Plan C is trying to "please" WS, thinking it'll make them "like" you....

not gonna happen, and as a wise Texan friend of mine says (in a long s-l-o-w drawl and a knowing smile)

"Ya trah to do rahhht...'course ya cain't"

I think I got it guys....


Plan C is Plan chamealeon.....when the BS tries on all sorts of new "personalities" to make the WS happy and like them more....as mimi would say ...YUCK

not2fun

The problem, I think, is getting caught up in trying to appeal to the WAYWARD SPOUSE...

I know. I sound like a broken record but the WAYWARD SPOUSE is NOT YOUR REAL SPOUSE.

The WAYWARD SPOUSE, sadly, is "IN LOVE" with the OP. The OP has filled up the LOVE BANK.

The way I see it, in PLAN A, the BS is trying to reach through and get a hold of the REAL SPOUSE who is buried deep inside. The REAL SPOUSE still has love for the BS...

Like Steve told me and I will NEVER FORGET; "If he LOVED (past tense) you once, he can love you again..."

But I came to ACCEPT that the WAYWARD DID NOT LOVE ME...HE LOVED HER...

DING DING DING....we have a winner folks.....sorry that's all we have for tonight.....



the rest of that is good Mimi...especially the part of what Steve told you.....i think we BS get caught up with the fact that the WS are in a fantasy and WE come to believe that the feelings they have for each other are not real. We tend to dismiss them....(I have a feeling I will get smacked around because I am not stating what I am thinking right....)....interesting food for thought......(don't smack me too hard...let me think on this some more and I'll come back to it....)

The HANDWRITING in my Mother's Day card, from the REAL HUSBAND:

"There is no woman who is more loved than I Love you"...

EXACTLY WHAT STEVE PROPHESIZED...

Their RELATIONSHIP is SICK and DYSFUNCTIONAL but from a strictly BEHAVIORAL POINT OF VIEW, the WS does "LOVE" the OP because the OP is filling the LOVE BANK, meeting the ENs.

I think your WH and my H were alike in still allowing us to fill SOME of the ENs...thus, being cake-eaters..and our husbands filled our love banks, allowing us to still have love for them...

But, it's important to keep in mind that THE "LOVE" for HER is there and will remain until there is absolutely NO CONTACT for several months....

That is something I am sure I can handle. I haven't done a good job of it lately.......


And I look at their "love" like this....it what people tell HS and teenagers when they have their "first" love....people will say "you don't know what love is,,,,,you are too young....you haven't been together long enough...". I used to cringe when I heard that, and I actually still do, because I remember what is like to "be in love" at that age. To me it is too ABSOLUTELY real....

ok...I'm tired now...thanks mimi....

I wonder how many WW's realise at some point in their affair that they have made a mistake but are to proud to go home so they decide to stay with OP and make the most of it.

That is funny....really if you think about it, because that is what they REFUSED to do with their BS....

The key is to STOP WONDERING about the WAYWARD...

In PLAN B, the WAYWARD does not exist...

What the WAYWARD DOES or THINKS does not matter..it's SCREWY anyways....They are ALIEN DINGBATS...

This quote is continued PLAN C THINKING...

If the WAYWARD is "IN THEIR AFFAIR", the WAYWARD is a WAYWARD is a WAYWARD is a WAYWARD...

Some of the Fog-Speak Alien-Babble Blah-Blah-Blah of the wayward is almost always something along the lines of "Too much has happened." It's even quoted in the flash routine that runs on the side of the forums every single day.

In an effort to justify the affair in the first place and make it mesh with their own sense of ethics and resolve the tension between what even they know to be right and hurting the one they have promised to "love, honor and cherish" many a wayward will make a decision that "I have made my bed and must lie in it." If the affair goes on long enough, and if the betrayed spouse is unable to convince them that recovery is possible and that the marriage can be made better than it was prior to the affair, the wayward then considers the issue closed in their own mind.

At this point they might even make a decision to salvage the affair even if it is not working out rather than try to return to the marriage they have decided is unrepairable since if it was not unrepairable, every action they have taken thus far was wrong and this too would cause them to be unethical in their own mind.

These are often, I think, the same ones who refuse to return to the marriage even if the affair fails totally and instead they choose to move on and seek someone else as a life partner rather than admit any wrong doing in the first affair. It causes them to have to admit that their justifications were wrong to begin with and so they choose to go forward. To them, it is actually an ethical decision on their part.

Just my opinion based on my own observations.

Mark

Wow, Mark, your post is dead on, IMO. This, I believe, is exactly what I'm experiencing. I have been trying to find the words to express where I believe PWC got in all this. He wasn't even in an affair (as far as I know) this past year, and STILL would not engage in recovery efforts. It's as if he resigned himself to failure before it began, and came home only to be able to say that he gave it all he had.

In truth, with that frame of mind, he DID give it all he had.

Thanks for posting that. I feel so out of place here most times, because our M isn't ending because of an affair, but because he gave up.

SL:

I appreciate Mark's post..BUT..

I don't think it's helpful to try to figure HIM out.

I don't REALLY think that's possible unless he were to HONESTLY tell you.

I'm so STRICT these days about not making ANY assumptions.

For over 25 years of marriage, MY ASSUMPTIONS were SOOO WRONG.

Now, I'm in a HEALTHY relationship with my H.

I TRY to NOT make ANY ASSUMPTIONS and ASK HIM DIRECTLY about his thoughts and feelings...

Even now, in THIS OPEN RELATONSHIP, I'm OFTEN WRONG when I've made AN ASSUMPTION based on MY OWN VIEWPOINT...

So, how can YOU REALLY KNOW ABOUT PWC...

How can one REALLY know about a WAYWARD?


Why would YOU feel out of place HERE?

What matters to ME, what matters to US is what is going on with YOU.

That's all that YOU will REALLY KNOW unless PWC is HONEST enough to TELL YOU.

I don't believe in ANY ASSUMPTIONS.

I think WE tend to make ASSUMPTIONS in order to make everything fit into a perfect little package. Life is just TOO COMPLICATED for that. PEOPLE are just too complicated for that.

IT MIGHT NOT EVER, EVER MAKE SENSE.

I get really, really caught up into wanting everything to MAKE SENSE. I, too, like many, want it all to be LOGICAL...and often, that WILL NEVER HAPPEN...

You are right, that it is an assumption, without hearing it directly from the horses mouth.


Keep in mind, I can't do this, not now. You've got an advantage there. ;)I did try, no responses ever came, and may never come. It's hard NOT to draw conclusions from whatever information was gained and from the past actions. I'm not swimming against the tide anymore, I'm learning to swim across it, but it takes practice.

Truth is, there is some comfort in finding that I am not to blame, by making assumptions, even if only momentary, so I hear what you are saying about relief in making some sense. Truth is, none of this will EVER make sense to me.

I promise I'll never stop learning, though, and I can almost guarantee I won't stop making mistakes (even though I'm pretty close to perfect :/).

I probably feel out of place because my plan didn't work. I could believe that PWC was a wayward, with the whole wayward mentality. I didn't, however, want to believe he didn't love me anymore, and even without another OW, he was in search of that FEELING of love, and would still break his family to pieces to get it. An addiction to that feeling, not just the OW.

Hey, I just had an epiphany! Who'da thunk it!

SL,

One of the hardest lessons in life is coming to the realization that we cannot make anyone do the right thing. It is actually the downfall of many schools of philosophy that try to show that if person can just be educated or shown the truth or in some way be made to see reality, then he/she will choose to do the right thing. It is actually the reason communisim is doomed to fail. People will not do the right thing simply because it is the right thing. People in and of themselves are mean, nasty, cruel, heartless and selfish.

When you attempt to show people the truth and they will not accept it, sometimes they do accept it but choose to do differently. Other times, they cannot accept the truth because to know the truth requires that we act from the truth. It means that we cannot choose selfishly and must act based on reality rather than our own fantasies.

If we assume that all people are rational actors, that is, they make rational decisions about their life and what they will and will not do, then it seems simple to see the right way to do things.

But two things prevent that from being so simple. One is that in some cases decisions are based on feelings rather than rational thought. We tend to float along in life and see where it takes us rather than making a decision by choice. This causes us to end up where we never intended all because we felt better by not making a decision.

The second thing is that when weighing the pros and cons of a decision, not everyone places the same value on either side of the ledger. You valued your marriage above many other things and so were willing to fight for it. PWC on the other hand did not place the same value on your marriage, for whatever reason. So for PWC, the effort required to recover it and even to build it into one PWC could be willing to fight for outweighed the goal and so the decision to fight was not as attractive to him as it was to you. The consequences outweighed the goal rather than the other way around.

Nearly everyone wakes up one day and asks "How in blazes did I get here?" Some look inward to find the solution to being where they feel they do not want to be. Others look outward. They see others as the reason they are in the situation they are in. Unless they can see that where they are in life is the result of choices they have made and not what others have done to them or caused them to decide, they will forever be unable to find a way to make better choices going forward.

Mark

I KNOW that this is my H's ADDICTION...

I think this is a REAL ADDICTION..

I KNOW that this is a REAL ADDICTION...

Yessirree! this is where I be. Looking inward is tough business, and I can see why many do not want to do it.

Now that there quote is some serious BS "fogginess"......

SL, if this were the case then many others on here would be out of place as well....B...for example. And I can tell you this much, there were days when her calm bits of words were like a balm to my battered soul......and your encouragement has been invaluable to me as well. So get that stinkin thinkin out of your head......

not2fun

I hear you, Not2.

Most days, I feel right at home here. There is something about transitioning from the fight to save the marriage to divorce that leaves me feeling detached from marriage builders. Could be the entire platform this place is built on. MARRIAGE BUILDING. Right now, my M is being dismantled, bit by bit. It's just sad to me, and such a waste. It's hard to let go of the 'If only'. Alas, PWC and I aren't on the same page. Heck, we're not even in the same book!

Believer is AWESOME! She's worked thru much of what I'm experiencing now, and I will get there, too, just not all in one step.

Right again, though, I have no good reason to FEEL this way. It will pass. THis place has been invaluable to me, and dissing it by saying I feel out of place is not what I want. Even right now, I am able to convey my thoughts with those who get it, and it's helping.

SL,


You are the most amazing person who has so much to give to those of us who either don't get it or are still hurting so deeply.

Each one of our stories help someone somehow and even if our M don't recover, we are recovering and give hope to those who can't even imagine that.

I need you girl. I need your steps ahead of me or walks hand in hand because if I can offer you something, then I feel useful.