This really resonates, writer. Thanks for sharing.

My WW has on multiple occasions said that she thinks I've sabotaged the M at times because she thinks there's a part of me that doesn't want to be married. That deep down, TB wants out. Yes, I should be wary of "WW-speak", but then again, MY actions should illustrate what I truly want. Cut and run? Well, maybe then her comments regarding sabotage were dead on. Stay and fight for the M in the face of adversity and anguish? Well, that certainly paints a different picture.

Thanks again,
TB

But that is at the heart of how we actually make our decisions on who to love, isn't it? If you have a strong need for an attractive spouse, you will fall in love with people who are very attractive. If you have a strong need for openness and honesty, you will fall in love with people who wear their hearts on their sleeves. If you have a strong need for financial support, the ability of a partner to meet those needs will help you fall in love with them.

Is physical attractiveness part of who you are inside? No, of course not. It's only skin (and perhaps bone) deep. But it dictates who falls in love with you based on that attribute. I absolutely love this philosophy because it just makes so much sense in a world of dating and marriage advice that seems designed to be confusing.

The thing I love about the MarriageBuilders program is that it's empirical. Dr. Harley bases his program on things that actually work in real life for a lot of people and minimize failure rates.



It's not as rational as that, I think. It's hard to be aware of the process, you know?


I think this has a lot to do with your emotional needs. Warmth == affection, sense of humor == communication, kindness == possibly domestic support or family support.

Similarly, earning potential == financial support, access to country club == recreational companionship, no? Sure, we commonly regard a number of emotional needs as shallow, particularly "attractive spouse" and "financial support"... but if the love bank balances of people go up when they meet those needs for you, they are still legitimate needs that should not be discounted out of any altruistic or religious dogma.

"It's not who I am inside, but what I do that defines me." --Batman



I'm certain my wife doesn't just love me for who I am as a person. She loves me for what I do.

By the way, I am in no way trying to make excuses for my A. No matter the state of the M, an A is never the answer. There are much better ways I could have and should have handled my problems. My A was a horrible, terrible mistake. It hurt a lot of innocent people and it was wrong.

I was just trying to share where my head was at during the time of my A.

I understand what you are saying, Barnboy, and I agree. So, if we follow that, however, what happens if a better looking /better earning/better sense of humor option comes inot your spouses life, say at work? Some guy that does not have all the energy sapping duites of providing for kids, paying bills, working one's butt off?
See, that is what happened to me, although I think I am smarter and better looking, and I clearly make more $$ than the OM.
But, with the advantage of being younger, single, and unencumbered by responsibilities, this guy was more attractive. So, the cost benefit deal went in his favor and there was squat I could do about it. Moreover, I don't feel that I should have been required to do anything about it. Should i quit my job so i could spend hours at the gym or run around at the bar at night and be the life of the party?
I think BSs are at such a disadvantage to the AP if their WS does not have the depth to have more than a mere cost/benefit analysis re the superficial stuff.
How does a woman that has had 4 kids compete with some young super model if her H is big on attractivenss in his analysis/ Why get married if it is just a cost/benefit deal, as there will always be someone that has more benefit and less costs somewhere.

Perhaps. I would say that I was arguing against making what is known as a fundamental attribution error, which is a fairly common cognitive bias.

Isn't all cognition biased?

That's exactly the fight I fought. He was on sabbatical and had all the time in the world to chat my wife up one to three hours per day late at night.

He met my wife's top emotional need: intimate conversation. He met it better than I could because he was there. Ultimately, competing with him met meeting that need, among others, better than he possibly could. My FWW returned to me in spirit, but it was a close thing for a month after D-Day.

This is why part of Dr. Harley's recommendation is to only allow our spouses, among all members of the opposite sex, to fill our needs for intimate conversation, recreational companionship, sexual fulfillment, and affection. Those four tend to deposit so many love units that it's easy to fall in love with the person providing them.

In a more general sense, in Surviving An Affair, Dr. Harley advises that you make it easy for your spouse, and relatively difficult for others, to deposit love units. To me, that encompasses the philosophy of committing to a marriage: for the rest of your life, you make it hard for anybody other than your spouse to deposit enough love units for you to fall in love with them.

This is the purpose Extraordinary Precautions, you know? They should be in place for couples who haven't yet had an affair, as Dr. Harley outlines in "His Needs, Her Needs". If you know you have a strong need for an attractive spouse, you do not make friends with very attractive members of the opposite sex. If you know you have a strong need for financial support, you do not become close friends with wealthy members of the opposite sex.

Know your strengths. Know your weaknesses.


No, but you can determine her top five emotional needs, your top five emotional needs, and fill hers as hard as you can while not allowing other people to fill the top five that your spouse fills.

That's the point of putting in good personal boundaries, extraordinary precautions against an affair, meeting one another's needs, and avoiding Love Busters: to ensure that NOBODY is more attractive to you than your spouse.

Ditto

That's fine, Barnboy, as far as it applies to me. But, one cannot force another to impose those boundaries on herself,although clearly she should. One cannot force another to let you meet her needs when you are constantly pushed away. Of course, IMO,I was dealing with a wife who is NPD or BPD or some combo platter. Your mileage may vary.

Psychiatric problems/conditions are not found on the outcome bell curve when implementing MB Plans.
((( hugs 4 Zel )))

Definitely outliers...

Normal distributions don't apply to those things that are not normal.

I agree with you Z....WHY DO THESE PEOPLE GET MARRIED?...When I married My H, there were better options out there for me and for WH. For me I was done looking and once I married my H, that was it for me, I loved HIM.....When he worked out, when he didnt, when he made good money, when he didnt, when he met my needs and when he didnt...There is always someone better out there...Do we really have to spend our lives worrying if our spouses are gonna meet someone better and leave their family...We get older, have more responsibilites, have children and are not always at our best or worst....

Sorry if I went off a little, but this really pisses me off....

Harley's emotional needs theory can be applied perfectly along with a timeline of my exWW's descent into madness with the POSOM.

Summer 2007 - Winter 2008 - POSOM would come over and help my exWW with her horses, or exWW would help POSOM with his horses. Thus POSOM was beginning to make deposits into exWW's recreational companionship account

Winter 2008 - Spring 2008 - POSOM and exWW started to spend hours from about 8pm - 1am working with breeding my exWW's ponies. Plus, POSOM was in all sorts of legal trouble with his dad. Now, Recreational Companionship is ratcheting up, intimate conversation is getting started. Also, 8pm -10pm was the time exWW and I usually spent together nightly. Now, that time is being monopolized by POSOM. At this point, the recreational companionship LB is being filled quickly by POSOM, and conversation is starting to get a positive balance. Meanwhile, my account with exWW is starting to drain.

June 2008 - POSOM moves into our tenent house. POSOM knows exactly what he is doing. He watches me for a week, learns my domestic support routine. THen, he does what I usually do around the house and farm. Except, he tells exWW how he does it better than me. As I sit around the house surfing the internet since I don't have anything to do, POSOM is planting stuff in exWW's head how I am a lazy bum and do nothing. Now, he is totally monopolizing exWW's time and overtly keeping her away from me.


They would go out on moonlit horse rides while I was sitting watching TV. ExWW wouldn't come into the house until 1 or 2 am. For example, the few times during July 08 that exWW wasn't with POSOM late at night, POSOM would knock on the door of our house and tell exWW there was something wrong with a horse or he heard some horses fighting. By the time exWW came back to the house, she was in a VERY different mood. Now, the recreational needs banks is overflowing, the conversation EN is overflowing, the domestic support EN is filling fast, and possible the SF EN is starting to fill. It's hard not to see why - POSOM is spending 20 hours a day with exWW and I am only spending about 1 hour with her.


July 24 2008- exWW lays into me for getting her up late for the DE State Fair Horse Show. I show up after jury duty (all week exWW is chewing me out for not getting out of Jury Duty). ExWW is madder than a hornet. She is cursing out DS6, and every 10 minutes or so she goes and hangs out with POSOM at the horse trailer. After the kids are done showing, the original plan was for POSOM to take the horses back to the farm and the 4 of us to ride the rides at the fair. ExWW is supposedly so mad at me she decides to go home with POSOM. I take the kids on the rides at the fair in a precursor to what my life with them is now. I am convinced that they consumated the affair that night.

July 25th - I get my scheduled vasectomy. ExWW and I had been joking about it for weeks. I call her after the surgury to come pick me up and she says she forgot all about it.

July 26th - exWW is absurdly horny. Unfortunatly, my tools were broken so to speak from the day before. I spent about 2 hours using other methods on her to no avail. The events from the state fair and this night has me convinced that the affair went physical on July 24th.

July 27th - we go shopping at Target. ExWW takes me into the dressing room with her to try on some VERY racy lingerie to see how I like it. We head to the pharmacy aisle and we decide to sample some of KY's newest offerings to enhance intimacy. She gives me the sly smile and tells me there are other ways...I'm thinking HOT DAMN!!!!

That night, POSOM calls again and exWW goes out with him at about 10pm. I sit in bed for a couple of hours, fall asleep, wake at 3am. No exWW. I go outside, check the tenant house - no exWW or POSOM in the tenant house. I yell for exWW. 10 minutes later she comes walking down from the top field. 1st thing she says is POSOM is in the tenant house. She then tells me that one of the horses was colicing and she was with her. We go to bed and I ask her if she wants to do what we planned. She says she is sore down there.

The next night she asks for a divorce. The affair is complete. POSOM is meeting Rec Companionship, Conversation, Domestic Support, and SF. I am meeting none. I'm able to put a lot of this together because everything happened right in front of me. POSOM was a relative, much older, and was thus the perfect cover. It's also an example of the power of gaslighting. Every time I would ask exWW why she was spending so much time with POSOM, she would say he's my cousin, he's a relative, etc, etc, etc.

psubiker,thanks for sharing this - it makes such perfect sense (a timeline is something I am particularly struggeling with in my situation) - I am so sorry though it happened right in front of you

No, not by definition. But yes, virtually all people are subject to various cognitive biases.

The fundamental attribution error is also known as the actor-observer bias. A simple example of an actor-observer bias would be say that I observe a person working on there car every weekend. He's always out there working on his car. What explains this behavior. Say I conclude he is just a "gearhead". This is potentially a fundamental attribution error, in which I attribute the behavior to the man's disposition.

Another completely plausible explanation is that he is a traveling salesmen and must make long drives during the week, and the reason he is working on his car is to ensure the tire pressure is fine, plenty of fluids, etc. It is his situation that drives the behavior, not his disposition.

Actor-oberver bias tends to show that people, when they are the actor in a behavior tend to put more weight on the situation as an explanation of behavior. It further shows that when people are the observer, they tend to put more weight on the disposition of the actor as an explanation of the behaviore.

This thread started by saying their are two different dipositions of WW's that can be indentified from a list of their behaviors. And this may in fact be true. But it is also equally plausible that there behaviors can be explained by the actors being in different situations.

The only reason I even ponder this, is because I think it's pretty important in determining whether recovery is possible or what type of recovery is possible. Because the question we all struggle with when considering our WS's is are they just a cheater (disposition) or did they cheat because of the situation. If it's the former, then I fear their is no hope, if it's the later, then addressing the circumstances behind the cheating will address the issue.

Indeed.

Does this understanding help you find answers to your own situation?

Intersting. But, doesn't the decision to put oneself in a certain situation say something about one's fundamental character?
For example, the man's decision to be a travelling salesman in the first place, which, therefore requires he check tires etc. would seem to indicate that tire checking and the like may be things he does not mind doing.

Yes

It could.

I think the best way to determine if it is situational or intrinsic character is to see what they do after D-Day, long term. A person with a conscience, even if he or she has behaved abominally, will, at some point be bothered enough to acknowledge the pain he or she has causesd others.
Of course, this does not help when trying to determine who you are dealing with during an affair and for a time thereafter.
4 years post discovery for me and I have yet to see one sign of remorse. Guess I got it right.