Oh DUH!! I'm not really thinking.

I'll have to check spam to see if it went there instead.

BTW....you have mail, too Mrs. Dub.

>The word, "submit" made me crazy,

Submit doesn't mean to quit thinking - you know?

There are dozens and dozens of ways to submit WITHOUT comprimising yourself. Methinks you need to think of the minute subtlties of the word instead of seeing the action weilded like one would weild a hatchet.

Christian "submission" is more about creating than taking away anything.

Sparky --

I think you still have some work to do in analyzing WHY you allowed this to happen.

You've been talking a good game for the last few weeks. You JUST got back from your weekend seminar.

And yet -- when it really matters -- you put aside all of your commitments and priorties, and allowed OM to walk all over your marriage and your husband.

There is a limit to Spartan's ability to forgive, Sparky. Why would you risk this? And you KNOW this, and willing chose it anyway.....I think you need to figure out why.

I have my own suspicion. And I mentioned it earlier.
Your need to be admired. What do you think?

Sparky,

I have been trying to figure out something to say to you to encourage you and help you. My problem is that this is totally self inflicted.

You just attended a New Life Weekend to Remember event. Then right after returning you had contact with OM. I know he initiated the contact, but you went along with it. Now you wonder why you might do that.

While at your weekend event, you had a hard time opening up to the group. You withheld a part of yourself. But I would suggest that you are also still holding back a part of yourself from Spartan, keeping a tiny bit secret, mysterious, unknown...

But therein lies the real problem because even a tiny little secret allows you to have a place where you are not known fully and in that place you can lie, not just to others but to yourself as well. It is a fantasy place where reality and the rest of the world cannot influence the way you think or feel and where you can live any way you choose and no one can say otherwise, since it all remains hidden from view.

But it is in those hidden places that we first sin. We all tend to think of sin as crossing some line in the sand that has been drawn by God and as long as we stay on the right side of that line we are safe.

But that line is not one drawn by God at all. It is a line drawn by the devil and does not indicate good on one side and evil on the other but is in fact the line that we follow when were KNOW we are not following God's ways.

In Gen 3 when the serpent came to Adam and Eve he said "You can be just like God..." But he didn't say "by creating things," since we are made in God's image and He is a creative God. He didn't say, "be like God by having compassion on the fallen and loving those who are unlovable" since God is a loving God. He didn't even try to convince Adam and Eve that we could be as powerful as we wanted because God is all powerful and we can be like Him in that way.

No, the way the serpent seduced Adam and Eve was to say that we can "Be just like God, knowing good and evil." Now that phrase seems so benign. The idea that we can recognize what is right and what is wrong seems like such a good thing. It seems as if it were something we knew that we could choose good over evil every single time...

But that isn't what it means. It isn't simply knowing and understanding the difference but thinking that we even have the ability and the right to decide between right and wrong. It isn't understanding and knowledge that got Adam and Eve into trouble, it was thinking that we as people have the right to choose for ourselves what is sin and what is not.

The truth about sin is that it always begins long before the act itself. When David was supposed to be out leading his troops into battle he was instead laying around his palace. He had already shirked the responsibility God had given him and was probably trying to explain and justify what he was doing. He might have said "I'm the KING! I have the right to stay home if I want to." Or maybe he said "I've won hundreds of battles for God (as if it were by his own strength he had fought and won) and NOW it is time for someone else to step up and fight." Perhaps he was tired of trying to lead God's people when they just simply refused to follow and almost never helped out, "I'm tired of doing stuff for people who are so ungrateful and never seem to do anything for themselves. I've been doing stuff for them my whole life and now it's time I did something for myself!"

Whatever he was saying, he was saying it to himself, in some dark and secret place where no one could question the actions of the king. So David was already in full rebellion against God and on that warm spring night, when he should have been out in the field leading his army to victory, he wandered out onto his roof-top. And there he saw Bathsheba. He sent for her, (how do you tell the king "I won't come to your house for dinner") Then David set in motion the events that led to his seduction of Bathsheba, her pregnancy, the attempt to fool her husband into believing the child was his in order to cover up the sin, and eventually the killing of her husband Uriah by sending him into battle and pulling back the support he needed to survive.

But David began sinning long before he even saw Bathsheba. He sinned when he thought that he had the right to decide what God expected of him and not do what God had called him to do. He tried to justify his own wrong behavior and so had shut God out of his life and mind and when we turn from God though it causes Him great sorrow, he will let us have our own way and the results are never very pretty.

The consequences for David's sin began when his sin came to light. He lost a child that never should have been conceived. His son raped his half-sister and David was in no position to claim the moral high ground. His son led a rebellion and almost wrestled away the kingdom and eventually was killed as the result. His family was ripped to pieces and the kingdom itself eventually was torn in two.

And it all began when David thought he could decide to do something other than what God said he should do. Not when he had sex with another man's wife and not when he first called her to come to him or when he walked onto his roof that hot spring evening...David's sin was already in full bloom by that night. His sin was not in just the actions that he did but in his thoughts and those thoughts took a wrong turn long before that fateful night in the spring of the year when kings lead their armies off to war.

The sin is not just the action, Sparky. The actions are the result, the consequences if you will of our sin. We sin not just in deed but in our thoughts and it is in our thoughts that we commit the greatest sins because it is there that we believe the lie of the serpent that we have the right to be like God and decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. It is inside our thoughts that we hide things, try to find a way to justify what we are thinking and make what we know is wrong into what others might accept as right. We redefine what is right and wrong to suit our own selfishness and then we seem surprised when we act the way we do.

The word repent is thought of as a changing of the way we are headed. It is associated most often with a change in actions. But what the word really means is to change our minds. "Re" means to do again. "Pent" is from the word head or thought or to think. So together the two mean to think again or to have a second thought. It literally means to change the way we think, because it is inside, where we hide all of those secrets, deep in our minds that we sin long before any outward manifestations appear to the rest of the world.

So what it means to repent is to change the way we think. It is an opening up of our thoughts to God and to others and refusing to have a dark secret place inside where we can pretend that we are like God and can decide what is right and what is wrong, a place where in secret our thoughts turn to selfishness and we follow a line that we claim we are refusing to cross when in reality we are following it right into the pit.

And the time to decide NOT to sin is long before an action is the difference. It is the renewing of our minds that results in faithfulness, not only to each other but to God as well. Once we have something we withhold, from our spouse or from God, we have already sinned and the act it self is but one tiny step at a time down a slope that we cannot easily return from once the path is chosen.

Have no secrets, Sparky. Have nowhere you can go that you think Spartan can't be with you because God will find you there and show you what is wrong, though once in that secret fantasy world where we are like God, we seldom listen to Him and the results are as predictable as egg shells in the garbage after an omelet for breakfast...

In MB terms where you are right now is not just faced with Spartan having a low Love Bank balance but he has closed your account because you are severely overdrawn. You have written a check against the account that you had no way to cover since the account was barely open and now you find that what you thought would remain hidden came out when you could least afford it. But the problem began in thinking you could keep a part of OM hidden in your thoughts and visit him there in secret without Spartan knowing about it at all. But just having that secret place was your undoing since once OM got to dwell there in your thoughts, you found ways to justify his place and it was but one tiny step from there to justification of contacting him and then of not just telling Spartan that he had called and the slope was so slippery you simply could not stand and slid far down the slope before you had realized where you were.

To your credit, you saw you were sliding and called for help, but it will mean a total change in the way you think about OM and about life itself in order to reach a point where you are not in danger of constantly beginning that slide once more, whether it be OM or some other OM yet to be met.

Gotta go to work...

This has been on my mind ever since Mon.


This is woefully true and the regret encompasses me.


I'm going to journal the things that are going on in my mind so that I can see them on paper. I need tangible answers from myself.


I know you're right. I've always had this need but the admiration that I was craving was unhealthy. I needed to be admired for worldly achievements and things. That perspective is changing and I want to be admired and identified with the essence of me on the inside (Mark1952....I will elaborate more on this in your post to me).

Wow, Mark there is a lot to consider in that post.

Sparkly -

When you phoned you mentioned something about wanting to jump right in with Spart-man to try to love on him and show him you are serious and "fix" (my word, not yours).

I want to caution you against this right now.

The very last time the Wookie had come clean about some things the last thing I wanted to do was to TALK to him about it. Though I knew he needed reassurance, I COULD NOT give that to him because of the gravity of what he'd revealed to me.

I simply was not ready to "work" on things with him.

Quite honestly, too, was the fact that his very neediness (for reassurance) got on my very last nerve (and I was saving THAT particular nerve for something special - like when my girls are teens).

Think of this as YOUR plan A - a role reversal, if you will. During Plan A NO RELATIONSHIP TALK until the other person is ready.

No smothering.

Just "steady as she goes."



And about worldly acheivements - they mean bubkiss when yer walkin' barefoot on the streets of heaven.

This couldn't be further from the truth.


Porous boundaries. I have taken measures to strengthen those boundaries.


It's those dark corners that have been literally suffocating me. Each step that I've taken to remove any toxic reminders have given me more life. I am actually able to see it in my face and that gives me so much hope and strength.



This was one of the topics that was covered at the Weekend to Remember that I took to heart. I learned what the Holy Spirit's job is and that I had been ignoring it. He never failed me, but I continually failed Him by going forth with poor decisions.


The adversary makes it sound so easy. But he does that for a reason and a very high price.


I'm beginning to grasp this, however I wish that my heart was open to it much sooner. There's that regret again.


Complacency gains nothing. I've been complacent with being a mediocre, barely enough to get by wife. All the while complaining and pointing fingers the other direction just as David did. Laundry has been piling, bills have been put off, Spartan's feelings have been cast aside and I was fat with haughtiness.


I feel ill inside being able to relate to this.


My marriage is now divided in two because of my selfish actions. My "kingdom" has been missing the necessary moat for a very long time. If the moat isn't enough, alligators will be added. The drawbridge will only be opened to people that Spartan and I both agree on.


Let the Holy Spirit fill my soul!!!


I shouldn't be shocked at all by the consequences that have come my way....and there have been many that I haven't disclosed here.


I have had a very repentant heart since Monday. Any thoughts that enter my head that distract me from godly ways is banished. I repeat to myself, "I do not owe OM anything".


I can honestly show that I want this by choosing to remain in the light.


When Spartan is ready (he is nowhere near right now), I will confess to him any thoughts that are against our marriage, even at the risk of making him angry.


I picture myself on spiritual videocam, and I make that statement in all seriousness and sincerity.


I don't really deserve too much credit because I let it happen, but the boundaries that I have set in place are much more solid now.

I've been keeping a very quiet, but open existance at home.

My view on worldy things is definitely changed.

Sparky,

I've never posted to you and I actually haven't followed along, but the other day your thread caught my eye. For some reason I was compelled to read. I believe the quote above is why.....

As YUCK as that all sounds, it was a very poinant way to put it.....I love it. I never thought of affairs that way, even knowing everything I know about Dr. H concepts....Thank you for this....

not2fun

not2fun,

Gosh, I'm honored that it meant something to you!

Not all money spends the same, does it?

So was it OM's fault you called him back and didn't tell Spartan that he had called before you reacted to his message?

Was it someone else who was standing there making it seem like it was something you simply had to do or your life was forfeit?

Did Spartan do something that compelled you to return OM's call?

Did the devil make you do it and you had no choice in the matter?

It was a choice that you made and that is why I said it was self-inflicted. You chose to not change your cell phone number before OM tried to call. You chose to listen to his message rather than turning the issue over to Spartan to deal with. You chose to call him back in case it was something incredibly horrifying that he needed to tell you (seems it was horrifying, at least to your husband) as if anything he had to say to you even matters in the scheme of your marriage to Spartan.

Then you chose to not just return his call but to talk to him for a half hour, listening to what he had to say, hearing the lies, the whining about how you abandoned him and it affected you; it got through to you; you felt guilty for turning your back on OM and THEN you suddenly realized what was at stake...

You then chose to block his email, block his phone number, look into changing phone numbers...

But by then it was all damage control...

And you ask, "How can I fix this?"

Answer: You can't. It already happened and we get no Mulligans in life. The bell can't be un-rung and the wound to someone already bleeding can't be uncut.

A better question is, "What can I do to never make that same choice ever again?" It isn't enough to say "I turn it all over to God." as if it is God's problem to clean up the mess we have made of our lives...

How many waywards have we heard from around here that say that the affair was God's will for them because God wanted them to be happy?

My diatribe was intended to make you see that each and every choice we make has consequences though some of them don't appear right away. The first choice we make changes what options we have when the second choice comes around and what we choose then affects the things we have to choose from in the future.

If David had gone to war as he should have done, he would not have been on that roof. He would not have seen Bathsheba and would not have seduced her. He would not have had to decide how or if to cover up his crime and would not have had to try to come up with a way to keep Uriah in the dark. He would not have had to worry about being in a morally inferior position when dealing with his son and would not have had to worry about the death of TWO sons as the result. He would not have had his son leading an armed civil war against the nation. The first choice made all the others necessary. At any time he could have chosen differently but it was that first choice to not do what God expected of him that set the things in motion that led to all the rest.

Choosing to not write a NC letter left doubt in OM’s mind and perhaps yours as well, though if it left any door open from either side it was a poor choice. And then your choice to not change your phone number so OM couldn’t contact you or to block his emails so you couldn’t be reached became a choice that you made. And THAT choice allowed OM access so that when you had your back against the wall you had to choose between calling him back or not calling him at all. It exposed a weakness that could have been protected all along.

The FIRST choice is the one where we go wrong, Sparky. It is when we fail to do what we know we should because it is inconvenient or doesn’t allow us freedom to make future choices that we start down the road to failure. If we choose rightly at first then most other decisions take care of themselves.

If OM cannot ever reach you for any reason and knows that it is impossible to reach you he will not bother to try. What if he has an emergency? There are no emergencies that involve you with OM ever for any reason. It matters not one bit if OM is dead or alive to your marriage. It only matters that he never be allowed to have any part in your life at any time for any reason ever again.

All doors must be nailed shut, boarded over and painted so they can’t be found if you are done with OM. It matters not one bit if it is a front door, back door, side door or a secret door behind the cupboard at the back of the wardrobe. And even when all doors are gone between OM and yourself, the possibility exists that he may find a way to contact you and THEN at THAT SECOND you must decide what you will do to not let him have access. The time to decide that is NOW, not when the day arrives and you are facing a similar decision as to allow contact or not.

Spartan can’t help you with this. It is something you must do if you want to recover your marriage. Spartan can’t ensure your faithfulness; only you can do that.

And this isn’t just about you, Sparky. It is about all of us. We each make choices that result in our having to make much harder choices under less than favorable conditions later. If we choose to do well to begin with then our choices later become much easier since we do not have to choose between a rock and a hard place.

Mark

Solely mine.


Mine again.


Never was.


I chose to take the bait.


OUCH....that truth hurts so bad!


I knew within my heart that God NEVER blessed that relationship. It was damned with the first thought of it entering in my head.


This whole scenario keeps playing out before me on a daily basis. I see couples who are completely at ease with each other and I know in the back of my head that I could have still been them "If I hadn't....."


Absolutely true, Mark. I got addicted to the extra attention that I received from the OM and the fantasy life that I could never in reality have.


Choosing rightly is infinitly easier in the long run and I'm reaping the rewards of that, now.


I owe OM absolutely NOTHING. I will not allow him any space in my head, heart, soul or marriage.


I'm in this for the long haul. When I start feeling weak, I have not only God, but a network of MB friends that I can turn to for support.


I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your wisdom and care. I will embrace your words and put them into action in my life. These principles are as vital as air is to breathe.

But you see, according to Dr Harley (and those of us who have been able to get a buy into the MB methods of building a better marriage buy our spouse that fantasy CAN become reality. The things we dream of, wish for, hope for and long for can be ours WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THE MARRIAGE WE ALREADY HAVE. We don't need to go outside of the relationship and form a new one in order to get those things if we strive to find a way to describe them, negotiate for them and receive them from a spouse who is willing to provide them for us because we are showing him/her extraordinary care.

When my ENs are not being met by my wife, I have a few choices. I can let things go and hope for her to understand what I need. I can turn my unmet expectations into resentment for what I don't have instead of seeing the blessing in what I do have. I can do what so many do and turn to someone else to get my missing ENs met or I can work at making sure that I am meeting my spouse's ENs so that she is willing to meet mine because when someone is in a state of Intimacy, that person IS willing to meet my ENs. Ultimately I am responsible for making sure that my own ENs are being met by my spouse.

Now in cases of alcohol or drug addiction or other true addictions the methods don't really work at all. This is because it takes someone who is willing to operate from a position of Giver at least at times. Since addicts are only willing to allow their Giver to work in exchange for the fulfillment of their addiction, no Love Bank deposits in the world can make them love anyone but their substance or action of choice. They do not take deposits from anyone, only from their chemical source of their addiction.


And yet you went along with it and tried to find a reason that would justify it and make it right somehow or at least acceptable, even though it wasn't even really acceptable to you yourself.

So what are you going to do now and in the future that will prevent you from ever being so selfish ever again? That is what you need to come to grips with here. You attempted to follow God, do all the things people who are forgiven and followers of Christ do and be the perfect wife and mother, and yet you somehow fell for the lie that you could make up your own mind about right and wrong and redefined what even you knew to be wrong as right somehow so that you could do it and not have your brain explode because it was so ludicrous and horrible.

What is going to be different from now until forever that will keep you from ever going down that road ever again? Easy answer is to build a new and better relationship with Spartan and get your ENs met so that you don’t feel neglected and have a desire that he isn't able to fulfill for you so that you don't have to go outside of the marriage ever again. But what if something happens that prevents him from meeting your ENs. What if he gets sick or gets called away for months due to some emergency or natural disaster that requires him to not be there every day for you? What if he is suddenly so ill that he spends his entire life in bed for months or even years and not only can't do anything for you but requires that you do everything for him? What will keep you loyal, faithful and loving only him?

Military wives face just such a situation quite often and though some do end up having an affair many do not. Dave Ramsey points out that the way he figured out what he did about money was to study rich people. He found out what rich people did that was different than what poor folks were doing (including him). He reasoned that if there were things that rich people did differently and he could identify what those things were he might be able to begin doing things that way and so end up like the rich people instead of being poor and broke as he was. So he says if you want to be rich, do what rich people do.

The same applies to a marriage. If you want to be happy as the couple with what you believe to be a perfect marriage, get to know those couples and find out what they do that is different than what you are doing. When you see that old couple walking hand in hand into church on Sunday morning get to know them. Do what THEY do and have done for 50 years. BTW, you will often find that their marriage has not always been as perfect as it seems and that contrary to what Hollywood teaches Love means saying you’re sorry every day of your life and the one thing you are not sorry about is choosing to remain loyal to your spouse.

And you still might be able to have this kind of life. I can tell you with no doubt that you never will if you give up trying. And giving up trying is what leads to affairs in most cases. We don’t have ____(FITB) and so we give up and go looking for it elsewhere.

And that fantasy was just that, a fantasy. It was never real at all. It only existed in your own mind and even the fantasy that played out in OM’s mind did not match what you sought and desired. You never had a real life and relationship with OM at all, only what you each were willing to give to the other in exchange for what you sought. There were no bills to be paid, laundry piled so high there was no way to see past it or sick children in the middle of the night. There were no dishes piled up in the sink instead of placed in the dishwasher, no things said in a moment of pain or fear that destroyed the love between you because you only had real life problems with your husband. Life with OM was simply put on hold until you had to return to reality…

But if Dr Harley is right and MB methods really do work like he describes them then you and Spartan can have that same kind of life together. Will it be perfect? With little doubt I can say that it won’t. But it will be real and not a fantasy.

Mark

MS...

I just read Spartan's thread...I am so very disappointed in you...I do NOT appreciate being lied to...50 phone calls between you and OM last month alone? C'MON!!!

You know, my gut kept telling me that you were still wayward, but I sloughed it off as the last remnants of waywardness...The new nose ring, the flip attitude, the "bar" thread you once started around here, the new iPod thread you started while your husband is still lying on the floor bleeding...All things pointed to wayward...I will not doubt my gut from now on...

Please do not come here and just agree in order to disarm...Come here and get honest...Get real...Drop the facade...

Let us know when you are ready to get serious...

Mrs. W

You might as well skip reading my last post.

Call it another bad investment on my part.

Like I have enough time to waste it for this...

Mark

I love this part what a lesson to learn from MB!! No longer a simple excuse of "BS was not meeting my needs", its a two part owership in the problem here . We Each need to take ownership and ensure that we focus our energy towards having our needs met by our spouse and raising a relationship in trouble flag when they are not being met.
Thanks Mark, your post really spoke to me, so its not all wasted time on your part after all.

I said this to you before, the POSOM is POISON to your family. He doesn't care about your children or your mom or your husband...and from what you've told me of him, I think he is a bona fide psycho in the making...and has DEEP character issues that no amount of sugar coating will make sweet.

Just based on what I know of his background tells me these things.

If you choose to continue contact with him I've no doubts you will end up on the negative end of his rage...if he doesn't take it out on your FAMILY first.

And you willingly brought this into your children's lives.

I'll prolly never forgive you if something happens to your children or your husband or your mother...because you are CHOSING this for them...and they have NO SAY in it because they have the bad luck to be related to you.

I felt SO bad when I told my KiwiJen I was disappointed in her. I felt rotten for days for not having the words to help her see where we were....

But I don't feel a smidge of rotteness right now. I feel fear for your family and for you...and that makes me mad.

I've been a member for many years and this is usually indicative of a new member whose focus is on anything but marriagebuilding.

They use the forum to blog...a network for friendships...shoot, a couple of times they have used the forums to pick up their next affair partners.

They swoop in and put on the initial act required to gain attention to their thread...then they move on to the really important stuff ....like books...ipods...bars...anything OTHER than marriage.

Diversionary...totally diversionary.

jmho
committed

Sparkle, what made you confess this contact and not any of the other 40 calls over the last few months?