Your wrote this a little while ago:

"PS ... you do NOT plan A if her affair is over.... "

I always though the Plan A was a life time thing. That is the way I'm trying to live my life. Always working on bettering me and my shortcomings.

This is not true??

good question M2L. i was wondering the same thing!!!

I will try this..the changes you make in you should be permanent however plan A requires you to put your taker away and that is not healthy long term. There must be a balance with your giver and taker.

Totally agreed with FF.

Plan A IS about making long-term (life long) positive changes in yourself to make yourself a more attractive spouse.

It IS about learning what your spouse's emotional needs are, and working to fill them...for life.

But during the actual plan A, you also don't truly expect those to be reciprocated (you tell your Taker to shut up, and let Mr Giver take over). Short term, this is feasible and benificial to recovering your marriage.

Long term, it's not viable. Not expecting any reciprocating response from your spouse to your work of meeting their EN's will result in anger, frustration, resentment, etc... Your Taker will sit there quietly only for so long, and at some point he's GOING to act up...and the longer he's repressed, the worse the explosion will be.

So once the A is over...you DO keep meeting the EN's, but you also need to step up and make sure that YOUR EN's are met as well. That's not plan A. It's a plan for living in a balanced, recovered marriage. It's making sure that BOTH love banks remain topped off.

Make sense to anyone besides me?

Got it -

That is how I live now with both of us meeting each others EN and such.

I was just looking at Pep's statment from one side. Thought maybe threse was something I was missing.

Totaly understand it and living it. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

Thanks FF & Owl <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />


PS How many people do you have to help to get on Pep's tag line? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Plan A is an affair busting strategy designed to show your marriage in the best light so that your wayward spouse will see the error of their ways. It has two parts....what pep calls the "carrot": stop hurting your spouse and fill emotional needs....and the "stick": exposing the affair and confronting the WS. Once the affair is over....you don't do Plan A.....you do MARRIAGE BUILDING LOL. Marriage building is about the four rules: time, honesty, protection and negotiation (the POJA). Plan A is sacrificial in a way.....that can't be maintained.

Maybe2late...I have been guilty of stating I am living a "lifetime" version of Plan A; that is, keeping all of the positive changes I've made in my contributions to the marriage in place. Most of the things I've changed were perceived as Love Buster's and/or a lack of meeting my W's EN's. The changes I made were necessary to "win back the heart of my then wayward W. It is also necessary that I keep those changes in place, so as not to push her away again.

Otherwise, I agree with the above posts...when you begin recovery those "other" parts of Plan A, including unconditional giving (meeting real or perceived EN's), exposure, etc. can be let go.

SD

How about during withdrawal? Even if it's true that my F?WW is maintaining NC and therefore the A is over, she is still in a fragile state. Sometimes she surprises me, by suggesting we attend the MB weekend seminar or by offering sympathy and compassion. Other times she refuses to help me heal and in fact declares that there's no point to even trying to recover.

Isn't Plan A a reasonable thing to do while a very WW is making her way through the fog and withdrawal and slowly returning to the M?

NS

Yes Yes Yes - while WD is going on.

I have been asking this question, sort of, on my thread, about what EARLY recovery looks like. I believe that it was Mimi who told me that you are, for all intents, back in Plan A (the BS) in early recovery, until withdrawal takes place, and WS is ready for more heavy lifting.

This is the role I have assumed. Hopefully, others can chime in about this...