Dr. Harley told him what to do, he didn't do it, and as a result, she lost interest in UA time.

Wives do not sign a pact promising to engage in UA time no matter what. In all cases, Dr. Harley says that if you want to have your emotional needs met, you need to make sure you make it enjoyable for your spouse.

Yes, sir. She signed up, asked Dr. harley for help, couldn't get you on board until lately, and suffered all kinds of abuse from you.

Isn't all of that true?

Well, you certainly shouldn't DEMAND it, like I did. Or be DISRESPECTFUL about it, like I did. Or have ANGRY OUTBURSTS over it, like I did. Is that what you meant by not "mandatory?"

But MelodyLane is right, the program doesn't work without it. There is no way to have a good marriage without learning how to give your wife fifteen fantastic hours a week. And Dr. Harley is in the business of teaching clueless husbands (I raise my hand first here) how to give their wives fifteen fantastic hours a week.

Of course, by the time the wife is not enthusiastic about spending those hours any more, it is usually much more difficult than it would've been earlier on. But not impossible. Dr. Harley gets calls/letters every day from men saying their wives are leaving them and they don't know why, and when they start looking into it, they realize their wives were complaining about the situation long before. It's when the wives stopped complaining that things got dangerous.

Of course, my typical approach was to expect the complaining to stop. After all, I was the injured spouse. I was entitled. I had complaints that weren't being addressed. I had a hundred reasons. After all, she had pushed me into the minefield.

Look Marcos, there have been LBs tossed my way the entire marriage. I have been disrespected and belittled and you don't have to believe me but I too have endured AOs but they're not AOs from her , they're emotion becouse she's ann emotional person and it can't be helped. And I didn't run on the forum and tell on her everytime she did somthing I disagreed with and when I tried well, it was dismissed. Shut up and eat your poop sandwich boy.

Resentment has been a huge deal from her concerning our blended family issues. Things I did wrong concerning my other children whom I had gotten custody of were continously brought up my mistakes were brought to my attention so often it made me feel hopeless. Resentment from her constantly, but no way according to Dr H was that even a significant portion of the problem. I had to sit an endure listening to events that had happened 10 to 12 years prior and it seems I'm the one who can't just move on...whatever.

We even had an argument over how damaging thoughtless behaviour was compared to infidelity, me leaving the sponge in the sink was as bad an affair... I felt that the affair was always being justified that it was always my fault. WPG indeed!

I have been the bad guy throughout this entire ordeal before and now. I have definitely, no doubt about it made mistakes here but as God is my witness things ARE NOT entirely as they have been portrayed.

LL says that for the first 2 or 3 weeks she met my needs better than ever and that is an accurate assessment but then like flipping a switch she went quiet and not talking for about three days, sitting on the porch depressed and staring off. Every thought imaginable goes through my mind and I settle on "she's thinking about him" finally after 3 days she tells me "it's about the dogs".

The dogs...a huge issue that didn't get resolved to her satisfaction. The dogs are one big reason we couldn't do a weekend getaway like I begged for. Of course the dogs will go with me. The dogs were a much bigger issue than the sponge or at least I thought so and LL never brought that up on the forum to Dr H. Because I had brainstormed and through POJA had bought kennels and arranged for an older son to house sit, she changed her mind. Couldn't get her to agree to a trial period...

Look,

I have not read your entire thread. From just the last few posts, I would bet considerable money that your W has had or is in contact with OM. Do you have adequate snooping methods in place to ensure this is not the case?

AM

I don't know armymama, if anything is going on. I don't think there is but there is no way I could ever have access to her office phone or work computer anyway. Government stuff...

I do believe you. Usually abuse comes in pairs and happens on both sides.


Yuck; I hope she didn't say that to you and that you didn't hear that from anyone here. Men, women, emotional people, and "non-emotional people" (if there is such a thing) are ALL responsible for controlling their emotions and not using them as an excuse to abuse their spouse. Women especially sometimes seem to buy into the idea that they are more emotional and so when their husbands fail to come through for them, or even just annoy them in some way, it is okay to address the problem by becoming hideously disrespectful or by having an angry outburst.

I would hope that this forum would support either one of you if you came here and talked about the other abusing you. Nobody deserves that, and you especially don't after what you went through.


I think you should air that. Making things work takes both sides, and she needed to take you seriously and if you had a problem with something she was doing then she, like any married person, needed to KNOCK IT OFF, and together you needed to find an alternative that both of you could be enthusiastic about. Of course, if either or both of you are prone to angry outbursts or other abuse, that becomes incredibly difficult.


I may be missing it, but I don't see anywhere where you mentioned to Dr. Harley that she was dwelling on your mistakes of the past. I'm assuming you probably did mention it to Kim, or to Dr. Harley off of the forum.

Yes -- she shouldn't be doing that to you!


The problem is most women tend to feel this way, at least until they fall in love with their husbands again. This is one reason Dr. Harley says not to discuss the affair, not to even bring it up after all the facts are out. She shouldn't bring it up, you shouldn't, if it comes up you should RETREAT!

(Even if she runs after you with an AO yelling "Come back here and talk to me, you jerk!" in which case I would hope you'd be here on the forum, and on Dr. Harley's private forum, and on the phone to Kim, telling everyone what's happening.)


Yeah, she wouldn't do that.


Okay, I believe you. There's abuse on both sides (typical), your wife doesn't intellectually and/or emotionally agree with her responsibility for the affair (typical).

But as for the number one problem, the number one thing that needed to happen for recovery, that is, the Policy of Undivided Attention and the meeting of your emotional needs: she posted to Dr. Harley about this and his answer was that she couldn't do that without you. And you did not take his advice at the time and do what was necessary to make it possible for her to give you Just Compensation. There was no way, according to Dr. Harley, that she could have done that without you.

For a wife whose husband is not on board, Dr. Harley usually recommends that she not stay in Plan A for longer than three weeks, because it truly is damaging to a woman's emotions, health, and psyche for her to be trying to meet emotional needs, in the face of abuse and a lack of reciprocation. Women wind up with compromised immune systems, post traumatic stress disorder, and a whole host of other problems if they keep trying to "prime the pump" for too long. Dr. Harley recommends they stop doing this and separate for their own health after three weeks.

You can see that your wife ran out of steam after three weeks. No matter how motivated she was or how much buy-in she had in this program, she could not keep going without you. She should have separated at that point, according to Dr. Harley. But instead she stayed with you for a year.

If she couldn't set up conditions where you could be safe, she should have left that job.

Abuse simply doesn't justify abuse. Just like your abuse didn't justify her affair.

I think it is important for both of you to be honest with us (and with Dr. Harley and Kim) about what has been going on: to tell us if there is abuse going on. You've done that here, and your wife has also revealed that the last two months have not been free of angry outbursts on your part.

This program really does work when it's followed, when you give it a chance and follow the rules. But what we're seeing is that you haven't given it a chance, yet.

I may be missing it, but I don't see anywhere where you mentioned to Dr. Harley that she was dwelling on your mistakes of the past. I'm assuming you probably did mention it to Kim, or to Dr. Harley off of the forum.

Yes -- she shouldn't be doing that to you!


Below is the 3rd post in that infamous thread...


Dr. Harley,

I agree that I have not met my wife's emotional needs and that her love bank is emptied. She deserves much more than she gets.

I have made a terrible mistake. A mistake that has haunted our relationship almost from the beginning. When we got married I had custody of my 12 year old son from a previous marriage.

You are so right about the issues of a blended family and the damage they do to new relationships. I tried to be loyal to my son and gave in too much to him. I hated how he felt about the divorce and the fact that his mother obviously didn't want him. I did the worst job possible trying to split my loyalties between him and my dear wife. I didn't make her number one. I didn't place her first and she cannot forget it. Ever.

We've talked about this recently and both of us agree that she suffers from what you have termed "Type A Resentment".

Dr.Harley, I destroyed our marriage and LTL's trust in me years ago. I know (now) the level of hurt I heaped on her and it cannot be undone.

I've been misunderstood here. I'm not complaining about sex. I simply will not subject my wife to an act that she doesn't have the heart for. I annoy my wife constantly. The list is too long to type out. She DOES NOT LIKE ME! I don't blame her either. My wife deserves better in life.

It's the resentment Dr. Harley...

What you didn't mention in that post is that she is bringing up that mistake. I don't know, maybe you personally thought that that mistake was "too much damage" to recover from or something, but Dr. Harley's the solution to the problem absolutely involves her NOT bringing up your past mistakes, and both of you creating a pleasant PRESENT. I don't know if you made it clear to him that she was bringing this up, like you did in this thread here. As I read that post, it sounds like you were (at the time) the one dwelling on it. You may have felt like you were obligated to discuss it / deal with it since she was bringing it up, but in Dr. Harley's plan, you get to say "No, I'm not enthusiastic about talking about this." She has to redirect to what she is unhappy about NOW (which may be something that is reminding her of the past, or making her feel like it is brought back, somehow).

When Prisca and I got here we had tons of past crap I didn't think we would ever overcome. And I was skeptical for well over a year of Dr. Harley's "Don't try to resolve the past" approach. But it works. When we have achieved happiness, all that desire to dwell on the past goes away. And when our damaging love buster habits have come back, it's amazing how all of a sudden I feel resentful about those past mistakes again. But I have to follow the rules and shut up about it!

It's really important in recovery if your wife isn't following the rules to very clearly spell that out to Dr. Harley and his staff. It's also important to not respond with lovebusting instincts and habits, even though it feels very natural and justified.

Even in the presence of Type A resentment (we all have some of that, because pretty much all of us, at some point, have made the mistake of doing something our spouse was not enthusiastic about), a marriage can still heal if they focus on making a happy present instead of dwelling on the past.

Dr. Harley responded to you by directing you to focus on making a happy present together. He did everything he knew to do to try to motivate you to get involved in meeting your wife's emotional needs, protecting her from love busters, and being thoughtful toward her in your decisions (i.e., not creating additional resentment).

Affairs are pretty much the worst conceivable example of independent behavior. There is no way that her Type A resentment was worse than yours. (Although comparing bruises is not really a healthy way forward for a marriage.)

And yet, despite all the resentment affairs cause, Dr. Harley says that when Just Compensation has been made (and that means building a happy marriage -- it doesn't mean flagellating yourself and sacrificing to try to make it up to your spouse), the resentment fades. He says that if the resentment is still present, it is a sign that either the recovery is not complete (a happy marriage has not been achieved IN THE PRESENT) or that somebody is using the resentment as a weapon to extract demands out of their spouse (what he calls "secondary gain," which you can read about in the Q&A section of this site -- let me know if you want a link).

Any other Type A resentment is the same. Prisca's got a million reasons to feel Type A resentment. (And frankly, so do I.) But when we follow the rules of good conversation, when we stop dwelling on mistakes of the past or present, and when we focus on meeting each other's emotional needs and avoiding love busters and making sure our decisions are made with each other in mind -- we stop feeling resentful. It just pretty much goes away. It is truly amazing!

That's healing. That's the healing I want for you guys. It can come despite affairs, despite past mistakes, and despite past abuse. It takes awhile, and it takes work, and it takes following some rules that you DO. NOT. WANT. TO. FOLLOW. But if you give it a chance, it works.

Judging by your posts to Dr. Harley, you've been telling him and anyone else "It's too late for us, it won't work" for almost a year now. But it does work. There are people on this site who have recovered from abuse, multiple serial adulteries, drug addiction, you name it.

The solution is to make deposits!

When you find yourself at the bottom of a hole, stop digging. Don't ask for another shovel.

The weird thing about making deposits when you are in the negative is, you start out, and even though you make progress, you don't see it, because you are still in the negative. Your spouse doubts the deposits, they still feel the resentment (because you aren't done yet), and sometimes they express it. They may very well express it in an abusive way.

All of that combines to make you want to give up.

But if you don't give up, if you keep making deposits, eventually you cross the zero point and you get into the positive: "like" territory, instead of "dislike" or "hate." And if you keep pressing forward after that, you cross the romantic love threshold, at which Dr. Harley says men have called him and said "Dr. Harley, I don't know what's happened, is it possible my wife is taking hormones???"

I have seen Prisca wake up from a nap and say "I have no idea what's happened, but suddenly I'm dreaming about sex." When the night before she didn't want me to touch her. Know what happened? That happens at the end of weeks of love bank deposits.

Here's something interesting for you to read:

http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2069963#Post2069963


It's really interesting to me how your wife's enthusiasm collapsed right on the dot, at about three weeks, just at the point Dr. Harley tells most women to end Plan A if their husbands are not on board.

But the really interesting thing to me is how Dr. Harley says we on the board can act as a support system to help someone (particularly a man) go longer.

I listen to Marriage Builders Radio practically every day, and have listened to practically all of the archives. I have never heard Dr. Harley tell a woman to plan A longer than 3 weeks. Never. But I ALMOST ALWAYS hear him tell men that they can keep going longer than they think they can, and encourage them to push harder.

It reminds me of the fitness class Prisca and I just got done taking. We did a lot of weight lifting on our own before that, and I still didn't even bench a hundred pounds. That jerk of a coach started me off on more than I had ever lifted, right off the bat, and told me I could do it, and insisted that I do it, and made me do it.

Now we're done with the class, and I've doubled what I lift on practically every exercise, because I never pushed myself before.

Good coaches look like jerks, and help you do more than you ever thought possible.

Think of the Olympics without pushy coaches !!!

Thanks Marcos but I believe you've read LLs response.

How does one do those various, separate quotes. I'm an idjit sometimes...

Yes, I sure did, and it's informed everything I've had to say here today!

This is an interesting comment from your wife's response:


The thing is, you believed from the beginning that it was too late and that you could not do more, so you did not try to do more. But you were mistaken, you could do more. And you can do more now.

She is rightly giving up in response to you saying that you cannot do more. Dr. Harley advises a woman to plan for a separation when her husband will not get on board with making the marriage happy for her, i.e., when he is neglecting or abusing her.

But the typical scenario is, the husband believes that he CANNOT address his wife's complaints (in my case I believed the real problem was Prisca needed to come to grips with things herself and stop complaining and give me peace so we could get on with our happy marriage), that he cannot do any more, that his wife's complaints are limitless, that he's just not that kind of a guy (conversational or affectionate, or whatever) and his belief justifies him in INACTION. And it is that INACTION that dooms his marriage. If someone can help him see that there are positive actions that he can take, that he actually CAN start addressing her complaints one by one and that they are not limitless, that he CAN learn how to be conversational and affectionate, that he CAN learn how to be respectful and hold his temper, that he CAN start making love bank deposits regardless of what she is saying -- then they stand a chance.