nb1712

I�ve read both you and your wife�s posts. Painfully, I see what may be some similar dynamics to my near marital meltdown a few years ago. I feel like I may have some useful experience and insight to add. I�ll get a few things wrong but if I get a few things right, let�s see if we can move this train forward.

I�m going to make a brief statement on the affair thing. You�ve gotten a lot of direct advice on this topic. I agree that your wife, (like anyone in her position) is very VULNERABLE to an affair � which I define as having one�s most important ENs met by someone other than their spouse. If your wife does have a male friend who is at least meeting a few of her needs and showing her that there may be a future for her outside your marriage � then re-building your marriage will be extremely difficult. If this is the case, she is not a bad person. She is a normal person, possibly making an unwise decision � but a totally understandable one. If you had felt abused and neglected in your marriage like she has � you too would be VERY VULNERABLE to an affair. I�m not soft peddling the issue but this is not going to be my focus because an affair, IF it exists, is a symptom, not the main problem, IMO.

Your wife has given us some absolutely GOLDEN information. For her, your marriage has been an intolerable series of disrespectful judgments, angry outbursts and serious neglect of her most important emotional needs. She has been parented and bullied by someone who should be treating her and her views as totally equal to their own. She has suffered this periodic disappointment and abusive treatment silently for years until finally she has said �ENUF. I know this is a big deal but I cannot do this for another 20, 10 or 5 years. I can�t do this for another month.�

Interestingly, to her point of view you have been pretty well fed in your marriage. You likely have had some complaints, ones you probably inform her of often and pointedly, but after some �straight talk�, things change a bit and you go back to your comfortable existence. It doea appear your lack of satisfaction certainly hasn�t risen to the level of seriously wanting to pull the plug.

Like every marriage breakdown, *yours has been due to a failure to care for each other* � you have stopped doing the good things that feed your love bank and you�ve exposed each other to nasty, repetitive love busters until there is nothing left. There is no mystery here. Though your situation may seem unique and hopeless, it is far from either, based on what I�ve read.

Here is what worked for me when I was in your situation. Try it on.

You must undergo a complete and total paradigm shift. You my friend have been an abusive husband and your spouse is a battered wife. Do you get this? Has this sunk in for you? You may think this an extreme statement but *from your wife�s perspective*, I suspect it is absolutely true.
You likely see things differently.

You probably do not see yourself as an abuser. At the suggestion that you are you may try to impose *your* perspective on her and talk her out of hers, to help her see how she is WRONG� in an attempt to *once again* control her. Good luck with that.

For now I would suggest you take this whole beast on your shoulders. Your wife is totally in withdrawal. Don�t expect her to come to the table for a much, much longer time than you are hoping. * In fact, don�t expect anything.* Do the right thing, treat her right � not because you are expecting reciprocation � but because it is the right thing to do. Period. You *become* (not just act like) the husband she will find irresistible � whether she chooses that new husband, is up to her. But your clear the path. You create an environment suitable for the development of emotional re-attachement. You let her know (through consistent and enduring changes in behavior) that if she chooses to come back to your marriage that she will never have to go back to the pit of your previous relationship. Then you wait. Consider a wait of at least 3 months of you being that guy before she�ll even stick her toe in the water. If she doesn�t, you don�t� change back. You are different, forever.

I�m going to try to summarize to not keep going on.

>>Get and read Fall In Love, Stay In Love, Lovebusters, and His Needs Her Needs. Read them cover to cover in that order. The website is awesome but it and this forum are not enough. Buy and read the books. Try doing nothing but avoiding harm while you�re reading them because half-baked marriage builders is worse than doing nothing IMO.

>>Discover and meet the ENs she will allow you to meet. Don�t press for more. Tell us what her ENs are and what you are doing to meet them.

>>Catalog and absolutely extinguish your love busters. Tell us what they are and what you are doing to avoid them. I kept a daily chart and gave myself a star for every day I avoided DJs and AOs. Try this, you may be surprised. Maybe ask her to tell you if you past that day or not.

>>Expect nothing. If your wife chooses your new self as her new husband and comes back to the table as an equal participant in your marriage (which means knowing and loving you back,) awesome! If not, you still become the best you. DO NOT use marriage builders and your changing mindset as another tool to hurt and control your wife. DO NOT DO IT! If your wife can tell you are trying to manipulate her, you may as well hang it up. And she will know. She�s experienced your subtle manipulation and control for many years.

>>Don�t kid yourself that divorce is the answer. You�ve done a lot trying to fix things but not much of the right things. You�re just getting started with an effective plan. The clock is just now resetting.

I know this is long. Keep posting. If something I've said seems way off base, maybe I haven't been clear. This is the hardest thing you�ll ever do, doable but worth it. A better marriage than you've ever dreamed of awaits you and punky and your kids on the other side of this.

If you�ve found this helpful I�d be glad to offer more feedback offline-

brent (at) smithnet (dot) us

Sorry, one final nugget - do not do anything to support separation or divorce. *Lovingly* choose not to enable a separation. Don't read what I just said as 'stone wall' or manipulate. This is a fine line to ride. But do humbly and lovingly exercise your choice to not do anything that supports the dissolution of your marriage. This was a terrible and painful though well-meaning mistake I made.

BWS just did a super job describing the CARROT of Plan A. However, without the stick, Plan A is of no effect. And let me give you an analogy. Your marriage is the Titanic. The Titanic is not perfect, it has many rooms that need to be painted and the engine needs some work. But the Titanic has just hit a huge reef and the resulting hole has caused the ship to sink. The hole in the hull is the AFFAIR. In order to save the ship, you must FIRST stop it from sinking.

It is the same with an affair. Even though the poor state of the marriage and her pisspoor boundaries with men led to the affair, you must FIRST find the affair and expose it in order to save the marriage. THEN you can work on painting the rooms and improving engine performance. The affair must be addressed FIRST, though, so it can be exposed wide and far. You cannot save a marriage if you don't know what is tearing it down.

The affair is what is killing your marriage. Your marriage can recover from all these other garden variety problems; it cannot recover from an ongoing affair. Nor can you effectively meet her needs when she is having an affair. So, your goal must be to get the information about the affair and then kill it off. Affairs thrive on secrecy, so getting it out into the open will hasten its death.

p.s when you find the evience of an affair, you should first DEMAND that she end all contact with the OM.

From the new book by Dr. Harley Effective Marriage Counseling pg 94:

"Granted, there are situations when demands may be necessary in marriage. During a spouse's affair, for example, I recommend that the betrayed spouse demand there be no contact with the lover. If there is continued contact, separation or even divorce would be the logical consequence. While normally demands don't work, in this case there are no reasonable alternatives because thoughtful requests are even less likely to separate lovers."