i meant buy the book. i should proof read better

i do not feel he was a single person. otherwise why did he have to lie. he lied to his children too.

we also share many other things roommates don't. please do not try to hurt my feelings. i come here looking for help. i feel like a committed married person and hesays he does too. and our kids believe in us. don't trivialize us.

i do not know dr. jake. but i still want to know what he said.

Mamasita, *YOU* have trivialized your relationship by never getting married. Don't get mad at people for not pretending this is something it is not. You can pretend, but others are not likely to oblige you.

Your boyfriend is a single man who is free to move on. If his "feelings" enabled him to feel "married" last week, they can enable him to "feel" single this week.

Mamasita, marriage is not only a commitment between two people, it is an obligation. It is a social contract as well as a bond.

MelodyLane has been telling you that without the legal, moral, civic and social standing of marriage, there is nothing to stop your partner from walking out whenever he feels like it. Who or what is going to stop him?

When two people get married, it is a bond recognized by the law, religion and society. As such, it is designed to require the two people to work out their differences, and when they cannot, the court can step in to assure equanimity.

You see, marriage is much more than just a piece of paper. But all you've been running on is "feelings." Feelings won't get you anywhere in a court of law.

And now you find that your partner's feelings aren't the same as yours. What is your recourse? Not much, I'm afraid.

Feelings aren't facts.

so is marriage just a big club to punish people with in a court of law?

i told you my partner cares. do you not believe me. i will finish the story that shows that he stayed and some changes that have been made. not now tho.

for now, i would like to say that i want more than just to punish my partners transgressions, i want to heal and move beyond this. i want a relationship we can be proud of. i think he wants the same at this point. not before, but this is how it is now. i think. i wish he would post so you could here it from him. you are just more people i have to justify things to i guess. i wanted help, instead i just have more problems.

Mamasita

Oh bull. . .


Just because people have been telling you things you didn't want to hear doesn't mean you haven't been getting help.

It is difficult to help you when your brain is so scrambled that you both confess your partner's sins and defend him. Excuse me if I am wrong, but I did note that he expressed positive emotions about getting married, that it might make a difference.

Did I get that wrong.

And I am not posting because you started up the pity party again. I came to the thread to tell you something else. I mentioned Dr. Jakes. He is a Minister. He directs a very large Church in Dallas (Oak Cliff). He is on Dr. Phil's show from time to time. Bishop T. D. Jakes is a very wise man. I used to live a mile away from his Church and while I was not a member, I did attend three or four times a year because I thought his message was so powerful.

If you are looking for a message of inspiration, I feel safe recommending you google T. D. Jakes and find something to read. He likes to talk about marriage, for one thing.

I don't have a shake and bake magic wand for help. Sometimes it takes me a few days to find out what is in a person's head before I can post anything meaningful. I am thinking about you and I do intend to have a few things to offer you, once I am sure that you are not going to beat me up with the racist label, or reject my advice because, just because.

If I KNOW that you are at least going to read what I might say in the spirit of paying attention, I can then invest the time it takes me to comment and offer up help. Let me put a perspective on it. I spent over three hours last night on ONE post to someone who had asked for help.

That is a ton of personal time.

Got it?

Larry

Excellent, bubbles. I started to google that for her on Friday and got sidetracked.

Mama, maybe you'll have better luck investigating other sites for unmarried people with relationship problems.

Mama:

here is what I said:


You ready to listen with both ears yet?

Larry

by all means. bu t id on't really want to be kicked while i'm down. i came here for some support that i can not get in real life.
no time now tho. i'll be back later. jury duty.

i felt like crap yesterday thinking how you guys keep comparing me with your college roommates. i don't know what kind of room mate you had. but ihave been in both situations and they are not the same. at all.

also with the dog analogy, it's like we were strays and nobody wanted us. i feel the same here. and i am sad because this was my sanctuary for the last year. it was helping. i was getting healthier and dealing with things in ahealthier way. i agree with so much here that i think could strengthen our relationship. mostly the policy of joint agreeement and the policy of radical honesty. i want to learn how to avoid love busters, his and mine.

why won't you guys let me play. i know i said mean stuff right at first but i said i was sorry and i want to learn. you could help me. do you want to throw away that chance to convert a heathen.

as. i said he wants to try too.

Your posts say differently. Go back and read them. He runs his own hours, does not spend quality time as a family, and has relationships with other women. This is a room-mate.

You have spent the vast majority of your posting time on here, trying to change the rules of the game to suit you. Isn't going to happen. This isn't a Living Together Building site. It's a Marriage Builders site. All the whining in the world isn't going to change that. We've given you suggestions and you pick and choose what you want to hear. That's a form of manipulation that doesn't work here. Haven't you caught on to that yet?

I think it's great that you are able to glean some helpful info here for your sitch. But it doesn't change the fact that you are NOT married and do not respect the institution of marriage. That's your first hurdle to clear, and we can't help you with that.

You don't really know why folks refuse to give you advice, you are just guessing.

It may be a good guess.

Think of it this way, you've already demonstrated by what you've posted, that you are not fond of doing things the advised way.

It's advised to date, get married and THEN have children. Yet by your own admission, that's not how you've arrived at where you are in life.

Many folks are going to conclude that regardless what they say, you are not going to listen, and just march to your own tune.

If you want folks to give you good advice, (and I think many have) you have to demonstrate that you are willing to follow the good advice and not merely defend your prior choices.

The more you defend your past, the less likely you will find folks willing to help.

If the way things have gone in the past is working so well for you, then why are you here? That's the point many are trying to make. Living together is inferior to a committed marriage when it comes to raising a family and supporting one another.

So you can continue to defend what you have done and are still doing, and folks will largely leave you to do what you want to do.

Please note, by continually defending your choices, you are sending the message that you really do not want advice. You merely want folks to validate your prior choices, to feel sorry for you, or to cheer for you. You do not send the message that you are willing to consider and act on the advice you request.

If you want advice, be more advisable and less defensive about your prior choices.

Note the part I bolded. What you have been doing is "play marriage". Play house. Play Family. Now your children are at risk of not having both parents in their lives full time because he played the game by different rules - but it was all a game. Can you trust him to be real when it's time? I don't know that you want to marry someone who doesn't play by the rules of the game; how can you make this real now?

So the game is over. One way or another. He broke your heart with the "let's pretend we're married - after all, we don't need a piece of paper to make us "forever" game.

Get real or let's NOT play!

I'm frustrated with posting to you because I know you're not that obtuse; but you refuse to see what's right in front of you!

Oh baloney. Stop the pity party already. Put on your big girl panties and open BOTH ears. Nobody is kicking you when you are down. Lots of people are trying to give you what THEY believe is good advice.

YOU are kicking THEM because YOU don't want to HEAR it. This is what I hear when you open your mouth, "I want to be what I am with no changes. Someone please wave a magic wand and fix the stuff I am complaining about."

I ain't your Daddy. I don't have a magic wand. When I offer advice, it is with the expectation that it will listened to. When that doesn't work, I give up. Plain and simple. Get it?

When I do offer advice, it isn't my problem if that advice gets rejected. All I want is for folks like you to listen and not tell me I am a bad guy for offering to help. Do you get THAT?

Calling me a racist was just flat stupid. Here's your sign.

Nothing is going to change in your situation until YOU change your mind about how you do your life's business. You are where you are for a reason. And the reason is you!

Your guy says he is ready to start. That is great! When are you gonna be ready? And don't tell me right now. I won't believe you until you change your attitude.

Because your attitude sucks. And a large part of your life sucks because of your attitude. I am NOT drinking kool-aid at your pity party. And I have decided that I am tired of the argument. All the best, I am outa here.

Larry

good for you. i don't want you here anyway. you are not nice

Mamasita, have you bought a copy of Buyers, Renters, and Freeloaders yet?

Have you read through this site's Basic Concepts, yet?

Marriage Builders is like a diet. It's a great plan that won't work for you if you don't use it! And I guarantee you will never use the plan if you don't read it.

Mamasita,
I have been thinking about your thread all day. Let me start by saying I've never posted here - like you I've been lurking and reading here for almost a year and I am by nature a lurker, I don't like putting myself out there. However your situation keeps running through my mind. Mostly this is because I see so many similarities with myself.

Six years ago I ended a 4 year long relationship with my boyfriend. We'd been living together for the last 3 years. As a child raised through divorce (my parents divorced when I was 2) I swore I would never, NEVER get married. That way I would never get divorced. We had been living together happily and that was good enough. We talked and planned our future. We talked about having children. I always figured we would have children. But I was never getting married. Like you, I didn't need a piece of paper to tell me I was committed to my ex. We loved each other. Sure the relationship wasn't perfect but it was good - better and healthier than any I'd ever had before.

I stumbled upon the Marriage Builders site when we'd been living together for a year and thought all the information was wonderful! Just what we needed- of course, until I came upon some articles about living together before marriage. I was incensed. How dare this 'doctor' on teh intarwebs tell me I wasn't really committed to my ex! We were perfect together, in love; we were going to have a wonderful life together! The statistics and information may have been true for past generations, but my generation didn't see marriage the same way, we don't need it.

And then a couple years later, through a series of events I realized that my future children deserved the BEST mother they could get and I wasn't it. I was going to have to change. The relationship I was in, though I loved my ex, wasn't it. We'd established too many bad habits. Now, my ex wasn't a bad guy by any means - he was actually really great in many ways. We just messed everything up. We broke up and I spent the next year working on myself. Little did I know it then but I met my future husband only 2 weeks later. And we did things very differently. We refused to even sleep together before we got married. We treated our relationship with respect along with our commitment. See, having lived both lives I can tell you IT IS DIFFERENT!!!! in so many tiny ways.

My husband has a saying that appalled me when I heard it. "You're single 'til you're married" What a horrible saying, I thought. But it's true. Until you have said the words In PUBLIC and they're signed and sealed, they're just words. With that piece of paper, you're protected. But it's more than that. My marriage now is drastically different than my live in relationship with my ex. Though if I were to go back in person and tell my then-self face to face I wasn't as committed as I could be I'd have laughed in my face and ridiculed the information. But I am different in this relationship. The way I approached the relationship from day one was different, and it's better than I could have ever dreamed. It took that moment of introspection, that moment of honesty with myself to realize things needed to change.

Whether you like it or not we live in a society that values marriage. Social Institutions exist for a reason: they work! The institution of dating, by nature, is temporary. It's a method for getting to know whether someone is worthy as a potential mate. It's structure is not meant to be permanent and it shouldn't be. You should be able to walk away easily if it isn't working out - with few losses except maybe a bruised heart. Once a level of commitment is established you say to those around you - I am willing to marry this person, and you get engaged. However, all you have to do is say the word and the engagement is ended. It's a little more difficult but lives have not yet been entwined - you can walk away. And then there is marriage. It isn't just a commitment between two people. It is a commitment between them and the society around them. They are saying to society that they will be bonded together, raise children together, be 'off' the market and society is saying in turn - we will support your union. Just because there are unhappy marriages doesn't make the institution broken - it makes it human.

The fact of the matter is that as human beings we recognize symbols. A red light at a traffic intersection isn't just pretty decoration, it is a symbol with life or death implications. Marriage isn't a piece of paper, it is a symbol and a very important one in our culture. You cannot remove yourself from our culture's social institutions without consequences. The consequences for you are an abusive relationship with a man who cheated on you - by his own admission because he wasn't married to you. You have twisted the institution of dating into something it wasn't meant to support, because by it's nature it CAN'T. You can't mix the two: dating and marriage, by their natures one is transitory and the other permanent, they don't mix and match well.

I'm so sorry that things are the way they are. You truly seem to be hurting. But you don't have to be! Your situation is different from mine - there are children involved. The ideal scenario is you and your partner are crazy in love with each other, raising your children in a love filled home protected by marriage. Because marriage protects your children as well - and they deserve that.

So you need a plan, you want to know how to 'fix' your situation. There are no easy fixes here. My advice: get married, but as there are abuse and infidelity issues those should be addressed through pre-marital counseling. Along with that, you and your partner have developed a thousand and one bad habits that have cumulatively damaged your relationship and they would positively annihilate your marriage. But habits can be changed. It takes a ton work but it can be done. You've built up parallel but independent lives and you're driving yourselves apart. But you can come together and create interdependent healthy lives. Like Larry said, it will take an attitude adjustment. A willingness to look at yourself and make personal changes and a commitment from both of you to the Marriage Builders program. You complain that you're not getting any support here, that people are kicking you when you are down. Well you never stood up and participated in the symbol of marriage so society has no need to support you - in fact were there no children we'd say cut your losses and run. But for their sakes, some people have come to give you advice, and it's good advice. Going it your own way has ended you up here, maybe it's worth seeing if the other way isn't better.

I'm sorry if this post comes off wrong. I'm not used to posting and have a pretty abrupt manner. But I really care about your situation, and your family. And I do care about you and think you should have a happy and strong relationship, not just for the sake of your children but for yourself.

Oh and in reference to your above statement, right now you don't need nice, you need honest. And that is what you're getting.

Back to lurking.