Larry has traveled internationally extensively, and has some extra insights into non-U.S. cultures. For this reason, he often asks people what part of the world they are from, if there is any indication they are not in the U.S. or that they speak other languages in addition to English. With a name like mamasita, I guess you just looked Hispanic to him, hence his asking.

Larry is a pretty nice guy and if this is all you had to tell you he was racist, you might want to apologize; it'd be better to have his help than to lose it.

Yes, get this book, Mamasita! You need to do some reading and learning about the tools that are available here to help your relationship.

I personally ordered this book today, actually, and I am legally married. Looks like it has some good ideas to offer me. Notice closely that MelodyLane said this book may have some solutions to offer you. How would you feel about getting these issues solved?

Also, have you read this site's Basic Concepts? http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3000_intro.html

Learn and practice the tools on this site. Meet emotional needs. REFRAIN FROM LOVE BUSTERS. This is the biggie. He will not be open and honest if he feels like doing so will only be rewarded with selfish demands, disrespectful judgments, or angry outbursts.

This program is the way to rid your marriage of those and receive openness and honesty from him. But you have to practice the entire program; you can't just pick and choose some concepts. Some of these tools are a little bit complicated, and in order to use them properly, you are going to have to start reading. Have you read the basic concepts, yet? I think you really, really need that book Mel suggested.

Mamasita,

Read what turtlehead advice, it's really good advice, and relax. When I asked my BH to be honest with me, I usually(not always) can't take it. So, how can he be honest with me, if I don't react well. Whatever your partner say, doesn't necessarily have to be true, it's just their perception, but you do need to understand it to better appreciate what he thinks or needs.


And don't worry about if you are married(signed a paper) or not, you and your partner have been living together for a long time, and have 3kids. That's what you should care about.

Me WS -37
BH-37
Married for 13years, and still working on our relationship .

thank-you to everyone and i am sorry about going off on everyone in such a confrontational and defensive manner. i do not want to appear to have headed for the hills.

i continue to consider the good advice i was given. i asked for advice and right away i started rejecting it when people started offering it. i will try to listen better in the future.

i really want to learn. i really want to grow thru this. i really want to make my relationship into something me and my partner as well as my our kids and parents can be proud of.

i apologize for all the abuse i dished out. it has been a bad week for me with my hand injured and being so independant and stubborn and never knowing how to ask for help. i have had to rely on my partner and my children in a way have not really ever have to.

it is true i never really totally committed to my partner in that i always felt it was important to be able to take care of myself and go my own way at a moments notice. i amsure i have had some previous relational traumas before i met(he did too) that made me believe being independant equaled being intelligent

anyway. iam here to listen. i have also been discussing posting here with my significant other(look at me dance around the marriage issue) and he has agreed it may be a good thing. i am seriously messed up over the affair issues and have serious trust issues and am willing to admit my choice not to marry him one of the few times he actually asked me may be part of our original problems.
again , iwant to learn and discuss here and apologize to everyone i shut down with my anger. i will try not to be such a smarta$$ in the future.

also, my partner also actually bought the book you suggested. i can't really believe it. he seemed so anti-marriage builder before. maybe all you guys giving me a hard time made him think you must be okay. maybe I neeed a wake-up call. even though i wasn't the one to actually have the affairs.

i DID lovebust , i did ignore, i did allow. idid avoid conflict and let it grow into resentment. i didn't commit. now i wonder if i should after the affairs. and worst, after avoiding and not truly healing in the aftermath these last three years. i need help. maybe i can get HIM to post here too. that would be great. until then, i'll wait for my book, and be happy for any suggestions from all of you. i'll try not to be so mean.

also, i think i worry that you all think it was all right for my partner to cheat on me because we are not married. there was committment. there were lies. it was affair-marriage or not.

you know, my partner actuualy agrees that my failure to commit to marriage was part of his decision that it was all right. it was one of the things that come up in the first days after d-day. that we weren't actually married. i thought it was just ws bs. but it was like we had no actual agreements i guess. i had a code. he had his ideas. we never actually communicated clearly about it .there were no verbal agreements other than professions of love.

maybe it makes a difference. if it makes a difference to him, it should mean something to me. there is an agreement to take care of eachother.

i feel like the grinch finding the meaning of christmas. maybe marrriage perhaps , means a little bit more.

maybe i was afraid if i lifted the bar too high, he would not rise to meet the occasion. i was afraid to ask for help, love, commitment because i was afraid of rejection and abandonment. i made a disrespectful judgement by assuming this man i love could not be the husband and father and partner i needed.

i want to change that now. i want to have high hopes and expectaions instead of settle. i want to save us.

Thinking about your own values and how those values may keep you from getting where you want to go is the first step.

Congratulations.

Larry

so now what? maybe i should tell my story. i don't know what i specifically am looking for.

here i am again. hopefully this will be better after my rough start last week. i seem to have offended a lot of people with my argumentitiveness. i was offended. i am angry to be treated differently then married people. there is just not respect in it. when we filled out our census yesterday marriedis number one on the list, "unmarried partner"(makes us sound like we are a gay couple) is last after "non-relative". this hurts it's true.

and when we went to the hospital we were are asked if we are married or single. i have to answer single.

it doesn't seem right to call us single after all we've been thru. we are so much more than most boyfriends and girlfriends. boyfrind and girlfriend doesn't sound serious enough. when we file taxes i am listed as "dependant". lame. i really don't like that.

also, i feel totally cheated on and betrayed, even though we are not married. i want to talk about that here today a little bit too.

You are trying to bend society to your values. A social contract requires people to bend their values to that of society.

If you don't like the designation "single," the answer is quite simple: Get married.

ou relationship started in 1999-new years. we lived together immediately. fell head over heels in love and hardly ever left eachother's sides. we both needed that love and closeness and it felt so good. there was some real chemistry but not much real communication and commitment.

i feel like i was afraid to ask for too much help, because it would end like so many other relationships i had that just wanted the fun and didn't want to do the work. so i guess i made alot of the work of relationships a non-issue for my partner so he wouldn't feel overwhelmed and leave. i feel now this was a disrespectful judgement on my part and caused a lot of other problems in the end. that's what i get for avoiding conflict. i do not do that anymore.

by the end of the year, we decided to have a baby to be my five-year-old daughters long awaited brother or sister. i love babies . it's true. he seemed somewhat happy, not ecstatic. he did not want to tell his parents. that should have told me something. he was not surprised. i had my norplant taken out while we were together. we both talked about having babies and knew it was a definite possiblility as we were like bunnies then and were not using birth control.

what was i thinkiking, but i love my babies so much and if i could go back i would not change a thing. we had one son in mid 2000 and another in early 2002. 2 boys in 20 months. that's a lot of work. and taking care of their needs became my number one priority.

he came along. he stuck in there. but he was not so enthusiastic as me from the start. he started avoiding hanging out with the family by staying up all night working on his computer. he is an independantly employed computer programmer. then he would go to bed in the morning when we woke up. sometimes he would get groceries at night and leave them on the counter for us to find. it was like the elves and the shoemaker story. he was just not very "there". he worked the night shift. and during this all, the emotional affairs over the computer started. i think it started right after son one was born. they never actually met or talked on the phone, but there was chatting and flirting. i forgot to mention he was addicted to an online video game called everquest.

i think he was more comfortable talking to people on line than in real-life. there was also another girl on-line right after son number two was born. she tried to convince us to come live by her- unknown to me. we actually had am-track tickets to portland to get new work, if we had went- it probably would have been a PA.

so by now, i was lonely. i am a very infependant person who does not mind spending time alone. and i wasn't alone anyway. i had 3 great kids who were my best frieds. there dad worked allday. we still said love you. we still had sex. he was proud of our children and they made hime smile. but he was never really around, even though we lived together full time. he was either sleeping or on his computer. i knew something was missing.

fast forward a couple years. he got a good paying job with benefits. it was a 9-fiver. you would have thought this would have helped , but it did not.

he worked with a highschool friend who was very enabling and not marriagefriendly- or even important relationship friendly. he started giving him adderol- prescription speed. now my partner had had a speed problem before i met him. i can hardly believe that a doctor would just give him that stuff. it was the same hospital that he had went for drug treatment years before.

then things just spun out of control. the tendencies were already there. this just gave him some bravery and an ability not to consider what he was actually doing. he met another girl thru his stupid computer game-this game is gone now buy the way-
and actually gave up our phone number. they talked extensively for months and then he went to see her. he stopped by LA on a plane on his way to a business conference in florida. a little out of the way, don't you think?

and it didn't end there. i don't know how or when it ended actually, because he won't talk about it to me. he also says "i don't remember" a lot. he said they only physically saw eachother that one weekend in may2005.

eventaully that ended, with the job, i think. the prescription ended when our insurance ended. i think he tried to get him self together. he stopped the pills, but ,then, his enabling friend just started giving him some more- he had extra. and there was another affair- this one with a local girl who was part of our social group- and our kids social group. they are not our friends anymore since i found out they don't take infidelity very seriously. every one makes affair jokes, i don't think they are funny anymre.\i'll write more later. this is tough. also, i just got my stitches out-yeah!



i am a very independant person who isn't very social anyway

i found out about the second affair feb 11, 2007. he immediately confessed to the one in 2005 at that time.
since then, we have been struggling and he protects a lot of secrets.

Mamasita, it sounds like your H (and you too, perhaps) are not "buyers" but "renters" or even "freeloaders."

If these terms are unfamiliar to you, may I suggest you read this thread to get a better understanding.

Maybe then you'll have a better grasp of where your relationship sits.

Mamasita, if you want to be taken seriously, then YOU have to take your relationship seriously. You haven't. YOU have BEHAVED like boyfriend/girlfriend and people are just treating you accordingly. Just living together does not make you married anymore than I was married to my college roommate.

Instead of carrying on how people won't treat you as "married" why don't you spend all that energy getting married? If you want to be treated as a married person, then go get married. Its real simple.

Others are not going to pretend with you. sorry.

Mamasita - "Buyers, Renters and Freeloaders" has been recommended to you over and over again. There's no "explaining" your way through how you're different when you haven't read the book.

You may have felt like you're a buyer and behaved like you're a buyer, but you got into a relationship with a renter by being a renter.

Are you parroting his words that you don't need a piece of paper to have your relationship be real? Is this how YOU really feel, because if it is, then you shouldn't be surprised that he doesn't need a piece of paper to go waltzing off with another woman when he feels like it.

The world can't run on feelings forever. Because feelings change. His just changed faster than yours.

Kayla is right. If he "felt like" he was married to you, those feeling may have changed. feelings come and go and change with the daily tides. If your whole life is based on the feeling du jour then you have to be prepared for the times when those feelings don't work in your favor.

He may "feel" like moving on now and there is nothing stopping him. He is - in reality - a SINGLE man who can move on at will.

Mamasita:

I understand your reluctance to get into buyers, renters and freeloaders. It is ok. But do it anyway, the concepts will change your life, I promise, I swear, Please? Do you know who Dr. Jakes is? If you do, I will tell you about something he said.

Larry

i did but the book. actually, my partner did which surprised me that he is willing to support me thru this when he has been anti-marriage builder all year.

he has asked me to marry hime before. I just felt like we could be married without actually getting married. i felt we were married. we shared a lot more than your typical room mates.

i feel somewhat hurt that you continue to say we have nothing more than typical roomamates and he is actually justified in his affair. is this what the book is going to say too. because i do not agree. we share our kids, for one, two and three. this is a sacred bond and commitment proven over time. we have problems, but our relationship is real. i am not saying marriage is a bad idea and i have admitted as much repeatedly. i was probably wrong to think it was not that important.

i am waiting for my book. i will continue to post here when i can and i value your honesty and continued advice and support. thanks for sticking with me thru my angriness. it is mostly hurt and confusion. iam quite anice hardworking person in rel life. give me a chance. i respect what you do here. i agree with much of the teachings.