Hi Mark,
Thanks for taking the time to write these insightful posts. I�ve read what you�ve wrote here quite a few times and I am trying to assimilating your message.
Here�s more info about my case so that you can better gauge our state:

Since we began working the MB program, we have put emphasis on the intimate ENs. We were spending a good amount of UA time together for a couple of months. WW claims that it was working great for her. Unfortunately, I can�t say the same. She has been trying to provide me with plenty of affection, SF and RC. I mean, it feels OK when we are meeting each other�s IENs but I can�t say that my LB$ is sustaining growth. What seems to get a lasting bang is when I feel she�s opening her guarded feelings to me. When she�s meeting ENs like SF and RC it feels really nice but the results are not as remarkable.

This is very true. I�ll keep it present.

I have rarely brought the A up in over three months. Back in Nov we�ve had some conversations about the What, When, Where (not Why) of the A. However, I should mention that I still feel that there may be discrepancies in her explanation. So I find myself having a feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop. What bothers me is not the specifics of undisclosed actions but the lies. I sense that I may be yet another BS victim of trickle truth.

This is a very interesting angle of the POJA. I�ll make note of it.

We�ve done 14 sessions with Steve since Oct when we started coaching with him. We�ve completed the EN and LB questionnaires and quite a few assignments under Steve�s supervision. Additionally, we attended the MB weekend in Jan.

I am still in a self-protection mode and very cautious about meeting her needs. At this time, I don�t think it is cost effective to perform a stellar plan A. For the time being I�ll put about the same effort she�s putting and avoid LBs. I�ll implement this tactic while I regroup and/or put my ducks in a row.

--ElCamino72

They are great resources but not critical to the bottom line.

--ElCamino72

Hi schtoop, thanks for the encouragement. Her anger seems to be deeply rooted. The A was active for more than a year and a half but her relationship with OM goes back to even before I have met her 15 years ago. They had a previous romantic relationship unbeknownst to me. When I look back, I can say that she had been clearly fueling her anger towards me and putting herself in a self-justification position for at least six years. All this negativity she has built up towards me might take a LONG time to fade away. It�s hard to say if I am going to be around when or if the anger ever goes away.

--ElCamino72

Yesterday I went to my parents and while I was out she changed her hairstyle which is a big trigger. She knows how much that bothers me so I took it as a direct attempt to cross my boundaries.

Later that night, I took her hairdryer and smash it to pieces with a hammer. She was about to go to sleep and heard the noise. When she came and asked what was going on, I just responded: "I'm just relieving some stress" and continued with my business without saying anything else.

I didn't feel like I really lost my temper. It was more like I had to consciously get some pressure out of my system. While I don't advocate this type of action, I gotta say that doing so felt good. I don't know if it's right or wrong but I don't feel much guilt. It's like beating up somebody who is trying to mug you.

--ElCamino72

You know, EC, I expected someone else to weigh in on this, but since they haven't as of yet, I guess it is up to me.

While you say that your emotions were under control, all you really controlled was the angry verbiage that you could have used to attack her directly.

I think you let a great teaching moment, or an "Ah-ha" moment slip through your fingers. I think it could have been an opportunity to state what a trigger it was, why it was a trigger and explain how you were hurt by it because of the memories associated with it. This would give her an opportunity to consider her actions from your POV rather that fueling her further anger and entitlement.

Even though left unexpressed verbally, it began with a SD, turned into a DJ and ended with an AO that did great damage to any efforts you were making toward establishing a high Love Bank balance.

What I'm tellin' ya is that it only takes one aweshit to wipe out ten thousand attaboyz...

JMO and we'll see what Steve might say if you talk to him about it.

I understand that it felt good. That's what our Taker is trying to do, make us feel good. It just isn't always conducive to sustaining the feeling of romantic love in our relationship. I'd have liked to have beat the crap out of OM too, but the best that would have gotten me was arrested and jailed.

So what has transpired since this incident?

Mark

Mark,

I have your opinion in very high esteem and I appreciate you taking the time to comment on my situation.

I think I understand what you're saying. I committed a bunch of LBs in an attempt to educate my WW which I know won't work. My actions could only have had a negative effect on my WW.

Now here's the "but": I can't deny that it felt good and that I am still inclined to repel future abuse if necessary. I recognize that this is my taker in action. What is not clear to me is how I can effectively protect myself from continued and deliberate abuse without my taker being in the forefront. Right or wrong, I am just saying what is my current mindset.

I really don't know what else to state to my WW about the triggers. I have tried way too many times to explain her how much these memories bother me. I believe that Steve has explained it to her as well. But she still believes that I am attempting to control her. So we just keep going in circles.

This situation is extremely unhealthy. I know that I can't make her do what I want and the chances of her changing when I need it are not looking good. The option of removing myself from all this craziness is making more sense right now.

--ElCamino72

EC,

What you have to separate to get through this is your emotional response and returning the hurt in like kind. You don't have to hurt her just because you feel hurt.

Boundaries that try to change what other people do to us seldom work. Instead what we need to establish is a boundary that protects us from being hurt. If she changes hair color or style and that triggers you there are really two parts to that. One is the IB to begin with which is where the trigger starts. Her current IB causes you to recall her past IB which led to an affair and you being hurt. Hurting her in return will not stop this cycle. What it will do is cause her to feel even more independent or at least as if she needs to be more independent in order to be happy. Your response reinforces her IB.

But if you could withdraw physically and even emotionally, not just for the sake of withdrawing and never for the purpose of manipulating or hurting her by doing so, but simply step back, process the current event on its own merits and contents without linking it to the affair itself it would prevent you from suffering the devastation of the affair all over again. This would allow you to formulate a way to express your unhappiness and the fact that you feel threatened by her IB in a way that she might actually hear what you are saying and then make a choice to either change or not.

When you take it upon yourself to "handle" a problem, then it is yours to solve. It is only by letting her fix what is under her realm of influence that you can heal as a couple. As long as you are making her issues your problem she isn't fixing anything.

If I had you hold your hand out in front of you and then I began to push on it, what would you do?

You would no doubt push back! It is an instinctive response. She pushes you and you push back. But the other way works the same as well. If you attempt to push her harder to change without giving her something specific that can be fixed by her or if you constantly take that thing from her control and into yours, then she will never do any more than resist the change and push right back against you.

She's attached to the rope already. Start pulling her in rather than trying to push the rope up the hill. Keep taking up the slack until she is right there beside you.

What I think some miss in the analogy of the Giver and the Taker is that our Taker is more than willing for our spouse to be unhappy. It is our Taker that is supposed to ensure that we get what we need to be happy, yet the methods it uses seldom get us what we really need. Instead we hurt our spouse by trying to force the issue.

On the other hand, our Giver must be controlled as well or it will let us become unhappy in order to make our spouse happy. But this does not imply a balancing act between Giver and Taker. It requires controlling BOTH of them by using rational thought and logic instead of letting the emotional part of our brain have free reign. It is in this emotional realm where the Giver and Taker both reside and decisions need to be made regarding our lives based on reality and data rather than on mere emotional content.

Mark

Everything else set aside, that was a REALLY SCARY reaction to any situation. If my H had done that, I would have quietly left the house and not returned until he went through some anger management treatment. That seems like serious bottled up rage to me and I would be fearful that the next time it might be directed at me.

God's Blessings,

Say

Hello say,

I think there's a distinction between an AO and rage. There's no excuse for my AO but I can't say that this incident involved rage or physical threat to anyone.

What your comment made me think is that it would be REALLY SCARY if my WW would falsely accuse me of DV. In that sense, I need to be more careful.

Thanks for your comments.

--ElCamino72

What Pep said, PLUS go buy her another one.

EC, that was really outrageous and it would scare the hell out of most women. I know it upset your wife and was a huge lovebuster.

I knew it even before your wife said it was.

"But she love busted too..."

Not an excuse to do wrong.

EVER...

Taker talkin'.

AOs always hurt our spouse.

ALWAYS...

That is why they are Love Busters, because they hurt our spouse.

Everything we do affects our spouse either positively or negatively.

MAXIMIZE the positive...

ELIMINATE the negative.

Meet ENs; avoid Love Busters. Follow POJA (even when she doesn't) and be honest, especially emotionally honest (without love busting)

SDs and DJs are the same as AOs BTW and much harder to see in our actions.

IB is what hurt you and you hurt her with the AO and maybe a bit of a DJ since you felt that she meant to hurt you when she was really just being thoughtless (as in not thinking about you)

Oh, and EC, you two need regular date nights when you can do the RC, Affection, Conversation, SF thing...

Makes all the difference in the way the program works. In fact, when the program seems to not be working, I'd say the problem is always not enough UA time meeting the 4 IENs.

Her hair should be back to curly by now. Thank her, hold her, tell her you're sorry about the hair dryer and it won't happen again...

And maybe buy her a new one...

Mark

El Camino:

Hello.


Yes.

I agree totally with everything that Mark has said. I see that you do as well and that is a very good thing.

I have only one thing to add.

She may be expecting the romance from you. That is her cultural heritage and she cannot escape it at this time.

There is something here that is a small thing, often overlooked, that might help.

Maybe treating this as a new romance instead of the recovery of the old one. Get it? Maybe just in small ways at first.

So when you replace the hair dryer, maybe you include the rose. She expects the passion from you, and you gave her the passion of marriage and control. Maybe the passion of courtship would help.

You think?

Larry

This is definitely (100%) rage. It is a double whammy: Not only is it an angry outburst, but you say something negative about her appearance as well. That's two LB's in one fell swoop. Efficient yes, but not very effective towards R.

May I ask why a hair style is a trigger?? I know it is a cliche, but saying anything negative about a woman's appearance usually is not a good recipe for success. I would recommend something like this:

Rizos: "Do you like my hair straight or curly?"
El: "I love your hair both ways."

Rizos: "Do you think I look fat in this jeans?"
El: "Hell no! It makes you look SO hot."

Rizos: "Which shoes do you think goes best with this outfit?"
El: "They both look great. I'd say the ones on your left, but it is a close call. They both look good."

Rizos: "I can't find anything to wear today."
El: "Well you do look great naked, but I don't think you should leave the house that way! Maybe we can get you something new this weekend."

So when Pep wrote that I should apologize to Rizos I finally realized that an apology was in order and planned to do so. But I fell sleep shortly after (Ambien works wonders).

Around midnight, Rizos woke me up and apologized. I immediately reciprocated. I could only be glad to see curly hair again and to put this ugly incident behind.

For the record, I recognize that my AO of smashing the hairdryer is unacceptable behavior and can only have a negative effect. I apologize to Rizos and to anyone I've let down. From now on, I am going to be on top of my actions.

BTW, Rizos told me that if I do that again MelodyLane said she's going to kick my [censored]. That really cracked me up. Getting beat up by ML is not gonna be good for my street cred so I better get my sh!te together

I am grateful that we are receiving support from such an outstanding group. MB folks, you rock!

--ElCamino72

And I would be so upset if it messed up my hair and nails!

Good job on handling it so well.

It was discussed a few pages back. She changed her hair when she got involved with OM. El Camino has strong preferences for her hair natural and recently she went against his explicit wishes that she keep it natural; she highlighted it, and then lied about having done so. There's more to it than that but it involved an affair trigger plus tons of LBs.

Sorry, IS, but I think this is a horrible way to live a marriage.

The Policy of Radical Honesty requires that we be honest even about these things. We don't have to be mean, but for someone who has physical attractiveness as a top EN, lying to keep the peace is never going to result in romantic feelings again.

One of our problems in most marriages is that we aren't honest about things like this. We try to shield our spouse from having hurt feelings and that is really a noble and righteous cause. The problem is that when we do that kind of thing we let stuff slide over and over again and eventually the resentment is almost overwhelming.

If a man (or woman) has physical attractiveness as a top need, a couple of extra pounds doesn't really matter in most cases. But what happens if we lie in an effort to keep the peace (conflict avoidance) is that those couple extra pounds that don't matter get repeated a few times and when the jeans go up a size if we still lie about our true feelings, then before long what we are talking about can be 40 extra pounds or 80 and then the question "Do I look fat in these jeans?" takes on a whole new meaning.

I don't love my wife less now that her jeans are a size 12 than when they were a size 4. I will tell you that I enjoyed looking at her in her jeans a whole lot more when she was a size 4. I'd also say that when women ask such questions they already know the answer. That suggests to me that they want to be lied to and so know they are the ones that are not being honest about feelings.

What most women really want to know is "Do you still love me now that I have gained weight?"

If a few extra pounds are there on the hips and tummy, I am not going to file for divorce. If you weighed 105 when you married and 10 years later weigh 305 don't ask me if the jeans make you look fat...

It ain't the jeans at that point anyway.

Suppose one of his top needs is PA and one of hers is honesty and openness. So he lies to protect her from the truth and her girl friend delivers the bad news that not only does she look fat in those jeans but her husband lied too.

Protecting our spouse's feelings is a good thing. Lying to do it is a really dumb idea if you expect to have a happy marriage for a long time.

And so as not to be picking on the women...

Guys..."I still wear the same size jeans I wore in high school" doesn't count if you now have to wear them at mid-thigh because you can't pull them up any farther.

Two things come into play here. If my wife likes me to look a certain way, I should try to do it because it makes her happy unless dressing that way would make me unhappy and I can't agree enthusiastically about dressing that way in which case I shouldn't do so. (If I want my wife to wear a mini skirt and see-through top to go to the mall on Saturday, something might be wrong with me anyway, but if I ask her to wear a skirt or dress to go out to dinner, getting home to find her in jeans and sweatshirt ain't gonna cut it)

But the second part of this has to do with Independent Behavior. If my wife likes my hair the way it is or if she would prefer that I wear it a different way than I do then she needs to let me know and I need to address her request. And if she tells me she like my hair long and I come home with a crew-cut, I can expect that some of the remaining hair is gonna get pulled out, either by her if she's mad enough, or by me, if she's really mad enough that she makes my life miserable.

Everything we do can affect our spouse either positively or negatively. This includes how we dress, what color our hair is, the style we wear it in and a whole bunch of other stuff we never even thought should matter to another person. But this isn't another person, this is a spouse, someone to whom you have made a vow to become one with. We aren't just individuals when we get married but are now half of something that transcends our individual identity.

And on top of all that, the hair was a trigger and telling EC he shouldn't care is like telling him that he should just get over it and not think about the affair. It judges his emotional reaction to not just the hair but to the affair as wrong because his wife's hair triggered a memory of the affair and it was THAT emotional set he responded to.

He responded with wrong actions, but his feelings were very valid...just not the reaction to those feelings.
[/tj]
Mark

ETA: EC, almost forgot...Good job on the second attempt. Just remember that you won't always get a second chance at this stuff. Gotta get it right the first time.

Yeah, I know...

IMstaying, things like this can be a massive trigger, which is a major lovebuster. Little things that remind a BS of an affair can send him into the ozone and you can see the result here. These triggers will send the average BS right back to Day 1 of recovery. So, he HAS to tell her this is a trigger. With others it might be towns, places, certain songs, a perfume. The couple has to know what the triggers are in order to avoid them so he did the right thing in telling her this.

Radical honesty is always the best policy. Unspoken issues create an air of superficiality that prevents intimacy.