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Yes, it's a story.

~ Marsh

This site has many good people on it but you are too juvenile for me please stay out of my business you have nothing to offer me.

And as long as you continue to believe that, none of this will ever make sense to you. Remember...YOU are an intelligent person. Unlike animals, your mind controls your heart...

Look at it this way (and this ties into your question, btw...):

EVERYONE is sexually attracted at some point to some degree to people who aren't their spouses. The difference is that most people choose not to act on it. Often, that attraction will happen with those that are already friends before it'll happen with a perfect stranger. So...sexual attraction is a FEELING. You normally find yourself sexually attracted to those that you love...like your spouse.

But back on the feelings about someone else, you can choose to act on it or not. If you choose NOT to act on it (to include not dwelling on it in your mind) you'll find that feeling can/will fade over time. If you emotionally distance yourself (choose not to love) your spouse, you'll find that same thing happen. I saw this happen clearly in my wife during her EA.

Our first MC told my wife that she had to TRULY choose to rebuild our marriage before our marriage could actually begin to come back together. Before our relationship could start to heal. Because you can't actually WORK on something before you choose to DO it.

I'm taking a guess here, but I'm thinking that your 'choice' to return home and work on your marriage was half-hearted at best. I'm betting that you figured you'd 'try it for a time, and see how it worked out'. You didn't actively DECIDE to stay married and fix the problems...you thought you'd "try". Yoda had it right..."Do or do not...there is no try". When you TRY, you give yourself the out to fail. And that was what our MC worked to get my wife to understand.

It took her a few months to realize it...but finally, she did get it. Just trying does nothing...

What WORK did you do to repair your marriage? What did you do/give WILLINGLY, without ANY reservation at all to rebuild your marriage? WHOLEHEARTEDLY, without holding back any part of yourself or your efforts?

Love IS a verb. It IS a choice. And once you make that choice...the feelings can and will follow. I've seen it happen in my own life.

You people call it story when it suits you to tell the others the situation but when I say it is my story you try to make it look unreal. Please do not offer me any more advice or comments you have nothing to give me other than insults and this site is not about bashing it is about helping others. If my telling the truth about my situation bothers you because you are insisting that someone beleive you over me then that is your iasue not mine. I will no longer entertain you, you do not know my life and even though I told my story you have chosen to tarnish it. Please go off and give someone else your death sentence I don't need it.

Point out one point where I insulted you. One phrase where I called you a name, insulted you, or was in any way abusive towards you.

Heck...find one point where I've been the slightest bit hostile to you in my tone. And then go review YOUR response to mine with that same view. No names, but lots of hostility. Why?

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I agree with most of what you say and you definitely sound like a together guy. The others on here other than PEP and Noodle have chosen to discredit me. This whole issue came about from my looking through the site and finding a subject that looked like my situation so I read it and offered my experience and advice. I had been through it. Only because I disagreed with them on sexual desire that was mentioned on another site where some poor soul is about to take his wife back without her agreeing to councelling, she is not sexually desiring him and hasn't been for months, she is not to date given up her lover but yet is moving back in. I was only trying to voice my opinion and experience and got the lashing of insults. This site is about helping not lying and they are telling him it will be ok and for me it was not. Owl thanks so much for your input but this experience has been very negative.

That would be relevant if I cared acutally you offer nothing but hostilty and should probably go get some help for your anger.

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I did not mean you insulted me but the majority have. You and Noodle and Pep have been good. I am just sick of everyone coming at me with nothing but negative thoughts just because I voiced my experience and my opinion. Sad but true.

Well, they're not telling him it will be OK. What they are telling him is that it CAN be ok...and the best way to give it's best shot is do what they're suggesting.

I agree with the advice they're giving BMM...its on the money. YOUR situation turned out differently...there aren't any garauntees in anything.

But don't deride the advice that's been given...those feelings CAN and USUALLY DO return once the WS truly makes the choice to come back and work on their marriage. Your situation is far more likely the exception, rather than the rule that we've seen in our own experience and on these boards.

The reason this has been such a negative experience is because you're posting on a marriage BUILDING site with advice that will not give his marriage a chance to survive. Can't expect that you'll get a lot of support based off that, can you?

If I were to go to gloryB or some similar site and tell all the poeple involved in their affairs that it'll never work (and statistics show that it very likely won't), I'd get flamed at least as hard as you were here. Again, make sense?

So it's okay for you to give your negative thoughts when you want, but it's not okay for us to give our negative thoughts?

I'm starting to feel happy for your ex.

You voiced your opinion as fact, your experience as universal truth and disrespected other people who held opinions that differed with yours. Had you stated that you had an experience that differed from what was presented to the poster, you would have stated your fact and allowed him and others to draw their own conclusions. I respect your desire to express your opinion about your experiences, but I would be more comfortable if you presented your facts as facts and opinions and beliefs as opinions and beliefs.

I think that "love" is a choice and "in love" is a feeling and our choices affect our feelings and our feelings give our choices value and priority.

Confused yet? [winks]

So your affair situation was a bit blurry due to being already separated from your H.

May I ask if it was a legal separation or just a physical one? By choice or by circumstance? [For example were you separated because you moved out or because your spouse was away from the home for an unrelated reason such as business or deployment?]

Had you filed for divorce yet or were you separated but working "working" on the marriage?

I ask to get a better sense of where you might have been at in the relationship and how that might have affected the affair dynamic.

For example...a person who has physically left the marriage and filed for divorce before ever meeting their "affair" partner...well it changes things a bit doesn't it?

It's an example of why it's a really good idea to wait until you are really and truly both finished with the marriage AND recovered from the divorce before pursuing new relationships...the age old question...what happens when the old relationship wants back in?

Do I think that having a new romance contrasting your damaged marriage impacted your desire and your motivation to do whatever it took to recover?

Absolutely. How could it not? How could you invest 100% in what looks to you like a beat up pinto when there is a lexus you have already enjoyed test driving waiting for you at the curb?

That would go utterly against human nature.

I asked out of curiosity because it was pretty clear you were not very familiar with the harley EN principles regarding how having our needs met affects our feelings.

I agree that married sex feelings will never compare with new sex feelings [and certainly not with affair sex] but in order to sustain that level of attraction a person would have to basically be serially monogamous for the rest of their lives or until they were no longer able to attract those who attracted them.

I believe that if there ever was a chemical sexual attraction to a spouse that has dissipated from neglect or mistreatment that it is possible to recover it by becoming educated about what it is that nourishes the spouse [many "old flame" affairs result from this very thing] and excercising care to keep those needs met [in other words make sure the bank account is full with special attention to those areas].

Personally I think the bank account imagery is spot on...although it does take some of the magic out of "in love" it also brings a lot of hope and practical advice for maintaining good feelings between two people who are..lol..for lack of a better way of putting it...stuck with each other for the rest of their lives [assuming they take monogamy seriously.

This is a Marriage BUILDING SUPPORT site.

Please consider that when posting!

Yes but it is not about not allowing a person to share their experience and tell someone else that it is not all rosy as they are made to believe or they will most definitely fail they need to know both sides. If this is a marriage building site then why do most people that speak about infidelity tell us that once a cheater always a cheater? This is a contradictory site.

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Can I post this? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Sorry, I just get tired of these every few month invasions.