I would eliminate all contact, via phone or in person unless your husband is by your side and even that might need to change in the future.

It is the innocent contact while getting some EN met that leads to falling for someone. You don't even have to knowingly participate in flirting and sexual banter for it to get to a point where stopping is hard, too hard when our own spouse is not meeting some specific EN for us.

And we don't even have to have a reason in our mind that would justify it to begin with, we just have to recognize it and run from it.

There are going to be people from time to time that come into our lives that we just simply hit it off with as if there was some magic in the moment. It might be a strong physical reaction/attraction or just a feeling of "this person is really cool." In almost every one of these cases nothing will come of the attraction and we just move on with our life. But if we linger in the moment, if we begin to think of "what if" in regard to this person, we need to recognize that at once and move away quickly.

If we are getting something from this person in the way of ENs of any kind whether attraction or conversation or honesty, it can become quite easy to start to justify continuing down the road we know we are on. An attraction becomes a crush becomes an obsession becomes an affair with no real concept of how we got there.

There was a thread a while ago about the ten second rule. In the early stages of any relationship we make conscious decisions to move one direction or another in the relationship. When something is leading us in the wrong direction, we have about ten seconds to make up our minds. We either back away from the inappropriate behavior or we engage in it and once that road is in front of us, it becomes harder with each step to turn around and run.

So when my cute 20 something coworker suggests I join her for a drink after work, it is at THAT instant in time I need to decide to remain faithful to my wife. It isn't that I necessarily want to have an affair with her but simply going out for drinks with a women that could lead to a problem. Or when that new girl in the office touches my arm as she hands me a cup of coffee fixed just the way I like it, that is the moment when I decide if I am going to remain faithful or if I am willing to flirt not with her, but with disaster for my marriage.

It isn't the first ten seconds in the relationship that count but the first ten seconds in which we know there could be something more than the innocent act before us. That is when we have to see it as dangerous and step away.

My wife seldom travels for work, but it does come up sometimes. But if she were to suddenly have to begin traveling with one of the men she works with, it would be a huge problem for me. It isn't even a matter of trusting her, but that I could identify a man and woman travelling together, spending hours together in a car, eating together, sharing strategies for business together etc as being a huge potential for a lowering of boundaries. Her affair in 05/06 was not with someone she would normally be attracted to. The only thing they had in common was talking about idle chit-chat at the mailbox or over the back fence. I could see the trouble ahead but she couldn't and she ended up ready to divorce and leave me for a guy she can't even speak the name of today without gagging. She let her boundaries down because it was all innocent behavior and it nearly led to disaster.

Ultimately it is having boundaries that prevent us from heading toward a problem more than a line we will not cross that will prevent us from doing what we know we should not and had no intention of doing when we began. It isn't our bodies nor our hearts we have to stop, but our minds...

Affairs happen not so much when we act, but when we don't.

Mark

Mark,

Thanks. I think I understand boundaries a lot better now and that I don't necessarily have to be doing or saying something wrong in order to go down a wrong path.

And at first I couldn't figure out what EN of mine he could have been meeting until you said it - conversation. Not that my husband doesn't talk to me, it's just that all his online game playing has given us less to talk about, that is until fairly recently as he's starting to become more involved in some of what I like to do. So that's improving now anyway.

Aph,

That's the thing about ENs. It doesn't matter which of our ENs is being met, even what might be number 2 or 3 or even number 10. As long as we are letting someone meet them for us, that person is making Love Bank deposits.

If my # 1 EN is Recreational Companionship and my favorite activity is fishing, I just simply can't let myself go fishing with a woman who enjoys it as much as I do unless that woman is my wife. I have a friend who enjoys fishing but has little time to go. His wife enjoys it as much or more than he does. I have been fishing with him and once with both of them, but I would never consider going fishing with her even if he and my wife both said it was an OK thing to do since we are "just friends." It would be asking for trouble.

For some the activity might be dancing to live music. That would be trouble for my wife. She just can't go out dancing alone or even with a group of women unless it is agreed ahead of time that they will turn down any and all offers from any men that might ask them to dance. (And they DO get offers) Even that is asking for trouble as well IMO because she also gets a big lift from the attention (less of a problem now than when she was a size 4 and looked 20 years younger than she really is) and once she's had a few drinks she might not be so willing to say “No” to an offer to dance...The dancing isn't the problem; the filling her LB$ is the problem and that happens when she gets to dance and has praise heaped on her for the way she dances and looks.

So the solution is to not engage in anything that fills our LB$ and the real trick is to identify what fills our LB$ the quickest and avoid repeatedly allowing someone to fill that EN so that they can never build a LB$ balance that exceeds the romantic threshold.


If conversation is your number one EN and a close second is O&H, then open and honest communication with the same guy for more than but a few minutes has to be something to avoid. It's like hypothermia. The first sign that you are too cold to function properly is when your teeth begin to chatter and then your body temperature has already dropped. You have to get to some place warm because your body is already restricting the blood supply to your brain and so your brain is not working to full capacity. Your decisions are already impaired. If you don't take action to warm up, you will eventually not be able to take action and then you will not make it unless someone else comes along to drag you to safety.

And you don't have to be in minus 30 temperatures to get hypothermia either. 75 degree water will kill you just as surely as 35 degree water. 75 degree water feels pretty nice on a hot summer day but if we were to spend the entire night floating in it with the sun gone, the temperature dropping and having to circulate more blood to our arms and legs to stay afloat and so speed up the cooling process, our body cools even faster. The 35 degree water will just kill you quicker.

So even minor ENs met over and over again by the same person tend to accumulate until the person has established a tidy sum in our LB$ and THEN we don’t want to do without it and it is too late. This is why an affair is thought of as an addiction. Once that barrier has been crossed, our brains just aren’t working rationally any more and it takes someone else pulling us out of harm's way to save us from ourselves. We have to disengage early enough to avoid allowing the person from making that big of a deposit, even with a lot of small ones.

It's really hard when you already like someone. But THAT is a sign that they ARE meeting some EN because we don't like people that don't meet some EN that we have. Couple it with a physical attraction and it is deadly to our marriage. It's easier when the person acts like a jerk every once in a while, but if we forgive them for being a jerk too easily we're already in trouble.

The problem isn't where you are but where you're headed...

I know you know this. Just a reminder for all of us.


Mark

Mark,

May I copy this post immediately above into the Memorable Posts thread? I think it's a keeper.

L4,

Just bookmark it or something. I think Pep is the keeper of the notable posts thread if that is what you are thinking about.

I trust her judgment.

I have been so honored before...

Mark

Been a while since we heard from you. How goes it?

Mark

Hi Mark, everyone.

Actually, we have a serious problem, which is why I came back here. Maybe you can recommend another place to post this where more people will see it. But my husband has lost both his sex drive and ability to orgasm. This is true even when I'm not there. (He no longer masturbates - not worth the trouble and doesn't feel like it anyway.) He's been to two doctors who say his hormone levels are fine, that there is nothing medically wrong and that there is no medical treatment. He insists that everything else with us is fine and that it must be medical. I'm completely stumped. Anybody got any ideas?

Contact this doctor at www.goodhormonehealth.com and see what he says. I have a serious endocrine problem and he is by far the best endo, probably in the country.

He's phenomenal. Really, truly.

Have you considered it could be depression?

Pepperband,

His mood is not affected, though. He's in a good mood most of the time. No signs of depression.

What ARE his testo levels?

My BIL was told recently that his are normal, although at the low end of normal. He insisted he wanted testosterone and HIS LIFE IS TOTALLY CHANGED!!!!!

Aph,

Not my area of expertise so I'm afraid I won't be of much help.

What's the doctor got to say about the little blue pill?

Good to see ya around, BTW, even if it's for help with a problem.

Mark

MarriedForever,

That particular doctor is very far from us, but it does give me an idea to try a local endocrinologist. The doctors he saw before were urologists and I think the only hormone they tested for was testosterone, so maybe we can try this. Thanks so much!

Aph:

I'd like to echo other posters - if he can see an endo and/or a specialist in male sexual dysfunction (not "just" a urologist), he's likely to get a more thorough evaluation. My first husband went through this and testosterone numbers don't always tell the story. Hormonal balance is a pretty delicate state of affairs. You want a physician with alot of background and experience in the area.

Good luck!

-Miriam

Sorry, guys...I meant to reply long ago but haven't been at the boards. Also, last time I came the boards were down!

Anyway, it turns out that although my husband's testosterone levels were normal according to one test, the testosterone was binding to some other stuff and causing it to leave his system too quickly! So he got some drugs and they WORK! Took a few weeks to work but everything is just fine now. What a relief!

We've moved into a bigger place since then and want to try to have another baby. Unfortunately, every time I take an ovulation home test it's negative. I'm hoping I've just been missing the right day or something so I'm doing every day this cycle and if I don't catch it, I guess I'm going to the doctor. I didn't expect to have this much trouble as I'm only 39. I guess the good thing is that I've already got 2 great kids so if it doesn't happen it's not a disaster. But maybe I'm worrying for nothing. I'll keep you posted.

Apharesis,

What a great update!

Another baby at 39? 40 by the time he or she is born? You guys nuts?

JK in case you had any doubts...

So beyond the SF part, how's the rest of the marriage doing these days?

Good to hear from you. Keep us updated.

Mark

Mark,

It's going great. I wish we could go out alone together more often, but my work hours have been cut down to almost nothing so no money for babysitting. I'd look for another job, but there's a chance he could get promoted which would mean moving out of state again - and I have no idea where, when or even if. On the plus side, he works at home a couple days a week so once in a while we go out to lunch together. Can't complain

So I take it being together is paying off, huh?

HAPPY BABYDANCING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love,
Kimmy

Yes, nothing beats being together