But the time has passed for Plan A. Plan A is only a short term plan until the affair is killed. You should be in Plan Recovery. Plan A is not supposed to be a way of life for conflict avoiders to enable tyrants. You are just teaching your wife to be a tyrant. If she bolts because you won't settle for a death of a thousand cuts, what have you lost? This is not about marriage at all costs, Stretch. What happens at this phase is recovery. You don't have a marriage otherwise.

Nor do I think she will bolt. I think she would have done that a long time ago if she didn't want the marriage. If she won't commit to recovery, you are BETTER OFF without her. She will respect you for having standards, stretch.

Move forward and lead your marriage out of the ditch, Stretch. The time for Plan A is long over.


Not working on the marriage is NOT normal and is not advised. Foggy is normal, but that does not mean you abandon recovery and settle for this. You don't settle for a death of a thousand cuts, you raise your standards and recover your marriage. If she doesn't get on board, then Plan B is in order.

Stretch, what usually happens when a BS sets the standards and gives the WS an opportunity to EARN his forgiveness is she will rant and rave and make threats. See, she is used to having you under her control and will not like you taking back control of your own life. Because all you are doing here is telling her what YOU will or won't accept. You are stating your own boundaries and giving her an opportunity to respect them.......or not. But you do have control over whether or not you choose to stay in an abusive, neglectful marriage. When you state your boundaries she will begin to RESPECT you.

Women do not respect men they can run over. It is disgusting. If you want your marriage to survive, YOU are going to have to stand up and LEAD your marriage out of the ditch. Your wife is currently in charge and she is a drunk driver. You need to take the wheel back, Sir.

You might hear, "well, I don't know if I want to work on it." She is testing you to see if you really mean it and to see if you really have standards. [she doesn't believe it and still believes you want her so bad she can manipulate you] If you are willing to make yourself available to be a doormat, I would tell thats ok, that you are volunteering to be her doormat.

If you choose, rather, to stand up for your marriage and not accept a crippled, loveless marriage, I would tell her that if she chooses to reject your offer and leave the marriage, you will sure be sad, but think it is for the best. Now, when will she be leaving because her refusal will lead to divorce. Can she move out today?

You have to be willing to back up your boundaries, Stretch. And keep in mind, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by setting standards for your marriage. I predict she will be shocked at first but will come to you later and agree to your terms. That is what usually happens. And if she won't commit, you have lost nothing except a death of a thousand cuts.

ANyway, if her behavior is a result of depression, then her current treatment is not working...but if you try to tell her that, even in as gentle a way as possible, she's going to take it as a DJ.

IC wants her to feel better

Dear A.J.,

From your description, you married a man who has "used up" the love of many women. I'm sure that others in his past have come to many of the same conclusions as you have. Your husband probably has a serious depressive disorder, and he's probably been that way, off and on, most of his life. It's certainly no fun living with someone who's depressed, and I would imagine that if he doesn't overcome his depression soon, your name will be added to the list of women who've left him. However, there are proven ways to help him out of his depression that may save your marriage.

Apparently, you lived with him before you were married, and you probably had a better relationship then. You may have met him when he was in a more energetic part of his cycle, and since you married him, his cycle has turned to a less energetic form of depression. He may have periods of temporary recovery that last days or even weeks, but the recoveries are less frequent and don't last as long as they used to. His depression doesn't keep him from his job, but it makes his work miserable. When he comes home from work, he may try to relieve his suffering with alcohol.

If I'm right about this man, his problem may be almost entirely biochemical. The juices that flow through his brain make him depressed. Lots of people are that way, and without medication that stops depression, there's not much they can do about it.

Granted, he's probably done plenty to make himself even more depressed. The way he has treated the women in his life has caused them to leave him. That's pretty depressing. He's probably done all sorts of things in a state of depression that has made his life pure hell for himself and anyone around him. After someone's been depressed a while, it's hard to know what causes the depression, biochemistry or the behavior of the depressed person, because his behavior also makes him depressed.

I won't lay all of his problems (or even the majority of his problems) at the feet of his depression, however. He probably has a lot to learn about caring for a woman, but his depression has given him a handicap that makes him socially disabled, at least when it comes to marriage. Regardless of how hard he tries to please you, his depression makes him a miserable man to be with. He simply cannot meet your emotional needs while he's depressed.

Depression is the most common of all emotional disorders. Everyone knows what it's like to be depressed from time to time, but that's not what depression, the emotional disorder, is all about. It is not the sorrow we feel at the time of an important loss, but rather, it is an irrational feeling of hopelessness when there is evidence for hope. The emotional disorder, depression, leaves a person blinded to his opportunities, unaware of his potential. The longer he is depressed, the more opportunities he misses until his life becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy -- he always thought he was worthless, and finally he proves it because he stops doing anything that's productive.

Whenever a spouse I counsel for marital problems suffers from severe depression, my first item of business is to treat the depression, not the marital problems. The treatment, however, is much simpler than most people think. Anti-depressant medication is the ticket. It greatly relieves, if not eliminates entirely, a depressive state so that the spouse I counsel can succeed in meeting the other spouse's emotional needs. As his depression is lifted, he seizes opportunities both in his marriage and at his job, that makes him more successful. In the end, his self-esteem is restored because he finds himself successful in achieving his life's ambitions. I do not believe that counseling to improve self-esteem, apart from showing people how to be successful, ever really improves self-esteem.

The approach that I use to save marriages looks at the present and future for solutions. I encourage you not to worry about your husband's past, his self-esteem or whether or not he loves himself. After he is treated medically for depression, focus your attention on the way you treat each other in the here and now.

Your biggest hurdle will be to follow my Policy of Joint Agreement (Never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse). His depression has made it impossible for him to follow that policy, and by failing to follow it, you have both been developing habits that make you increasingly incompatible. You are coming to a point in your relationship where you will be so incompatible that you will not be able to live together anymore, and you will end the relationship. When his depression lifts, he will be in an emotional position to learn new habits, habits that will restore compatibility to your relationship. By following the Policy of Joint Agreement you will eliminate all the things you're doing that grate on each other, and you will substitute behavior and activities that make both of you comfortable.

If either of you feels you cannot follow that Policy, it means that you are willing to gain at the other's expense, and that will eventually ruin your relationship. When you follow the Policy of Joint Agreement you create compatibility by taking each other's feelings into account, especially when you don't feel like it. When you feel the most self-centered, that's when you need it the most. If you cared about each other all the time, you would follow the policy instinctively, but in every relationship, there are times that we care far more about ourselves than we care about our spouses. So by following this rule day in and day out, you keep your relationship healthy when your instincts would tend to ruin it.

You and every other couple can have a terrific relationship regardless of your past. Granted, your spouse's depression must be treated, and, in my judgment, anti-depressant medication should do the trick. But his past has left him with all sorts of unpleasant habits which must change before you can have a happy marriage. If you follow the Policy of Joint Agreement as soon as his depression lifts, you will have that relationship.

If anyone reading this column is suffering from the disabling condition, depression, help is already available to you. Medical science has found an incredible cure that should leave you free to solve your marital problems intelligently and completely. Don't ignore it, take care of it now.

If it is anything to do with OM, my money would be that she's still keeping the fantasy alive in her own head and someone needs to get her to drop it. Whatever the case, ineffective treatment of depression or holding on to fantasy, the current counseling/medication regime is not working - and yeah, that's the trick, trying to get that across to her without her taking it as a DJ.

I agree, he seems to be doing everything right, really, going above and beyond, but it's not getting through to her. If she's got this active fantasy playing in her head, whether that's of the OM or if it's more along the lines of "Im not happy, I've never been happy, stretch is not making me happy, blah blah" then her LB$ is going to remain closed to him.