I would like to weigh in here for a second. The problem with sujectivity is that is is always changing/always different depending on who's opinion it is. What I see here is a splitting of hairs. Actually, the Catholic Church believes that when you marry in the Church, make a covenant with eachother and invoke God into that covenant, that you are married for life, even if legally you get the papers that say you are divorced. That has been the teaching of the Church since the time of the apostles. It isn't going to change b/c man wants to change it. Marriage is a Christian principle that gets thrown out by man who wants it to change into something more convenient. So, people go to protestant churches that change teachings to fit with more modern times. That is why we are even able to have this discussion - as if divorce is ever really the right thing to do in the eyes of God. So many people don't even care about what God wants for them. (I know the biblical approval in cases of adultry) The thing is, marriages CAN recover from affairs!!! So, that means that each and every single one of us has to do the right things to recover and save our marriage.

Divorce in itself should be avoided at all costs whether you look at it from a religious view or not!!! We all know that sometimes divorce is what it has to come to.

Whether you look at it as still married b/c you don't have the divorce papers yet, or we made the agreement to divorce, therefore I am not really married anymore, so I can date, is really irrelevant. So, then it would logically become a discussion factoring in religious beliefs.

I personally don't see how someone can simply move on so quickly, never taking the time to emotionally recover and get themselves to a healthy place first. Moving on to the next relationship that quickly is usually not a good thing - especially while you are "techically" legally still married.

Actually, divorce was in the old testament long before the Catholic Church or Protestant Church.

Mathew 19
3b�Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?�

4 �Haven�t you read,� he replied, �that at the beginning the Creator �made them male and female,�[a] 5 and said, �For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh�[b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.�

7 �Why then,� they asked, �did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?�

8 Jesus replied, �Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.�

10 The disciples said to him, �If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.�

11 Jesus replied, �Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others�and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.�

Deuteronomy 24:4
then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled. That would be detestable in the eyes of the LORD. Do not bring sin upon the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.

Deuteronomy 24:3
and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he dies,

Deuteronomy 24:1
If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house,

Numbers 30:9
�Any vow or obligation taken by a widow or divorced woman will be binding on her.

Leviticus 21:14
He must not marry a widow, a divorced woman, or a woman defiled by prostitution, but only a virgin from his own people,

just saying...

kaycstamper, ok, you gave a smackdown!!! I just didn't want to get into all of that!!!! I was merely responding to what the Church has has continually taught since it was founded by Christ 2,000 years ago. Marriage is a sacred covenant with God and should not be taken as lightly as it is.

KL,
an interesting discussion which I wish I could be part of but I haven't even had time to read and consider everyone's posts, so I will refrain. [a wise one once told me recently "a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing."]

I had to wonder about the above, however. When you say "earlier posts"...are you talking in the first few thousand or more in the 20 or 30 thousand range?


opt

Hey opt, nice to hear from you. And thanks for adding a bit of levity to this heavy discussion - it was refreshing to get a chuckle! Melody is quite the poster, I agree!

Everyone else, thanks for your interesting thoughts. This thread took a course of its own that I didn't expect, but don't object to. I would, however, like to get back on topic. If anyone is interested in continuing the discussion of marriage, divorce, dating, morality, etc, would you please start a new thread on that topic? And please post something on this thread indicating you have done so for the benefit of others reading this thread. Thank you.

AGG, it seems like a week ago that I read this post of yours from only two days ago:

(First though, I noticed you've been on these forums for almost 12 years! Wow, I think I've only seen one or two others like that. I skimmed some of your previous posts, and I was saddend to read about your divorce story. Sounds like you've bounced back quite well though. I also noticed we're aligned on only one of the MBTI axes - you: ISTJ, me: INFP. Maybe our different perspectives is why I respect what you write; you seem to have a knack for cutting to the chase and putting to words things I can't.)

Your assessment, and the assessment of pretty much everyone else on this thread, is that I started dating too soon. Leaving morality to another thread, from a practical point of view, I can think of two main reasons (there are probably others, but these two seem very important):

• I need time to understand what I did wrong in my previous marriage so that I don't make the same mistakes again.
• I need time to learn how to live on my own again so that I won't go into a relationship in a needy state and possibly end up with a partner that's not a comfortable fit.

Are there other important things I should accomplish during divorce recovery so that I'm healthy enough to enter another relationship? Whatever things there are, I want to be able to honestly say to myself that I've accomplished them.

I've mentioned a couple of times that my girlfriend and I are taking a break, and you thought that was wise. You also advised taking some time alone and then dating casually. I don't know what the rules are (if there are any) for taking a break and dating casually. There's a feeling in me that says if I'm taking a break (vs. breaking up), then I shouldn't be dating others. Taking a break feels different than breaking up. If I told my girlfriend we're taking a break so that I can have some alone time and date others to make sure she's the right one, that wouldn't go over so well. And if I break up with her so that I can date with a clear conscience, well, like you, I'd be sad and feel bad. Any thoughts about that dilemma?

Regarding the break we're taking, so far it hasn't felt like much of a break. I wrote somewhere else that she was taking a business trip this week and we would not be seeing each other for 2 weeks. At the last moment, we decided to meet briefly the night before she left, so it will not have been 2 weeks apart when she gets back later this week. We met at a local family restaurant, sat at the bar watching the opening ceremony of the Olympics, had a glass of wine and a salad, and talked. It was really nice seeing her. My feelings afterwards reminded me of what Dr. Harley said about romantic love in the radio clip that's part of Markos's signature, What Marriage Builders is all about:

• Romantic love has to do with how you feel when you're with the other person or when you think about them, what you do when you're with them.
• When you're separated, you miss them.
• When you're with the person, they turn you into something that's better than you are.
• You enjoy their company, they invigorate you, they make you feel better.
• You want to make them happy.

I feel all of those things about my girlfriend, which is why it's hard to take a break.

Although we don't call/email/text as often as we used to, we still do most days, and it doesn't really feel like a break. On a scale of 1-10, where 1 is not taking a break at all and 10 is completely breaking up, I'd say we're about a 3 or 4.

We're both having a hard time with this. Some days I'm ok with the thought of not seeing her for a while, and other days I really miss her. She's the same - some days up, some days down. From the point of view of accomplishing the goals of being on my own, is it possible to achieve them while still maintaining contact with her? I suppose anything's possible, but it might be very difficult. I wonder if I could focus on that in independent counseling.

KeepLearning,
Thank you for sharing about Melody. I honestly dont see ANY relevance about your posting at all. I dont care if Melody is married to 100 men or if she is an alien. She could be Jack the Ripper. Why would her actions have ANYTHING to do with what is right or wrong?

The fact is you have set a terrible example for your children and you continue to justify adultery.

I dont think marriage is a good option for you and I believe you would be better suited to just shacking up with love interests and moving on. Same as people do with vehicles.

You missed my point. It wasn't to justify Melody's actions. The point was Dr. Harley's assessment of the nature of her marriage and how it began. If you have a problem with his assessment, I suggest you take it up with him. If you have a problem with my actions, I suggest you start another thread. Thanks.

You are entitled to date when on a "break". What IS dating? Dating is shopping. Shopping around to find the best partner for marriage.

You're proposing that you go to the mall and sit on the bench, refusing to go into any store, and then deciding whether or not the package in your car in the parking lot is the best out there. How would you know? You haven't even looked?

Dating does not mean you have to have sex with another person. It just means going out and spending time with them. You would be doing yourself a DISSERVICE by refusing to date other women during this "break".

You went from marriage straight into another relationship. How are you going to find the "right woman" for you, if you refuse to look for her? All you're doing is keeping the other less-than-ideal prospect at bay for a time. You're keeping an obligation to fidelity that doesn't exist.

MB is NOT just for married couples. It is for people with marriage in mind but who are single - Dr. Harley has some info for those people.

Please read Choosing the Right One for Marriage
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5068a_qa.html
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5068b_qa.html
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5068c_qa.html

Excerpt:

. My standard advice to singles is to date at least 30 people before marriage. Strange advice to some, because, like you, they may have already chosen the one they wanted to marry. But the reason I give that advice is so they come to understand what they need most in an opposite sex relationship. The ones that they find most attractive are those who meet some of their most important emotional needs.

But dating does more than help you identify your emotional needs. It also teaches you what needs you can meet for others with relative ease. In other words, in dating you learn who is skilled in meeting your needs, and you learn how skilled you are in meeting certain needs of others.

Hi Alis, I completely understand what you say. For me personally, it's easier said than done. I like this woman. She likes me. We make each other happy. If I dated 30 other women only to find that the first one was the best, she might be gone and then I'd feel like I shot myself in the foot. But you're right, how would I know she's the best unless I tried others? I go round in circles on that.

How would I feel if the shoe was on the other foot and my girlfriend said, "I love you, but I want to date others just to make sure you're the right one." It wouldn't feel very good to be on the receiving end of that, which is another reason I'm reluctant to say that. And if I chose to date while on a break, I wouldn't want to hide that fact from her. (I do know, however, that in the beginning of a break, the main thing I should focus on is time to myself, not dating.)

This makes me think of AGG's comment that he was too "marriage-minded" when he first started dating. I think that's me. The other thing that's me is a sense of exclusivity. If I date a woman once and see nothing wrong, I'm inclined to date her exclusively to explore the relationship until I DO find something wrong. I don't know where I get that from, but that is the way I am, and it's the way I was before I ever got married the first time. I think I read in Opt's story that he's sort of like that.

One thing you said that caught my attention is that what I'm doing is keeping my girlfriend at bay for a time. That seems like a disservice to HER. Something for me to think about...

Thanks for your thoughts and the links. I've read those before, and I will read them again.

Please provide the link to where dr Harley said it is okay for melody to date while separated from her husband

As far as I know, Dr. Harley never said that. In the link I provided in this post, Melody describes a conversation with Dr. Harley in which he doesn't consider her marriage an affairage. Reading between the lines, my guess is that Dr. Harley would say it is not ok to date while separated; but according to Melody, he doesn't consider her marriage to be the product of an affair. I suppose you could question whether or not Melody's post is accurate, but you'd have to take that up with her.

Melody goes on to say that what she did was incredibly stupid. I, too, believe that what I did was not smart, although I haven't experienced the ramifications that Melody has to think what I did was "incredibly stupid." She apparently got engaged a week after her divorce was final and married a few months later. Yeah, that DOES seem incredibly stupid, and it shows how unstable even decent people can be in the midst of divorce.

If you'd like to continue discussing the problems inherent in not healing from one relationship before beginning the next one, please do. If you'd like to discuss the rightness or wrongness of dating while separated, please start a new thread. Thanks.

Thinking a little bit more about Melody's situation and comparing it to my own, I think I could've easily repeated Melody's scenario. I was very needy. I fell in love with my girlfriend quickly. If she had wanted to get married (as Melody's current husband did), I bet I would've agreed. In fact, I think I even broached the subject early with her, but she was smart enough to put the brakes on. She said we needed to, in her words, experience some seasons of life first. She also recognized that I needed some time on my own to heal and encouraged me to take some. I was too ignorant to listen to her, and I pressed to keep the relationship going. She did so, probably against her better judgment, because she was attracted to me, and liked the attention I was giving her.

Even though I didn't end up getting married quickly after divorce, I see how unstable I was and how easily I could have. In hindsight, I would've avoided a relationship so early; but having experienced what I did experience, I have sympathy for the plight of people in those situations.

Ugh, I just wrote a loooong response, and lost it.... I can't recreate it all right now, but here are some thoughts.

KL, when a marriage ends, especially with an affair in the picture, there is a deep wound that is left in your heart. There are two ways to deal with it - one is true healing, the other is a band aid. True healing requires time alone - time to understand why the marriage ended ("she cheated" is not the right answer, need to dig deeper ), as well as time to recover, to learn what you want in a partner, and to learn to be healthy and happy alone. THEN you can be a good partner to someone else.

A bandaid short-circuits all these. You find someone else, and you feel whole again, but the wound festers underneath. With some very rare exceptions (opt? ), the rebound person feels wonderful because they meet your needs that haven't been met in a long time - but they are unlikely to be right for you.

If you read here about my story (sounds like you have ), you'll see that I dated dozens of women, some for one/two times, others for months - and I also spent lots of time alone, doing home improvement projects to keep me sane and busy. The more I dated, the more I started understanding what I need in a partner, and it was totally different than what I thought I needed when I first became single. So I kept honing my picking skills, avoiding the wild women that we ISTJs are naturally attracted to, and gravitating towards the more calm and quiet girl-next-door types.

Regarding your GF, I would not suggest "taking a break" and dating others. There is no point to that. I'd suggest taking a break to spend some time alone, and then decide if you want to get back together (I would not recommend it, I have never see "taking a break" lead to anything good in the end). I think you need to spend several months alone, healing and growing, and THEN start going out on casual dates - not to find Mrs. KL, but to test the waters and see what works for you and what doesn't. It's a process, but you can't circumvent it. It's really worth it in the end, to find someone who is partner, who "gets" you, who adores you, and whose company you enoy. And vice versa. Much better than settling for something with the mindset of "well, it's not perfect, but what if I don't find anything better, no one is perfect, etc"...

I'll be happy to share more, let me know what your questions are.

AGG

KL,

What about Dr. H's advice to you to break up?

Aw, MAN, I'm bummed that you lost the post! Really, my heart sunk as much as yours because I really do value your insight and I feel the loss. I also know that it takes a lot of time to compose stuff like what you wrote, and I'm very appreciative that you took the time. I've lost stuff like that too, and I hate that pit-of-the-stomach feeling when it happens. All things happen for a reason is how I deal with it.

Comments/questions in the order you wrote about these:

• Healing. I think I've touched on this but no real details - I've been in independent counseling since very soon after I met my girlfriend. We hit it off rather quickly, and I knew that I had some healing to do, so I sought counseling to help with that; I wanted to clean out the baggage in counseling sessions and avoid having it spill over into my relationship. My counselor was excellent in helping me, as you say, dig deeper into the root causes of my divorce. I'm fairly confident with that part of my recovery. But I'm not nearly as confident in knowing what I want in a partner and I know very little about being happy alone.
• Festering wound. Anything's possible, so I could be deceiving myself here, but I don't feel anything festering. I did for quite a while, but I think the counseling has helped a lot.
• Rebound person. "feels wonderful because they meet your needs" Isn't that what a non-rebound person will do for you as well? That's a key component of MB concepts, meeting each others' needs.
• Your dating experience. I skimmed some of your posts, and read about a couple dating experiences, but didn't know there were dozens. I don't know about MBTI match-making, but I wonder if you and I would have opposite natural attractions. I wonder if I should seek wild women? Not! Although, my current girlfriend is a fire-cracker, easily exposing her emotions, which I like because I'm more reserved, and she opens me up. Emotional intimacy is easy with her and very satisfying.
• Time alone. I agree, the point of taking a break should be time alone. If we end up taking a significant break or breaking up, I think I would be happy avoiding the dating scene.
• Getting back together. You not recommending it, and never having seen it work out, is troublesome. I don't like the thought of losing her; I want to keep her. That gives me reason to not want to take a break.
• Finding the right one. Maybe I'm too blind to see, but it feels like I have found the right one, it's just that her son is difficult. We do "get" each other, we love each other, love being with each other, we love to workout together, cook together, like the same movies and TV shows, same kind of vacations, like similar books, she's very receptive to MB concepts, we're both dog people, love taking them to the lake together, like doing endurance races together, I could go on. Those are some of the Recreational Companionship compatibilities, and the other top emotional needs are very good too. Why do I want to leave this woman? Am I missing something? Seriously, if we go through the Emotional Needs questionnaire and find we're happy with how our needs are being met, doesn't that carry some weight?

I fired that last one off kinda quickly because I had to leave work. While riding home, I realized that the reasons I gave for compatibility were in the category of Recreational Companionship. The underlying reason for that is that when we took the EN questionnaire, RC was both her and my top emotional need.

I feel sort of like I'm sitting at the table eating steak for the first time and I have filet mignon on my plate. Since I've never tasted anything else, I'm considering trying other cuts to make sure I have the best one. If I trade this plate in for another, I'll probably end up with hotdogs or hamburgers, and when I decide I want the filet back, I'll find someone else has taken it.

The twist in my case, is that the filet comes with a cost that's too great right now (dealing with her son), so here I sit.

After-work activities are calling, gotta run. I'm sure I'll have more thouhgts driving around this evening...

Oh, BrainHurts, just noticed your post. I did listen to that radio clip. Dr. Harley ended with:

I guess I'm optimistic about that and hoping I fall into the category of "it works out."

KeepLearning, first of all, welcome to Marriage Builders. Please be aware that pop psychology can be a very distracting thing when it comes to saving a marriage.

Please don't spend a lot of time over what your 'special' personality profile is. When it comes to saving a marriage, the whole business of personality profiles becomes very secondary and is immaterial to your goal.

t/j - I disagree. One person can do it alone.

This thread...hmmmmmmm

Hi maritalbliss, thanks for the welcome. Regarding your post, the stuff about MBTI that I shared with AGG was meant to be light-hearted. I didn't mean to imply that I take that stuff very seriously. Maybe I should learn how to use some of the emoticons?

Your comment begs a question though. Isn't figuring out what your emotional needs are and what EN's you're good at meeting akin to understanding your personality type? Seems to me that it is.

Can I ask you something? I noticed that you've posted a lot since joining these forums. I haven't had time to scan through your history, so I don't really know anything about you, but since you've posted a lot, you might have a sense for something I've been wondering about. If you've read through this thread, you know that I got involved in a relationship without taking the time to heal from my previous one. I feel that my girlfriend and I have a special connection, but I'm occasionally plagued by the thought that maybe my judgment is skewed due to lack of alone time. In other words, maybe she's just "ok" and there are much better prospects "out there." This is one of the reasons I've spent time trying to learn MB concepts; instead of dating others to find out, I figured I could use MB questionnaires to help me decide if my girlfriend and I are a good match.

We did the EN questionnaire and found that our 4 top EN's are identical. For both of us, Recreational Companionship is #1, Intimate Conversation is #2, Sexual Fulfillment is #3, and Affection is #4. Is it unusual to have this kind of alignment of needs? Or not so unusual? The reason I ask is that from my limited exposure to MB resources and forums, it seems that what is typical is for women to have Intimate Conversation and Affection as their top 2 needs, while for men it is Recreational Companionship and Sexual Fulfillment. And it seems that a source of marital conflict is in trying to learn how to meet the differing needs of the opposite sex, or as Gary Chapman would put it, trying to learn each other's love language. Anyways, just curious if you, or anyone else reading this for that matter, has a sense for how common or not it is for the top 4 EN's to be lined up like that. Thanks for your thoughts.