Wife 32 yrs. old, married over 8 years, 4 kids. Wife cheated beginning last aug/sep. ended A about two weeks ago. She moved out in Jan into her own house, but not in with OM. We continued a relationship in every way but fully cohabitating. She would say the A was over and we would work it out, this would last day/days before it began again. I finally shifted to a light plan B, backed off and it died its own very ugly death.

Fast forward, I am not really comfortable forcing her back into our marriage as it was. We both still have things to work on and the reality of it is, although I think things can be better, they will never be the same. Under her plan rather than immediately moving back in with each other we essentially start over with dating. During this time we slowly show each other that we have both improved, rebuild the trust and let nature work things out. We both are comfortably with this rather than immediately jumping back into things. Obviously this has potential pitfalls, but I am not the type of guy, nor am I comfortable with a real restrictive and forced plan.

Wondering if anyone on her has tried something similair and what everyones thoughts are?

Well, that's good, right? Neither one of you liked it the way it was. You want things to change.

And if you want things to change for the better, I think what you want is the Marriage Builders program.

I wouldn't take back a wayward spouse without a commitment to follow this program, period.


Has she helped a lot of people put their marriages back together? Does she have a lot of experience with a proven track record of knowing what works in marriage?

The Marriage Builders plan will include lots of recreational companionship together: dating. Plus the other things that are needed to make the marriage of your dreams.

Does her plan include the Marriage Builders plan? Does it include coaching with a Marriage Builders coach?

If not, I'll bet it won't work.

Watta,

You ever heard the old saying "A doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient."

I'm thinking this is where you are going. The "let's separate and see where this takes us." isn't a plan for a recovery, it is wishful thinking. Worse as stated by you it is sweeping under the rug the real issues.

You and your W need a plan for recovery. A plan that includes milestones, evaluation points, goals, and a development of what happened and what you both want to change in YOURSELVES not each other.

I would strongly urge you and your W to read the articles on this site. They will help you and your W gather the data you need to evaluate your marriage and will offer you ways to make a functional plan.

Otherwise your recovery will be alot like my diet plan. I plan on losing 20 lbs and have been planning to do so for about a decade. I don't have a diet in mind, nor do I have a date set to start. Do I have a diet plan? Of corse not. I have at best a goal.

Think about it.

God Bless,

JL

Marcos has some great questions that I hope you will think about!

Half measures avail you nothing!

I probably left a few important points out. We are both seeing the same counselor, privately and together. I just bought the book SAA and we are both reading. We are already seperated, now thinking about going back. I am just not comfortable with letting her back in without seeing some change and she is not as well. I am also not comfortable with making demands I want her to do this for herself, not for me.
I know this is different that what the MB sight suggests in some ways, but there are other approaches, one is not right for everyone.

watta, I have heard of *divorced* couples doing this sort of thing in an effort to get back together, but you and your wife are still *married*. Married people live together and work to make a fulfilling marriage for both partners. If one or both is not willing to do that, they get a divorce.

It sure sounds to me like your wife still wants to cake-eat and fence-sit, but also wants to make sure you're still around in case she needs a backup plan.

I would not recommend this at all. If you are married, then you both have to act married. If somebody still wants to act single, then they need to be single.

She will torment you to death if you try to be "married" to her while she reserves the right to act single at the same time. You do understand that that's what she's proposing, right? And this arrangement is different from her affair how - ?

Ok, WAT, you do have a plan here, but it is nothing more than HOPE. You are going to date and hope for the best. The problem is that hope is not a plan. You will not get a good marriage by "accident" and that sounds like what you are hoping for. That a good marriage will just fall in your laps with no work on your part.

That is not how it happens. A good marriage happens as a result of hard work and commitment. And there is no commitment here. What your wife really wants is the freedom to cat around and pretend like she is a single person while reaping all the benefits of a married person. That will not create a romantic marriage, it will tear you down and ruin any chance of reconciliation.

In order to have a great marriage, you have to have a feasible PLAN. Hope is not a plan.

Does your counselor agree with Marriage Builders principles?

Have you asked your counselor the questions from this article about finding a good marriage counselor?

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi7100_counselor.html


Okay, now that is great! Keep reading. The articles on this site will also help you put it all together.


You are smart. If you want a happy marriage, then you want to make sure she doesn't do anything if it is going to cause her resentment.

However, I would not continue a marriage with an adulteress who wasn't willing to 1) implement a policy of No-Contact EXACTLY as described by Dr. Harley's program, and 2) follow Dr. Harley's Marriage Builders program to restore our romantic love and recover our marriage.


You're wrong. :P

Are you an expert in this? Exactly how many marriages have you saved?

You can try doing things slightly different from MB's plan.

You will get slightly different results.

For example, if both of you follow Marriage Builder's plan, you will get a marriage full of romantic love.

If you do it slightly different, you will get something slightly different, like divorce, or a lingering separation and a long emotional rollercoaster that will consume the best years of your life.

How do I know this? I've been trying Marriage Builders "slightly different" for several years now. It doesn't work.

Don't waste your time. Get into this stuff like your life depended on it, learn it, and do it exactly as the experts say. This is too important for you to try your own variations, cooked up by an adulteress who has never saved a single marriage in her life.

We are legally seperated right now. We are under a 90 waiting period due to a business issue or we would have been divorced. I filed and began the process last dec.

Maybe I didnt explain this well, or maybe it is crazy, but no one is acting single, or acting married. The rules are the same for both of us. We are just starting over essentially and both earning our way back into a marriage. I really am not comfortable just inviting her back in under a bunch of rules which I have to police. I want to to be back voluntarily and I also want to be happy with the arrangement. We do have a psychologist and certified counselor coaching us. We have not pitched the idea to her yet.

What is their track record of success? What are their qualifications? Do they even know HOW to save a marriage? What is their plan? Because if they use traditional counseling methods, their success rate is about 14%. The vast majority of counselors don't have the slightest idea how to save a marriage and don't even believe in teh possibility of romantic love. They have a higher divorce rate the general population and are little more than divorce facilitators.

My concern is that there is no PLAN here. Just "dating" to see what happens is not a plan. It is little more than aimless hoping.

Marriage Builder concepts and methods were developed by Dr. Willard Harley, Jr., as part of his counseling practice over many decades. He has both the credentials and track record to advance what he believes to be a good path for marriage success. Unlike such notorious book writers like Gray and DeAngelis, who have been married multiple times, Harley practices what he preaches.

In fact, there is somewhat of a movement within the marriage counseling business, and business it is, whereby more and more therapists are beginning to adopt Dr. Harley's dogma as both effective and part of their practice. The only downside from what I hear, is that in some ways, MB is too good. I will leave it up to you to imagine why that might be from a therapist's viewpoint.

There are other approaches. From my own research, no other methods are even close to Harley's success rate, which is near 100% for those who enroll and go the course. That cannot be said about any other discipline. One of the really good features of Harley's method is that it places the onus on the couple instead of therapist. That is where it should be.

Finally, Dr. Harley's methods are a form of Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Which is a very good thing.

Now, please realize that:

1. There is no reset button.
2. There is no shortcut.

Have you read and do you understand at least the basic concepts, which are available through the link at the top of the page?

Larry

Is the success rate really close to 100%. Is that documented anywhere?

I read it somewhere and remembered. I would bet that Mel knows exactly.

Larry

Here is what Dr Harley has written:

"When I found that the model I've developed had helped over 90% of those I was counseling, I gave up my career as a college professor and started counseling full-time. At the time, I didn't assume that it would save all of the marriages it seemed to help, because I felt there were factors beyond a couple's control. But after 35 years of experience with this model, I'm not convinced that it works with 100% of couples who follow it. I've yet to witness one couple out of the tens of thousands I've seen, that did not experience a healthy and happy marriage by following this model. Personally, I feel it's the only answer to the question, how can a couple have a great marriage for life?

But it�s very difficult to prove that one model of marital satisfaction is superior to another. The ultimate test is to randomly assign couples to various models and to measure their marital satisfaction after the provisions of each model have been implemented.

The training of therapists is a huge problem: How can we be sure that the therapist assigned to each model was properly trained? And there�s also the problem of representation and random assignment: Does the group of volunteer couples represent the population at large? And is the assignment to treatment groups really random? There�s also the ethical problem of assigning couples to a control group where they receive no effective treatment. When they divorce, does the researcher bear any responsibility? Finally, if someone who has a stake in the outcome does the research, it usually shows that their approach is best. Shouldn�t studies of alternative models of marital satisfaction be conducted by those neutral to the outcome?

My own personal experience led me to the model I�ve been using for the past 35 years. But that�s not proof of it�s superiority over other models. What I need is objective studies conducted by those who have no bias that compare this model to others. That�s hard to find even among those who have published hundreds of articles on martial therapy.

But I can direct you to three studies that support my enthusiasm. They all deal with my book, His Needs, Her Needs, the popular application of my model, and the effect it has on couples that read it.

The readers of Marriage Partnership Magazine were asked which self-help book on marriage helped their marriages the most. In that survey, His Needs, Her Needs came out on top. I didn�t know that the survey was even being conducted, so when I called the editor after the results came in, I was curious to know more. He told me that it not only was the top choice, but it was far ahead of second place (Ron R. Lee. Best Books for a Better Marriage: Reader�s Survey . Marriage Partnership Magazine, Spring 1998).

In a national survey that I sponsored, people were asked if any self-help book on marriage solved their marital problems. Out of 57 books that were read, only three were reported to have actually solved marital problems. The three were the Bible, James Dobson�s Love for a Lifetime, and His Needs, Her Needs (Lynn Hanacek Gravel. Americans and Marriage: National Survey of US Adults. Barna Research Group, 2001).

Finally, five out of six couples that read His Needs Her Needs were found to experience significant improvement in marital satisfaction (Julie D. Braswell. The Impact of Reading a Self-Help Book on the Topic of Gender Differences on One�s Perceived Quality of Marriage. Doctoral Dissertation, 1998, Azusa Pacific University.

Granted, these findings are not conclusive evidence that the model I use is superior to every other model of marital satisfaction. But when you find one that works for every couple that actually follows it, you have to be impressed. And coming as I did from almost zero effectiveness to almost complete success, I can�t begin to tell you how convinced I am that it�s the solution to a very difficult problem we face in our society.

I hope this helps answer your question.

Best wishes,
Willard F. Harley, Jr. "

Thank you Mel. I had seen that piece before and remembered it as 100%.

Larry

This make sense 2 me. What sounded most dis2rbing 2 me, reading your posts up 2 this point, is that it seemed like the plan 2 live apart and date 2 see how things develop amounted 2 a sort of "leveling of the field" by classifying her wrongs (the affair) as equivalent 2 yours (or that you are in part responsible for her having the affair).

-ol' 2long

...as Larry said, you 2's "wrongs" aren't morally equivalent, and it's unfair if she's trying 2 convince you otherwise.

-ol' 2long

This 100% success rate, as stated, is a pretty meaningless statistic. I'm not at all surprised that 100% of couples who adopt MB methods and work them until their marriages are recovered and romantically rewarding end up recovered and in love! That's a definition, not a measurement!

watta's separated from his W. I agree with him that his marriage has the best chance of recovery if they end the separation and she comes back because they want her 2 and she's made amends for what she did (because it still sounds as though she hasn't).

-ol' 2long

If you don't have boundaries for her. She won't have boundaries on herself.