okay, this is killing me--who's Sara?????

JustLearning,

I've already proven on other threads I'm not a troll.

You all just are not used to someone saying things you don't like because most people say things to seek approval. But I don't care enough about your approval to lie to you. Sorry. If you want someone to say all the right things and tell you just what you want to hear, regardless of whether it's true or not, go read someone else's thread.

I've read posts about people who have faked recovery on these boards. Has it ever occurred to you that your own behavior probably encourages it? Not just you (JL) personally, but collectively.

UPDATE: Today was a much better day. We got a financial budget completed without any fighting. (If you knew everything that has gone on, you'd understand that this is a VERY big deal and major accomplishment for us.) In addition to getting through it peacefully, we also managed to make some plans for the near future.

It turns out that his contract has been extended. So what we'll do is extend my time here with him until the last week of July, then drive back home, move everything out and clean up the house before turning it over to the landlord. Then we'll drive back here and live in an extended stay hotel for the rest of his contract. Meanwhile he will not only continue looking for work, but also use money set aside in the budget to pay for books and tests for professional certifications that will help him get a job after his contract is over. Then we'll move wherever his next job is.

We've also agreed that I should work. Although he has mixed feelings about it, he agreed it's necessary right now. (I know we should follow POJA, but he would not be enthusiastic about either choice because he very much wants me to do both - but of course that's impossible.)

We did other stuff today besides just budget talk. He had off for the day so we spent most of it together talking (politics, not relationship talk) and doing things with the kids. After we got the budget done, his demeanor toward me became much more positive.

One of the things he's been upset about is not being able to get me sitting down long enough to talk about the budget. I get easily freaked out about financial problems, partly because of how I grew up. So this was a problem I definitely played a major role in creating. (Why not solely me? Well, he did have a habit of getting angry and calling my suggestions insane. But this one was mostly me and my issues with money.)

Ace,

That's a very good point. So I will not wait until he voluntarily decides to read it. We should re-establish some emotional connection first, though. Otherwise it would just be me making demands on him and him rebelling. We've been apart for so long and with him not being interested in bridging the distance. Now that we're together I have an opportunity to create more positive interactions with him, which hopefully will lead him to want to work things out and be less ambivalent about it. That would be the time to more strongly encourage him to face the truth. If I do that now it will just be a love buster. I have to take his feelings into consideration (something that committed obviously doesn't understand.)

Sometimes I get a gut feel that someone is full of it and sometimes I don't. In the case of APH's husband, I don't get a feel that it is BS for him to put aside the letter. My personal feeling is that he knows pretty much what it says. This guy is an older man who has been around the block a time or two, is extremely bright and while he has his own set of issues, it doesn't surprise him that so does APH. He ain't no dummy. But he has huge holes in his logic pattern and is in denial somewhat, or so it appears to me.

He is living a bit in fantasy land. I guess he thinks his wife should be burned on the funeral pyre when he dies or something because he wants a SAHM and he himself is likely just a few years away from retirement. Yet he isn't rich.

His attitudes are going to bring out attitudes in APH, who does not live in a hole in the ground, immune from influences. How this all plays out is anybody's guess. I do think that APH is trying her best to do the right thing and is struggling with the transition from entitlement to family. I think she will make it. I don't walk in her shoes, so I am not going to slam her.

My contribution at this time is to speculate that her husband knows and is processing it at a level where he can ignore it. This happens all the time with people.

Larry

I just see Aph moving in the right direction despite her obvious flaws in thinking. She can make the journey. If I didn't believe that I wouldn't post to her and would ignore her like other trolls. I still have high hopes for her.

Aphaeresis


This "I won't deal with it" dynamic is somewhat perplexing to me.

Now, I understand pretty well about boundaries (most of the posts I make on this site revolve around boundaries - how to make them, how to keep them) so I get that he has put up a boundary around how much he's willing to listen to or deal with until this job situation resolves itself.

There's even a part of me that understands being SO overwhelmed that you have to limit the inputs into your system

It's just the scale that bothers me. Because, we're not talking about some minor little crisis like someone forgot their lunch money or missed their ride to school.

Why is it OK with you for him to check out in the middle of what seems to be a catastrophic marital crisis? What part of that behavior makes him a viable or attractive partner to you? If a member of your family became direly ill, does he get a free pass on that, too?

Somewhere, somehow, someway -- each couple, each person has to pick some priorities. Where exactly is your family on that list? Underneath his job? Underneath his desire to find another wife (after he finds the job, of course)? Underneath improving his golf score?

Where does your family fall on YOUR priority list? Underneath his job search? Underneath his desire to ignore things (upsetting him)? Underneath your guilt?

So, basically, Aphaeresis, what I'm saying is this:

YES, I think it's time that you brought all of this to his attention in a pretty major way -- his preferences or not. Your HOUSE is burning down around your ears and you're standing there wondering whether or not you should sound the alarm. YEAH! Now would be a GOOD time to do that.

Look, the both of you have driven this whole thing off into the ditch. And, you do have children, so they're in there with you.


Being Radically Honest with him about the true state of your marriage is not making a demand on him. It's providing him with information he needs to make decisions. That he does not want the information (prefers to live in denial about it until some future state is reached) does not bode well for a partnership relationship (so I do understand your reticence to tell him).


Positive interactions are good. In fact, it's recommended that you do this without Love Busting.

So, let's review what love busters are:

- Dishonesty - Obviously you are not committing this LB, as what you are doing is being honest

- Annoying Habits - Nope, not committing this one either.

- Angry Outbursts - Now, this one you have to watch for ... make sure that when you tell him you avoid this LB.


- Disrespectful Judgements - This one is even harder to avoid - so work really hard at avoiding this when you tell him (ie. telling him the truth isn't a DJ, but it can be told WITH DJ's


- Selfish Demands - Nope, just providing information. Don't ask for decisions.


- Independent Behavior - Nope

Don't confuse being honest about bad news with love busting (unless you insert DJ's, SD's, and AO's in there while you do it.). Bad news is... well... bad news. But, being truthful is the path to rebuilding your marriage.


I absolutely agree that you must take his feelings into consideration.

But, somewhere along the line, Aphraesis, if you want this to evolve into something that is going to work over time and be sustainable then there have to be some expectations and boundaries put into the mix. I suggest that one of those boundaries/expectations YOU put on having a relationship with HIM is that you're in this thing together. There's no part in partnership where he gets to check out of a crisis because he doesn't want to deal with it. Does that sound like a good deal to you?

It's not your job to "encourage" him to face the truth. That's crossing over the boundary into his space - his sense of self - the things he manages as a fully functioning adult human being. It's your job to BE truthful. You provide the truth -- and then you let him face it, deny it, make origami out of it or whatever he does. And YOU, my friend, get to then make some decisions based upon what he does.

Stay behind the boundary of your own thought space. Stay behind the boundary of your own decision making space. Stay behind the boundary of your own processing space. Stay behind the boundary of your own actions. That does not mean you don't take him into account - it means you do it in a non-manipulative way. It means you do it in a healthy way that both allows and REQUIRES him to make his own decisions, thoughts, ideas, etc.

So, right now isn't the time to make selfish demands (I agree with you on that one) - such as decisions. Both of you are processing a lot of new and rather unpleasant information. However, right now is the time for you to tell your truth - and all of it.

I really think how you behave right now, is going to set the tone for your future relationship. If you start this dynamic off by accepting less than a partner in this - by accepting someone who wants to live in denial and check out in the middle of a crisis - then I don't see this coming to a successful resolution. Respect is positive for productive behavior. Checking out/denial is not productive behavior. You should require more for yourself and for your marriage.

Mys

Your friendly, neighborhood athiest.

Great post Larry, I agree with what you wrote.

Aph - I'm really not surprised by this. When you said your H asks for a divorce a lot it was a red flag. I wondered if maybe he has his own stuff going on.

Thanks, everyone.

myschae, yeah you're right. I know he needs to know. Why does he check out during a crisis? It's the typical male fear of flooding, multiplied. He gets flooded even when I bring up a touchy subject. It's very frustrating, and the only thing that seems to help is ending the conversation and leaving him alone to calm down. Anything else just starts or escalates a fight.

Maybe if I start a general conversation about his habit of "checking out" I can turn to the more specific problem of what I've done once I've got his attention.

By the way, love your sig line!

Oh and you all, I still want to know if unilaterally giving him my email passwords without asking for his (until sometime later) is a good idea or a bad idea?

Ok, I'm not familiar with your use of the term flooding. When I looked it up in a psychological sense, it referred to a treatment of phobias in certain people. (ex. if someone has a phobia about snakes, taking them to a place where there are lots of snakes. Initially, there is panic and anxiety, but eventually the patient will not be able to sustain that elevated state of panic because the neuro-receptors are no longer able to fire. This leads to acceptance and the ability to overcome the phobia)

So, does your H has a phobia of some sort? Or.....


Can you help me understand what the dynamic is and what you're trying to accomplish or avoid?


Thank you. I guess I'm just a garden variety, vanilla atheist. I don't follow Sec Hum or anything - but it's always nice to see more of us around here.


Oh, I think we should take one step at a time. Let's figure out a way for you to get to full disclosure, all cards on the table (at least on your end) and then take a look around and see where to go from there? Sometimes, you can invest too much time in planning ahead past the big things -- then find out that the situation on the other side looks so different that time was wasted and the solution doesn't apply.

Mys

Your friendly, neighborhood athiest

Mys,

I'm familiar with that kind of flooding, although it's not quite the kind I was talking about. Interestingly, I was taught in psych that systematic desensitization is better. That's when you get used to the object of your phobia gradually, using progressive steps. Works for more people and less traumatic.

The type of flooding I'm talking about is when someone feels so overwhelmed by emotions that they are no longer capable of calm discussion and need to cool down. They often fear saying or doing something they'll regret later. The term is typically used in the context of men and anger. Women tend to dwell on things and so they feel better about talking it out right away, while men tend to get overwhelmed and need a break to cool down and revisit the topic later. Well my husband has this same tendency but it's much more extreme in him than in other men. He sometimes acts like an argument with me is the end of the world, even though we're usually fairly mild in our fights - no name calling, very little yelling if any.

We had been in counseling about this before. I would always feel the need to bring something up right away so it could be resolved as quickly as possible. He always wanted to wait and discuss things when everything was just right - he wasn't at work, he wasn't tired, he hadn't had an otherwise bad day, etc. I would get impatient because I'd dwell on it and get more and more upset, end up forcing him to talk before he was ready and we'd end up in a big fight. Sometimes he'd just leave the house and not come back for three hours or so. So the recommended solution was for me to adjust to his time table by writing down my feelings on paper until I could discuss them at a later time. His end of the deal was that I could ask for a time to discuss something and he'd have to agree to a specific day and time and stick to it.

And the conflicts in question were nothing compared to what we're dealing with now. Anything I bring up in connection with this is likely to be a flood trigger. And if he leaves the house every time I try to talk to him, we'll never get through the conversations we need to have.

I mentioned before in other threads that I thought that if you want to hear Radical Honesty you have a responsibility to help create a safe environment for truth-telling. In the case of someone like my husband, he might need a safe environment in which to HEAR the truth, as well as to tell it. So I have to figure out how to create that for him.

Aph,

Believe me my expectations of your words are not nearly as high as you seem to believe. What I have come to expect is unfortunately exactly what I am hearing. Excuses, delays, behaving as you claim you H does (wanting things JUST RIGHT before engaging,etc).

But what is most interesting is the apparent lack of empathy. Has it occured to you that your H hasn't been enjoying this marriage either? Apparently not, given your surprise that he would be on line. Has it occured to you that you control a great deal in this marriage including the non-linear reactions of your H to your actions?

You can DJ me all you want because in truth since we are not married it isn't a DJ, simply misguided. What you cannot continue to do is what you are doing now...NOTHING.

Please think about this.

God Bless,

JL

I've recently went through something similar, but from his side.

A man who has his wife cheat on him leaves him with no self esteem, unattractive, and unwanted. Do you seriously expect him to just sit around with all of these unresolved feelings and fix whatever YOU are missing to save the marriage?

You screwed up, and if you want this man, you had damn better show it to him NOW, or he WILL find someone else.

I know that Dr. Harley's philosophy is that the spouses both need to accept some responsibility, but your husband is not going to get there until he is told and shown that he CAN meet your needs, to avoid you cheating again, and that you can meet HIS needs to make the pain he is going through (and will continue to) is worth it.

Right now you should be focusing on discovering and meeting HIS needs, and hope that he can heal enough to start meeting yours; and it sounds as if you'd better start on it RIGHT NOW.

When I finally got my wife to admit to what she'd done, I was devastated. As we 'talked' I began testing the waters to see if other women were interested. Another woman began meeting my interim needs, and I came very close to having my own affair. It is a LOT easier to justify when your spouse has previously cheated...

If you want to save this marriage, I suggest you throw yourself at him ASAP, and get everything out in the open, or your marriage is toast.

I've recently went through something similar, but from his side.

A man who has his wife cheat on him leaves him with no self esteem, unattractive, and unwanted. Do you seriously expect him to just sit around with all of these unresolved feelings and fix whatever YOU are missing to save the marriage?

You screwed up, and if you want this man, you had damn better show it to him NOW, or he WILL find someone else.

I know that Dr. Harley's philosophy is that the spouses both need to accept some responsibility, but your husband is not going to get there until he is told and shown that he CAN meet your needs, to avoid you cheating again, and that you can meet HIS needs to make the pain he is going through (and will continue to) is worth it.

Right now you should be focusing on discovering and meeting HIS needs, and hope that he can heal enough to start meeting yours; and it sounds as if you'd better start on it RIGHT NOW.

When I finally got my wife to admit to what she'd done, I was devastated. As we 'talked' I began testing the waters to see if other women were interested. Another woman began meeting my interim needs, and I came very close to having my own affair. It is a LOT easier to justify when your spouse has previously cheated...

If you want to save this marriage, I suggest you throw yourself at him ASAP, and get everything out in the open, or your marriage is toast.

JL,


It's been obvious to me my husband hasn't been happy either, but he's never been clear on what I should do about it and often sends mixed or contradictory messages. I realize now that's because he has mixed feelings about certain things like whether I should stay home or get a job. And he's also said things like I'm going to be mad at you until I get a job, which sounded to me like he was angry at the situation and taking it out on me. I know now he has other reasons to be angry.

The reason I was surprised that he was looking for someone is that he has a sexual problem that he swears up and down is medical. Now I have to wonder, even though none of these affairs turned physical - that I know of. Anyway, that was the reason - not lack of empathy.


No, it hasn't. There is a psychological concept called the power of the least interested. Right now, he's the one least interested in the marriage so he has the power. But of course I'm open to hearing about any avenues of control I haven't thought about yet.

IceOhio,


Of course not. It just didn't occur to me until recent months that maybe he knew on some level and chose not to say anything. It's that thought that first made me start to question what I was doing and start to see that it wasn't so harmless after all.


I've been trying to meet his needs for admiration, domestic support and conversation. And I don't know what need creating the budget falls into but that was important to him and we did that. He won't fill out an EN survey so I have to make my best guess as to what to do.

He's made it clear that affection is out. I was going to post about this anyway. I feel like I'm dying inside, and I'm sure he feels worse. I just don't know what to do.

I wanted to talk to him last night but he said he was too tired to talk. (He had to work late because he took some time off to watch the kids while I was at my job interview.) As for this weekend, he asked me to keep the kids out of his hair so he can focus on this speech he wants to give at the Humanist meeting on Sunday. Maybe there will be some time I can carve out tonight for talking about what I've done.

Aph-

I really do hope you talk with him tonite.

I know you're not going to like hearing this...

You really should go back and look at this huge long thread that a poster named CARDSONLY had going. Many of the same "reasons" that you have for not telling your husband "right now"...really are just rationalizations for putting it off. I know you don't FEEL that's the case...but trust me, as someone who's seen a good amount on this and other sites...it really is the case.

The sooner that you step up and take this step, the sooner your marriage stands a chance to move in the right direction.

Owl, I'll let you know. A search for CardsOnly (caps, lowercase, combination, with or without a space) turned up nothing. Do you remember the exact name with caps v. lowercase, spaces, hypens or underscores?

I brought up the subject of him avoiding touchy topics. I said I thought we should discuss what I did. He asked me why I wanted to tell him.

I gave him my reasons and he said my presumptions were wrong. He said before we deal with longterm problems we need to solve the immediate crisis (financial), including making sure we both stick to the new budget.

He also said he's still angry with me over the storage unit thing, but I think what's going on is that he already knows without me spelling it out further but isn't ready to talk aobut it yet, so he's picking some other excuse for him to be angry at me.

I know he was really mad about that, but he hugged me when I first got here but has'nt since that day I told him I've had "similar activities." So I don't see any possible way he could not know. Like Larry said, he's not stupid.

So until he's more comfortable talking about this directly, I should go to Plan A, which I've sort of already started.

Oh by the way, I did mention that you guys were giving me a hard time for not telling him, and he said (jokingly) "just tell them I said I'd kill you." LOL!

Aphaeresis - the name is all lower case - cardsonly.

I believe the thread that Owl was referring to is:

cardsonly thread on GQ II

Okay, I read a few pages of the cardsonly thread and all I can say is WTH?! This person is whining about how difficult withdrawal from the OM is and I see no 2x4s there. Everyone was totally supportive of cardsonly and I see none of the hostility that's been directed toward me even tho this person is showing far less remorse.