wh76,

it's hard to tell who you are responding to in each post. It would be helpful if you hit the "quote" button to include the posts you are responding to.

I'm going to try to respond to all of your posts at one blow:

The POUA (Policy of Undivided Attention) is crucial. One problem I see, from your comment that you "probably" spend 15 hours together, is that you need to be more intentional: Dr. Harley suggests that you schedule this time each week, and track it to make sure you are really getting it, and to make you aware when you are falling short. You really will feel a difference above the 15 hour mark, so it's important to make sure this happens.

The goal is for both of you to feel romantic love for each other, for a lifetime.

The next problem I see is your husband rehashing the affair. You are right that this is going to make your time together unenjoyable. Dr. Harley's chapter in His Needs, Her Needs about Conversation includes a concept he calls the "friends and enemies of good conversation." When husbands and wives follow these, they make the conversation enjoyable for each other, so that both are motivated to participate. One of the enemies of good conversation, that has to be avoided, is dwelling on mistakes of the past or present.

I've had a big problem with dwelling on mistakes of the past myself, and my wife has sometimes done it as well, and we can testify that it will prevent your time together from being enjoyable.

And in order to feel romantic love for a lifetime, your time together has to be the most enjoyable time of the week. So all these rules have got to be followed.

In Dr. Harley's workbook is a feedback form you can give each other about conversation that can let you politely and quietly inform each other that enemies of good conversation are happening. Dr. Harley suggests exchanging the forms once a week.

Here is an article on this site about the friends and enemies of good conversation:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5056_qa.html

We know that an affair leads to hurt for all involved, but we usually have a bit of an obstacle helping the unfaithful spouse understand that while both husband and wife share responsibility for the poor state of the marriage before the affair, the responsibility for the affair and the hurt it caused is completely on the wayward spouse.

It is not unmet needs that leads to an affair. Nor is it low points in life: I have seen people on this site who have had wonderful lives, wonderful marriages, and still had an affair!

Here is a simple "equation":
unmet needs + poor boundaries = affair
met needs + poor boundaries = affair
met needs + good boundaries = no affair
unmet needs + good boundaries = no affair!

This is why the importance on the extraordinary precautions. You will find many people on this site who had bad marriages (sometimes because their spouse was out cheating) and who still did not have an affair.

So it's important to own responsibility for your choice and move forward by protecting the marriage, because it is up to you to be faithful even in times when something might go wrong and your husband isn't meeting your needs.

And so saying things like this is really insensitive to the pain of your husband, and it would be best not to engage in blaming conversations like this, as it is disrespectful to him and the pain he is going through:


But you know what? Most of the time it takes an unfaithful spouse awhile to get all of this. You are very normal in saying things like this. The important thing to understand is that you are unwittingly saying something that is hurtful, and incorrect.

Change your thinking: protect your marriage, and make your marriage fulfilling. The two of you can come out of this better than ever.

WH76,

You are responding to GO, with your last post, and the contents of your post don't fit your target.

He would explain things from a better perspective, but let's get the short-and-simple;

Affairs happen even in GREAT marriages if one spouse or both spouses have poor boundaries with the opposite sex.

Unmet needs may add to contrast in adultery, but contrast will exist at any time a person lets two people meet their needs.


Every instance of infidelity is a series of poor decisions - talk more to this person, go to a private place, drink too much... every step is a decision that goes; "This is risky, but I will do it anyway."


Years of little hurts and "what you didn't deal with in the beginning" are not reasons for an affair, sister. They are reasons for an empty Love Bank.

Does that make sense to you?


You can't blame your husband for YOUR choice to ignore your vows, you can't blame your affair partner for YOUR choice to betray your husband - from beginning to end, each and every little choice belonged to you.

Sigh......

NO it was because you have poor boundaries with men. There are lots of spouses out there whose EN's are not being met that DON'T cheat.

This is why you are getting 2x4's. You still don't get it.

Hello wh76. Glad to see you here

I'd like to repeat what my husband said: this site is not just for bitter betrayed spouses who like to beat up the waywards that show up. I am a FWW, and some of the other posters posting to you are also former waywards.

Also, and this is from personal experience, but I suggest you take note and listen to the posters who make you the maddest. There is probably a reason they upset you so much.

I also suggest you give up Facebook altogether. It has too much potential for temptation further on down the road. It is not needed.

As for the therapist, I suggest you give that up too. You did not have trouble communicating with OM. The problem here is not bad communication because of the past, but rather poor boundaries and a dying marriage in the present. Stop dwelling on the past, and use that time to work on your marriage. This program will successfully address any trouble you believe you have, with communication or otherwise.

Again, glad you are here.

And it's OK if you don't learn it all at once, although the faster you learn (and the faster your H learns), the better things will be for your marriage going forward.

I'll grant you that to attain a better marriage going forward than you had before the affair, you'll each need to work harder at identifying, communicating & meeting one another's needs. However, the Rule of Protection also requires that, at the same time as you strive to meet his needs & communicate yours respectfully so that he can meet them better, you also need to cultivate a correct understanding of why your affair happened -- indeed, why your husband's or any other affairs happen. This is necessary in order for you to help him feel emotionally safe with you.

The issue of images/triggers is something all BSs confront, and many of them can & do find themselves more able to deal with them as time passes, and that they lessen eventually. But that "lessening" can happen faster if the WS is better able to give the BS some measure of assurance that there'll be no more cheating. (I'm not talking 'perfect trust' -- that's not attainable & shouldn't be an expectation of yours or his -- but I'm talking about a baseline level of confidence that future infidelity is considerably less likely.)

Extraordinary Precautions are a very tangible part of building this partial assurance, and they're absolutely crucial; but so is mindset & outlook. For this, I refer you back to this:

Originally Posted by GloveOil on 7/20/2012

...what my affair was, what your affair was, what all affairs are at their very core: A manifestation, a metastization, really, of selfishness. Once you admit that central fact to yourself, you'll make much better headway in helping your H feel emotionally safe with you & building a marriage that's better than before your & his affairs.

I agree with you that for most people -- for myself, at any rate -- an affair is, as you put it, an "all-time low", in one way or another. For me, however, I wouldn't say that it was an all-time low in terms of not having my needs met beforehand, although it certainly was an all-time low in terms of the effort & spare time I was devoting to my marriage. As HoldHerHand pointed out to you, and as was the case with my wife & me, affairs can & do happen even in basically happy marriages where most needs are mostly met most of the time. My key emotional needs hadn't been going completely unmet, but because I had sloppy boundaries, I gradually allowed someone other than my wife to meet (some of) them better, for a spell. And, <wham!>, I -- squared-away, well-regarded, church-going, happily-married, good-dad guy that I and others saw me as -- was in an affair, and in a matter of weeks.

It wasn't because my needs were unmet. It was because my shoddy boundaries allowed somebody else to the fore in meeting them. And why'd I do that? Basically, I got lazy. It seemed easier to indulge myself in the free attention & admiration that OW was suddenly tossing my way than to go through the convoluted work of explaining to my wife what was going on in my head & in my life, the work of changing certain circumstances in my life to take myself away from regular contact with OW (who was a fellow singer on our church's music team), the work of communicating with my wife about some areas in which my wife could've done a better job meeting my needs, and the work of communicating & listening more attentively to her in order to be better at knowing & meeting her needs & thereby in turn maybe helping her become more enthusiastic about meeting mine.

It just seemed easier for me to leave my life the way it was: to avoid messy conversations with my wife (aka excessive conflict-avoidance), to keep going to music team rehearsals every Thursday evening, and to indulge myself a little in the fact that here was someone who kept paying me compliments and who was allowing me a role as a sort of confidant -- after all, I'd been such a good guy all these years, I was entitled to a little fun amid the long commutes and the responsibilities and the household chores and the lonely evenings when my wife was working nightshifts. Wasn't I? So I chose the easier path -- in other words, I grew lazy. And laziness is simply a manifestation of selfishness. That's why I told you that selfishness -- not unmet needs -- is at the core of infidelity.

Your statement of earlier today, that it was because your needs weren't being met, shows that you still need to think about this. Saying that you had an affair because needs weren't being met doesn't reflect the mindset that will give your H a higher comfort-level. Rather, it puts most of the onus on him to meet your needs, at peril of your having another affair -- and thereby largely takes yourself off the hook. (And the idea that your relationship with your daughter contributed to your being at an all-time low, thus also contributing to your affair? That must make your husband feel incredibly powerless. If you ever find yourself going there in your reasoning, stop.) You had an affair not because of your relationship with your daughter, not because of unmet emotional needs, not because of issues in your childhood, not because of the price of oil or any other irrelevant 'reason.' You had an affair because you got selfish. No ifs/and/buts need or ought to be appended. Acknowledging that laziness/selfishness is at the core, rather than unmet needs, puts more of the responsibility on you, which is where it properly belongs.

It may all seem like semantics, but please think about this carefully. It actually matters a great deal.

May I double back to this for a moment?

One of the points Dr. Harley makes is... well, better to have you read his own words: http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5042_qa.html

I don't know what went on back then, as you've (quite properly) not brought it up further nor dwelt on it as an excuse here, nor has your husband on his thread (unless I missed it while skimming). However, for your benefit going forward, it's important that you not expect or even want your husband to handle things in the way that perhaps you might've handled them back then -- i.e., "just forgive & forget".

If you 'get' this, then you should be in better position to follow through on this advice (Harley again; bolded for emphasis): "...the person asking to be forgiven must first demonstrate an awareness of how inconsiderate the act was and how much pain his or her spouse was made to suffer."
In the above, I think the word "selfish" is also a good substitute for the word "inconsiderate".

If your recovery fails (and I pray for both of you that that will not happen), chances are, it won't be because your H didn't get proper advice from strangers on an internet forum re: dealing with the awful mind-movies & images. Rather, it'll be because you didn't internalize how selfishness is at the root of an affair, and how crucial this realization is in order for "just compensation" to become,for you, not merely some mechanical, sometimes sluggish, implementation of steps from a list; but a new way of life, a more or less constant mindset of gratefulness for what you've got & what you can have, gratefulness for a second chance that by rights folks like you & I ought to have forfeited, indeed forfeited.

He hasn't sicked a lawyer on you & kicked you out. You're playing with house money now, wh76. Let it motivate you to earn the second chance you've already got in hand. Taking action on the specific steps you learn from SAA, see if that attitude doesn't gradually help your H feel safer with you, as time proceeds. I'll bet it will.

I did give up my facebook. I was just stating that I never had it private from him, Probably an irrelevant point I didn't have to make.
I do take total responsibility for the affair now, . I understand that everyone has a choice on how they react to their unmet needs, disappointments or hurts That is absolutely right I just don't understand why I chose the path of having an affair except for that I didn't have barriers in place. Maybe that was enough of a reason? That's why what I read in the books makes so much sense, it just seemed the lack of barriers is so easy to put in place now that I know how. It's easy because my marriage means that much that nothing could be too hard to do.
Your opinion of not seeing my psychologist I don't really like because he's not helping me persay with fixing my marriage, that is what MB is for. But there are other issues from my past that I feel he is helping me with, not that involves my husband but in my childhood, growing up. I feel by continuing there I am changing all around as the person I have always wanted to be, especially helping to create a closer relationship with my daughter. I had many reasons to "hide" my feelings and withdraw from things that caused me pain which by now understanding this and how to deal with those feelings I withdrew from I can be a more open person, honest person. If this doesn't shed enough light I can go into further details..It's like it has helped me to be open to MB where before I was too angry with myself to do it.My psychologist helped me to "communicate". I still am very angry and depressed I did what I did, I struggle with it everyday to try to enjoy time with my kid's or husband and not dwell on feeling like a piece of s@#*.
Sorry about how I am responding to everyone I am technically challenged, I will ask my husband to show me how to post correctly.

G.O.
I do realize I have been given a second chance and am greatful. I AM excited about this new way of life, that's what I was trying to let posters know. MB books helped me and my H understand how to be the best we can be to each other.
I don't believe we might fail, I know how we really feel for each other andI know our love is powerful enough to work through this. I know how I handled the past was wrong and I don't want him to do it the way I did, It didn't work,

Have you sat down with your DD17 and told her you are sorry for your affair and the damage and hurt it has had on her also?

Another EP I suggested he put in place to help him was an app to track my phone. It's like a GPS,

Good idea.

what is DD17?

Darling daughter 17

Here you go.
Acronyms and Abbreviations

Here's a thread about a DD14 having to handle to affair knowledge. The DD14's dad had an affair with her mother's sister and do it affected her because of her cousins.

I hope this might help.
Suggestions for 14yo daughter having to hold a secret

I know you won't read this because you probably have me on your ignore list, and that is fine. If someone feels what I am posting to you is appropriate, then they can do so with a simple quote post. But think about this; if they felt that what I posted last night was so wrong either the vets, regulators, or mods would have called me out on it. (And it wouldn't be a first)

Yes, I did make that post to intentionally piss both you and your husband off, but only to spur you both into action. I posted the night before that you both seemed at the point where I thought you could fully recover your marriage with nothing more than the resources of this board. If you really think my post was born out of malice or contempt towards you, then you need to think again. Nothing pleases me more than to see a fully repentant spouse making the efforts to right his/her wrong. Nothing at all. You can believe what you want, but that is the truth.

Sometimes a good ole swift kick in the [censored] is necessary for getting the ball rolling for better things. My post wasn't meant to be educational, but to do just that. And look at what you have now, and who are posting to you to try and help. You've got help now that you simply can't buy. Okay, you can buy it, but at this stage of the game I believe you are in, I don't think you have to. But if you can spring the grand for the online course, I would highly recommend it.

I would like to be able apologize for offending you, but I just can't do it, as it would be apologizing for what I was trying to accomplish. It would seem I did accomplished what I set out to do, and that is get the both of you more actively engaged on this board so these more experienced posters can help you and your husband build the life you both deserve.

I won't post to you again, as that appears to be your wish, but just know that I wish you the very best of luck and happiness in your new MB marriage.

Take care!

Tiger

whathappened, focusing on the past prevents you from focusing on the present at a time when your marriage is in big trouble. It only brings problems of the past into the present at a time when your main focus should be on your marriage.

I would also point out that it is cruel to call the victims of adultery "bitter." Would you call rape victims "bitter" because they objected to rape? Calling people "bitter" reflects an astonishing lack of empathy so you might want to rethink that strategy. If you want folks to help you here, I would try and show a little respect. A little humility will take you far. Calling people "bitter" because you don't like what they say is offensive and won't get you too far.

Here are some quotes from Dr Harley, clinical psychologist, about receiving counseling for one's childhood:



here

here

here