this is the type of converstations he is still having with me


talking about his needs, her needs.... i was advised that because i make more money than him that i do not make him feel like a man and he really enjoyed and still hold as a pleasurable relationship that had more partnership and connectedness and pride because he was the primary provider iwth dead wife #2... and that that relationship felt better to him as a man because he felt like he was the provider .. instead of respecting and feeling pride that i too maintain our standard of living (and the fact that he refused to work while doing the therapy for two years.. said he could not do both...) went to work within two weeks of both babies being born despite heart complications with the last.. i did not want to .. but i did not have a choice.. but he had more pride that she made $300 a week and helped him (however at the time she died they were strugglinghe was working two jobs and yet still.. lights cut off, bills not paid, water cut off.. all because she was not working and was refusing to go back to work ) than the fact I have solely supported our over $200k lifestyle.. he saw it as a sacrifice for her but sees it as so easy for me?? why does he still put such high attributes on any piece of garbage she did.. but diminimizes the actual sacrificial actions i have done and endured and provided.

he could not see how his position with me that he could not be encouraging to me or positive about feeling like a man unless he is the primary wage earner and he STILL hold great pleasure in the fact that he thought he was the primary wage earner in his second marriage is hurtful to me.. even when i expressed that it concerns me that i can not meet his need to feel like a man

This is exactly what i am thinking. I don't know if he started saying that she was great, and then you said arent' I great, and then the comparisons started.

Anybody who dies prematurely will be put on a pedestal. What you have to do is not make comparisons in your head nor allow him to make comparisons.

So if he says she was more sexual than you are, then you might say "I am glad you had that intimate relationship with her. It sounds like it was wonderful. I hope we can build something wonderful too."

I think like the quoted material said, that he may be feeling guilty about his wife/wife's death. Could he have done more? Was he having marital issues?

Try affirming what he says about his wife and see if that helps.

"I appreciate this site, but i have yet to get anyone to address how to overcome the fact that my husband has done so much damage and what are reasonable expectations as to rectifying the situation and what are reasonable boundaries...

i have sought counsel with five therapists.. and no one will give me a definite answer.. all say there needs to be some amends but will not tell me or my husband how to move through this muck we find ourself in.."

I think it's because only you can determine what you will need to feel better about everything. A therapist can't give you that answer. Nostradamus himself couldn't answer that.

And, honestly, you can write a script and give your husband a list of things he needs to do, but is it going to work? Isn't the damage done? Can you forget and put past all the things he has said? You seem to really be clinging to all the things he has said, so I'm having a hard time believing this man would ever be able to make enough amends to fix everything and make you feel unconditionally loved by him.

I think you've been deeply hurt, possibly irreparably hurt, and you want him to recognize and understand the damage, maybe feel it as well, but I don't think that, in itself, is going to take it away and make it all better. You have to be ready and willing to forgive as well, and I'm not so sure you're ready for that.

You, yourself, have to figure out what your boundaries and requirements are for the marriage to survive. You're the only one who knows what you need. Without sorting that out, and maybe even putting it on paper for him to see (which in my estimation is no different than filling out the questionnaires here), it's going to be gray matter to him and maybe both of you, actually.

This is exactly what i am thinking. I don't know if he started saying that she was great, and then you said arent' I great, and then the comparisons started.

no.. he came right out and said you are great but she was better.. after he started realizing when i confronted him about having sex with her in his sleep and talking about how much greateer she was and carrying her picture not mine in his wallet and car and keeping their laminated wedding announcement and slutty pictures on his side of the sink ..this is when he moved in after we were married and he kept getting more stuff out and moving her in..

Anybody who dies prematurely will be put on a pedestal. What you have to do is not make comparisons in your head nor allow him to make comparisons.\

how can i affirm his statements and yet not allow him to make comparisons when they have been.. she was the love of my life.. and the therapists have repeatedly told me that when he gets into the FANTASY statements.. becasue factually they were not true that i should tell him that is inappropriate in our relationsip.. yet everyone says allow him to make such false positive statements about her?

So if he says she was more sexual than you are, then you might say "I am glad you had that intimate relationship with her. It sounds like it was wonderful. I hope we can build something wonderful too."

i have tried that and he says what we have is good... but she was great

I think like the quoted material said, that he may be feeling guilty about his wife/wife's death. Could he have done more? Was he having marital issues?

Try affirming what he says about his wife and see if that helps.

how can i affirm his statements and yet not allow him to make comparisons when they have been.. she was the love of my life.. and the therapists have repeatedly told me that when he gets into the FANTASY statements.. becasue factually they were not true that i should tell him that is inappropriate in our relationsip.. yet everyone says allow him to make such false positive statements about her?


REMEMBER: he created a fantasy.. not reality based... not factual and yes their relationship was in a huge crisis.. he was wanting to leave her the day that she dies and he was relieved and felt FREE the moment he realized she was dead.

DO you really believe there is such a thing as irreperable damage to a relationship?

I keep trying to set the record straight.. i do not say bad things about her but i have been given permission to say that is not factually correct according to his own realizations and please do not go back to that fantasy view that you held for so long. ( 10 years.. because noone helped him throught the grief process.. he had ignorant people with no training or education to help him.. no professionsals and their way of making him feel better was to tell him how great she was and how much of a loss it was.. even though in her life man y of them thought she was very bad news for him and not a nice person nor a good wife and especially not a goood mother to their child especially because of her cheating and drinking)

I think it depends on the person who was hurt. You seem very hurt, and you're the only one who can determine in the end if the marriage can survive. Even if he says and does what you say, it's going to boil down to if you can forgive him or not.

Not just to forgive him, actually, but to get past what he said and BELIEVE him that he's not thinking the way he was....

Can you do that?

There are many issues in your marriage and I think it is safe to say that you are in Taker mode and sometimes in Withdrawal. Apparently Joint Enthusiastic Mutual Agreement or The Policy of Joint Agreement :Never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse may be the only way to get out of this. And to do so, a safe environment for discussion is necessary, safe rules for negotiation. No more LoveBusters but meeting EN. MB Basic Concepts

Considering what I did with my prior and deceased wife’s stuff before I knew about MB. First, let me say that I was clueless until I read Harley’s books.

Now what I should have done is realise that keeping all of it was completely out of PJA. I thought she would understand what I wished and respect it.

Well she did NOT understand, and just thought it was unfair as she wanted to compete with her. From that prior point of view, I thought it was a bizarre reaction.

I finally just resigned myself to her not understanding that she was dead and that those things were no more than souvenirs and so I got rid of most of it and we didn’t talk about the rest.

(But now she is pregnant with a child from an OM, we are divorced since 2 weeks and, well I learned, but lost so much. Worst thing in my life. But that is beside the point)

OK OK back to this,

Hope? For your marriage. Well you have logic on your side. With two kids together.


Keep posting and do talk to Steve Harley.

You know, his stuff could really be dealt with as a pornography addiction. With PJA it would work. I’m not saying this lightly.


Sorry if I come across as cold, I’m really hurt by my FWW now XW's actions.


In a real sense, it would really help me to know that what I've learned is effective so that my next marriage can work out. So you see, I’m on your side. Well the side of your marriage.

DL-K

I've said this before. I think the more you contest his viewpoint, the harder he's going to hold on.

I really think the only way you're going to make him see is to ask him some pertinent questions when he says these things. "What sort of things did she do that make you feel she was a great mother?"

I think your tone and delivery are going to make a huge difference. If you talk bit**y, your objective will be totally lost. If you speak jealously, it will be a fruitless effort. Speak conversationally, in an even tone.

"I'll bet she spent a lot of time with the baby, sang to him, read to him, and all that. Did he have a favorite book that she read? Do you remember what it was?(Make sure it's nothing you did for your kids. Don't force him to compare you two women. Just get him to think about the comparisons between his reality and the truth, but in a gentle indirect way.)

What I'm getting at is that you need to get him to be more specific about what he loved about her because I think as he is forced to look inside and be honest with himself, he isn't going to be able to come up with anything that can really substantiate his need to hang onto her.

And...your delivery will make or break the effort to get him to really examine his feelings. If you come across like you're trying to cut her down, it isn't going to work and he might realize what you're doing as sneaky. I would just try to be nonplussed when he talks about her and be very matter of fact - like you're talking about the weather.

He may actually come up with some answers, but the trick is to get him to think more in a pragmatic way about her rather than just following his emotions. And it seems as though the only way to accomplish that is to be gentle about it but get him to really think about the why of his feelings without being forceful.

Do you understand what I mean here?

I believe that Solee is quite right.

Four Guidelines for Successful Negotiation is the way MB states it.

should i chose to forgive him and believe that he is really over it when within the last month we had the following conversation

this is the type of converstations he is still having with me


talking about his needs, her needs.... i was advised that because i make more money than him that i do not make him feel like a man and he really enjoyed and still hold as a pleasurable relationship that had more partnership and connectedness and pride because he was the primary provider with wife #2 the deceased... and that that relationship felt better to him as a man because he felt like he was the provider .. instead of respecting and feeling pride that i too maintain our standard of living (and the fact that he refused to work while doing the therapy for two years.. said he could not do both...) went to work within two weeks of both babies being born despite heart complications with the last.. i did not want to .. but i did not have a choice.. but he had more pride that she made $300 a week and helped him (however at the time she died they were strugglinghe was working two jobs and yet still.. lights cut off, bills not paid, water cut off.. all because she was not working and was refusing to go back to work ) than the fact I have solely supported our over $200k lifestyle.. he saw it as a sacrifice for her but sees it as so easy for me?? why does he still put such high attributes on any piece of garbage she did.. but diminimizes the actual sacrificial actions i have done and endured and provided.

he could not see how his position with me that he could not be encouraging to me or positive about feeling like a man unless he is the primary wage earner and he STILL hold great pleasure in the fact that he thought he was the primary wage earner in his second marriage is hurtful to me.. even when i expressed that it concerns me that i can not meet his need to feel like a man

I did not ask for or encourage the comparison.. he just blurted them out.. i took your advise and just let him talk about how much more of man he felt with her and how much better that relationship made him feel and then went further as to how he felt like more of a man sexually with wife #1... all without me asking for or encouraging comparisons.. just telling me his true feelings ( as he says he should be able to do without any consequence or reaction on my part)

I took your advise and did not react except to tell him that i was sorry he felt this way, and what could i or we do to rectifiy the situation and he said there is no fixing it .. he just liked his position in that relationship better and therefore he liked that relationship better and therefore he felt better and safer with her... i just listened..


WHY SHOULD I BELIEVE THAT HE IS OVER IT????

ALl four therapist have told my husband that unless it directly related to her relationship with the child or it depicted something between her and the child that it should be removed from our house and his life.. no pictures of honeymoons, activities or anything prior to marriage.. none of those according to all four therpaists have anything to benfit the child and are simply for the benefit of the surviving spouse but have NO place in any other relationship nor should he have any need to keep them except for the benfit of a child if the relaionship and the grieving is truly over.. i hope you will take that advise

and NO woman wants to hear anything about another woman if they are supposed to be the love of your life.. period.. if it is a comparison where they are not equal or greater tahn your past.,., makes then feel like a failure at meeting your needs

What attracted the two of you in the first place? I'm really curious because it seems hard to believe there was no inkling of his grieving personality at the time you were dating. What brought the two of you together?

I'm wondering why you got pregnant while he wasn't working and was in therapy yet feel resentment about going back to work so soon after the birth of your child. I'm not trying to embarrass you, but I think we need to take a look at this piece of resentment you're holding onto and really take a look at it. You didn't see any of that coming? With a 6-figure salary you couldn't put some money aside in 9 months to allow you to stay at home a bit longer than 2 weeks?

I believe he has an inferiority complex. You've got a better job. You're making far more. I believe he's using his dead wife to hurt you because he feels so poorly about himself and is somehow trying to even the score. I don't know why. Can't figure it out.

I'm beginning to think now that it isn't the wife herself. It's the characteristics of their relationship that he's missing. "I did not ask for or encourage the comparison.. he just blurted them out."

What concerns me here is that he knows it hurts you and he says it anyway.

And now he's married to a different woman with different aspirations and goals, and it's blowing him out of the water.

Does he work at all? If so, maybe you can put him in charge of buying all the pleasurable things for the family. You can provide for the bills, etc., but allow him to finance vacations, Christmas, etc. These are important things to finance because they are venues for creating memories for your children.

Do you want to stay married? Do you think a separation is something you're considering?

when we met, he was emotionally supportive, complemetnary, very nice to the kids and seemed to enjoy playing with them and being with them.

he told a story of his great ability to love and his desire to find the right person, who could love him back and that he had not ever really had that.

he was employed until six or seven motnhs after we were married.. in fact i sold my house and bought a house in another county on acreage with the understanding that he was to run his construction business from there and store the equipment in the barn and that if he wanted to branch out into other psecialty furniture making activities for an internet business , he had a barn to do it in.

but then when pushed in therapy.. he said he could not do therapy and work at the same time.. he was supposed to be fixing the house which needed renmovations, bvut what should have and ultimatley did take hgim about 2 months he did not complete in over a year.

i think he has issues because he can not control any othe women in his life.. he thought he controlled her through finances but in retrospect he realized that he did not even have that ... she still ran around..

he presented as a prep sc hool educated.. golf playing , tennis playing guy who got married too yound to #1 and had child , #1, then got married to #2 oput of feeling that he was damaged from having a kid with #1 and so married beneath himself.. he tried to go to college while with her but she made it so uncomfortable, he quit.. then they out of inability to pay for contraception one month had child #2 and then when he was five months old she died
then he was single and very involved in the church, but got involved with wife #3 who the church pushed him into marrying due to their extracurricular activities, she was very physically abusive to him and his child.. so he left... he swore he would nver get married again.. but he said he was so everwhelmed with me that he struggled with it and eventually decided that he could not live without me.

he does work now, but he he makes barely enough to cover his IRS debt ( another thing i did not know about until they filed a threat of lien on MY house)_... and his gas and his helath insurance and his clothes and his cigarettes and lunched.

he would never pay for the luxury items, because , he does not spend money on my kids nor dsoes he spend money on his child, often using money desinated fo stepchild for his own benefit such as $1000 bow to hunt with when he had a perfectly good one that i bought him...

i really believe that he is not bipolar at this jucture but is borderline, he has not ability to show empathy nor any understanding that his words and actions hurt others.. only that he is entitled to vent his rage and wrath on anyone who "crosses" him

i am reading this wondering what in the h*ll a HIGHLY educated and intelligent woman such as yourself is doing with a man like this?

you may not have seen it before you you married him but you sure as hell see it now. what is keeping you there? good lord.

you can obviously take care of yourself and your children. you don't need him. get away, get counseling to see why you would have been attracted to such a man, get strong, get emotionally healthy, and find a good man of your caliber.

i am just in such shock. **shrugs shaking head**

mlhb

two children and the hope perpetrated on me by the therapists that he was fixable.. htat it was all related to his failure to grieve correctly and therefore the creation of a fantasy

the problem is that they failed to realize and help me realize that there was another reason he created a fantasy other than guilt and grief

HE HAS A MAJOR PERSONALITY DISORDER!!!!

this of course was swept under the rug by the therapists as i addressed it.. claiming that is hard to tell whther or not amyone has a personality disorder when they are gpoing through a crisis

since then, i have learned that the best way to tell if someone has a personality disorde is to look at the trail of ruin and destruction that they have left behind or made of their life through jobs, relationships, finances, etc...

oh course , all of this was hidden n ot just by him, but by his family and a very differnet spin was placed on the truth

why do i stay.. two very young children, isolation on a ranch that will take at least a year to sell and the required maintenance by a me alone and the isolation and fear of the unknown out there...

two older children( mine not his) who genuinely like him and have bonded with him, more than they ever bonded with their dad and concerns about the ramifications and fall out on them.. one only has high school to finish.. last divorce messed him up bad educationally.. he does not handle change or transitions well

as far as finding a good man.. my PICKER is obviously broken.. i will avoid that issue... i don't want put my children through any more, especially the older two

i believe h will disappear from lives of little ones or will stay and be so spiteful that is more damaging than continuintg to live with him as i can control or mitigate his behaviour or intervene on his behaviour with the children 99 % of the time.. exhausting but necessary

Ugh. I think it behooves you to see a lawyer and get your ducks in a row, to know, exactly, what a legal separation would entail, and what your obligations are to him, if any. It doesn't mean you have to do it right now or ever, but at least you would be educated about it.

One of my concerns is that he will file for alimony.

One thing to think about is that sometimes people make better parents when they have scheduled visitation. It forces them to address some sort of relationship with the child and perhaps even think about the day ahead with that child, plan a fun outing, etc.

I am not sure how much it would matter, but you never know...why not TELL the judge about your concerns that he will abandon his younger children?

You have to remember that you're an advocate for your kids, and though the judge has the final word, anything you say may have some bearing on what the judge allows/disallows.

I would look into it. What can it hurt? Just don't tell him. He doesn't have to know right now if ever.

what i have avoided telling you is that i am a divorce attorney for 18 years i have been written up as one of the most aggressive trial custody attorneys in the multicounty area. i have a 95% win rate. i have multiple jury trial experience with all wins.

i would never allow my clients to remain in the muck that i have created in my life..

Therefore, that is why i have a prenup and post nupt.. that protects me financially.. that is why I have made him go back to work full time.. only alimony in our state is if you are disabled, or not working ofr 10 years or more due to care of minor children.. that is why i have kept documentation of the cruelty he has heaped on me and the neglect to the children.. that is why i have sought to get him help.. because daily i see the unforseen consequences of divorce.. and i wanted to avoid it for my older two again as well as my two little ones.. hoping that at least under my watchful eye that i could ameliorate the potential damage if he was with them alone.

just sad that people look so normal, talk so normal and then are so damaged

maybe now, you understand why i could not stay home despite my ( 6 figure) earnings, i have a business and payroll and other people dependent on me for their living also as well as clients who depend on me to sort out their lives

if i came to myself as a client, i would have filed for divorce the first time he told me he loved her more, i would have had him and his distrubed child removed from my life through a filing.. i would have repoed the car he was driving that was mine,, whgich ultimatley i let him trash and just recently traded for a car for him that was paid for instead of $700 month so he could have a big ego.. i would have shut off the bak accounts.. i would have told him if he wanted to see and the baby that he could go to counselling on his own nickel.. i would have nver sold my house and moved to the country,, i would have had my very sweet home office set up that i had before and i would not be out over $100 at last calculations on this man and his son.

but i had hope that God could change people and heal people .. if they wanted his help..

NOt so sure anymore