Nesr,

We have worked on the PEs together, I feel confident she is 100% in on the PEs. She has removed all phone # of men, except family. We are going to change her # so OM won't have it. We have gone over the list several times this week and sealed it to about air tight, no confusion and we both agreed.

Have not done a NC letter, that is in our plans, she wants to do an apology letter with it to her ex best friend, I think that is a good idea.

I did not list the requirements, I did however tell her the requirements. Kinda fell in line with EPs but not so nice, had a little hint of a LB in there.

We or I am not focused on what we should be focused on. I come here for- who the hell knows why I come her, as it just pi55es me off. I am constantly stuck on DNA and the Poly. I can't agree to the DNA and finally got that argument out of the way and now I seem to be going rounds on the poly that is only 2 1/2 weeks out. I can wait!!! The day is coming and that can't be soon enough. Beyond that posting here is only making me plead my case and argue why I won't take some advise as it is outside of my beliefs or my standards.
I may be a bull headed sob but there are many others here like me here, I can assure you of that.

The best advise I never took is "stop wasting your energy arguing and work on your marriage". Or another "Go ahead and keep defending your position. It takes a lot of energy to do that. You could be applying that energy to healing your marriage and your life!" from Zibbles.

Zibbles, wow - I read it, passed it up, and tonight it hit me. You are absolutely correct. I am wasting my time arguing my position. No sarcasm at all here, you are on the money with that, and I thank you.

I am going to take that advice and step out for a while as I am not helping myself or you good folks. You all have plenty of other helpless cases that you can put your energy toward.

Thank you all for your help.

I think the thing that isn't making sense to people is that the money to pay off a credit card charge for a poly will be there before the bill will be. So that's where you might address the avoidance issue for both of you.

Senninpa,

I think because your WW is very willing to take the poly it does not have to happen now, but like judgement day needs to happen. Patience is a virtue not a weakness, and given that you haven't recovered for 10 years or so this isn't that much of an extension percentage wise.

Perhaps you can have her put $10 in a cookie jar every week until you get to the needed sum.

It might take me another year or two to corner OM2 but it will happen.

God Bless
Gamma

Senn

There was no MB's online when my last A ended. Never heard of Dr. H.

As a seriel cheater (many ONS)what I remember about the first few months of being back together with my W after the A ended (2mo EA/2mo PA) was how long is this crap going to keep coming up?

When she would try to talk to me about the A the sound inside my head would be like a train locking its brakes at 60 mph mixed with the teachers voice from the snoopy cartoons. Amplify that 10 times and that is what I heard my W say when she was hammering on me.

I just wanted it to go away without having to change anything about nESRE.

Thats what you call


Sweeping it under the rug..........

Letting all other mundane aspects of life be more important than the M itself.


This bought time until a crippled version of our M pre-A's was established again.

That is not the goal of MB's. The goal is to create a new M that is better than the old M ever was. That is why posters here are so hardlined MB's. It does you and your WW no favors to be fluffed along here. Dr. H is specific that deviations from the program can be disaterous. Such as my case-A crippled version of a M.

My wish for you and your WW is that you don't end up with a crippled version of the same old thing you already had. Going back to the same old thing will probably result with the same old thing...........Or maybe worse.

nESRE

Senn,

Calm down! It's easy to project the frustration you feel about your life onto this forum.

I didn't mean to scare yazu away. I was just offering my thoughts because she asked for opinions. Not many people posted on that thread and my feeling is that a lot of people looked at the situation and thought it was going to be a very hard road to recovery. She wasn't interested in the answers that people offered, even the ones who were trying to encourage her to work on the marriage.

Why did this affect you so much? Because you too decided to stay with a serial cheater early on in your marriage. You love her and you wanted to work it out. So here you are and it's very hard and you're busy as a bee. Staying busy means not having to feel the HORROR of what just happened.

That's what I see you defending against and I don't blame you. It IS horrifying. There is a narrow road to recovery and it can be done. Will you try? Don't waste time defending why you can't do it, JUST START TAKING STEPS!

I'm on your side and I'm on yazu's side. It's too bad she couldn't see it...

She has one good plan: "Stall. I don't have to take the poly for several weeks. I can figure something out by then. Maybe this will all blow over."

That is preposterous.

Selling a car for half value in order to procure vital medication for a terminally ill child sooner would make perfect sense.

This is just as serious.

By the way, when you sell, you're not really selling for "half value." You are selling for the full value. You just paid twice as much as it was worth, when you bought it, new.

Why aren't your children doing the laundry and the dishes?

Emphasis mine. That sentence, combined with your WW's disappearance from her thread, speaks volumes.

Who was this woman? What was her posting name?

It was Yazu, Marital on page 2. I didn't mean to be harsh...she asked for opinions.

And really Senn, if Yazu was your daughter, what would you tell her?

It feels kinda like you are gaslighting us, senn.

I mean, our assumption is, obviously, that you wanted help in implemented MB principles to help you recover the marriage and prevent another affair from happening into the future.

Almost every step of the way has been met with argument, excuses or the phrase "I have a plan for that". Probably you should have just been more upfront about your intentions in actually implementing the MB principles and that rather you two were going to be cherry picking through them again. I know for myself I would not have spent nearly as much time posting to you as I did.

As has already been pointed out, things like working opposite shifts and not spending enough UA time together because work and kids come first is not how MB works. And no, this is stuff you can put on the back burner after your M has suffered through 6+ affairs.

Good luck!

Hold on a second, senn. I went back and re-read the thread you're referring to, and I think you are out of line and are being disrespectful to the people who took time to post to her.

Consider:
1. Her thread title makes it clear that she knew that leaving the marriage was an option: "New here - my story - should I run?" You think we shouldn't answer her question? Is that what you're saying??

2. She wasn't even ON here long enough to get help - she signed on at 4:03 and then bailed three hours later.

3. The following is a random sampling of snips I pulled from the responding posters. Please tell me where these posters weren't helping this woman (my apologies to the posters for snipping their posts):


Zibbles advised her that she should consider leaving the marriage (as yazu had originally asked). That is zibble's opinion and zibbles is right to express it. Many, many childless people have chosen to leave their marriage after it was damaged by infidelity. It is absolutely an option.

Other than that, yazu was advised:
1. To be tested for STDs.
2. To schedule a poly to determine her WH's truthfulness.
3. Follow MB plans to recover the marriage.

This is part and parcel to what Marriage Builders is about. What part don't you agree with?

I'm having a hard time figuring out why you would throw out such an inflammatory indictment against the members here. This thread does not back your assertions, and it is insulting to me that you would slip something like this into your post.

I believe you owe these posters an apology.

As one of those who posted to yazu, the best apology I could get would be to see some action on here.

You have made it clear you are willing to wait for the poly Senn, so in the meantime what other demonstrable things is your WW willing to do for you.

How is transparency coming along for example?

Seriously, Sem, that was way out of line to say something like that. You owe those posters an apology.

This is not actually true. You are going to budge on a lot of things in life. We all change as time goes by.

The thing is, you can do this intentionally, making planned changes for a better marriage, or you can do this haphazardly, unplanned, unintentionally, just drifting along where life takes you, often going somewhere that you don't want to go and becoming someone you don't want to be.

Either way, you will budge and change quite a bit.

The help we offer on this forum is to help people make the changes that Dr. Harley has found lead to marital recovery.

If you're looking for some other kind of help, you may not be able to get it here, because most of us are only willing to give the kind of help that we have found works. We are not bad people for doing what we have found works.

I definitely get the feeling that he wants everyone to guilt everyone to be 'less harsh' - i.e. 'tell me what I want to hear' or 'dont tell me anything negative'.

But unfortuantely Senn, you're up to your armpits in an entire swimming pool of negative.

All we want you to do is move one leg, then one arm, then one leg, then one arm, swim to the side - and pull yourself out.

We cant do that without mentioning the negative stuff you're in. But you dont want to move. You want us to help you pretend everything is ok.

It's not.

So back to business - what is being done towards an MB recovery today while you are waiting for the poly?

I want to clarify; The yazu thread, was what got me a bit worked up, Melody, your good luck post got me worked up. I was working on no sleep and at my roller coaster's angry bottom, and for you all to misunderstand what I was trying to say, I do apologize.

AS for what I wanted you to understand, I do not apologize. I did not intend for my statement to be disrespectful to any one of you, or to take away from any one of you for what you all do here. I did say you have good intentions and I know you all do, and do appreciate it and try to mention it regularly as I post (you have helped me more than you can imagine, though I may not show it like you want).

My point to the statement was this; You all could put some kid gloves on when dealing with a newcomer, they are at ROCK BOTTOM and are looking for a shoulder to cry on. I know that isn't what MB forums are for, but if you want to help someone, show them you care, ask questions and let them vent, when they are hooked in and ready, then give them the advice they need. Don't drive them out with emotionless, cold advise first thing.

There are actually courses out there for e-mail etiquette to prevent you from pi55ing off coworkers and business relationships as people don't put thought into how you type something, and it might be construed as rude or cold and pointed.

You all seem to feed off of each other and even seem to jump on anyone for showing sympathy or empathy, That isn't what MB is about, but you can't preach MB if a person who asks for help feels like there is nothing but cold pointed advice within the first few hours of getting here. This can cause them leave here to only find substandard sight that does not help or could lead them down the wrong road.

I DID not read the title of Yazu's thread before it was edited out, It does not matter, She as you can now see now, was not in a state of mind for that advice at that point, and should have titled it "HELP" as that is what she was looking for. You all are smart enough to know that, but choose not to see it, and continue with the emotionless advice you give.

I miss the newcomer board as the board members who went there to help, knew how to help a newcomer through the hard times (kid gloves) and get them over here for the good advise, despite your views of the "old MB".

As for me, I am @ or around DD + 2 weeks, I have my ups and downs but have grown a bit and can take it. I want the advice you are giving, just don't want to continue arguing over little things- as Zibbles put, it that is a wast of time and energy.

I see. When someone comes here asking for advice we should not give it. We should let them ask questions but not answer them straight away. We should let them cry on our shoulders despite the fact that we do not know them, and we are a help forum to which they came looking for help.

yazu came here with a direct question about whether she should leave, and those who posted to her gave their advice because they wanted to help her deal with her husband's abuse. I, for one, did not have the slightest inclination to let yazu cry on my shoulder and I do not see where she asked me to let her, but I did want to see her avoid STDs from her serially cheating husband, and learn about his true character before she brought children into her marriage. I did want to see her get to the truth before she took back this husband who, after only two years of marriage, had shown himself to be skilled at deceptive behaviour and lying, and that is why I recommended a polygraph to her.

For some reason she took exception or perhaps even offence to the polygraph suggestion. I have no idea why she would find it unacceptable. She also took exception to those who said that she should think about leaving, since doing so now would be easier than when she had kids. Her H's track-record is such that telling her to think about leaving now was an entirely reasonable thing to do.

Our advice was only given to protect her. I feel sorry for her that she's rather listen to her serially adulterous husband than take the advice to polygraph him.

You admit that you didn't read the thread title, and it sounds as if you were not aware that she asked direct questions about whether she should leave her horrible situation, yet you come back today to defend the criticism you made of us from the basis of ignorance, rather than just apologising. You also ignore posts like mine that pointed out that recovery was entirely possible for her, if she and her H followed Dr Harley's advice. You "don't want to continue arguing over little things" but yet you still do.

I give some of my time most days to helping people on this board, something that you haven't done, as far as I can see. I think you should stop telling others how to help, and criticising the work that we do. There is nothing stopping you from checking in here most days to see whether there are new people you can help, and giving them sympathy and a shoulder to cry on if that's how you feel they should be helped.

With all due respect, SEM, that "emotionless" advice to which you refer is actually tried and true Marriage Builders advice. That is what people come here for. This is not a chat board, this is where people in crisis come to get help for their marriages. If someone leaves because of that advice it is more likely because they didn't like what they heard and were only looking to be validated.

In the situation you cited, the posters gave the same advice that Dr Harley would give, which is to consider leaving the marriage. He gives this advice in young marriages that have no children. It is compassionate to help the poster do the right thing in a very difficult situation. She is married for 2 years and her husband has already had 2-3 affairs and impregnated his OW. While she may not have wanted to hear it, the compassionate thing would be to tell her to run for her life. That is just common sense. Telling her what she wants to hear, to stay in an abusive marriage, or to commiserate "you poor thang" as a substitute for good judgment in a time of crisis, is not "compassionate."

The board of "old" was solely a place to commiserate and not a learning place where marriages were improved or saved. Your marriage is proof of that along with the others from that era that never recovered. Most of those old veterans are in crippled marriages today. No one knew much about Marriage Builders here and they spent most of their time chatting instead of actually taking actions to save their marriages. The difference between now and then is that marriages actually get saved today. People learn about Marriage Builders now. The board is now a learning place rather than a chat channel for people who are more interested in talking a problem to death than taking the hard steps to improve their marriages.

Helping someone save their marriage is my idea of true compassion, SEM. Saying nice words is fake "compassion." We are here for the business of saving marriages using Marriage Builders concepts, not to commiserate. It is a tough business and there is a very narrow path. IT is not for the weak of the heart and it is certainly not for those who come here to chat and commiserate instead of doing the hard work to save their marriages.

Indie,

As for where we currently are, I believe I have given up on questioning WW about the past. We, as I have said, are not getting anywhere on more exposure on the past. WW is willing and wants to do the poly and said " I'm tired of the questions and want to prove to you there is nothing more". Like many here I cannot believe her, I think there is probably more, but find it is a wast to continue asking. I have been so focused on that, and arguing here, I found an empty hole looking forward as I wasn't sure there would be a forward, Too focused on the truth. Probably why everyone feels the poly should happen tomorrow.

We have gone over EPs, the only thing I added was there would be no messages/ text/ or calls erased on her cell as I want to be able to match the phone records to what is on her cell. Erased texts would create distrust.

We are reading a book about boundaries, as that has been pointed out repeatedly here. I read and finally understand what codependency is. I have heard the phrase and knew somewhat of what it meant, but now I understand. Wow, I am an enabler to her infidelity from last time. I let her off the hook and am working on it again. I do not know how not to without leaving her, as staying is removing the consequence of her actions. Full disclosure and poly are a couple of consequences, Suggestions would be good.

We are going to work together on Poly questions this weekend, I want her impute, as it might give me some insight as to whether she is planning to try to beat it, or if she is telling the whole truth. When we work out a list, I will put them here for advice. She is going to schedule the poly, and feel that will be good, I can't imagine having to explain to the person on the other line why you need one, that will be good for her.

We ARE going to pull off the NC letter here and revise it, and mail it off with her apology letter to OM's W this weekend. We are both reading in our spare time, and discussing what we feel is important. She is coming around, I am not satisfied yet, but I do see improvements.

Sugar and Melody,
I respect you both and your opinions on this, I wrote my clarification as I felt it was the right thing to do, as I did not intend to insult anyone. I was upset when I posted about the yazu thread and that is clear.
My opinion is what it is, I think you can show a little of your heart to newcomers and get them to stick it out and get through the hard time, so you can advise them after they see you do care about THEM and not just the principals of MB.

Standing at the door of the church beating the bible does not bring in lost soles, it drives them away. Doesn't mean you have to give them bad advise. You can see who they are and where they are, then preach to them when they know you have their best interest at heart. That is my point. I will likely not change you minds on this, don't need to, just hope you can think about that and respect my opinion on it.

I will/ do not want to debate it, it is just my opinion. I know you will continue giving people good advice and doing what you do best. You hold a lot of my respect for that. As I said, you do good work here, and I am not trying to be a critic here, just giving you my opinion for what that is worth. Probably nothing