The past incident I spoke of was an illustration of my reaction to honesty. Not how he should react. He thinks I will blow a gasket at honesty.

It is exactly the opposite. I get pissed when I am lied to. The "Fixing" you see, was me pointing out to him, my reaction not his.

That simple.

And for the record, there was more to the thought. He did finally admit that he had been trying to figure out where to get the porn..... <---- This is trickle truth too.

As far as the feeling safe dear, that is my need.

And that is a need that continues to be undermined by his choices of trickle truth honesty and deception.

As far as being judgmental, that has been his fall back justification for everything. He says I am judgmental, so now he can do what ever he wants. She is judging me so I am justified in looking at porn. She judged me so I can treat myself to a trip to the strip club. HE admitted to this after the A.

DJ is NOT a justification for negative actions. It is a LB yes. But so is lying. And yes both are wrong.

I have spent the past year+ working on my DJ, learning to choose each word as it relates to ME when I am speaking with H. My feelings, my actions, my example. I purposely try not to judge him and his failings. Obviously I am not perfect, and am failing myself.

And after talking this morning, he even admitted that nothing I said last night was in judgement of him.

I want him to see me for who I am and right now he is not.

"If I tell her the truth about anything she will bash me over the head." < This is what he keeps telling himself.

But when he tells me the truth, I don't bash him over the head. Yes part of me does get hurt with the bad truths, but I see that as my failing not his. I tell him thank you for the honesty and actually get a little smile in my heart that he did trust me for that second.

I only get pissed when I am lied to. And I get really mad then.

When I discovered he was looking at porn again, (I found it, he did not tell me) I was disappointed that he backslide. I was angry that he did not tell me the truth. I was not angry about porn, only the lies.

His version of me is not based in reality and I want him to see ME. Not the person he developed in his head to justify his actions.

HHH

Perhaps I am crossing the line, and I am trying to do better.

I am afraid he will continue to view me as that person rather than to see how I really act to honesty. That is why I felt like I needed to point it out. And you are right, that was probably not the best course of action.

Again I want him to see me. The real way I react to honesty. So how do I get him to see and understand that, especially when he wants to continue being dishonest?

Do way-wards really ever see the difference when you just leave it or do they continue to believe the fog they are using for justification?

Can someone please link me some refresher information on DJ. Apparently I need to re-read it.

I am confused on this.

After the 2x4s I kinda feel like I am being told to just say thank you or that hurt me and continue to allow the behavior. For the record I know that is not what I am being told, this is just what I am feeling like atm.

So help me understand how to ensure EPs are met, how to handle when they are broken, and how to avoid DJ in the process.

In the final analysis, disrespectful judgments represent an effort to force our spouses to give us what we want in marriage, but it's often cleverly disguised. Instead of making an outright demand, we present our problem as if it were really our spouse's personal shortcoming. We try to "straighten out" our spouse in an effort to get our way.

At the time we rationalize our disrespect by convincing ourselves that we're doing our spouses a big favor, to lift them from the darkness of their confusion into the light of our superior perspective. If they would only follow our advice, we tell ourselves, they could avoid many of life's pitfalls-and we would also get what we want.

A disrespectful judgment occurs whenever one spouse tries to impose a system of values and beliefs on the other. When a husband tries to force his point of view on his wife, he's just asking for trouble. When a wife assumes that her own views are right and her husband is woefully misguided -- and tells him so -- she enters a minefield.

But how should I react when he breaks EPs?

If I ever reach the point of not being able to take it anymore, say my bank is so far in the red there is no recovery. Then what? Do I just pack our bags and leave without a word? Do I hold my tongue on everything he does that hurts me?

I can not control his actions, but how do I handle my reactions to his actions?

As far as being judgmental, that has been his fall back justification for everything. He says I am judgmental, so now he can do what ever he wants. She is judging me so I am justified in looking at porn. She judged me so I can treat myself to a trip to the strip club. HE admitted to this after the A.

His version of me is not based in reality and I want him to see ME. Not the person he developed in his head to justify his actions.

I don't know if it's bad form for me to post in my wife's thread or not, but HHH your comments while I know you are trying to help us has had an opposite effect. Eluna has been very upset because she is getting 2x4ed for things that I had said, some of them she did deserve and she admits that. The comment above that you say she is being DJ about are not her words, they are mine. She is relaying to you what I have said to her to justify my actions.

I have to admit that I have had an unrealistic view of my wife; I use to have a friend that I spent a lot of time with that did cheat on his wife multiple times. He thought that Eluna was a very judgmental person because she didn't like how he acted most of the time. So she was trying to stand up for herself and it would get to him. When she and I would have an issue, he would use those times of weakness to colored my view of her into thinking she was as judgmental of me as she was of him. Such as telling me that she is full of it, or she was being immature and childish. He was trying to convince me that how she views him was how she viewed me. Which wasn�t true, she didn�t view me like what she saw in him. I did have an epiphany that I didn�t start calling her judgmental until this person had come into our lives. Some of you are going to say how could you be that weak to let this other person color your view of your wife. Well when you are down and feel like everything is falling apart, some charismatic person dangles a carrot in front of you, you tend to reach for it.

In the final analysis, disrespectful judgments represent an effort to force our spouses to give us what we want in marriage, but it's often cleverly disguised. Instead of making an outright demand, we present our problem as if it were really our spouse's personal shortcoming. We try to "straighten out" our spouse in an effort to get our way.

At the time we rationalize our disrespect by convincing ourselves that we're doing our spouses a big favor, to lift them from the darkness of their confusion into the light of our superior perspective. If they would only follow our advice, we tell ourselves, they could avoid many of life's pitfalls-and we would also get what we want.

A disrespectful judgment occurs whenever one spouse tries to impose a system of values and beliefs on the other. When a husband tries to force his point of view on his wife, he's just asking for trouble. When a wife assumes that her own views are right and her husband is woefully misguided -- and tells him so -- she enters a minefield.

In most cases, a disrespectful judgment is simply a sophisticated way of getting what one spouse wants from the other. But even when there are the purest motives, it's still a stupid and abusive strategy. It's stupid because it doesn't work, and it's abusive because it causes unhappiness. If we think we have the right -- even the responsibility -- to impose our view on our spouses, our efforts will almost invariably be interpreted as personally threatening, arrogant, rude, and incredibly disrespectful. That's when we make sizable withdrawals from the Love Bank.

Rules that Guide Good
Habit Formation in Marriage

By Willard F. Harley, Jr., Ph.D.

Almost everything we do is repeated over and over. That's because we're creatures of habit. While it may seem to us that we're making creative decisions about what we do throughout the day, we actually tend to be on auto-pilot most of the time. As long as our behavior is useful to ourselves, and not objected to by others, we're fairly predictable.

But if our behavior becomes a problem to others, we're encouraged to change. And change is not easy. It takes effort. In some cases, it takes tremendous effort.

My basic approach to helping a couple create a mutually satisfying marriage is to focus on the effect that their habits have on each other. I help spouses eliminate habits that cause unhappiness and create habits that cause happiness. It not only leads to a mutually satisfying marriage, but it also creates and sustains romantic love.

Most people see the sense in spouses learning how to make Love Bank deposits and avoiding their withdrawal. But as I've noted so many times before, knowing what's right and doing it are two entirely different issues, especially when it involves doing something new. So in this newsletter article, I address the topic of how to create new habits because they make or break marriages. Let me begin with a very brief review of how habits are formed. Then I'll explain how rules can guide motivation to create good habits.

Habits 101

Habits are formed through repetition. The more often you do something, the stronger the habit becomes. If you want to meet an important emotional need that you have been failing to meet, you should practice the behavior that meets that need until it becomes almost effortless.

An example of this principle is affection. If your wife (or husband) feels that her need for affection is not being met by you, ask her to make a list of behaviors that meet that need for her. Then, practice each behavior on that list every day until they all become habits. At first, while learning the new habits, your effort and awkwardness may diminish the effect somewhat. But eventually, your habits of affection will become smooth and expressed from the heart. When that happens, making massive Love Bank deposits will become almost effortless.

Motivation 101

While it's repetition that creates habits, it takes motivation for a person to repeat a new behavior long enough for it to becomes a habit. My greatest problem in helping couples restore love to their marriage is motivating them to do what they know would work. It's a problem because I am greatly limited in my ability to provide what's known to be the most effective ways to motivate people.

The most effective motivation to repeat a new behavior is the enjoyment of the new behavior itself. The more enjoyable the behavior, the more likely you'll repeat the behavior. For example, you may never have gone fishing until a friend invites you to join him. On that one outing, you may find fishing to be one of the most enjoyable experiences of your life. If that's the case, even though you've not yet developed the habit of fishing, you will take every opportunity to repeat the experience. Eventually, fishing will be a habit. I call this motivator MR1 because it's usually the best way to motivate a person to repeat behavior.

Another effective motivation to repeat new behavior is to experience enjoyment after you behave in a new way. For example, if you have a need for sexual fulfillment, and your wife agrees to make love to you whenever you help her with the dishes after dinner, chances are good that you'll get into the habit of helping with the dishes. This motivator is MR2 because it's usually less effective than MR1.

A third motivator, MR3, is punishment. If you suffer pain when you fail to repeat a behavior, you will tend to repeat that behavior until it becomes a habit. When we punish our children for failing to clean up their rooms, they will get into the habit of room-cleaning if the punishment is far worse than the pain they experience making their bed and putting their clothes away. I call this MR3 because it's usually less effective than either MR1 or MR2. Those of us who tried to use punishment to motivate our children to keep their rooms picked up can attest to punishment's limited usefulness as a motivator.

Rules That Create Romantic Love

As a counselor helping couples create romantic love, I try to use MR1 and MR2, and avoid MR3, whenever possible. And rules help me do it.

The Policy of Joint Agreement -- never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse -- helps spouses work together to try to make new behavior enjoyable (MR1). This policy rules out MR3 because punishment would never be agreed to enthusiastically. In the case of affection, for example, I encourage the spouse trying to meet that need to discover the most enjoyable ways to do it. If he enjoys practicing affectionate behavior, he'll develop the habit of being an affectionate husband in no time.

The Policy of Undivided Attention is a rule that helps create MR2. Give your spouse your undivided attention a minimum of fifteen hours each week, using the time to meet the emotional needs of affection, sexual fulfillment, intimate conversation, and recreational companionship. By meeting all four emotional needs, the effort of one spouse is rewarded by having their own needs met. That's why I encourage couples to spend 15 hours together each week: It takes that long to meet all four emotional needs adequately.

If a rule to guide habit formation doesn't address motivational issues, it won't work. But when it requires couples to implement the most powerful motivators available, it always works. All you need to know to create a very successful and romantic relationship is these two rules, the POJA and the POUA. When you follow them, your marriage will be everything you could have ever dreamed it would be.