nikko,


I'm sorry my words have hurt you. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> First....I am one of the people who don't snap <over infidelity or divorce>. I could definitely snap under other conditions. You were/are not me...you cannot be. I am not you. I haven't snapped yet....and I won't. Besides my children, I have a lot of people who depend on me....snapping is just not something I can afford to do for their sake....they don't have anyone else. Who would care for 95 year old Grammy? Or my handicapped sister? Or my little boy? I'm 52 years old.....and one of the few benefits of age....is developing positive coping mechanisms forged by experience and necessity.

Most people do not "snap", become catatonic, or develop amnesia or PTSD as a result of one time or prolonged trauma. It is still the exception and not the norm. I'm not unusual or special....I'm just run-of-the-mill and fall into that general catagory of folks who just plod along and trudge through. Most of the people who experience severe grief, stress, and trauma go through the stages of recovery that are fairly universal. Those who really "snap" (and they are in the minority)....and also kill (what this thread is about <not you>....an even smaller minority)....will face charges that generally take the mitigating circumstances into account. Betty Broderick, Andrea Yeagar are good examples. Everyone goes through periods of withdrawal, depression, anxiety etc. when they are faced with severe trauma....but "snapping" is a severe form of those things that goes beyond (in severity, duration and scope) the normal reactions.....into mental illness. We're all capable of "snapping" given enough trauma.

Yes....I could end up in catastrophic event like 911, a plane crash, a bombing, kidnapping and torture and "snap" perhaps....but I can promise you with complete confidence...that my husband (or some OW) is not powerful enough to cause me to fall apart. He's just a man who's love I want....but don't need to be healthy or happy. And I am convinced that part of the reason he wants *me* is because he knows I don't need him. That way....he is never obligated to love me and I am never in fear of losing myself if I he leaves me.

jimm5045,

I think you are totally mistaken. "F"WS's are widely loved on these boards. It's the WS's that get a hard time. Deservedly so. Fog and Entitlement are never well received.

This has triggered my sense of irony once again. Shortly after marriage, FWS told me that he thought it should be legal to kill a cheating spouse.

I have the feeling there's more to this whole story than we're seeing in the news.

Oh for pete's sake.

I don't believe anyone is "holier than thou".

I totally don't believe "it could never happen to me" though I believe it will probably never happen again. (the eternal optimist that I am--but I also know how we've implemented everything we've learned out of this.)

Always Remember the "Frog in the Water" analogy. I believe good people get caught up in a relationship and before they really examine themselves or what they are doing they are already emotionally involved.

As a woman who did have an emotional affair many years prior to my own husband's betrayal, I do think I GET IT -- Both Sides. (The one thing about my "EA" is I chose to be with my friend when my husband was unavailable, but never ever chose to be with my friend if my husband was available, Hubby was always my first choice, and I was hurting a lot over being left alone much of the time. So EA?? Not sure, but inappropriate? I think yes.)

I believe Dr. Harley is absolutely right, it could have been me! And I'm a "good person". I love my husband so much, I'm so glad it wasn't. You know what? My hubby is a "good person" too.

Marriages go through upheavals, and uneducated spouses don't know how to handle them. We're all learning.

Marriage ain't easy.

MEDC- Just to be really clear, you've never been married, isn't that correct? You never married your 'baby-mama'. Maybe if you had she would have been more motivated by vows made. However she didn't make any vows with you. I know it still hurts, but there is a problem I see with you advising people who are actually married, and made vows for eternity. So often you advise ultimatums, and other self-defeating behaviors.

Do you see that as part of the partnership, you have some responsibility for the state of the relationship? A huge red flag on that is the fact you did not marry her. I wouldn't feel very committed if my husband hadn't married me, in fact, after I learned of his cheating, I don't think I would have made an effort to work it out, if I had not married him for better, for worse, til death do us part.

Sorry but I've been wanting to bring this up for a while. Judgementalism toward the struggling wayward spouse will not entice them back into the fold. That's why PLAN A is so effective.

I instinctively went on Plan A, never having heard of MarriageBuilders or Dr. Harley, and it worked like the charm it is.

I could speak at length about this if I had time, but suffice to say, when my hubby thought life would be He(( from now on, and I would never ever forgive him or get past it, he was ready to divorce. I had to show him that a good life could be ours in spite of the huge obstacle that his A caused us. I believe in US, and that was hard for him to resist.

Plan A will only work IF you haven't been plan Aing the wayward your entire marriage. I had been. I beat myself up so much after I found out about the affair. What did I do. What's wrong with me. Well I finally figured out that there was nothing wrong with me other than not being perfect. Plan A will not work in a marriage that could have been described as good, great, etc before the affair. The wayward's actions to leave that type of marriage and or family atmosphere for one of lies, deceit, selfhisness, entitlement and more is more often a statement of that person's true character than anything else imo,

We've been married 25 years. The last 15 years of our marriage was pretty darn awesome, great and I had been Plan A-ing when my husband got involved with the other woman.

You are right about the state of mind of the entitled spouse during the affair.

However I was working full time and going to school full time, so even though I was still Plan A-ing my hubby, I had allowed my career goals to become first ___FOR US AND OUR FUTURE___!!

He allowed himself to believe that after I graduated I would leave him for a lawyer (why would I want him when he's not degreed, was his flawed line of thinking. But it had absolutely nothing to do with reality.

In fact it was because friends of ours had gone through something: all of us (friends and familY) believed they were perfect for each other in every way, They were like star-crossed lovers. He put her through school, she got her degree and left him for a lawyer.

He got depressed than hooked on drugs, overdosed and died.

That had a profound effect on my husband I never even knew about. It only came out recently that that was a lot of what was going on with my hubby.

The SOB that my hubby was behaving like during his affair, is not who he truly is.

So often the BS in a good marriage or great marriage is often floored by the wayward's choice to have an affair. To your point it was your husband's burden to come and talk to you about his fears, beliefs, etc. Were you supposed to read his mind?

I do believe though that some of the waywards are simply not the "good people" they want or tried to be and that there are character flaws, child rearing, mental issues, unresolved feelings, parenting models, etc that cause them to stray more easily than others and to keep them in the affair once they get started. The affair is the only thing that dulls their reality so it is valued above all else including husband, values, principles, morals, friends and children in some cases. Does it make them all bad. No. I do think some make terrible decisions and spend the rest of their life trying to earn that FWS title. Others I am not so sure of though. I think there are some who simply are not cut from the cloth of "good people" and instead are by choice or pre-disposed to being nomads of the relationship world looking for something or someone to make them happy for a period of time before finding the next great thing.

I agree with that assessment--as far as those who are unable to truly commit--especially the term "nomad", so apropos.

I know people like this, I guess we all do. I don't think they are evil, I think they are lost.

Hope & Pray,

Does this mean that a M is unrecoverable under these conditions? Please advise. K

My marriage is recovered, follow the long trail of my tears here in MBForums and you will see that even my husband believed we were happily married as he was sliding down the slippery slope into the affair.

"His A-encouraging buddy told him MOW was unhappily married. Hubby said on the way home he thought to himself "But I'm Not."

If we both thought we were happily married I really defy anyone else's opinion since it was Our Opinions that count, as the two in the marriage.

BEING HAPPILY MARRIED DOES NOT PROTECT YOU FROM AN AFFAIR.

Learning to protect your weaknesses, does though.

Follow the Harley Brick Road.

No! It doesn't mean that and I am sorry if I conveyed that.

There are many more things to do to try and save your M.

I want to explain that I still believe a BS should do a plan A. But please understand that the plan A is more than just trying to show your WS an enticing you and environment for which to return. It is about you becoming the best person, wife, mother you can be without expectation regarding the WS reaction at your improvements. Also, plan A is about personal boundaries that you will accept and will not. It is about exposure of the affair to all who can help put pressure on the WS and the OP to end it.

There is plan B and other techniques aimed at recovering the marriage.

I should have been more clear so thank you for responding.

I was really trying to say that in a lot of marriages one of the spouses normally the BS was already a good spouse, a loving, admiring, attentive wife/husband, who was passionate about his/her family, life, etc, who provided many of the emotional needs the WS should want to have met and the WS chose the path they chose anyway.

In these cases, the ability for the wayward to notice plan A changes in you are limited for your ability to change into this person YOU ALREADY ARE is not possible. You are already and have been a good spouse who tried to meet important needs of the WS throughout the M. We can all improve but don't expect the WS to notice in these cases.

But again, and as I mentioned above, there is a lot more to plan A than simply becoming a better person. Then there are many more tools to use to recover the M absence of an effective plan A.

So, don't give up just keep reading and searching for the tools and advice you need to try and recover your M.

10S words... I have been married. As for the rest of your post... I will only say, I hope you are well.

Hope & Pray,
Thanks for clarifying. When I really sit down & think about things, maybe my M wasn't as "happy" as I thought it was. I guess we were both "just" content with eachother. Thank you for your advice & Plan A is certainly where I am right now, not much fun but it's where I am. I DO feel much better about myself & that is a good feeling that I haven't felt in a long time. I just need to get past the "expectation" part of it all & I think I'll be ok. Thanks again. K

Karen1,

Just remember that a happy and growing marriage is a 50/50 responsibility, a responsibility to communicate, participate, give and take, and much more.

His having an affair because something may have been missing is 100% his responsibility. Remember that.

To all those I may have offended. I do want to apologize. The discussion turned out pretty good, but I came on way to strong in my comments and want y'all to know I don't have a negative view of BSs. I am not real happy with me, especially as a FWS, but that's my own problem. Reading what some of you have written here...you sound like pretty cool individuals. I pray that God blesses you all.

My .02


All of these situations are escalations and the direct result of the individuals involved not enforcing and defending their own boundaries.

Suggesting a person has an affair BECAUSE their spouse was deficient in some manner is the SAME rationalization that a BS would use for murder of the affairees. The Same Exact One.

So remember that feeling of outrage and offense WSs...that you have when it is asserted that you have earned death or CAUSED your BS to kill you or your OP...remember that next time you are tempted to make that assertion.

They differ not even a little bit.

So a person is driven to an affair because they have been abused or neglected? A BS is driven to kill the people involved? I say hogwash. I say the individual is responsible to EXIT any situation that is going to turn them into a monster no matter the cost.

The problem is that people don't want to make these decisions. They wait for the magical third option and disappear into wandersome fantasy based behavior. Their own inability to disengage ...to hang on to something that was pulling their head underwater ...refusal to self preserve is DIRECTLY responsible for their after the fact mental state.

I'm not discounting the "snap" factor but would agree with MEDC that it is a sudden thing. Say a woman walks into her home and finds a man raping her child and she kills him bare handed ...that would be an example of a situation in which the person has not had the opportunity to process and the situation falls completely outside the context of their existing coping mechanisms.

Then there is the problem of injustice.

I say it *IS* unjust that a person could deliver a life altering or life ENDING disease to me and it's legal. It is unjust that a person could betray me and walk away with half of my assets and my children. The system has failed. I say that the fact that it isn't a crime [taken seriously] allows people to diminish the act and the damage while also leaving the victim uncompensated.

A person can choose to walk away from a poor relationship or one that isn't satisfying them for whatever reason and it is my belief that they SHOULD do so when that relationship requires them to compromise their integrity because those compromises ARE often what dissolves the boundaries that prohibit taboo behaviors such as betrayal and murder.

This is why "driven to it" doesn't fly for me.