Since I'm not really sure what you're asking I'll just say that spending any amount of time looking at a woman that isn't my wife is damaging to both her (my wife) and our relationship not to mention just not a very nice thing to do.

But you said "I looked a bit more and finally saw what her face looked like."
As in Mission Accomplished. As in seeing her face was a goal of yours.

Have you looked at my post asking you to describe your event in third person? I'm trying to get you to look at it outside of yourself. Can you respond to that post? I'd be interested to see your take on it.

Sorry, I believe that I've misled you. I wasn't interested in seeing her face and by that point (much too late) I was no longer interested in watching her at all.

I start a thread and all I get are weak excuses and justifications.

Well at least it is a start.

Mister JK,

One of the things my WH said to me in regard to his fling with the STD Tramp was "She was nothing to me."

That remark INFURIATED me!

My response to him was, "So...if she was "nothing" to you, then that means that, for however long it took for you to boink her, I was LESS than nothing to you."

Your staring at the woman and your attempts to downplay it is also saying that, for the length of time you were staring at the woman, your wife and her feelings were not important to you.

Trying to excuse one's horrid and hurtful behavior as not being important is a HUGE no-no!

I think he will turn around.
Hopefully, it won't be too late when he does.

MrJK-

About this:

Anything you did to make your BW feel desired was completely erased because of your choice to focus your attention on another woman, especially in the company of your BW. You destroyed every attempt you made to help her feel like she was special again when you did this.

You might want to peruse "Every Man's Battle" and "Every Man's Marriage". These books are written by men, for men.

Actually, MJK, this is a good thing. I would prefer to see you respond this way as opposed to "I couldn't wait to see if her face was a hot as her body" or some other trash like that.

I'm no therapist and I don't even play one blahblahblah But it seems like you have a habit to look at women as objects - like you depersonalize them. Please respond to my other post. Let me rephrase what I'd like you to do: I would like to see you retell what happened at Loew's, but I'd like to you play the role of some other customer watching the whole thing unfold.

Start it like this: I was at Loew's the other day and saw this guy pushing a cart with his wife...how would you finish this?

MR JK
As the guilty party for injecting the word droll, I must congratulate you for your courage in coming here to learn. Perhaps you felt that droll was incongruous and perhaps it was however I got the sense that it may not be. Droll "amusing in an odd way" as the definition is that I believe your behavior is a reflex borne out of attitude.

I believe it is attitude infused actions that your wife is reacting to. It seems that our attitudes change once we have been broken, once we have reached bottom and given up all pretense and the masks we carefully craft to cover up our insecurities. I think Marriage Builders is excellent at realigning actions. And if I understand the process feelings will follow. And hopefully eventually attitudes.

So the question I have is there something within you that causes you to withhold? You are admittedly passive aggressive, and that indicates to me you are trying to protect yourself. What is it you are trying to protect yourself from. From my observations passive aggressive personalities try to control the situation in an attempt to minimize the potential of being hurt. And it is natural that we want to protect ourselves, however the barriers we put in place for protection can also impair us from experiencing the things we desire in a relationship.

You hedged your bets by having an affair. You signaled to your wife she is not sufficient and you considered her an option. Marriage is forsaking all others. That is the contract, are you able to fulfill your part of the deal? Does your wife know you love her with abandon? Does she get the sense you are all in? What is preventing you from being all in?

Good Luck. There are lots of folks wanting to see you succeed. Including me.

Blessings
BCBoy

Agreed. It was thoughtless and insensitive behavior and I am ashamed that I did it.

I know. Not only did I hurt her I set my own efforts back years.



Thanks for the tip johnstwin.

Actually it quite the opposite, I have a great deal of respect for women and, in general, I enjoy their company as friends and colleagues. I don't want to get into details about my psychological profile but, if anything, I tend to attribute more power to women than they actually have.



So, I was in Lowes shopping with my wife when I saw some squirrelly dude ogling some woman who was totally dressed inappropriately for shopping at a hardware store. I said, �Dude! Check out the rogue male perve checking out the tube-top woman! Then I noticed that the rogue male wasn�t rogue at all! He was attached to a lovely woman shopping for plants a few feet away from him. �What a sleazebag� I thought, �I hope that his wife catches him and catches holy hell.� I then apologized to my wife for each and every time I�ve looked at another woman since we�ve been together.

Okay, I'll buy that. I hope that you'll forgive me, though, if I fail to find anything about this situation amusing.



These are the things that I've been working on in myself since D-day. I came to understand that I have had a lot of behaviors, P/A behaviors included, that didn�t serve me well. I�ve been working changing these behaviors ever since. JK has seen many of the changes that I�ve made but she is naturally skeptical regarding their extent. This is why I am so infuriated with myself and how I�ve undercut the progress that I had been making in reinventing myself.



Sadly, no.



I believe that I am despite evidence to the contrary.



Thank you BCBoy.

Now that it's gotten a little quiet in here let me explain some of the precautions that I've taken to protect my marriage.

I work around 40-45 minutes from home, seemingly a perfect situation to indulge in misbehavior, right? So this is what I do:

There are a couple of women in my work group. The one that I work with the most is gay (thankfully!) and the other has always seemed somewhat hostile towards me. I don't know why that might be and I haven�t spent any time trying to find out. Neither of these people represents any kind of threat to JK.

There are lots of women in this office, some of whom I come in contact with in a professional capacity. I�ve made a point to make sure that these contacts always stay on a professional level only. I have no idea what goes on in anyone else�s private life and vice versa. I�ve wanted to introduce JK to my co-workers since I got here so that she would be comfortable with my work environment but she�s always declined.

The only not strictly professional activities that I have participated in have been the occasional going away lunch or lunch with consultants. I normally each lunch by myself. I usually go out, buy something, and then return to my office to eat. I go to different places every day so I haven�t developed any kind of relationship with any food servers.

I usually call JK several times a day, on my way to work, mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon, and on my way home. Often I can�t reach her as she tends to be very busy. If she tries to call me for any reason and I can�t pick up immediately I text her to let her know what�s going on (usually it�s because I�m in a meeting.)

I recently got an opportunity to work at home, alongside JK, and I jumped at it. There are a lot of reasons for this but mostly it is because I love spending my days with JK and being with her each day will hopefully ease any suspicions that she may have about me. I�m looking forward to starting this new job and very much looking forward to being able to spend my days with JK. I consider myself very lucky to have gotten this opportunity.

Stop saying what you think people want to hear. (In this case, READ)

Your rewriting of the Lowes incident is like a stick in the eye.

And this is the type of attitude that JK has been dealing with for YEARS. All talk, no action.

It wasn't a "squirrlly dude". It was YOU, trying to look at an attractive young woman. I'm sure in any conversation with any one you respect, would you EVER refer to yourself a "squirrelly"

Then with the rest you just went over the top.

Had the two of us been doing the shopping, and had watched this play out, I'm sure the convo would have been much different.

LG: MrJK, check out the Tube Top woman by the plants....
MrJK: Wow, I love this summer weather....
LG: Oh, yeah, check out that guy by the watering cans, his eyes are bugging OUT!
MrJK: Oh, man, he really is, he just can't get enough of that...
LG: Lets see how this plays out....
MrJK: Yeah, see how he pushed that cart out of the way, and then moved that Plant, can you believe it, its like he never saw a woman before, you think he just got out of prison?
LG: Incoming on the RIGHT, looks like his Wife is coming down the aisle from the other direction...
MrJF: Wow, It lloks like she is ignoring it!
LG: Lucky guy!
MrJK: The woman is moving over towards the checkout line..
LG: Yeah she is, and cart-man is going to the check out too, notice how he is staying behind his wife while he continues to ogle tube top woman?
MrJK: Classic move to avoid discovery!
LG: Look at him at the check out, he STILL can't stop...
MrJK: Uh oh, appears that the Wife has noticed, she is looking at him, and has been for about 30 seconds, he still hasn't noticed....
LG: Yeah, gonna be trouble for him, how about that "almost" perfect game yesterday?

And away we go...

Which is more realistic. Yours? Which would be TRUE if you where just trying to blow smoke, or mine? Which would be two guys watching? Or even one.

There would be very little name-calling of the guy, except for the obviousness of the sitch. No "sleaze-bag", "perve" or other deragatory terms.

And I am sure that your daily conversation take this behavior pattern as well.

I can see it on your thread already.

You going to say what others like to hear, and then do what you want to do, NOBODY is telling you how to act.

Been There, Done That.

Flamingo doesn't tell me HOW to act. She tells me WHAT HURTS HER, and I work not to act that way anymore.

Think about it that way for awhile.

You can do anything you want, in any manner, until it starts to hurt others. And then when you know it hurts others, and you continue, it becomes extraordinarly scary at that point.

Change your behaviors.


LG

None of this is very realistic LG. I just don't tend to pay much attention to stuff like this. Usually it's JK that will bring these things to my attention (hey, look at the rogue male!) and I just sort of go along with it.

When we're out I usually spend most of my time focusing on JK while occasionally glancing at the game on the corner TV.

I asked JK yesterday whether or not she�d been vigilant in keeping an eye on the focus of my eyes lately and she said no, that she had come to trust that I wasn�t checking women out. This was both good and bad news to me. Good in that at some point I actually had regained a measure of trust and bad because I�ve now lost that trust that I�ve been working so hard to regain. It�s also bad news because I can�t point to that and say �See? It really was an anomaly.�

LG, quite honestly I could really care less what anyone here (no offence) thinks of me, I�m not writing what I think that y�all want to hear. I only care (and care immensely) what JK thinks of me.

I know that I effed up. I�m not trying to sugar-coat or minimize it. The only things that matters to me at this time is that I hurt JK and taking the steps necessary to fix it. I�m desperately trying to regain my footing with JK so that we can continue building our relationship. I am absolutely disgusted with myself with how I�ve hurt JK. That is why I�m here LG.

Made an appointment with Steve Harley for next week. Got the ball rolling on taking a polygraph test. Off we go...

Good luck!
Be the best you can be.

YAY! Steve is wonderful and will be a huge help and just scheduling the polygraph will do a lot toward making JK feel better.

MJK,

What were you so angry about tonight?