part four:

now that OW has his attention

she shares her stories
the ones her H does not want to hear one more time, they are old news to her H

my H, on the other hand, is sympathetic, reassuring, offering a place for her to vent her sorrows and her dissatisfactions about her M and her H

this is how affairs are born ...

SHARING STORIES

I so agree with this. I can thoroughly understand an EN for Admiration - it's my WH's #1 and nobody does it better than the simpering mincing females he finds in the workplace - but there's got to be a balance somewhere.


<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

By the way, Scarlett O'Hara felt the same way. If you recall, she was actually very smart but was always taught that she had to be "simpering and mincing" (love that) if she wanted to catch and keep a man.


I would so love to see you say this to your WH. Maybe it could be part of the Plan B letter.
Mulan

Edited for rudeness.

There it is. Noodle got what I was saying.
If this is the "new WH," he ain't gonna get along with the new LilSis.

So...is this the new him? or is this just the foggy WH? Because this WH is a selfish jerk; my H was NOT. I greatly admired my H...and tell my boys that every day. I will be the first to admit that after the "honeymoon" phase, I fell off the mark in letting WH know--in ways HE could understand--how much I loved him.

I am more than willing to show him how much I love and admire him IN EXACTLY THE WAYS HE CAN UNDERSTAND (i.e., admiration, SF, etc.). But I don't WANT the icky WH!!! How do I know if H is THERE or will come back??? Will I be stuck with this selfish jerk??

Make any sense??

It seems the wheels have come off the cart here. How does meeting your spouses needs make someone a "simpering Stepford wife?" I sense some 60's kneejerk reactions going down here.

I meet my H's need for admiration just fine and I am hardly a "simpering" female.

Is my H being a [censored] when he meets my needs? Or does this only work only way?

believer, who is having SF with a "weakling?" Whose husband are you speaking about exactly?

Sis ... like I said before

stick with Mimi ... she's got the goods ... a happily recovered marriage

Pep

I think it requires balance.

A WS [unless they really are just an unbelievable jerk] is by definition out of balance.

So there are some changes.

Some realizations.

Things to learn about treating your mate as not only a priority...but THE priority...wouldn't you want the same?

I would...but I also recognize that he will not always agree with me...he will not always have the answer I need when I need and yes [email]d@mn[/email] it he is going to plain old FAIL to meet my needs from time to time.

I will be bored with the same joke I have heard fifty times.

So will he.

Then what?

Ultimately it is my job to manage me...and I expect no less from my spouse.

Okay, LilSis, it looks like it's me, believer and noodle in one corner and most of the other posters in the other corner.

Frankly, I'm for a balance. I say meet your spouses ENs as much as you can, but not at any cost - certainly not at the expense of your own self-respect.

I totally agree that if a "simpering mincing slag" is the only thing that really gets him off, and he's willing to dump you for that, then he's not worth having anyway.

It's a fact that some men would rather have the SMS, fake and trashy as that is, then get *genuine* admiration and respect from a spouse. Why? Because the *genuine* admiration and respect has to be earned. From the SMS, it's all free. It's also worth nothing, but hey, for some guys the fact that it's free is attraction enough.

My WH is very much like this. He doesn't care that the girls at work only suck up to him because he's the boss and they're getting what they want from him (promotions, perks, attention, a workplace boyfriend) - the fact that it's coming in truckloads and is FREE! makes him shove me hard out of the way to give it a free pathway.

I'd be glad to admire him all he wants (and I used to), but it's going to be real thing born of respect. If he'd rather have tons of free garbage instead, there's nothing I can do about that.
Mulan

PS - I recently had a thread about this very topic - "real" admiration versus "fake" admiration - if anyone's interested, maybe I can bump it back up.

Pep

Okay, it's back up - look for "The Nature of Admiration" here on GQII.
Mulan

The world isn't divided into feminazis and stepford robots.

Okay, edited Pep. Don't want LilSis's thread to get off track. Will continue on Mulan's thread.

AGREE!

I will restate this because I think it captures my fear in a nutshell:
I am more than willing to show WH how much I love and admire him IN EXACTLY THE WAYS HE CAN UNDERSTAND (i.e., admiration, SF, etc.). But I don't WANT the icky WH!!! How do I know if H is THERE or is capable of coming back??? Will I be stuck with this selfish jerk??

I guess the answer is...no one knows until after the fog clears, if it ever clears. So the only way I will know is to keep doing what I need to do to try to provide WH with a path out of the fog, if he so chooses to leave the fog. If he does NOT choose to leave the fog, it's a moot point. But once he's out, I hope that I can assume some of his OLD self (the one I so admire) will return as well...that he won't have TRULY, COMPLETELY TRANSFORMED into someone who needs CONSTANT stroking TO THE POINT where I feel that I am sacrificing my integrity.

I THINK I JUST ANSWERED MY OWN QUESTION. Does the above resonate with anyone? Is it the middle ground upon which we can agree?

I'm having to read these posts quickly, so I hope I'm doing justice here. I can spend more time later...processing.

LS, keep this in mind, your H was NOT fogged out when the OW attracted him into an affair. So the needs that are important to him as a WS were also important to him BEFORE he was a WS.


Meeting one's need for admiration does not mean acting PHONY or sacrificing integrity. And no one has said any such thing. BUT yes, you will HAVE TO MEET THAT NEED CONSTANTLY if it is important to him. YOU WILL HAVE TO MEET THAT NEED FOR LIFE. If you are not willing to meet his needs, this is not going to work.

p.s. LS, do you have His Needs, Her Needs? I think reading that will help this make much more sense.

But no one has clearly stated that it isn't. SOOOO...is EXACTLY what I have been trying to CLARIFY. And I am willing to meet his needs for a lifetime...I wouldn't have married him otherwise.

I'm with you guys. I'm just chiming in to help LilSis see that she's not alone in her feelings about this.

Mimi, maybe you can explain what you mean by admiration. Maybe we're taking this wrong the way, because we don't understand. I admire my H because he's admirable. And part of what I admire about him is his intelligence and the conversations we have. I completely understand where LilSis is coming from on that. And if my H were to leave me for some primping, superficial blitz-brain, I'd be just as confused as LilSis about it.

Are you guys saying that you pretend to admire everything about your H? It almost sounds like kids who are praise addicts, whose "self esteem" has to constantly be be stroked with praise that isn't earned. To me, self esteem comes from actually accomplishing SOMETHING. Same with admiration. You admire people, because they have good qualities or they are decent people or they do things to demonstrate it. I can't imagine laughing at the same jokes every day like I heard them for the time, just to make someone with a serious inferiority complex feel good. I can't imagine that's really what you mean, either... Help?

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I think you may be getting confused because there has been a lack of distinction between what a caring emotionally literate WIFE would expect to provide and what a mistress provides.

LilSis,

Is this RT's first affair or is she a serial cheater? I wonder if she's into the high of a new relatioship and if she will get bored and move on after it starts wearing off.