU make that decision when even God allows divorce for infidelity without argument. It is YOUR call. There is nothing weak in making the call to respond with grace - mercy where none is deserved.

4. Stupidity: The affair has 2 useful aspects - it can make you realize the grass is not greener and it can be examined to see what caused it. Learn from it, learn all you can about what bad habits made it possible and change those habits. Repeating mistakes once you understand them is stupid.
- Know what your spouse is doing and make sure they know what you are doing
- Know where your spouse's satisfaction level with EN's is and do your best to meet them better.
- Know where YOUR satisfaction level is and let your spouse know where you are unsatisfied. Let them know in a non accusatory fashion "I need your help here, there and there - where do you need me to do better for you?"
- Don't, Don't form inappropriate opposite sex relationships, whether you were BS or WS have boundaries. Sharing your deepest feelings with another person innocently can and often does result in sharing a bed with them.
- Don't ever forget how much pain there was on D-day
- Don't be nasty. Your spouse, more than anyone else, has the capacity to make or ruin your day. Expect/demand consideration and lead the way by showing it.
- Remember the affair did not start in bed - it started over lunch, over the computer - whenever you started sharing things with an opposite sex person that you should not have - after that it was a matter of time.

There is a lot more to it obviously but let's start there. We all want the same things. Logically we all see where the MB principles support what we want and we all forget to do some/all of them sometimes.

Is there anyone who has done all of these and failed?

Is there anyone who has ignored No Contact or anyone who has insisted on getting even who has been successful?

No plan is perfect. Harley's works but you have to work the plan and follow it. You follow it on days when you feel like it and you follow it on days when you don't.

Why?

Go back and review what the goal was.

So how many of us are getting closer to the goal and how many further away? Who is 'stuck' and not getting anywhere? Figure out where you are headed and think about why.

Now what are you going to do to get the ****** off this rollercoaster and on with the rest of your life? What is that life going to be like? What kind of marriage do you want?

What are YOU willing to do to get there?

"I Love you" is easy, "I was wrong and I'm sorry" is harder.

Unless everything is going great already get back with the program and figure out where YOU need to do more.
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[color:"blue"] love the way this guy expresses himself [/color]

[color:"red"] This was the day that a couple months of being really frustrated seeing so many people doing exactly the wrong things and being miserable as a result pissed me off enough to stand up and vent all that frustration out before the overwhelming desire to slap someone took over.

The nice thing about the MB principles is that they pretty much work every day because they make sense and they are simple.

There are 5000 theories depending on which professor a marriage counselor had in grad school - at least half are based on bullsh1t.

Harley's work because they clearly and simply reword the things we all know, that the Bible, Koran and other multi-millenium bestsellers articulate less clearly.

In the end it is simple stuff - you are honest and kind to your spouse and you don't betray their trust. When you do, you go back and try harder and work at it until it isn't work any longer.

If I read Harley's principles to my 8 year old she would understand them as easily as we all understand them - they are obvious.

Knowing what's right and what works is simple, doing it requires a little bit of backbone and a decision to do it.

Hope is a fine thing - a solid and well-defined plan is preferable.

The MB principles work, plain and simple. If two people are willing to put one another first and their union above all things then nothing can ever tear it apart. If they are not, they will miss out. Easy? no. Simple? yeah, it really is.
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I always liked this post of 2oak's:

Link: For the poor lost WS who need to find themselves

BWHAAAAAAAAAAAA

did you read down the replies & see what Jimmy Mac wrote!

*snort*

He mistakenly thought it was another WS rant by a BS .... not realizing 2Oak WAS a WS

LOL

Pep

and his sig line

[color:"red"]No Contact is very simple, it means no damned contact of any kind ever. Which part is confusing you? [/color]

Yes, I remember that too. Wish he'd hang around again...at least for a while.

2oak,

Great poster. Sure miss those kinds of posts. The one's that made us think...use our gray cells and really motivate us. Yea sometimes we vented through those posts but it had a way of reaching out and helping others....or yanking the snot out of 'em. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

L.

2oak left due to some off-the-board contact that wasn't healthy for his marriage - even wise ones aren't immune!

I'm actually shocked to see that he's back - there was a lot of hurt behind the scenes that hasn't been dealt with openly and honestly.

wow.....that comment killed this....

*thud*

Thanks for bringing that up Kayla. Don’t know what you said before editing but your post was diplomatic <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" /> to say the least. KB

I missed the post before it was edited, Kayla.

I am really surprised he wouldn't have been one to patrol his boundaries with all he'd learned and been through.

How did so many of us miss what was going on...and how did you know? Oh well.

I just posted this on the Recovery board, for anyone interested:


I'd be interested to know the whole story, and how it panned out.

TA

"....it was a case of inappropriate electronic conversations with another MB Wise One (opposite sex), "

Who would that be?????