Today is my 14th Wedding Anniversary! WOOOTS! I have MB and the community to thank for that. MY marriage is going great.. MB and christ is our foundation and the core of our marriage now and forever.

I also thank everyone who has helped me bring my marriage back around .. and all the advice and help I recieved since i found this amazing place in 2006 (i lurked for many months before i joined). I have since spent many more years posting casually helping others while i too learn MB and more frequently in the last year or so as MB really took over the foundation of my marriage.

.. I recently discovered I had some masculinity issues from being raised by a single mom which i turned to outside sources of MB to fix me with, which as i found out, was the final missing piece to the happiness in our home. My passion that circles these discoveries (possibly not expressed very well here on MB) has brought me to the conclusion that I am a distraction to some posters here who should be helping others instead of trying to prove me wrong or whatever.

I do not want your efforts to be distracted from those who need it. My apologies.

I will be taking a break for a while (probably lurk some on my commutes to and from work for reading material) .. maybe I will come back and help others again in the future.

For now .. im going to go be the best hubby my wife wants me to be (the cheery ... funny/cocky, level headed, confident, roll with the punches great catch kinda guy) ... and focus on my family and my job.

So on that note .. I am off to go spoil my wife on our anniversary since we POJA'd to do so! Hard to believe i been married for 14 years and together for darn near 19 ... Man time flys!

Keep up the good fight guys Chat at ya again in the future.

MNG

that was the lousiest "good-bye cruel world" post I've ever read. ;p

Happy anniversary!

Happy Anniversary to you both!

One more update before I am gone for the rest of the summer at least.

My wedding anniversary date night was fantastic!! Went out for Fancy Sushi (the best roll was the delicious roll and some golden scalops served on a candle roasting pan with garlic and butter all sizzling when it came) near my work had Tons of UA (special thanks to my DD14 who pushed us out the door when i got home to get started on the UA).

We even had a thunder storm that night and went to the roof top of my commercial building i manage to watch gods fireworks celebration of our anniversary display!. (we left once the rain started after about 40 mins of cuddling and chatting and watching the display!) Never seen lightening so close before .. was practicly right overhead. Flash BOOM! No One mississippi in between! GReat way to polish off an evening. Just wish i had brought my camera, as there would have been some amazing shots! HOwever .. i didnt know there was going to be a storm .. so .. *shrugs* It will be a great memory instead!

MNG

P.S. I will be back .. i love this place .. i will be on several holidays now til summer is over. I promise this wont be the last of me .. but the break is much needed .. my passionate side of me had been getting the best of me.

Have a great summer everyone!

OK .. I have a question. My daughter has been bugging me for some I technology.... specificly an Ipod. She tells me the reason is because all her friends sit around and facebook chat at school ... or text on them .. and she feels left out because the halls are quiet and she is not included. My fear with it is that it could get internet anywhere (with a password for the wi-fi of course)... and that I cant protect her from internet predators if she has seemingly unlimited access to the net and texting her friends etc.

She has a great head on her shoulder... and its not that I dont trust her .. I just have an issue with all these internet devices teens have these days ... and who knows what is being said.

I guess my question is. Is 14 too young for Ipod or something similar of that related technology with unlimited internet access? Or am I just being over fearful/protective about it and it should be no big deal? I am open to suggestions. Its been a hot topic in my home.

This is triggering my hurts from when my wife and I had internet issues in the past and is making me grouchy for some reason.

MNG

Well, my 8yo has an iPod Touch, sooo...don't know if you want to hear from me!

I am just against buying things for the sole purpose of fitting in. Like, my 15yo has a cell phone. He wanted one long before he got one, and the reason why he got one was for me. He was getting older and spending more time away from home, to places where the walkie-talkies we used to use didn't reach. I wanted to be able to reach him. Of course, now he texts all the time with his friends, but I would never have gotten him one just so he could text with his friends, kwim?

The three younger ones all want cell phones. I don't have any need for them to have a cell phone, so no! I don't care that all their friends have one. Truth is, a lot of people are giving their kids cell phones because they've shut off the landline. I have a landline, and these kids aren't old enough to be off by themself. If I need to talk to them while they're away from me, I can get them via the other parent.

Why the 8yo has an iPod: It's a year of big birthdays here. We tend to be fair when giving gifts to the kids, and for birthdays, we tell them how much they can spend and they can choose anything (within reason, of course...I'm not buying a Playboy collection for the teenager, for instance!) that falls in that range. This year, it's $200. iPod touch is $189. So that's what he wanted. So that's what he got.

All my kids are computer savvy, I guess I just haven't worried too much over it. I check up on them, have some stuff blocked (for instance, picture messaging is not available to ds15).

Don't know if that helped!

Thanks .. yes it helped some. My dd14 has a cell phone. ITs just not a smart one. Its a dumb one .. all it does is call and if she wants to text with it she has to press each number several times for one letter. Shes not allowed to give out her number and the only people we allow her to text to are my wife and I and her aunt. The phone is for emergency use (sorta) so she can contact us or give us info etc if shes going to be late from school or whatever. We have no texting/data plan on the phone either .. so thats another eason its restricted for use .. have to pay for everything that goes in and out of that phone.(she shared minuted and unlimted texting to my wifes phone tho)

*shrugs*

p.s. She gets facebook with her friends at home ... we have 2 PCs setup side by side .. and we have a keylogger set up on it that both my wife and I are aware of ... however DD14 is not. SO far shes been pretty good .. some "teen" stuff .. but i pick my battles carefully.

I think stopping the march of technology with teens is like pushing a rock up a hill. If your DD is responsible and you don't think it will interfere with her studies, why don't you ask her to earn the phone? (and slap some spyware on it before you give it to her.)

Yeah ... she has a phone .. its just not "good enough" for her. However A turn of events (after snooping) has shown me that her "friend" has just had her ipod stolen from school. ITs their first year of high school too .. DD seems to be in a better mood now .. probably after finding out her friend just lost her Ipod .. and now has no MAJOR influence to get one.

If i got her one ... spyware will DEF be a must .. AND it will not be brought to school.

MNG

Lol. I suppose she wouldn't be happy if you gave her a CB Radio then

HAHA .. funny you mention that HDW. I said the same thing to my wife the other night .. and explained to her that I felt the same way about getting a CB radio that my daughter felt about getting the Ipod. I was on the phone so much when i was younger that the CB radio only made sense so I could talk to my local friends. Eventually I saved up my own money and bought a car unit and a 12v power inverter and a 20ft antenna with 200ft of cable to hook it up to the base unit. I lived on top of a big hill so I could get my signal out almost to the next town! Several of my friends got CB walkie talkies too so we could all talk without using the phone line.

Wow .. i feel old ...

UPDATE:

Hey ... im having a bit of a setback lately. Both my wife and I are in a state of withdrawl. A series of events led us to a "relapse of indifference and emotional turmoil"

Its strange how it all happened.

Here is how I THINK it happened. Maybe you guys can help me.

At the beginning of December my brother asked me and my wife to baby sit his new baby (3 months old) so him and his GF (babys mom) could go out on a date. They had originally asked me for a Friday overnighter with the baby, so they could go to a concert. However ... later they called me back and said that the concert was on thursday so they couldn't go, but would go out to a dinner and movie instead on the originally planned friday night. We said ok no problem (thinking great .. we dont have to keep the baby overnight since its just dinner and a movie).

SO .. Friday comes and I am out of the house for a bit (running kids to martial arts) they drop off the baby .. and tell my wife they thought overnight was still ok since we originally agreed to it. My wife said ok and they left.

When I got home ... my wife was in a jumble. Trying to cook with a 3 Month old baby in her arms ... that was a bit upset. SHe hands off the baby to me, then tells me that its overnight. Well I immediatly begin to feel uneasy about it. But .. i dealt with it. My wife acted all stressed out .. and her energy was very .. negative. She threw a wack of lovebusters at me (a few nasty words and tone which withdrew many love units in a rapid rate) and i responded with a bit of glaring feeling a bit taken back by all this and a few nasty words were then exchanged. I appologized for my nasty comments but she didnt for hers.

Ok .. no problem. I am trying to keep my cool .. and baby whisper the kid so my wife can complete dinner. Both of our frusterations grew quickly. The baby was a bit relentless in its effort to be upset as 9pm is approaching. We pushed the babys bed time as far as we could. Was told the baby gets up at 4am to feed and so was not looking forward to 4am, so we tried to keep the baby awake longer than my brother does so we could get more sleep. After a few glares .. and a few unkind words during the whole ordeal ... I was triggered into a state of borderline withdrawl/conflict in a very short period of time. The good part is the baby slept in a bit later .. my wife got up once to feed him around 4:45am and he went right back to sleep til 9am. The next day seemed better energy.

This event pretty much set the pace for the rest of the month.

THEN... everyone is bitching about christmas and spending (exterior family members) we begin to get all sorts of feedback about an agreement of a limit on christmas spending that we had all previoulsy agreed to do. The exterior people decided not to stick to the agreement and went and spent extra money ... and then proceeded to tell us they spent WAY more than our agreements (including exactly how much they spent) and felt that our agreed limit was not enough. (we all originally agreed kids no limit and adults to spend 20$ and be creative with it) that was blown out of the water and our external family began talking about us behind our backs because of it. It leaked to us and created even more stress.(this is a few days after the baby incident). This negative talk about christmas spiraled around for a week or so stressing everyone out.

THEN ... with the coming negative talk about christmas i get triggered about an emotional event that occured a few years ago at christmas where my step mother told me to go #$%^ myself christmas morning because she was mad her daughters didnt make it out for christmas that year and we were having a discussion about christmas and santa and she was trying to convince my kids Santa was real. I had already told them hes not, but that a guy named st nick did exist and he did help poor kids in his time but not some guy that comes with magic down the chimeny and puts your toys under the tree. And i did that because i hate lying to my kids. They agreed ... i explained to my kids i was mad when i learned there was no santa and hated my mom for liein to me and i didnt want them to have false expectations of christmas.

So with this trigger reminding me about my stepmother about being told to go F myself ... i became depressed as christmas approached closer. I lost my happy go lucky feeling good about life roll off my back aura i had going ALL YEAR .. in a matter of seconds. I was down in the dumps for several days. Really Bahhumbug.

I guess my mind state caused me to not meet my wifes needs as i kinda tried to keep to myself and i had no motivation to do anything for anyone .. including myself (she was doing ok at meeting mine but was withdrawing love units faster than she made deposits with angry outbursts and disrespectful comments and would say "but i did meet your needs, so now im not good enough for you to meet mine?" and so apparently a week of trying to keep to myself to try and shake off my depression caused her to drasticly fall out of love with me and become depresed herself. SO then we BOTH became majorly withdrawn/depressed and occasionally would slip into a state of conflict but couldn't resolve so would go back to withdrawl again.

Many more days go by .. and now we are barely talking. My wife i guess (according to her) tried to be light hearted for a few days but couldnt help me out of my depression state. So after a few heated discussion i realized that the go $%^& yourself comment was really affecting me so I confronted my step mom about it because i couldnt bottle it up anymore (i said sorry to her that day for making her tell me go F myself and kinda sucked it up to keep the peace) .. and she appologized. She got all upset on the phone that i confronted her and told me she didnt remember that happenening but again .. appologized anyways and i felt better.

However... my wife was now in depression mode .. and i was lifting out of it (no thnaks to my wife who has totally ignored me cuz i am apparently an [censored], which i probably was). And so for several days my wife ignored my needs (over 7 days actually). I tried to explain to her i needed a bit more sex to help relieve my stress but she refused due to her depression and state of withdrawl and ripped me a new one for "counting days since we last had sex (she has had a bit of an aversion to sex but doesnt want to do the aversion exercises and we are both very inexperienced believe it or not and our sex life is usually very vanilla or less).. she finally offered on a sunday morning but i declined because of the way she offered. It was in a reluctant way. (to this day we have not been intimate since about the first week or so of dec ... which is very difficult for me as im getting grumpier each passing day. Pathetic right?

Come monday morning at the beginning of last week i was checking over keylogs on the computer to monitor my daughters FB and i notice a name typed in one of the logs.. my wife had gone and looked at the guys FB page that she was in an EA with when we were having all our previous problems. I was triggered BIG time .. got anxiety ... became stressed again and so I phoned her up right away (i was at work) and blew a gasket on her. Told her how i felt about her looking up this other guy ... and she acted surprised and got mad at me for getting mad at her about it. She said she did it by mistake becasue she was bored and i should get over it. WTF? I told her i believe her (there was not other logs to indicate that she actualy contacted him, she just looked)

Now my wife is in a horrible state ... tells me she wished she never married me .. says since i have not been following MB for a while now and not meeting her needs thats shes not going to meet mine.. and we seem to be at a stale mate. Since all this I am trying to just find happiness somewhere to keep the emotional state of the house in positive light since it seems that my emotional state controls the house.

Wow ... that was long winded ... and why i have not been around for a while.


Probably seems petty compared to several things going on here on this board but its where I am at right now and maybe i am just ranting to get it off my chest ...or maybe i really am an [censored] and need to be told so. Whatever it is i need to get back to how i was in November before all the crisis happened. I need to get my "i am the great catch" and fun and fantastic attitude back. My wife seems to think i tricked her somehow into thinking that things have gotten better since last year. Funny how 1 or 2 weeks of tough times can take away a whole year of greatness that we have had. Stupid triggers! Grrrrrr!

Opinions? MAybe i need a few 2x4's? not sure. I know i gotta stop lovebusting .. and clean my side of the street and its getting better... Maybe pray for peace in my home as christmas approaches. Satan is working overtime here as this all seemd to pop in out of no where.

MNG

edit detail

Ummmmm, how about back to basics? Increase your UA time. Use POJA. You already recognize that you both are lovebusting all over the place.

Don't sign up for things you don't want to be doing - watching nephew overnight, guilted into spending more money than you want to.

The holidays can be a very stressful time, especially when we lose sight of the "real reason for the season". Try simplifying, with the focus on each other.

AM

I agree with Armymama. You both have stopped doing MB. You know doing MB is what makes a happy in love marriage so get back to it ASAP!

The words "I need SF more often to relieve my stress" would be a big turn-off for many women. Women want to make love with their husbands when they feel bonded to them, not as a therapy for stress or out of obligation.

Agree with AM and MPto get back to the basics. You lead this by committing no lovebusters and going ahead and meeting your wife's ENs.

I've heard Dr. H. say that it's easy to bust up all the great feelings of being in love with a week of LBs and little UA time, along with neglect of ENs.

Remember "I would love it if..." when you would like SF. Make sure that you are first meeting her needs for intimate conversation and affection.

Too bad about the whole Christmas economics in the family. That makes it really hard for everyone to truly enjoy the real meaning of Christmas. Stick to your POJA, though. If the family gets nasty by gossiping about how you aren't "doing the right thing" by spending as much money as everyone else, perhaps it's time to find something else to do over the holiday.

How have you done MB? Forum, bookss, phone?

I think a phone call is needed to get the both of you on track.

To argue over santa claus vs st nick with Sm two years later unreal.

However to be mad at your wife for breaking NC on FB was dead on. Your repsonse to it was dead wrong.

Blowing up wife's phone while she is at work. Did you find evidence that wife was going to stop on the way home to get some milk and some bread and some OM?

Could of waited till after diner.

Do you have a key logger on the PC, seems like you should.

@ armymama - yup u are right. We have lost sight of the basics in the turmiol. I mentioned it to my wife and she agrees also. I have been avoiding lovebusters for several days now and just hanging out with the kids while trying to make pleasant conversation and up my domestic support. We got a date planned to get out of the house which we haven't done in quite some time. As for doing things we don't wana do? We originally did want to then assumed after they changed the plans there was no overnite with our nephew. Our mistake. Lesson learned. I should have asked to confirm so I was not surprised.

@ mariposa - yup I agree. I'm in a better mind state and working on my wifes needs. She agreed to refill out the ENQ to see where we are at. So I will be a new start again as the new year approaches.

@ longwayfromhome - yeah after I reread my post I feel like even more of an [censored]. I figured by telling her that I was just being radicaly honest. It didn't help any that's for sure but I am past that now and really only want sf when my wife is enthusiastic. It was a selfish statment and I rralize it was a lovebuster for me to say it like that. I have since appologized to my wife for that and she has now appologized for her DJs.

We are trying to take christmas back and remove the commercialism that surrounds it and bring real meaning to it for its true reasons. Our external family members are maiking it difficult but we told them this year if they can't get along then don't show up (our family is broken up into little chunks from adultery early in my childhood and no one gets along)

@ theroad - we have pretty much everybook but SAA. We discussed just lastnight that we should reread HNHN again. So I am looking forward to that. Especially simce its the revised version we just got in the mail. (We r giving a copy of HNHN and LB to pretty much everyone this year for xmas).

About the santa / st nick thing. Yeah. I realized I had to talk to her about it because when it originally went down it was lighthearted and then a switch flicked inside of my step mom and she blew her top. I was very passive about it and tried to ignore how I felt when she told me to go F myself and internalized it. What I realized though this year is that movie would play iin my head every year since then but previously I didmt confront it in fear of my step moms reaction (she was care giving my younger one and was our only support for dates etc). So I confronted her this year. She sppologized not realizing she said it but believes me and we r moving on.

As for the OM issue. They never met... Ever.. It was only emotional. However it was a huge trigger for me and brought my mind state to as if it was happening again yesterday. I have a keylogger that we both know about that's been on my pc for over a year now. We both look at it. She didn't contact him this particular time and claims it was innocemt. I believe her as the keylogger showed me there was nothimg more than her looking at his fb page and then moved on. I over reacted when I got mad at her but she has now appologized and removed all men from her fb that's not family or a mutual friend. This OM was not on her FB but he was a friend of one of her other female friends she met in an online game years ago. So she removed her too so not to temp to look at OMs page again. I told her I appreciated that and thanked her.

For the love of Pete, MNG... why did you bury the fact that she was looking up her AP under that huge pile of text?

That is hugely relevant to her behavior towards you. That is a freaking Day-1 recovery reset.

It is back to basics here; reestablish EPs, NO NIGHTS APART, 20+ hours a week of UA.

Your marriage CAN survive regular stress and dips into withdrawal if you apply the concepts, it will NOT survive withdrawal being accepted as an excuse to hit the crack pipe again.

I bet she was mad, getting caught...

Also, did you know that if someone is BLOCKED on FB that they will not come up while you are logged in? And private pages show NOTHING if you aren't a friend.

Dude, don't minimize the danger or damage done by this situation. It hurt you, it damaged your marriage. It wasn't "just," or "only."

X2. If you have not thoroughly discussed this, you should. And you should both read "Surviving an Affair".


AM