Plank:


That one is about a billion percent true. I am reminded of Golda Meier's comment that the wars would continue until Arab mothers got tired of sending their offspring off to die.

Now Plank, uh, erk, I *want* to ask what you were doing when you found that article, uh, (hack cough), but giving in to discretion, I won't. But I really want to.

Larry

LOL. Larry, I found the article when I was searching for monogamous animals. Ironic huh? I knew of a couple before I found that article. I know the rest of the article goes on to describe monogamy as a disadvantage to a species perpetuation. And I was particularly disappointed with swans. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

<Shrug> But I really wanted those animal references so I was willing to take one for the team to get my supportive information. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Larry, I think that one overwhelming negative for humanity is the loss of conscious living.

Look what it has taken in our lives for people like you and I to discuss things that really mean something.

Years ago the smallest unit measure of sociological importance used to be called FAMILY.

I was raised with that idea and have cherished it’s meaning for many many years.

Enter new idea: The smallest sociological unit of measure is ME ME ME.

And if Langley’s idea of dual and separate households takes hold in the good old USA, then the people with dedication to family that embrace good things and know how to live in a selfless way will amass all the power while the others waste their resources and piss away their children’s future on something that felt good for the moment.

Indeed, maybe it is evolution?

Plank

I am working on something for you and me and MiM and others who have more or less of the same type of situation. It is called "The Wall." I should be through with it in a couple of days. I have been testing the hypothesis for a couple of weeks ever since I discovered it. I will post it to Recovery. Just to give you a heads up.

Larry

Aren't we all......

But then again maybe it has something to do with having to deal with all those ugly kids.

And, considering their history, I guessing pretty much all swans have issues of low self-esteem.

TA, many of those descriptions actually described my own thinking distortions and errors at the time and how I drifted into emotional infidelity because of that wayward mindset and justifications/rationalizations. (Keep in mind that I was one of those typical conservative women who thought that I was immune against infidelity… <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />) As you say, those feelings are real, but the way of interpreting and acting out on those feelings are totally skewed and destructive. That’s probably why I felt so defective and didn’t understand what was going on with me.

Anyway, it’s the first time I’ve read something that described my distorted thoughts/feelings and mental/emotional journey into emotional adultery at time so accurately (well, not ALL of it but many of it). It provided some additional insight to me on HOW I ended up the way I did and how my thinking, feelings and behavior spin out of control into the start of stage 3. (The 15 steps already explained that process (the actions part) but in addition, Langley’s stages provided some additional insight in describing those distorted and wayward thoughts and feelings that contributed to my emotional adultery.) I guess that’s part of the reason I decided to share those stages here on this board because in addition to the solution, some people do need to understand the process too (at least it was for me and I remember Larry stated that understanding was important for him too).

Looking back now, I’m very relieved and thankful that I discovered this website and was able to get out of that cycle and address and correct my wrong thinking & behavior before it could escalate any further. I don't think I would have been able to live with the consequences, guilt and pain of physical adultery as well...

Good post and very valid questions TA.

I ask you, how did these tit-for-tat deletions strike you?

It struck me as unecessary.
Perhaps even disrespectful of adult discussion.

But that is me. How did it sit with you?

[color:"red"]when you are sitting on the hot seat, the place to start looking first is where you are sitting.[/color]

Flip Wilson made me do it.

Larry

Larry... I was reading about the chemical issue you bring up. Chocolate causes the same chemical release. Would you say that chocolate is like crack or meth??? Now don't get me wrong... I love chocolate... but I am not out robbing a grocery store for money to feed my jones for chocolate.

Hi Pep, I don't view it as tit-for-tat deletions at all. I would have delted those links on your request even if it did not happen that you've posted something from 2OfAKind that I requested you to delete. I agree that tit-for-tat deletions from my side would have been unnecessary (even immature).

I did not realize the way I worded those deletions would appear to you as tit-for-tat (it was not my intent) and therefore I have deleted your name from it.

I said to Larry today on my thread on In Recovery that after I've read all the replies on this thread about Langley, I'm actually not interested anymore at all to read her books because if she does not provide solutions together with her explanations (which I did not realize), I don't see the point and value of her books.

Larry,

What clerk are you talking about? Is it from one of the books or a post from the site? Do you have an url or page number? And btw, I have only read the first book. I have a digital copy.

APH


Somehow I missed why you changed your name and significance of your new one.

What I did was basically challenge Mel to see the difference between someone like her, who has lived long enough to have life's experience as a teacher, plus being smart as she is, plus having a job that is probably challenging, and the example I used. She declined by ignoring me. *sigh* I am used to being ignored <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Mel can see that Langley's stuff is a dead end. How would the hypothetical person I described see Langley's stuff?

I think I know how many would see it. So if I am right, how do you counter the influence?

Larry

MEDC

Did you stop me for speeding? Are you mad at me? Gimme a break. I know chocolate has PEA in it plus dozens of other stuff. Meth can be made out of Drug Store ingredients, but just because I took one to help with my allergies or whatever doesn't mean I am a meth head.

Affair fog versus Meth fog. I asked you to compare out of ignorance, I was not trying to be a smart [censored]. You may be the only person on here qualified to explain it. And I am interested.

Larry

Larry, I didn't realize you wanted me to comment on that. Of course I do see the difference. And I have no ideas how to counter it. I am aware that a gullible, naive person would be impressed by her "program."

Larry, I am not mad at all... not at you or anyone else. I just was pointing out that it is not the chemicals that keep people in affairs... it is a lack of character and integrity. The same high is gotten in other things that people can turn off...with crack or meth there is a chemical addiction that more often than not needs medical intervention. If the dependancy was anything like these drugs, there would be hospitalizations and drug therapies needed to stop their use. Most people...although they go through an emotional withdrawl which results in some physical symptoms do not require a medical intervention beyond drugs designed to combat emotional...not physical distress.

no worries here Larry...sorry if I came across snooty.

MEDC

Ok, got it. Thanks.

Larry

Okay, thanks Mel. See, I did post over on her website for a fairly long period of time. And I could never figure out how to counter some of her stuff. She is oh so reasonable about some things. But it is reporter spin, imho.

Larry

Larry178,

About my name change, Mrs. Wondering said if my husband started using the boards he might take my choice of name
the wrong way, as equivalent to being Casanova or something. She's not the first to complain, she's just the first who gave me a good reason for her complaint.

The new nick has the boring meaning of forming a word by removing the beginning of it, like 'round for around or 'til for until. But it can also mean filtering stuff out of blood, but I didn't know that until I changed it.

As for Langley's stuff, I'm just not in the habit of seeing justification every time an explanation is given. There is a clear line in my mind between a reason and an excuse.
Sometimes we have bad reasons for doing things. Recognizing what the reason is - is not the same as saying it's a good reason. People are jumping to conclusions about her personal views on affairs, but I've been talking to her on her private boards and I don't get that sense that she excuses them at all. In fact, she's the one who told me that a good marital sex life requires focused attention and affairs get in the way of that.

I also don't think her predictions of the future necessarily have anything to do with what she actually wants to happen in the future. I predicted that the Iraq War would take 3,000 US lives before the majority of Americans changed their minds about the war, but
that does NOT mean I wanted 3,000 soldiers to die. It just means I predicted that something bad would happen. Not everything that happens tomorrow is going to be a good thing.

As for her stuff being a dead end, well of course it is. It's a description, not a prescription. But a good description does aid one's understanding of a problem. For example, I think she's very clear on affair emotions being infatuation and not love. I think recognizing that one fact would help a lot of women. Are you saying an uneducated person would not recognize that it's description only - without a solution? That they'd stop searching for more answers? I'm not sure what to do about that. I don't really understand people who have no intellectual curiosity. When I have a problem, I never read only one book - it's every useful book I can find.

Interesting prediction about men becoming more monogamous, btw. If it does go that way, I still think there will be a distinct difference between their own girlfriends/wives and someone else's. IOW, even if they do become less likely to cheat ON their wives, while they are still single they
will most likely still cheat WITH someone else's.

Aph,

Just an observation here that is based entirely on my own opinion and not necessarily that of this site's founder...

While I will grant you for the moment a distinction between a reason and an excuse, I find it very difficult to distinguish between the two. If a list of grievances contains both excuses and real valid reasons for doing something, who makes the determination as to which is which? Does the WS get to decide what is a valid reason or does the BS make that determination? Or does a third party need to intervene in order to make the choice as to what is valid and what is not?

Once the list of reasons/excuses is pared down to only the valid reasons, what becomes of the rest of the list. Does it simply get discarded? Does the WS simply agree to give up on pursuing those items and start working on the other items on the list?

Now, here is what I observe in all of this...

The list of reasons/excuses contains some valid COMPLAINTS about the BS that the WS needs to have addressed. These are things that the BS did or is doing wrong that are draining the WS's LB$ or causing them to remain distant from each other.

These are all things that are wrong with the marriage and may in fact be sufficient to end the marriage over if they cannot be resolved. Problems that the WS has put up with perhaps for many years need to either get fixed or the marriage is doomed and should probably come to an end, since it is never going to be what the WS needs in order to be happy.

However, and you knew I had one when I began, how does having a complaint against our spouse, valid or otherwise, justify an affair?

In Ms Langley's list of conditions that lead to an affair, not one "problem" with the marriage or the BS is listed. Everything she describes seems geared toward explaining and validating the WS mindset that fuels off of the resentment over unresolved issues in order to make the decision to cheat palatable to the WS themselves.

She may say some things that are true in that they are definitely a good description of the thought process a WS (not just women, IMO) goes through in order to arrive at the decision to commit adultery and jeopardize the primary relationship with the one they married, but I do not believe any of the things she says are valid reasons for doing so.

While there are likely many things within a marriage and that attack it from without that make an affair seem like a viable alternative to the marriage itself, there is nothing that is sufficient grounds to justify an affair. It is not merely enough to describe the thought process used or to make a list of problems we have encountered, since our spouse is also dealing with problems as well. If one chooses adultery and the other chooses faithfulness, operating from the same set of conditions, the conditions do not warrant adultery, which we often clean up to say affair or infidelity, but which is by any name a violation of one of God's laws that are universal in that all societies condemn adultery, even in those where open marriage lifestyles exist.

The assumption that must be made for Ms Langley's current conclusions is that a person, in her research a woman, is helpless to make good choices for a whole host of reasons, which in her case includes oppression at the hands of men who are the source of the unhappiness women experience. She also tends to buy into the Hollywood/romance novel concept that love is a mystical and magical force that cannot be denied and that we simply fall in and out of love with no choice as to outcome. It is fatalistic in it's approach to adultery in that it gives the conditions as the reason, which does not completely follow logically.

When I trouble shoot a radio system, I find a symptom of something wrong and my job is to identify the cause or reason for the anomaly. The symptom is easy to identify, the reason for it occurring is not usually so clear.

In the case of adultery, the reason it happens is that someone chooses to do it. The reason is a choice, not the list of symptoms that Ms Langley has enumerated.

Many of her observations are valid. They describe in detail exactly what a woman (or man, IMO) is thinking and what they are telling themselves as they head down the road to an affair. This makes them true and valid, but does not make them the reason for the affair. That remains the choices made by each individual. "What" is not the same as "why"...To avoid an affair we must decide not to go down that road long before we reach the intersection.

And FWIW, if the basic concepts here are correct, the feeling we call love is as real for an affair as it is for a marriage. The difference is the commitment and caring promised in marriage. What Dr Harley prescribes and what his methods show us is that the same feeling of excitement and indeed infatuation that we once had in the days of our youth can not only exist again, but can be sustained over time.

I will grant you that you may have more insight into Langley's current state of mind, in that I do not communicate with her on her private boards and have only read portions of her first book and none of her later one, since I found it to be offensive and full of what I would call self entitlement issues. Her general response to adultery committed by women seems to be "You poor dear, didn't you know that it has to happen like this? You can't resist it. The best you can do is understand it." By her account, women must commit adultery in order to be real women and it is only oppression by men that has prevented it from being universal.

My point is that if she offers only what happens and not any reasons for why it happened and certainly makes no effort to address how to keep it from happening agin, what is the point of her site and why should anyone even care about what she says?

JMO.


BTW, good reason to change your handle.

Mark

Hi Mark,


I don't see why that assumption has to be made, and she often says that women need to take more responsibility for their behavior and not treat their husbands as disposable. I think she's saying the feelings that occur are inevitable but it's not inevitable how you deal with them.


This one leaves me scratching my head. I don't see that in her writings at all. She seems to be saying the exact opposite - that affairs are infatuations, not love.


If someone slapped you, and you asked them why, and they said, "Because I chose to do it." Would that be a satisfactory answer to you or would you want to know WHY they chose that particular action at that particular time and why it was directed at you?

Similarly I also see people post character assassinations as explanations for adultery, but that doesn't explain anything either. Even if I had no morals or no character, why did I choose to cheat instead of shoplift? Why not just cheat on my taxes, kill some whino or commit grand theft auto? (None of which I would ever do, btw.) You know I think shoplifting is a good example.(And I wouldn't do that either.) I could have stolen something and even if I had gotten caught, my clean record would have meant a slap on the wrist and it would have been far less harmful to my marriage. If I simply wanted to make some random bad, morally wrong choice in my life, shoplifting would have been a much better choice than infidelity. So there's got to be some reason I've made bad choices in relation to sex but good choices in all other domains of life.


But again, there are reasons why we choose one way instead of another way. And why our choices in one aspect of our lives are better or worse than in some other domain.

This only makes sense as long as one fully comprehends that, despite those "reasons," the person is 100% accountable and responsible for said choices. And that the main "reason" is a failure to protect one's boundaries. Sometimes it is as simple as gross immaturity that leads to a lack of self discipline. The betrayed spouse, who had no control over the decision to commit adultery, cannot be responsible over something which he had no choice.

Nor does one have to know those "reasons" in order to change their behavior. All they need is a clearly defined plan to change and the willngness to do so.

The problem with the "feelings" Langley describes is that they are clearly the feelings of a wayward AFTER a person has become wayward. [her works read like a very wayward mind] That helps no one, because those feelings are exaggerated out of all proportion because the wayward is drunk, so to speak, on the high of affair[s] addictions. Understanding his state of mind, while drunk, is not a solution. Understanding what really got him to that place, while sober, can be,

Her phases are recognizable to the UNfoggy as fogbabble, characterized by self pity, blameshifting, rationalizations, etc. There is nothing to be gained from listening to fogbabble from a person who has a vested interest in self pity and passing the buck. One cannot change until they look inward, one can't change by focusing on others. It is a diversion and an obstacle to the KEY of recovery: self-honesty.

But, as we all agreed earlier, Langley does not have solutions, nor does she pretend to have solutions. That is apparent.


im·mor·al [i-mawr-uhl, i-mor-]–adjective 1. violating moral principles; not conforming to the patterns of conduct usually accepted or established as consistent with principles of personal and social ethics.
2. licentious or lascivious.


Most immoral people don't commit EVERY sin; that is not the definition of immorality. Immorality is characterized by a lack of adherence to moral standards that may or may not include stealing or any crime. An immoral person may not be interested in stealing, it doesn't mean he is moral, just not interested. Or exaggerates adherence to other minor morals in order to claim "virtue" - this is a typical tactic of an addict, btw.

On the other hand, just committing adultery does not necessarily mean one is immoral. Some adulterers cheat because they are immoral, some not.

I spoke to Dr. Harley about this once, and he did agree that serial cheating, on its face, is not enough to deem a person IMMORAL. That has to be characterized by a lack of adherence to moral principles in general. Serial cheaters are sometimes addicted to the high of an affair.