Skirmisher and I started MC with Jennifer last night and I have been wondering something. Given his wayward mindset, and the poorly constructed, crumbling boundaries which resulted in the "reunion Incident" and "Damaging Message," What do the wise MB'ers think I should request or expect of him before he is again referred to as a FWH.

I don't want to jump the gun on this one like I did more than 3 years ago, but I also don't want to appear like I am withholding something he has earned because I don't wanted to slow or discourage progress.

Any in put will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Who

Can't really answer that question. The Xws needs to earn back the BS and family's trust. What is he doing to meet that need?

What are YOUR personal and M boundaries?

L.

Who:

I can talk to you a little bit about this, but some deadlines are strung together right now.

"F" are earned. And it is all because of the WH actions, not the BS actions.

Honest and Open. Transparent in your actions. Not even exchanging TM/VM/EM's with someone that you THINK you might like to explore a little more with.

Understanding what boundaries you have and what was wrong with your boundaries in the past.

That starts the process of getting the "F" (instead of the "FU")

LG

I do believe that he is being open and honest with me and that he never did contact his former classmate. I think a very important part of my personal recovery was missing all along. Since the A was already over, and had died a natural, unpleasant death, I didn’t see much need in exposing it. Besides OW did that on her own out of vindictiveness when Skirmisher ended the A.

What has been missing for me all along is any feeling that he even partially understood how much he had hurt me and that it had/has left me far more sensitized to his behavior and actions ever since 2003. So his first step was coming here and posting. The experience has given him a broader, more complete picture and understanding of the horrific impact his behavior has had. And we are counseling with Jennifer, and he is going to start IC as well to address his poor self esteem issues.



My personal boundaries include working like a fiend to not LB anymore to the greatest possible extent. I confess that while I have worked pretty hard to meet Skirmisher’s needs and reduce LBing, I still have a long way to go on the LB side of the fence. I do understand that the holes that LBing put in his love bank do keep deposits from accumulating.

Additionally, I will never be unfaithful to him, no matter what happens. And I will not tolerate further infidelity of any kind.

Also, we both do have a clearer picture already of how we got where we are today and how we can recover from it and protect our marriage from returning to this state.



Skirmisher and I have been reading Love Busters together out loud for an hour each evening and discussing the things that we are each guilty of and how they have impacted our marriage.

The whole “reunion incident,” and please don’t accuse me of being naïve, as I see it now, was less about a desire to be unfaithful, and more about hurting me because we had a fight in the car on the way to the reunion.

Skirmisher knew very well what he was doing and it was a deliberate act intended to hurt me.

“Abuse is the deliberate effort of one spouse to cause the other to be unhappy. It hurts your spouse in two way: by the act itself and by the knowledge that it was deliberate.”

I didn’t handle the situation as well as I should have, but the whole thing really knocked me out of kilter. Unfortunately, Skirmisher, consciously, or unconsciously, felt the need to “up the level” by sending an email that he had to have known I might see. Again, a deliberate effort intended to cause me to be unhappy. It hurt me in two ways: by the act itself and by the knowledge that it was deliberate.


My first boundary really was for Skirmisher to make an honest attempt to understand how wrong, serious, and hurtful his actions were to me, to him, and to our marriage. I believe that he immediately began to see that more clearly as a result of posting here and reading the responses which pretty much spoke a single message with one voice.

Another boundary is that Skirmisher get IC as well as participate in MC and he is willing to do both. In fact, he took on additional work starting this week so that he can assist in the associated costs of the MC. This is important to him, and frankly to me, even though I can well afford to cover it myself. It says that he is serious about wanting to recover and isn’t just going along with it to humor or placate me.

For me, as I stated above, I’ve got to work on reducing LBing some more. We have both been trying very hard in this area and really have already noticed a difference in our ability to communicate with each other and remain calm.

That starts the process of getting the "F" (instead of the "FU")

I know that Skirmisher is a good person and I don’t’ believe that he wants to pursue relationships outside of our marriage, be unfaithful, or hurt me. He just needs to learn better ways to cope with his poor self esteem and with conflict in our relationship. He can never again allow himself to dabble or even contemplate using infidelity as either a coping mechanism or as a means to retaliate when he is angry with me, whether his anger is justified or not.

Maybe we can say at this point, he’s earned a lower case f.

Who

Since I'm running in a parallel universe to yours, I've been giving this subject a lot of thought. We just started MC. Right now I've accepted that the only way thing I can do to make sure he never cheats on me again is to get out of the marriage. I'm in a bit of a holding pattern to see if he's going to be the one who makes sure he never cheats on me again.

Here are a few things I'd like to see.

1. For him to really believe that even if I never find out about it, infidelity still hurts me, hurts him, hurts our marriage, and damages our children.

2. 100% honesty about his past activities.

3. He needs to dig deep and figure out what flaw allows him to make the choices that he has. He can't fix something if he doesn't understand what's broken.

Those are some of the major things that I need.

It's a weird universe I'm living in. He's not a FWH anymore because he was exploring the options to cheat. He's not technically a WH because he's not actively cheating. And Formerly Wayward, Potentially Wayward, Untrustworthy, Needs to Stop Thinking with his Penis Husband doesn't make for a convenient acronym.

Dobie,

Well said. And I certainly agree with everything you said. I feel exactly the same way. I have worked hard to meet his EN's since 2003 and although I still have work to do, the recent evidence that Skirmisher would still consider using infidelity as a "payback" mechanism when he is angry with me, has made me realize that the lion's share of work here needs to be Skirmisher figuring out why he does this.

I can't fix him, this is something he has to do. Given that we are more than 3 years into this mess now, he has to act pretty quickly because I do want to get on with my life, either with or without him.

I do believe that he knows his cheating has never made him happy, quite the contrary, it has made him pretty unhappy and decreased his self esteem. This is true for all of the incidences that I suspect I don't know about as well as those I do.

To be dramatic here......the sand has just about run completely through the hour glass!!!!

Who

Ever feel that it's a self-destructive streak that these guys have?

I know it is. Skirmisher has issues left over from his childhood that I believe make him feel like he doesn't really deserve to be happy.

Who

Mine too, and he's in denial about them.

Freaked out on him last night and unloaded a lot of toxins. Not very MB, but I feel relieved and drained at the same time now. There's nothing quite like the mind warping experience of venting while trying to avoid LB.

Dobie,

I learned a new term this spring at a marriage conference we attended. The term is "Gunny Sackin'" and refers to a tendency to accumulate resentments and continue carrying them around with us instead of dealing with each as they come along. We save them all up for a day when we dump them all out as ammunition during a dispute. The real problem is that we then put everything we didn't dump onto our spouse back into the sack and save it for another time...The next time we open the sack and let it all out at once.

The other option of course is to deal with each grievance as it comes up so that resentment is curtailed and things of the past stay there.

It isn't a LB to express negative feelings but it is one to dump years of resentment onto our spouse when most of it is unrelated to the current conflict.


Mark

Who,

I've engaged in numerous threads where the most important thing is expressed as "Why?" For me, it is more a matter of "How?"

For a WS to become a FWS, I think they need to understand not only that what they did was wrong and why it was wrong, since they pretty much knew it was when they did it and even realize that it was their own weakness that let it happen.

The trick, I think, is in figuring our how to prevent the conditions that allowed it to happen from existing again in the future.

This means that not only do changes have to take place in the relationship between H & W, but also must be made in the way the (F)WS deals with others outside the marriage. It has to do with having a boundary, that is sufficiently established in their own mind that signals them to enact a plan of protection for the marriage when ever it is in danger of being breached.

The problem is that for so many, the boundary is merely a line that they allow themselves to approach and get as close as possible to thinking they will simply resist crossing it while inching near to it.

I have been attracted to many women over the years. I recognized that almost from the onset of meeting these women. My solution was to avoid them when possible or make the case right up front that our relationship should be completely professional. I simply refuse to discuss my personal life with any woman I meet. I also let it be known that I do have a wife that I love and cherish above my own needs.

For a WS to earn the F in my opinion requires a completely new way of thinking about how to be faithful. It requires transparency with the marital partner but also with others. It requires thinking about what to do if they find someone attractive and how to avoid letting themselves be drawn in. It requires that they establish this plan of attack BEFORE the temptation is present, because once it is there, the conditions are already ripe for disaster.

If the (F)WS understands and accepts the MB basic concepts, then they should understand that love is not something that happens to us, but something we allow to happen. IF Dr H is correct in his BCs, then we should be able to avoid putting ourselves in jeopardy by refusing to let others meet our ENs for any reason. Not easy to do when life sucks and that is why the way to avoid the possibility of an affair must be decided upon when all is well at home.

Recovery of the marital relationship involves much more than simply earning the F though. It involves learning new skills for communication and actually implementing the MB ideals, especially spending 15 hours per week of recreational time together. It is building up the marriage to a condition where unmet ENs don't get a foothold, but also learning to deal with complaints respectfully so as to avoid building up resentment that fuels the self entitlement that leads to an affair. It also requires that the PORH and POJA be part of everyday life rather than just concepts in a book. For it is through POJA that we avoid resentment and by following PORH that we learn to express our feelings both positive and negative so we don't give selfish needs a reason to rule our thinking.

We learn to use POJA to negotiate using both our giver and our taker equally, so neither can take charge when we aren't actively trying to keep either in check.

IME, there is more to earning the F than simply ending the affair, but making the marriage one less prone to a relapse takes so much more from both the FWS and BS than just a new title.

Mark

Mark,



That pretty much describes Skirmisher's approach to things for our entire relationship. I have the impression that he has poked his toe over the line too many times to count and crossed it entirely at least once that I can prove. But then, I can't really ever be sure because he will never be honest with me about anything before d-day.


Very good point. Skirmisher is neither transparent with me or with anyone else. Example. Within days of my reading the damaging email message. He sent another one to a close male friend; a friend with strong Christian and moral values. He was inquiring about a possible job with the agency his friend works for. Towards the end of the message, he states that things are collapsing with WhoMe and he will probably be having to move out. Now this friend, knows about his previous infidelity and as a matter of fact advised Skirmisher to stop the affair and get MC. My point here is that he didn't admit or even alude to his friend why things were possibly collapsing. Am I wrong to expect that if he confides our situation to his friend that he should be honest with him?

We still have soooo far to go if we are ever going to be able to recover that it makes my head spin.

Who

Ok MBr's,

Situation update. Yesterday Skirmisher received an email from the former woman classmate who was the primary subject of the "damaging Message."

I surmise that because he never set the recipient of the message right about the original message, that he gave her Skirmisher's email address.

Like I have said, I can't bring myself to refer to this woman as the OW because that really would be judgmental in assuming that she would be willing to engage in an affair with Skirmisher or any other MM.

So, anywho....Skirmisher did not reply to the message, and he forwarded it to me at my work email address. The message was pretty innocent, she is in town and wanted to know if Skirmisher and his WIFE would like to meet for dinner and/or a drink before she leaves.

I decided to leave it up to him to suggest how we should deal with this i.e. simply not respond, respond with a polite decline, or actually meet her.

Well, when I checked the email today, he had deleted the message...it was in the trash folder. It looks like he has decided to simply not respond. I haven't had a chance to discuss this with him so I don't know if that is his intent or not.

What do yu folks think here? Is he working his way toward earning the F, or not?

Who

Who,

It actually sounds hopeful to me.

He may not have those stripes yet, but he might just make it, IMO.


Skirmisher,

Transparency is a great start. PORH and all that.

Now just think BEFORE you do something stupid and stop yourself the next time.

Yeah, we do tend to learn slowly. It's what us guys do best. Makes it easier to remember if we don't take it all in at once.

Mark

Who:

Something you stated on the Tarnsy thread struck me:




And I thought I would bring it back to this thread.

That is a pretty stunning realization by Skirmiser, and then to actually verbalize it? Wow.

I knew this info during my A. That OW wasn't good enough.

He was speaking about your 1st H, but it does apply to him. I would revisit this convo with him....

How is the counselling going with JC?

LG