Thanks HPB. Out of respect for your wife I want to read the entire thread. Its going to take a few days. But I will make a comment shortly.
Thank you.

HPB, thank you for linking to your wife's thread. I appreciate so much her struggle to find her way while continuing to care for her children's welfare. I was also impressed with the majority of the advise and support she received here. I also see how your maneuvering her to maintain status quo while she used avoidance compounded your problems. Your new marriage is a miracle!

Our Christmas was rough. Husband had numerous calls to see patients. Interrupted our only time w/grandchildren on Christmas eve and the family time was cut short also when our 2 year old grandson started vomiting. In fact we started to worry our grandson was poisoned by an old bottle of expired apple juice. (turned out to be a flu bug) Christmas day we were alone. I was mostly alone because of my husband kept getting calls requiring him to see the patient. I was upset by this and told my husband my disappointment --not due to patients neediness --- but the symbolic ambivalence this represented. My husband was upset by the entire experience and claimed he is committed to me. He was remorseful about the day and we made plans for a B&B on New years eve. So that was positive. At any rate --I'd say my issue surrounds his tendency to allow things to happen naturally that is part of the overall problem we face.

I appreciate my husband does seem to be making efforts to connect. This seems hopeful ---but these days I have learned here and via my own experience not to ride on hope alone---but to stick to the recovery plan. With work schedules and now my husband has the flu, its especially difficult. I'm cautious. I'm worried about my husband dodging the creation of EP plan surrounding exercise as I proposed. Right now the dojo is closed for the week. I can only assume I'll be competing against his other interests shortly. This of course is unacceptable. At any rate, I feel this is a good point to press for these boundaries.

Our marital recovery truly is a miracle.


PORH, Policy Of Radical Honesty, is a cornerstone of the MB program. The difficulty lies in our inability to deliver said honesty with the absence of Love Busters.

"Now" is always the best time to ask for boundaries/EP's.... And agreeing to always use POJA is another cornerstone....

POJAing a topic or decision can be revisited as often as needed. You may agree to something just to find later that you are no longer enthusiastic about what you agreed too.... You share that you are no longer enthusiastic and re-negotiate until you find a solution that satisfies both parties.

Press on!

Osu, HPB. It really helps to come here and to be reminded of the policies and plan. It reminds me not to settle or settle back in. Its like moving basics. Always go back to moving basics, right?

I've been curious as to what type of karate or branch of karate you and your family were/are involved?

HPB can you elaborate on this? How does one close their admiration account, when to some extent in general life you will get admiration just by doing good in the world, working hard, etc? IOW, if my H is successful at business, he will be admired and that isn't necessarily something he controls, but it does fill his admiration bank. You are suggesting this makes our M more vulnerable because it does not allow ME to fill that need, and in fact my attempts to do so fail in comparison?

I just thought this was an interesting statement and want to understand it more.

Our family studies Okinawan Panginoon Karate & Kobudo - My oldest 3 Children have received Shodan degrees in several arts besides these two mentioned above.

our oldest 5 have been training since they have been about 6 years old. Our recent additions willl start at a later age though.

I am a Shihan (the term means Master) in Aiki-Jujutu, Aikido & Jodo.

Unwritten,
What a great question! I've wondered and stewed about this atmospheric admiration that goes on. In my case my husbands talents are prized by others in a public way. Soon he is 'needed' and when his talents become helpful and depended on his talents start to cheat us. How to balance and not compete? It's a dilemma for me. He's gotta work. We go to church and his tenor voice turns heads. He goes to karate and he's admired there. My family lives many miles away and think he's Jesus. (Sorry). I talked to Steve H a little about this phenomena. His comment was something like. ...all these 'others' are behaving more as consumers----something like that.

It's one thing to receive a compliment from someone other than your spouse, it's quite another to seek them out at my spouses expense.

When I realized the activities I was involved in were really Independent Behaviors, I knew it was time to stop. Why would I want to continue to live a life filled with Love Busters once I knew how damaging it was to my wife?

I closed the bank by eliminating the IB. The RC I enjoyed, that excluded my wife, was one place to start. I also eliminated all my business activities/association meetings after hours as well as my volunteer activities at church. I replaced hem with activities my wife enjoys doing together.

I had become so used to IB and excluding my wife, that she had NO chance to meet my admiration need...... Everyone else was filling it!

It was the awareness that allowed me to stop!

your spouse will never be acutely aware that his admiration is being filled by others until you mention his IB every time it occurs.
In other words, complain.
Complain without being thoughtless in return.

No silent treatments, no selfish demands, no disrespectful judgments, no sarcasm, etc.

Just a simple; "This activity is excluding me and it hurts me every time it happens". or "This activity is an independent activity that not only excludes me, but allows others to meet you need for admiration. It is thoughtless and hurts me ever time you continue to participate at this level." Etc. Etc. Etc.


You must become radically honest every time for him to become aware. Don't be discouraged, he won't be able to do this perfectly for quite some time.... It will take constant vigilance on your part to complain honestly every time.

I'm thinkin' Admiration Whores usually watched to many John Wayne movies....

I'm curious, Does he allow these interruptions during Karate classes? During church choir? During any IB activities he's involved in?

or

Does he wait until he's just with you or family to allow them?

HPB,
I'd like to admire your transformation from a 'admiration whore' (AW) to devoted hubby ---but I'm afraid to! Actually I admire your wife for all her hard! Anyway, I appreciate the advise you are sharing here. The advise to specifically tell my husband when his actions are IBers is especially helpful. I've learned well how to simply state the facts w/out getting emotive about it. This can be a challenge when my husband does his questioning thing. I recently learned a new vocabulary for this form of questioning. It fits right into the AWing.

Its called pimping! It means asking questions meant to help 'them' look good and 'you' seem less then somehow. This kind of questioning can be benign to educate of can be malignant on many levels or degrees.

About his on call schedule: He is a solo practitioner but shares an on-call schedule with several like practices in our area. So he is assigned to be on-call over a weekend or holiday weekend period approximately every 3 months. When he is on-call all activities and relationships are subject to interruptions. Its hard.

HPB thanks for your responses. I will have to give it more thought. I guess from my perspective working hard, being successful, being an upstanding citizen...is a way to seek out admiration. If indeed a reason for doing so is to have an admirable character. But of course we would encourage out spouses to DO this right? In my case, H is successful (brilliant actually) and gets many compliments at work by many people. This def fills an admiration need. But I can't exactly tell him to slack off at work and ruin his rep to give me the edge right? Likewise he is very gifted at construction, mechanics, you name it the man can build or fix it. Again, these are traits people comment on regularly. But he doesn't seek it out from women, or in any conscious way. He has some IB but I am not in disagreement with it (like he hunts and I support that, so it is independent but not necessarily what I think of as negative IB). Im sure he gets 'nice buck' from his hunting buddies right, but that's good isn't it?

As a SAHM I would want my kids to tell me I am a good mom, that would fill a admiration need but I don't want them NOT to tell me that ya know?

I have a way of over thinking every concept in this site it seems...

Unwritten,

We all have love bank accounts for those we associate with.
I like how Dr. H. says it best;


With this in mind we understand how critical The concept of UA Time is.

We achieve Romantic Love when a threshold of deposits is crossed.

Knowing this, we begin to understand how important boundaries are. Waywards never learned this valuable lesson until an affair taught it to them...... And still, some never learned, even after loosing everything.

Admiration being a high need can be seen in many waywards. You can discern those who have a high need fairly easy when talking to, or watching them. They are the ones that are eager to display charm and charisma, they are agreeable with strangers even when it seems to contradict their belief system, they seem to have the ability to see what someone needs help with quickly and they act upon it confidently. They are often the people that volunteer for helping even when their plate is already full. I could go on, but I think you may recognize these traits.

You might say none of these are bad qualities....

BUT,,,, It's the motive and the character that's the problem. They are seeking deposits from others and dropping their marital boundaries, care and protection every time they engage in these behaviors.

Dr. Harley say's receiving praise is not something we can control, and I agree. But when we "SEEK" admiration, as in my examples, outside of the marriage, this "IS" something we can control and it's something we can stop.

Allowing other men, my children and my parents to praise/admire me is safe. But seeking it out is no longer acceptable under any circumstance.
My wife and I have a plan in place where I have the opportunities to receive admiration, conversation, RC, etc. in the event she became ill and couldn't meet these needs. Dr. Harley Chalmers advised us to put this in place.

My boundaries/EP's limit/prevent the opportunity for other women to give me admiration. These EP's allow my wife to have levels of trust that make her feel safe enough to leap over the threshold of Romantic Love with me. Without these Boundaries/EP's she would never really want to open her bank account, no matter how many deposits I attempted to make.

I hope that clarifies my thoughts on this topic a bit more? IMVHO, It's an important topic.

Yes, this is an important topic and it drills down into the aspects of care/thoughtfulness and prevention so important to recovery. Its important for my marriage.

Can you more specifically describe your EP's in this area? I like the notion of preparing for a situation such as an illness. This was a huge issue between us and had been a vulnerability all along. This is a motivational factor for me to set up Ep's. I know there are a lot of women and probably some men who are essentially abandoned emotionally and sometimes literally during an illness when they need their mates the most.

I'm linking a tread on EP's here ----->Link to EP Thread

Thank you HPB. I have read thru this thread previously and even recently had my husband take a look at this particular thread when i began asking again for him to write up EP list himself. I had previously wrote a EP list--back when I found out my husband had this infatuation going on in 2010 and just after returning from MB weekend. Apparently he did not buy into the EP's I wrote. Predictably we have bumped along and I have lived under tremendous stress he seems indifferent towards. Today we had a fairly pleasant day together. Early in the day we had a productive conversation about our adult children and boundaries we were going to set with them. Again I brought up him writing EP list for us. Its been really interesting how he has gotten focused on our kids ambiguities in how they are managing their futures.When I pointed out the PT stress I am under without EP's he indicated he would write EP's but at the same time he did not seem committed to get the job done in any kind of timely fashion. HE expressed the opinion the topic surrounding our children and the EP issue were not related. The thing that bothers me is he consistently says "sure" when I make a request. But then he is not accountable towards me so this lack of accountability forces me to react and he does not have to confront anything himself. This is very stressful.

My logic tells me I need to set a timeline and walk out if he does not take care. I have expressed this kind of strategy to SH before and he does not give out decisive directives to help me sort this out. Mainly he directs me to say things to my husband that would encourage him to work directly with him. I appreciate its my life and my marriage. All I have wanted to do is save it.

My husband likely would remain indifferent if I left anyway because he has built a network of admirers to meet his need. Tomorrow we work half day and we are going to a B&B. I want to have a nice time but I also want to stabilize our futures.

I've learned a lot here and thru this experience over the past 3 years. Its always been difficult to have my husband so extremely goal oriented. On the one hand there has been the notion of developing his talents and using the talents that God has given him. This has been one way my husband explained away his priorities. It sounds good in theory but as a spouse ---its a double bind. After I experienced his betrayal I'll never be the same. I look back thru the years at how I thought I needed to support my husband or was pressured to support ---- and a good part of it was supporting his IBing so he could de-stress or help others. Its never been easy when he'd get wrapped up in helping others with a noble cause. Its not like I did not ask him to meet my needs but he was so bullish about his own interests.

I know we do not go back to FOO and all that. But I have this intellectual understanding regarding growing up in a alcoholic home that I want to comment on.
I want to comment because I have asked myself why would I be able to put up with marital imbalance all these years? (I'm not saying I'm a perfect angel) But I know there are many here who also are loyal to a fault like me. To the point of self neglect and abuse.

Just as I experienced as a kid--- I've experienced in my marriage. The mixed up priorities, addictions, compulsions and so on caused me to feel less-then, invisible and as though I did not matter. That was normal to me. Its always hurt but I have not known much different. Its not been easy to catch the problems and trying on the MB principles as its clumsy at times. Reading MB and now discussing this here are helpful as I've not had the modeling such as the Harleys. Our own culture doesn't have the answers and we all know what happens when we allow things to happen naturally.

I wanted to make these comments because although my husband is not making it easy, my own vulnerabilities and blind spots are not helping either. Also I felt i wanted to mention this as I do believe we can make our weaknesses our strengths and I really need support if at all possible. Hopefully this will help others.

There has been a karate break now for a couple weeks. Tonight classes start up again. I've asked my husband to commit to UA time, working on the lessons, written EP to eliminate IB and coaching w/Steve. I do not want to return to karate without the above.

Last night my husband attended a dinner hosted by the instructor (Sensei)with other student instructors attending, mainly kids or young adults. Also the instructors husband attended. I realized after my husband left this dinner arrangement was a IB. He did not plan this activity but I appreciate we both have to recognize situations that are more IB oriented. My husband realized this too after he'd got there. Learning curve for us both. I stated matter of factly that I should have been invited to go and I'd been insulted I was not.

Feeling violated is reasonable. He went alone, to a dinner with a group of people he had an EA with in the past. I'm amazed you didn't have triggers going off....
Your H was very thoughtless.

My EP's never allows me to go to dinner without my wife attending. If my wife ends up ill and can't go with me, I stay home and take care of her.... It's really that simple.

We do have black belt meetings & dinners. I bring her to every one of them, or I don't attend. If it's a problem, I offer to pay for her meal. I was reminded once that the meeting was for Dan ranks only.... I reminded them that my wife comes with me or I don't attend. They've never mentioned anything since!

You have a right to ask for and expect protection (eliminating IB's, and all other lovebusters)in your marriage.