Yep. Looks like you're still Love Busting each other; I've covered that in previous posts to you, so won't revisit it here.

You also need to learn to turn your frustration into thoughtfulness and openness; you both need to follow the instructions here: http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi8120_sex.html .

Yes. She's doing no love busting. Its me. Busting it at every turn. Cant help myself.

I think of you doormat as I do it and come here to confess it.

Im bad at maintaining md skills consistently.

Yes. She's doing no love busting. Its me. Busting it at every turn. Cant help myself.

I think of you doormat as I do it and come here to confess it.

Im bad at maintaining MB skills consistently.

Mike, here I go again trying to assess a colleague's mindset from a few typed words.

I cant escape the thought that my marriage is ruined. We are living a sham for the sake of the kids. This is my daily thought of late.

DoNoMo pointed out the probable LB going on, and I'll partially agree with him on his wise opinion. I would, however like to add that LB'ing does not necessarily have to be outward directed. People can, and I believe you currently do, think and act in ways that LB themselves.

For the next few weeks do not concentrate on your current marital status/relationship as a "stand alone" model. In other words, don't compare it to the supposed ideal marriage with which most people enter into the union. Compare you situation today with a series of checkpoints from your past. Is the marriage better today than it was a month ago? Two Months? (I sure as hell know it's better than it was in May!) And as hard as it may be, compare it to the (true) state of your union during her A. (Always focusing on the relative quality of your marriage, not focusing on the awful things that existed then.) If the elephant you have to eat is huge, concentrate on the fact that it grows smaller with each forkful.

Success is a measure not of where we are, but of how far we have come.

Thanks NG. As usual you always know what and how to say it.

I need to give more effort.

I think the easy way would be to leave and I've always taken the easy way. My kids are forcing me to take the hard path. They don't know it but its true without them I doubt id be here now. My focus truly is to be her husband and try to continue our restarted lives together with the goal of making and maintaining each others happiness.

My inability to keep her A out of my daily thoughts is toubling.

Thought for the week:

'Silent treatment is a Love Buster.

Stop doing it.'

Mike,


From one BS to another... It's self pity bro. I did it. It keeps the rollercoaster going.

Sounds as if you are allowing yourself to get mad at WW because you feel secure enough that she is not going to leave you the family the marriage.

And you are on schedule to to get these feelings. At about six months past d day your feelings of increased security are allowing you to enter the next phase of recovery. Known as the anger phase.

The anger phase starts about six months out from d day and this phase can last for about six months.

Now you know why BS's are told it's a good idea to wait a year before making life changing decisions. Also this is why recovery takes two to five years.

Now you know what phase you are in. Keep up the good work.

Good to know Im on schedule.

That's Grief Cycle stuff, though, not MarriageBuilders. An important core concept of MarriageBuilders is that NOTHING and NOBODY makes you angry. You choose to make yourself angry. It's very important to learn how to channel your frustration into thoughtfulness -- introspection or discussion -- rather than an angry outburst.

Frustration is an emotion.
Anger is a choice.

[quote]"It begins with that 1 spouse who in a flash of desperation lifts the burning wreckage and frees the other spouse from the hell they are trapped in. It begins with that one spouse who begins marching through the flames, with a hand extended, refusing to burn any longer - I will not burn, and you can CHOOSE to come with me."

It was like from a movie. I told her SHE was the 1. SHE was the one who picked up the burning wreckage, not me the BH. And it was because of her strength to make us better that we are indeed moving forward.

I have chosen to come with HER. [\quote]

Mike: Apologies if I already shared this with you, but I'm still drawn to the raw powerful emotion of this vignette. As a BS, I just felt like I was burning in pain.

And then I decided to act, and I've never turned back. Never let up on FWH. Does it get frustrating? Absolutely. But my life is worth it, and ultimately, my FWH is worth it, too. I wrote this last week: I married a wonderful guy: sweet, caring, handsome, great father, funny, spontaneous, etc. Now, post affair and post this painful journey of self discovery and maturity, he's even better: kinder, emotionally honest, more grounded, less distracted.

To me, with MB, you're either ALL IN, or you're gaming the system. Even for us BSs, who never deserved it in the first place.

SP

I try to get as close to fundamental following of the MB techniques that I can.

I feel muting my feelings to be very hard. Sure, I dont AO, havent in months. And I avoid any judgements or accusations or really any 'how could you's?.

I get sad. I find it hard to get happy and Im not a good enough actor to act otherwise.

I know, CV, boo-hoo me. Dont bother saying it. I know it.

What I need to do is be a better actor. Pretend I dont have bouts of depression and anger. Pretend I look forward to the future. Act like I enjoy being in social situations. Act like what she did doesnt eat at me all day.

I just read the last 10 pages of this "Recovery" thread and, boy, what a flake Ive become. Is this recovery? Wishy washy intervals of ups and downs and extreme anger and passion, sadness and isolation?

Please dont recite the MB 'to do's' here. I am hitting all cylanders on them. UA, lots. Recreational stuff, doing it. Alone time, no problems. I filling the same ENs I wasnt and he was. Dinners out. Movie nights. I go to freaking malls because that makes her happy. All with a smile.

In fact, most of my lows are when Im working on the road that spill over when I get home.

Working on being happy over the past few days. No issues.

Then don't mute. Redirect.

As a for instance, think about an image that's incredibly funny to you. For me, it's this video on AFV of a kid bouncing on the bed, then his dad throws a pillow at him and the kid flips @$$ over teakettle and lands, giggling like mad. Right? So even just thinking about it now, I grin. It's freakin' hilarious... for whatever reason, watching someone's feet fly over their heads is just really funny to me.

The next step is to realize that remembering something -- ANYTHING -- carries with it an emotional payload in the form of chemicals in your brain that lag behind the memory by about 90 seconds. That's it. You have a magic minute and a half to do something to prevent a memory from delivering its emotional payload, which is likely to be some cocktail of chemicals to deepen your depression.

Start practicing remembering that funny image or video every time you have a bad memory. Find a way to derail your thoughts into something funny. If you don't dwell on the memory for that magic minute and a half, the payload of depressive chemicals in your brain won't be delivered. Instead, you'll probably get some happy chemicals from the laugh-inducing image you put there instead.

Done often enough and consistently enough, you're no longer attempting to "blunt" your emotions; the bad memory will be corrupted by the memory of all the times you laughed at it, and the emotional payload won't be there to need to be re-routed.

Oh. And take a break from this board for a week or two. It helps.

No 2x4's today bro. Instead try this: Let her know you are hurting. Let her help heal you. Don't hide it or keep it inside. Be O&H with her and tell her this is tearing you up. That you need her help. Let her hold you.

Let me give you one more "tool" to help, MSS.

Yes, the pain remains, and will for a while. You will NEVER be as innocent, or as trusting of anyone, as you were before. All of that is a description of fact.

Now the question becomes: How do you want to go forward? Do you want to face the future without your FWW (either de jure thru Plan D, or de facto by emotionally disconnecting)? Or would you want to move forward with her, in as tightly bound a marital union as you can create?

It is entirely your choice.

Those are my choices, huh?

I was going back in the SAA thread over the weekend and was looking at some of the posters who came spilled their stories took some advice...never came back. Interesting. Id like to read about how they are coping in their lives.

Its just amazing how many people are involved in the infidelity business. BS, WS, and AP who come on here. Its unimaginable how many people in our world who cheat and get cheated on if so many come on here to get help.

Misery loves company but its like an epidemic.
==========

I found this from a thread back a few months ago by Melody Lane:

THE CRITICAL IMPORTANCE OF UNDIVIDED ATTENTION TIME TO RESTORE ROMANTIC LOVE
from Effective Marriage Counseling:
Originally Posted By: Dr Harley"When I see a couple for the first time, I let them know that my program will require a minimum of fifteen hours a week of their time. If they can't dedicate that much time while I'm counseling them, I suggest they find another counselor because my plan won't work without it."

This is one of the biggest misses that couples make here. This program does not work without this step. No, 8 hours does not work, 10 hours does not work. It takes 15 hours of UA time per week to maintain romantic love and 20+ hours to create. It does not mean time you spend with your kids or watching TV. The time is most effective spent away from home in an environment that does not invite distractions in 2-4 hour blocks, meeting the top 4 INTIMATE EMOTIONAL NEEDS of affection, conversation, rec companionship, sexual fulfillment.

Once again, I found out the hard way that you cannot cut your hours and stay in love. A couple of years ago, my H and I slacked on this and were down to 6-8ish hours per week. We noticed the romantic love in our marriage going down fast.

Those are some of the top ways where corner cutting causes disaster. Please take it from a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks, and don't cut corners if you want to have what this program offers. It is not easy at first to implement new behaviors, but once learned, they become second nature.



This was from a thread about cutting corners in the MB process.

This is interesting thing. The undivided attention sessions. Yes, hard to do with children around but we do quite a bit but Im fairly sure we dont hit weekly minimum of it.

I think a lot about the UA required of us. I liken it to when your parents caught you smoking cigarettes they made you smoke the whole pack one after another. With a spouse's affair uncovered, you now will have to spend what is heretofore an unimaginable amount of time together alone.

I read the message as to why. The alone time allows for many, many things that didnt exist prior to dday. SF, conversation, or simply affection. All outstanding albeit missing elements of our life before dday. Not to mention the sheer strengthen of the mental and physical aspects of a married couple happens during UA.

I thought about Melody's post a lot today and maybe my recovery is slowed or beset with major downers because Im resistive of UA and becuase the lack of UA we're giving each other Im opening myself to failure. (ie. depression, thoughts of leaving, bad movies in head, sadness, and all the others)

Since I still have troubles with the mental images, the concept of engaging in a few hours of UA in a typical evening is a standoff going off in my head all the time. I know the UA will help with the images. But the images dont help with the UA.

Chicken or the egg.

Mike:

I had those images, too. Horrible. But I wanted my husband back. The good guy I thought I'd married. And now I have a guy who isn't going to cheat again.

So it's not really chicken/egg. It's how to I make a delightful chicken salad out of the leftovers of my marriage. (OK, really bad metaphor, but you get my drift.)

I couldn't even let my husband touch me for weeks. Made my skin crawl. Had that rock hard pit in my stomach, seemingly, forever. But I knew my job was to find my way back to him.

And guess what? After all the pain and hard work, I have an even BETTER guy than the one I married. His affair and my pain shocked him into a final phase of personal growth that forced him to put aside lingering immaturity and selfishness.

But he wouldn't have gotten there, if I'd said "Screw you, I'm too hurt." We walked through the fire together. Yes, I'm still limping, but getting better and stronger all the time. With his help.

Hope that helps!
Sweetpea

Push came to shove and I took inventory of where things are in our recovery and I realized, certainly after being asked dozens of times, we are woefully missing the minimum amount of UA required of a recovery. After a moody few days I spoke to my wife about this and we committed to UA.

I think this is the lacking EN in our lives. I know you guys knew this.

Ill keep you posted.

Push came to shove and I took inventory of where things are in our recovery and I realized, certainly after being asked dozens of times, we are woefully missing the minimum amount of UA required of a recovery. After a moody few days I spoke to my wife about this and we committed to UA.

I think this is the lacking EN in our lives. I know you guys knew this.

Ill keep you posted.