I stumbled across an interesting statement on a completely unrelated BB. It equated relationships and decisions made to stay or leave them to economics and referred to the "sunk costs" principle. See this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost

Basically, it says you should not make a future decision based on sunk costs (unrecoverable costs). You could consider the investment of time and effort into a relationship such as marriage as "sunk costs" in the sense that you can never get that back, regardless of what decision you come to. In some respects, this makes sense. How many new BS's come here and lament about how many years they invested in their M, only to have it turn out this way. Many of these BS's are in M's that even the die-hard marriage-supporting MBers consider unsalvagable - yet they still say - I invested x# years in this. Well, that time is gone.

I am not an economist and don't fully understand everythign that is explained even in the Wiki format, but I do find this analogy fairly interesting. Especially for people who come here in a state of mind that isn't very conducive to making a decision in the first place. Perhaps a similar mantra could be developed to help those people. When you think about it, it's not the time invested/wasted in a M that makes or breaks chances of recovery. It's a host of other factors - ending the A, remorse, commitment from the WS etc., that matter.

Of course a marriage is more than just sums and balances on a spread sheet but that doesn't mean the principals can't be helpful.

Thoughts?

What an interesting idea and it does make a lot of sense. Those "costs" are gone forever no matter what the outcome--divorce or reconciliation.

I think it's possible to make lemonade out of these lemons, however!

Probably most of us coming here tend to focus on the faults of our spouse and feel a lot of frustration because we can't change them--and believe ourselves to be pretty faultless-lol.

But when we focus on changing ourselves, then even if we get divorced, there is a pay-off for the cost of time and effort that was put into a failed relationship. That pay-off might be learning how to make a better choice of partners in the future or changing our own behavior that created conflict.

Thus focusing on and correcting our past bad choices gives us something good to take away from the relationship, no matter what happens. Concentrating on the long-term keeps it all in perspective.

I'm also a fervent believer that MB principles work in all relationships, with a few adjustments!--and have been applying them to extended family relationships as well. Anyone else?

It's interesting, but would be difficult to quantify. No matter how much money my FWH makes from now on he still can't make up for the money he pissed away feeding OW's horse face. Does that qualify as a sunk cost?

Another way to look at reconcilliation is the old customer service adage of "It's easier / cheaper to keep an existing customer than it is to find a new customer"

I can say the same thing BR regarding money. But I find it interesting to look at this with respect to time invested. One of the most difficult things for me was knowing that I'd invested 17 years of my life into this man. That's 17 years "thrown away" that I can't get back. Well, even if the A never happened, those years are still gone. If we had reconcilled, they'd still be gone. In other words - sunk costs. Yet how much did this fact affect my thinking and decision process along the way? You read this in every single newly betrayed spouse's thread.

Upon D-day, a BS is faced with a decision - stay or go (or toss the WS out). Now if you could step back from your emotions and try to take a logical approach to a BS's decisions, perhaps both the execution of the plan(s) and the outcome could be better. Instead of attempting recovery based on sunk costs (years married), they would be doing so for reasons with a better chance for success - WS's remorse, the chance to fix underlying problems, the chance to bring MB principles into their M. (you could add children here but it's another layer of complexity so I'll just leave it out for now while I try to wrap my head around this) Making better decisions this way can also change the way you focus on carrying out these decisions.

Of course, this is mostly academic because the level of pain a BS is feeling at d-day is far to staggering to make logical choices anyway.

I'm sure many recovery attempts are based on this. However, one can look at it this way too - if the existing customer is consistantly behind on his bills or otherwise causes problems, why would you continue catering to him? The marital equivalent could be the serial cheating WS. There are BS's on this board trying desperately to save these marriages, despite the fact that even the vets are questioning why.

I guess the question is - is the length of the marriage a good reason for deciding to stay?

Tabby, I think of it more like what Dr. H says about it being easier to change actions than beliefs. When the BS is working Plan A, their thoughts will match, that there are good reasons to work on it, like for example the number of years invested. But then if they go to Plan B, and choose those actions, then their thoughts will change from those new actions, like, "these were sunk costs, and I know that I did what I could."

Tabs:

The MB version of "sunk costs"?

The Marriage prior to Dday, if there is infidelity. Or the Marriage prior to finding MB.

Those are "sunk costs". That Marriage is dead. It bred either massive problems and/or infidelity. THAT Marriage can NOT be saved, nor should it be. A NEW better marriage must be built.

10 Years? 15 Years? or 20? You are right, those years are gone. Time to creatte a NEW next 20 years.

LG

That makes sense lg - thanks.