sorry, SIHW, but I don't answer hypotheticals, and I don't speak for Marriage Builders, hun.

Well I guess we will never know if Marriage Builders can help everyone in the world then.

I have noticed that the "other culture" angle seems to be a common rationalization embraced by those who live[d] together. It is like whistling past the graveyard and unfortunately does nothing to erase the fact that there is an 85% divorce rate amongst those who live together before marriage.

I guess not.

I've been following along amusedly all day, but haven't said anything.

I don't think MB principles can be applied to everyone in the world. What about cultures where it's acceptable for men to have more than one wife? It would be difficult, I think, to apply these principles to a harem sort of situation.

As far as people in primitive cultures who do not have the ability to get married - I doubt seriously that that's going to be the situation of anyone with access to the internet, and thus, the MB forum. I would guess that most of the developed world has some sort of legally established marital relationship.

The fact is that the OP could have married his girlfriend and, for whatever reason, didn't. Now, she is apparently married to someone else. She has chosen to enter into a legally recognized relationship with another man. She was never in a legally recognized relationship with the OP. If she is married, and he continues to pursue a relationship with her, he becomes the OM because he is intruding on someone else's marriage.

SIHW

"There are still regions in the world where people marry without pieces of paper or laws binding them."

The problem is we don't live in one of those regions. Or does the original Poster.

He was not willing to brand her/put a wedding ring on her finger.

Living together is not the same as being married. That final commitment was never made.

Living together is just full time dating. This arrangement just facilitates the ease at which one can get laid as often as one wants.

People can commit to live as man and wife on there own. Ship wrecked on an uncharted island, no hope of being found. Or where the man and woman live it�s so remote there is no priest, no judge, no church. Places as these are getting harder and harder to find in this world these days.

This couple in the western world as all others that have chosen to live together with a church on one corner and a jewelry store on the corner other have no excuse for not committing to get married.

They just were not only unwilling to get married, they were unwilling to commit, and they were fogged up in that they were unwilling to admit that they refused to make the full and final commitment.

EXCUSE ME, you two, but I addressed this point earlier in the thread.

You see: if you want to know the right answer, just ask me.

Dr Harley talks about traditional marriage as defined in our Western, Christian-based societies. He does not claim that the scope of his plans covers every model of marriage that has ever existed, because he has not researched those models. I do believe that he has said that MB can create romantic, mutually fulfilling, happy marriages even in arranged marriages where there was no romantic love to begin with, but those marriages must be exclusive between one man and one woman. Thus the programme is not designed for polygamous cultures, where having more than one spouse (usually a wife) is perfectly legal, nor for swingers, who reject the model of a sexually exclusive relationship.

As for the Amazonians: if the arrangement that you describe is a legitimate marriage for that culture, then the couple is married. That does not mean that any other legal jurisdiction would recognise the legality of their marriage, but their own culture would. If they were to seek marriage counselling in their society, they would be recognised as married and given advice based on the assumptions of what marriage means to that society. They could hardly expect to go outside their culture to receive effective and appropriate marriage counselling, if that counselling was based on a wholly different set of assumptions about marriage.

America (and the UK, where I am) has a recognised and established concept of legal marriage. If you have gone through the legal procedure you are married. If you have not, you are not. Marriage in the US carries certain assumptions within it, including being a permanent and sexually exclusive relationship of extraordinary care between one man and one woman (Dr Harley).

MB has been researched on, and is designed for, such marriages, not for the world's variety, and not for living together situations.

All, please see the moodiness BW thread. IT APPLIES HERE. Of course they were in a committed relationship for 9 years similar to a christian based marriage. Maybe they got together in a witcan ceremony by a tree w/ garlic hanging from their necks? IDK I'm sure they held themselves out as married, so MB plan A and B can apply assuming she hasn't married the OM. That is the FACTS....DUDE

Dude, are you ready to come out of your room and be nice?

Yeah, how's things w/ you Cane? How are you doing? DUDE

Wiccan. Not witcan.

Don't see how it matters anyway. It's obvious that the man saw what was posted and bolted.

>All, please see the moodiness BW thread. IT APPLIES HERE.

As for that, I also don't see how moodiness has ANYTHING to do with this.

But perhaps I'm just hormonal or something.

Gah.

SC, it's obvious that he's NOT ready.

THANK YOU Sugar for giving such a detailed answer to my original question.

So if MB is based for christian marriages of the western world...would you say it holds more relevance for marriages after a certain time period? As we know generations change through time and things are much different than those of our forfathers. Also with the roles of women changing from inside the home to the work force of america. What time period would best suit MB? What I mean is I know deffinatly the current marriages but what would be the earliest period of marriage MB would cover?

(Curiousity based and nothing else)

I'm tip top, thank you for asking, but YOU, young man, are taking your life in your hands annoying all these moody women.

I'll just say the roller coaster ride for some on here are more obvious than others. Thanks for the wiccan spelling correction...DUDE

They love me...I'm their (f)WH they always wanted to "tell off" but don't want to LB!! hehe

>...I'm their (f)WH

Not even close.

Not even!!!

I couldn't find it answered here--did the OP and the non-wife have children together?

If she's married, it doesn't make him betrayed, it makes him a stalker.

It's my pleasure, but is that polite way of saying that I ramble on?!

Okay, that's true.

Well, hold on, I did not say "Christian marriages". I said

Dr Harley speaks of "traditional marriage", not "Christian marriage". He makes clear that he and his wife are Christians, and I believe that he refers to Biblical guidance for those who want it (my copy of SaA is upstairs somewhere, but I believe there is a section in there, and on this web site) but he does not offer his counsel to only Christian marriages.

I'm wary of assuming a role of Dr Harley's official interpreter (but if Dr Harley would like to offer me that role I'd be happy!)

That said, my reading of Dr Harley's descriptions (picked up here and there; I have not read the whole Defending book) are that he favours traditional roles because they have worked over many generations.

Dr Harley himself wrote on this forum only yesterday of his recognition that men and women have different emotional needs.

That does not sound like a particularly traditionalist view at first glance, but I believe that it is, because it goes against the current orthodoxy that "men" and "women" are social constructions. One brand of feminism has it that "male" and "female" are biological facts that can usually be established at birth. However, sex means nothing outside the reproductive area. Our sex does not determine our behaviour, talents or "emotional needs". Behaviour etc is something that is socially conditioned, and women have been oppressed by that conditioning. Hence they must not seek men to be the breadwinners, protectors, disciplinarians, furniture movers or mammoth-slayers. They do not need men to be those things - they just think they do because that is what they have been taught.

Dr Harley is very clever, in my view, at staying out of feminist arguments but I detect an opinion that feminism and changing roles have not done marriage many favours, and he is not sure that men or women are particularly happy with the changes, either.

I see his polite reticence about feminism here:

If I would dare put words into the great Dr's mouth even more, I would say that he would not tell women to get back to the kitchen, and he would not say that real men do not change nappies. He does not tell us how to live. But subtly, I think he makes us question how we have chosen to live (as individuals, and as a society) and asks us whether modern marriage has made us happy.

Husbands and wives live separate, independent lives and do not answer to each other for how they spend their time or their money, and then they wonder how their IB led to breakdown of their marriage. They claim their rights to nights out with the boys or girls, separate holidays, socialising with colleagues after work instead of coming home, and then wonder how a friendship turned into an affair.

No IB, total POJA, spending practically all non-working time together, no RC with other people...most, if not all Harley principles take us back to more traditional marriages than the ones many of us have now.

I was a bit of a loony feminist in my youth and though I gave most of it up when I moved with with my H, Dr Harley's views have made me think about all this again.