NED, I have read that article and I definitely agree that most folks don't STAY where they feel neglected. However, they generally will repeat the pattern again and again and wonder why they keep going back to the same dry well that just has a different name this time around.

Which brings me back to the idea of "comfortable."

I don't mean that in the sense of, I feel like I can have a conversation with you, or that I'm pretty sure that you're not a serial killer so I'm OK with having you babysit the kids. I mean comfortable in the sense of "this person has the traits of the people who raised me, it's what I know, it's what's familiar, and even if I think those people were nut jobs I don't know any better so I'll stick with what I know" kinda comfortable.

Hypothetical Example: I grow up with a dry drunk alcoholic father who is not drinking but not spiritually sober, and a resentful martyr of a mother. Chances are I will repeat this pattern in some way in my future relationships not because they make me happy, but because I don't know any other way and to do something different would be very uncomfortable. I will stick with what is comfortable, that is until I become AWARE of the patterns and make a conscious decision not to continue it. And I can't change my behaviors without some awareness of the pattern I'm fighting, because otherwise it will go "underground" and I will "fake it till I make it" until that pattern rears its ugly head again because I've been trying to force a solution.

Like GI Joe said, knowing is half the battle.

(I can't believe I just typed that!)

Think,

I will try to respond in the morning. Right now I'm working from a laptop with a VZW modem that keeps dropping the connection. As soon as I warm up I need to load up to go home, so it will probably be morning before I get around to it.

I will say for now that people don't have to know what makes them feel happy in order to know when they are. Comfort is not enough to make someone fall in love.

You are correct that a WS must choose to come home and end an affair. They are more likely to choose to come home when the affair ends if the BS has given them a reason to do so. Most affairs end. If the BS has made it clear that they will be there to catch the WS when they fall and has established that they are capable of meeting ENs and have dealt with Love Busters, the WS is much more likely to make that choice than if the BS has turned life into a living hell rather than done a good Plan A.

My wife says that she chose to remain in the marriage. But I gave her a better reason to remain married than to leave it for OM.

Mark

This article may help describe what I mean by people doing what is �comfortable� versus what will make them happy: http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5066_qa.html

I�ve pulled the parts that I think are most relevant and highlighted what I think is most significant.


And this:



And this:





Harley never answers this last series of questions. However, he provides a solution to person with the electric fence personality (EFP): get honest and follow the POJA for negotiating.

He does NOT provide any solutions for a person who is married to an EFP.

The solution is dependant on the spouse with the personality problem to get honest. Since one can�t make their EFP spouse get honest, how can one do any of the MB with a good chance of success? We can do these things for ourselves, but we can�t save our marriage until the EFP gets honest and agrees to the POJA. These conditions are necessary before romantic love can be re-established with an EFP.

Harley doesn�t say this, but I personally believe that we ALL have tendancies to be people pleasers, perfectionists, and even EFP to varying degrees. All of these facets are part of human nature and exhibit themselves somewhat depending on what the circumstance calls for. All of us have unknown electric fences we won�t cross, and we all have denial and self-righteous justification to varying degrees. We all have a tendancy to take the easy path rather than risk the pain of change. I�ve found that people who have deep abiding faith and trust in God have less of a problem with this.

I�ll go so far as to say it�s not a small subset of the human population or even personality type at all, but a basic truth about human beings. It goes back to the idea of motivation (which is clearly one of the things that either makes or breaks someone�s success with MB). On an instinctive, reactionary level, people are motivated by three major forces:

1. The expectation of pleasure or happiness;
2. The fear of loss;
3. The threat of pain.

I would contend that threat of pain would be the strongest motivating reactive instinct, followed by fear of loss, then expectation of pleasure.

So while I totally understand Mark�s description of what happens in the brain chemically when we work with the Love Bank model, that cannot overcome the way human beings instinctively react to the threat of pain or the fear of loss. We will avoid the threat of pain even at the expense of pleasure. We will choose comfort over happiness every time, unless our conscious will overrides our reactions.

And in order for our conscious will to override our reactions we must be honest with ourselves and be aware of the problem we are trying to overcome.

The lesson here for all unmarried people is, DON�T marry a person who has a proven record of not knowing they are lying to themselves and everyone around them. That is not just a behavior or habit to be changed. It�s a way of life that is incompatible with marriage to ANYONE.

I have read that EFP article several times in the last 2 years, and find it confusing. Dr. Harley doesn't explain what the electric fences might be for some people. They aren't social rules, because he says those push them into their fences. I guess we all know people who sort of sound like this, but I am not sure exactly what Harley is trying to describe.

Name that feeling anything you want; that feeling is what MB is about.

I love that feeling, and I want to provide it for my wife, and I want her to provide it for me.

Well I am now so far behind that I may never catch up...

This is supposed to be the reaction to the stimulus of getting our ENs met. The area of the brain where the release of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and vasopressin takes place (actually the place where the high concentration of receptors is located) is called the pleasure center.

It is actually the same sectio0n of the brain stimulated by smoking crack or drinking alcohol. In addicts it lights up light a Christmas tree when stimulated by certain drugs though less so in those who have been using for many years.

Serotonin and dopamine being received by these receptors is what we call happiness and well being.


This is actually what makes ending a relationship where the above has been occurring so difficult. It is not just loss but the loss of a stimulus to the pleasure inducing part of our brain. It is called in addiction circles withdrawal and the chemical/emotional part of it begins at the thought of ending the addictive behavior. The fear of loosing the source of the pleasure causes all the symptoms we know of as withdrawal including depression, anger, etc.

This is also what gets triggered when someone who we have strong emotional bonds to begins to make moves to leave us. This is what we experience when we get the ILYBINILY speech or when we find our honey has found someone else.

Pain and emotional pain each contain similar characteristics in our brains. It is the high emotional content memories that get triggered time and again to cause the same emotions when we think of the details of the memory.

This is why it is so important to continue down the road of meeting ENs and avoiding Love Busters. Love Busters cause negative emotional memories which when recalled cause negative emotions, just like the original event. Good memories, recalling the details of a pleasurable event, causes us to experience the same emotional content as the original, in this case pleasure (happiness/well being/connectedness/bonded).

Will have to look at the EFP article since it's been quite a while since I read it the last time.

What makes the whole MB process work is the fact that any high emotional content memory when recalled by our brain and called into consciousness even for a short period of time causes the release of all the chemicals into our brains as the original event. We don't choose to have the emotion but we can choose what we think about.

When our spouse does something that causes us to feel emotional distress/pain/discomfort any recall of the memory that is triggered is going to make us feel the same way. If the action is repeated often enough then the mere presence of our spouse or worse yet the thought of our spouse is sufficient to trigger that same negative emotional response in us. We FEEL pain, threatened and as if we are about to lose something. It becomes something we must avoid in order to be happy. When associated with our spouse, that is our spouse has become a directed stimulus, we don't choose to feel that way but we do and our spouse makes us unhappy simply by being. The memory/thought of our spouse hurts us emotionally.

If on the other hand our spouse can stimulate sufficient GOOD emotional responses in us by making us feel happy (pleasure/reward center lit up/high levels of dopamine & serotonin) and can do so consistently enough then our spouse will then when those memories are recalled we will experience the same emotions as the original event, in this case pleasurable.

Done repeatedly over time the stimulus (getting our pleasure center tickled) gets associated with the source (the one who is always there when it happens) until it becomes a directed response to the directed stimulus. That is, the memory of the pleasurable experience causes the pleasure to be experienced merely by thinking of the person which triggers the emotional soup that makes us feel happy and have an overall sense of well being.


This is why it only takes one aweshit to wipe out ten thousand attaboyz. One emotionally painful stimulus of sufficient depth can have effects that linger for years. This is what causes the resentment that can short out the replacing of bad feelings with good feelings when we are trying to become the directed response.

The Love Bank is driven by these very things, Think, I think... Fear of pain, fear of loss and seeking reward/pleasure. We seek out those things that make us feel good and avoid those things that hurt us or make us feel bad. When those things become people because of the way that person has treated us it can result in either good or bad feelings about them and the person becomes someone to want to be around or someone to be avoided.


It is these things that drive the model. Dr Harley is telling us to do things that provide pleasure and avoid doing things that are pleasurable or cause distress or pain or trigger a fear of loss. It is an action response feed back loop that either runs toward the happy/good emotional content/love side of the process or it runs the other way toward pain/fear/distress/negative/to be avoided/hate side. "In Love (the feeling/adverb and not the verb)is when we get the wheel spinning one direction and keep it going long enough to build some inertia. Once reversed we have to overcome inertia before we can make any progress.


Back later if I get time...

I think a key point you raise is that the memory reinforcement effect can interfere with love bank deposits. So, in effect, one love buster done in the past can have continued negative emotional impact in the future if the spouse continually refers back to the prior hurt.

And I agree with you that this often occurs in cases of "mere" neglect. That is, when one of my ENs has been neglected for a long time, I choose what to think about that. I can remember a time when the need was met. Triggering the "good" chemicals in my brain. And hope my spouse will soon be motivated to meet that need again. Or I can choose to remember an occassion in which my spouse turned me down using an AO or DJ. And trigger the negative chemicals in my brain. Where neglect of ENs is chronic, in some cases ( Hold wonders who that could be ) the neglected spouse chooses to remember the bad events. This has the same chemical / emotional effect as if the withholding spouse were doing the AOs and the DJs again and again and again.

I think it is important for the both spouses to realize this neurochemical effect. The withholding spouse may be thinking "I haven't done any LBs lately". But the neglected spouse may feel that they have been the subject of repeated LBs. In the absence of getting their ENs met, the neglected spouse may choose to focus on negative memories. Which creates a bigger negative love bank balance for the withholding spouse to overcome.

Doing nothing may not result in emotional status quo. Doing nothing may result in "compound interest" that causes the credit card balance to grow even without new "purchases".

Not only can it interfere with Love Bank deposits it is at the other end of the scale that it makes the model work.

What we do affects the emotional state of other people. This can be good or bad and when it is good (pleasurable) often enough we become a directed stimulus, that is, WE become the only required stimulus.

At the other extreme, if we stimulate negative emotional responses often enough then we become a directed stimulus and it is we ourselves that begin to trigger the negative emotional response.

When we seek to replace triggers with good memories and "reclaim" our lives in the wake of an affair what we are doing is beginning to lay down new memories that give us new associations with our spouse and the events or similar events so that we have more positive memories that trigger more positive emotional responses in our brains.

The choice a person can make is what they think about. How they feel about the memory they choose to recall is determined by the emotional content of the original event. Many of these things can and do fade with time, but if we constantly re-associate the event with the emotion then we reinforce the negative response repeatedly and before long we have caused ourselves to be unable to respond positively to a person because they themselves have become the trigger for a memory that has negative feelings in our mind.

The answer seems to be to consciously recognize that a negative event has been recalled and to change what we think to something more positive before the emotional content can flood our brains. This is the act of will that becomes a choice. If the resentment associated with some past event is great enough, it can cause a person to continue to relive that event and thus cause negative emotional response no matter what the current stimulus.

This is why resentment can get in the way of the Love Bank working like the model would predict and in those case, there may be little anyone, other than the person who is holding onto the negative event as an active memory.

Mark

Very true. I think that is why going into withdrawal helped me. By not giving my wife frequent opportunities to reject me, prior rejections faded into the past. That may have given her recent deposits an opportunity to register on the love bank meter. Previously, anyhting positive she did was drowned out by the negative associations between her and rejection.

I think the biggest "electric fence" for people is radical honesty. Dr. H does explain this a little bit . . . I'll hunt it down and get the quote.

In my view, honesty ITSELF is probably a consistent fence for EFP because being honest has in the past resulted in puninshment or pain. They associate being honest with the neagative memories of pain. Of course, consicously living a deceptive life is, in itself painful because of the guilt. So in order to protect themselves from the guilt, they bury the truth even from themselves. This makes sense, as Harley states that folks with EFP often don't know what does or does not make them happy. It is more comfortable to not know yourself than it is to know yourself and live a lie. In other words, denial. They are literally more comfortable living the the world of lies than the world of truth.

The other challenge I find with this is in the second paragraph: "In fact, if you were to get into the habit of telling him the truth, you would get into much less trouble."

The problem with this is that we tend to marry someone who is roughly as emotionally healthy and mature as we are. Someone on here phrased it this way, "Water rises to it's own level." I've also heard the phrase like attracts like. Anyway, if an EFP tries honesty with their spouse and the spouse reacts badly, it confirms once again that honesty is painful. And unless the spouse is already well-schooled in the rules of MB they are very likely TO react badly, in part because the EFP is so unpracticed at being honest without also being hurtful as well.

The other big "electric fence" that I glean from the above quote is change. People dislike change, even good change, because it means letting go of what is comfortable, even if it's in my best interest.

Take a kid who resists learning to use the potty. Many kids resist this process, even though there are many benefits: increased independence, sense of self-esteem because of self-control and accomplishment, clean pants, maybe some incentives like treats for making it to the potty in time. But many kids resist this change for irrational reasons. One kid I knew could verbalize it. He said that if he used the potty he wouldn't be a baby anymore and believed his mom wouldn't love him anymore. POWERFUL fear of loss operating there. Not at all rational, but extremely powerful.

That kind of electric fence is what many people are up against when dealing with their spouses. Deep-seated irrational beliefs which drive them to consciously withold pleasure because their fear of loss (of self maybe?) is not worth the risk of happiness which may or may not last.

If the EFP is already in withdrawl, they have little fear of losing the "good stimulus" of their spouse meeting their EN. In fact, being an EFP requires a certain amount of regular withdrawl from most people, places and things that require them to go off their path. So they are VERY practiced at living in and surviving, even thriving, in a state of withdrawl. In fact, withdrawl is where they are most comfortable, even if it's not where they are most happy. They learn through their independent behavior to make themselves happy and find contentment for themselves.

The problem is that EFP eventually start to feel the pain of their unrecognized guilt and start to lash out at others if there's someone else around, or internalize it and direct their anger at themselves. They eventually hit bottom. I would think that an affair would accelerate this process. And I suspect that marriages in which there is an affair actually have a better chance of survival in some ways because the pain of living with the guilt of an affair, or the detruction of the fantasy by exposure, is greater than the pain of going back to the betrayed spouse.

In a situation without an affair, the spouse may never reach the level of pain it would take to flee from the relative "safety" of withdrawl back to the arms of the spouse, whom they identify with pain.

So to quick recap, two "fences" that an EFP would have to overcome would be honesty and change.

If they can become honest first with themselves and then with others and not fear the consequence, and if they can willingly and consciously embrace the possiblity of change against their instinct of fear, then they can begin to practice POJA and open their Love Bank account once again.

As for other "fences" I think that would vary from person to person based on their childhood experiences, religious beliefs, education, cultural issues, etc.

In the original article Dr Harley talks about one possible solution. That solution isn't just based on the changes being made by the person with an electric fence personality but by his or her spouse (her in the case of the original letter that prompted the discussion of EFP)

Very often someone living with a person who is EFP will not recognize that certain triggers (the electric fence) are present because of the tendency to lie about things. So when the anger about being forced into the fence shows up the spouse asks why but is given some excuse that does not relate to reality. This makes the spouse try to accommodate the EFP by making changes that have little or no effect at all, since they are operating from false assumptions. This can happen time and again until the EFP finally goes off their own way or the spouse gets tired of the drama and constant complaining and leaves him or herself.

But Dr Harley points out that EFPs are often shocked to find that he can in fact more easily identify what makes them happy or unhappy than they themselves seem capable of doing. His analogy of the flashlight seems to shed a bit of light on that (OK. Bad pun...) I think.

It can sometimes be easier for someone else to recognize exactly what it is that is setting the EFP off and help them to avoid the fence and the resulting pain. I know that our daughter's shrink was able to teach us to recognize her approaching manic phase (she was diagnosed bipolar at age 11 after a few years of irrational behavior followed by bouts of depression followed by additional acts of stupidity and craziness.) She herself never seemed to see it coming but my wife and I often could. We could then take precautions to protect her and others from her stupid choices made during a manic phase. Manics are very impulsive and we learned to eliminated triggers that led to opportunities to act impulsively. (keep the keys to the car behind locked bedroom doors for example so she couldn't take the car in the middle of the night while we slept or keep the checks in a locked box or safe unless they were with one of us so she couldn't take a check and write our check for a new car...yeah that happened)

We learned eventually how to spot an impending meltdown and at least minimize the damage rather than allowing it to run its course with no constraints. As she got older, her manic phases got farther and farther apart, we became more adept at dealing with them and she finally got on some meds that helped keep her balanced most of the time.

I think the difficulty involved comes from the fact that the way we tend to approach a situation like this is to create rules and boundaries that must be enforced and it is in part the reluctance to follow rules and recognize the boundaries of others that is the mark of someone who is EFP.

Seldom do two EFPs get together for very long since one of the things that indicates such a personality type is the moving from relationship to relationship, always looking for getting ENs met yet never allowing anyone to meet those needs for very long. These folks are the ones who often have multiple affairs or who do things that become so destructive to relationships time and again that lovers tend to leave them to look for their own relationship that involves less drama.

The doctor also points out that seldom are people of one pure personality type and that we are usually a mixture of various types. So a pure EFP probably doesn't really exist, at least not very often. So if a person who tends toward the EFP type has a spouse who is sufficiently attracted to other personality traits they might have, it could be possible for the spouse to begin to learn what triggers the withdrawal thereby helping to identify the fence, not trying to coax the EFP across to the other side but agreeing to remain on the EFPs path with them.

Since people change over time and since we seldom know all that will come from life the mark of a good healthy marriage is the ability to adapt and change to remain compatible as we each change as time progresses. For someone who is married to the EFP type, it might require more continuous yet more subtle changes in order to maintain the relationship.

Unfortunately I think for most when the spouse of the EFP moves off in his or her own direction and the EFP does not follow but begins to build a new relationship with someone else who has come along, the relationship usually ends because the spouse of the EFP is not always willing to make changes in their own path in order to accommodate the EFP.

I think the EFP is in constant conflict (internally) and the lies are the result of wishing to avoid further conflict. But I also don't think most marriages of EFPs last very long and that when a marriage worked pretty well for a long time prior to an affair or other serious troubles showing up the cause is not likely to be EFP but some other problem. Most often it is neglect of the relationship, usually by both husband and wife alike and the resentment that results.

Mark

Really good points, in the whole post and especially this last paragrpah.

What strikes me most is that in a marriage with EFP, the person who is NOT the EFP has to do most of the changing and compromising in order to accomodate the EFP's "need" to stay on their path. That doesn't seem like a fair partnership to me.

Cancer isn't fair either, but people adjust, adapt and support their spouse through treatment. (J Edwards excepted maybe) Neither is any serious illness fair.

Imagine how unfair it is to work like crazy to do a magnificent Plan A followed by the demise of your spouse's affair and then have to learn how to support her or him through withdrawal and getting over OP.

Not at all uncommon around these parts.

How fair is it to have to adjust our actions to anything our spouse does or needs?

That is what this place is all about from where I sit. It is those who do not adapt and who cannot change in support of their spouse who find themselves single again.

It is the very point of POJA.

If my wife needed to get treatment for a disease that would incapacitate her or cause her death, and the only way to get that treatment was to move to Siberia, the For Sale sign would go up this afternoon.

Not fair, but Care.

My vows didn't say anything about only doing what I thought was fair.

Mark

Is EFP a disease? Is it even a real personality disorder? Is there any hope for recovery from marriage to an EFP? Or is it like being married to an addict or alcoholic?

I hope so. Mrs. Hold and I are both EFPs. I find this conversation fascinating.

Can anyone describe what an "Electric Fence Personality" is, without using the term? How is it different from some other named personality? What are some of these "electric fences"? How did they become so afraid of these fences?

I cannot say whether there are other names for EFP or whether persons who display EFP also display other recognized personality traits or disorders. I can only describe what it feels like to me.

I am terrified of rejection. I long for connection and interaction. But I fear if I ask for it, I will be rejected. So I often self-sabotage. I remove myself from situations where I might be motivated to seek interaction, for fear that any initiative on my part will be met by rejection.

Yes, I understand that taking myself "out of the game" ensures I will never "win". Never make contact. And never obtain the satisfaction I hope would arise from interaction. Nevertheless, the hope for success is typically not enough to overcome my fear of loss.

This is not rational. Rational behavior would be to "try try again". To keep seeking the interaction I crave. To put up with rejection as an unavoidable cost. A pothole on the road to satisfaction.

But to me it is not merely a pothole. It is a sinkhole. I fear I will fall into it and never escape. So I stay home and don't take to the road seeking my "fortune".

Not sure it matters how this fear arose. All that matters is summoning the courage to overcome it.