BINGO!!!!

You could do this program on your own *IF* you put your marriage first. One of the most important aspects of this program is that you devote 20+ hours per week of undivided attention meeting each others emotional needs [WITHOUT KIDS!] and doing your lessons. There is none of this crap about squeezing in 20 or 30 minutes here and there. It is all or nothing becuase this program does not work without the time committment. Dr Harley won't even TAKE a client on who won't commit to that because they are wasting his time.



She has every right to bring up your fidelity anytime, any place she wants. And if she has concerns, she should bring them to you and you should RESOLVE her issues.

Melony, I want to address one part of your point:


I literally do not know what I can possibly do to correct this. I spend no time alone with women, except in my shop which is in public, with surveillance systems rolling at all times. I have no close women friends, and no female friends at ALL unless they are also her friend. I go nowhere without telling my wife where I am going. I have completely quit porn cold-turkey. I can't undo my past porn use, but I can say that ever since we got married I have practiced these tips for avoiding even the possibility of affairs. I have even refused a friend help with college math homework because we would have been alone. Even though she is married and I am and we are all family friends and she's the Godmother of my youngest child, I refused her with the full knowledge of my wife to avoid even the slightest possibility of misunderstanding or temptation. I have done this MANY times. I am at my wit's end. I KNOW what I am doing in protecting my marriage from affairs and suspicions! But yet here it is anyway. I have many weak areas of character that she can reasonably attack, but my fidelity is simply not one of them.

Now that said, I will not deny that this insecurity on her part must be dealt with as thoroughly as possible, but I can't make her change it just by telling her it's wrong and stop it! Feelings of insecurity cannot be wrong, it's true. But they can be unreasonable. And things do hurt, even if objectively they shouldn't. Pain and fear are subjective. Maybe it'll come out in counseling.

But I will stop taking it as an attack on me. Well, I'll intellectually stop. I still may have an emotional response, but I'm learning now how to keep those under control.

Maybe she has a feeling she has not expressed to me that she doesn't deserve me (this may sound self-aggrandizing but it has some history. Not really low self-esteem exactly, but rather a very strong sense of guilt for the way she's treated me over the years) but now it's evolving into "I don't deserve him, but some other woman does. And soon he'll find her. And the other shoe will fall." Something like that would be within the realm of possibility for the way she thinks, though right now it's fully hypothesizing.

ML .. your the greatest. I know what your saying. I know this guy needs help. Our psychologist didnt start us togehter .. we started alone. it has gotten better each time. Maybe it helps that our love banks are not so low? Not sure.. He is helping us manage our anxieties. SO maybe the OP needs to be in a better place before something like that can happen. NOt sure .. I just know its working for us right now .. and my experience has been that the psychologist has a better grip on things than the MC did. Our MC Cried along with my wife .. and took her side on things where the psychologist is not on any side .. and both of us hav eatn crow from him and put us in our place. We like him ... maybe we got lucky.

So PM .. PHONE THE HARLEYS! Get yourself in a better place emotionally with your wife before going to a MC or pshchologist.

If I am misleading the OP ... thats not my intent. Sorry.

MNG

QUOTED FOR TRUTH!

Pm, I'm stepping off your thread but I want you to know I am praying and rooting for your marriage and family from the sidelines. I am grateful that we can go to God and talk to Him about our problems and come to know what His will for us in our lives is. I am grateful that He give us continuous support and encouragement. Please remember that you were perfectly and wonderfully made, and so is your wife. He gave both of you everything you need to rebuild a stronger marriage.

Please read more about the Renter, the reason you and your wife are saying things in such damaging ways is because you are both giving into the Renter mentality. Both Zhamila and I sniffed out the undercurrent of hostility immediately, but you can catch it and redirect it to what a Buyer would do. Your job as the husband is to sanctify your wife as a Buyer, not to calculate what words will cause her the most pain. When you catch these words coming from you that's your signal to redirect. Everything you do affects your marriage in a positive or negative way. You can do this! I pray you will use this opportunity.

No, she does not. In a healthy marriage, she has the right to bring it up anytime. But rightnow? By mutual agreement we decided to speak nothing of our problems until we've begun and undergone counseling. We both violated that agreement. With poor results.

Nor will I allow my abusive wife to dig a needle into the wound she opened. I won't respond well and I knew I wouldn't.

You can stop questioning whether or not she can question you. She has her perspective. Quit trying to convince her she�s wrong for having it.

You have to remember .. no one MAKES us angry at any time .. anger is ALWAYS a choice. We may have learned habits or deep rooted things that trigger our angers .. but it is still our own responsibility to keep our spouses safe from our anger AT ALL COSTS.

I owe her a hundred apologies, and I'm learning of more as we speak. I will give them as soon as it is safe to do so. I promise.

Ah I see. You see it as her just being more abusive.

"Ah I see. You see it as her just being more abusive."

No. I SAW it as more abusive at the time. I see now that I am wrong. I'm not saying my emotional response will be different right away, but I am seeing that I don't have the right to question her feelings.

edit: Yeah arg my tenses are all wrong. I have a lot to learn before I can start learning this. No I will not allow abuse. But disallowing abuse means disallowing communication, not jumping all over her for a feeling she has that I believe is unfair.

Just be patient with me, guys. I'm learning.

Her feelings ARE NOT unreasonable. And you hurt her by punishing her when she tells you about her insecurities. What should come out of "counseling" is that abuse her for being insecure.

And I believe you when you say you are not having an affair. HOWEVER, the answer to how to solve her insecurities lies with HER. Instead of having a meltdown and abusing HER, you should be asking her "what can i do to alleviate your insecurities." It is easier to change BEHAVIOR than it is reactions.

If am doing something that makes my husband insecure, I STOP DOING IT. Real simple. I don't tell him he is crazy or "subjective" or stupid or to go off to counseling for 20 years to flap about his childhood, I JUST STOP DOING IT!

So ask HER what you can do to make her feel safer. Stop defending your actions because it does not solve the problem!! It makes it worse. Ask HER to help you find a solution.


It is not an attack on you and it greatly surprises me that you take it that way. When she is upset, she should be able to come to you with her concerns so you can change what upsets her.

A complaint is an irritation in a BAD MARRIAGE and an opportunity for improvement in a good marriage.


And you may be right. She knows deep down that she has made YOU vulnerable to an affair perhaps. If she doesn't know this, we will tell her because she HAS.

But the solution is not to punish or abuse her for being insecure. You now have a plan to alleviate her insecurities by getting her the help she needs to become a better wife. That may solve the problem. But in the meantime, you should take her complaints seriously. Welcome them. Because that is how you solve problems in marriage.

I remember listening to Dr.harleys audio file on anger management 101 and when Dr.Harley said "does your wife make you angry?" both me and the caller had the same answer! then Dr.Harley and his wife say "that was a trick question" i bowed my head in shame! DOH! >.< Right then .. i knew not only did i think my wife had an anger issue .. but I did too .. so I had to own mine and not blame my wife.

BUT ... Work becons .. so .. i must depart for a while.

Cool.

ok, I told you how to solve this now, though. You don't have to go to a counselor in the future when this issue comes up. I promise you if you approach it in this way that you will be fine.

PM,

My Pastor says that people dont make us angry. Anger is in us and some people are more creative in bringing it out of us. The key is to get the anger out of yourself. I have found in my life, I get angry when things dont go my way or the way that I may have planned them to go. When I realized that I can only control myself and not my wife, my anger went way down. It became much easier to control the AOs because there just wasn't much anger left in me. Each time something comes up that might cause me to get angry, I first ask myself if it's somoething that I should/can control. If the answer is no then I let it be or address it with the proper questions to get to the bottom of the issue. She now has more AOs than me... Go figure, I never thought that would happen.

I'm not sure if this is MB or not, but maybe you should make a list of the things that get you angry. Everytime something else makes you angry add it to the list. Then everyday, review the list and determine what you can/should control and let the rest go. NOTHING should make you have an AO. Deal with the stuff with respect for each other. You do love her dont you? Do you cherish her? If so, then respect her too, it'll go a long way.

Melody, I will correct myself.

From my perspective it is quite clear that a suspicion of infidelity is unreasonable. Yes it is. I will ask some of my close friends and my pastor to make sure that I'm not missing something. But I feel strongly that objectively there is no evidence to suggest an affair. Please get that clear.

So, therefore, I have a very strong feeling that questioning my fidelity is unreasonable. It is my right to feel this, as you know. Where I erred is in projecting that feeling onto my wife. I admit that we cannot make progress until I admit that in her mind, it is not unreasonable to have suspicions of infidelity, as her knowing she's increased my vulnerability to affairs. I will try my best to understand, but it's not going to change how I feel.

Now, that said, I agree that I horribly, horribly judged my wife. I am very sorry and she will know that. I promise.

Oh .. one more thing before i leave .. your wife accused you of cheating. I can see where she gets that from .. your out of character by leaving the marital home to get away from her abuse. You have tolerated her abuse in the marriage (im sure your no saint either) and in her mind .. because your out of character its part of her anxiety thats givine her that info to work with and its running rampant in her mind. I know .. becasue when my wife kicked me out and we separated for over a week .. because my wife was out of character in kicking me out when we have endured worse behaviour in the past.. i said the same thing to my wife that she must have someone on the side .. but the reality was she did not .. and it was only my mind filling in the blanks for the (what seem to me at the time ) her unexplainable behaviour. Which really was her just protecting herself and our kids from us doing further damage to the marriage and not allowing us to continue.

Hope that gives you a different perspective.

MNG

Mikey,

We can hash at this somewhere if you�d like. Here we go.

You said you have a very strong feeling. I don�t deny you what you feel. You view things from your perspective and develop your feelings from those views. That doesn�t mean your wife views things as you do. To assume she does or that she SHOULD (because you are somehow the judge and jury and all-knowing) is a BIG TIME DJ. I call it a big time DJ because it is one of the hardest for us to come to realize we are doing. BTDT. Yet it causes huge problems in Rs. It leads to arguments or resentments etc.

It was very difficult for me to grasp this. My W has some issues that create thoughts and feelings in her head that I will never be able to comprehend. That doesn�t make what she feels any less real for her. I seriously don�t understand her thought processes sometimes.

AND I DON�T NEED TO!!!!!!!!

It is my job to make her feel safe and secure. Buyer mentality. I have care and concern for her feelings and well-being. So when she states something I don�t understand I first seek to understand what she feels. Not why she feels it but rather what does she feel and what can I do to help her to eliminate any feelings that make her unhappy, scared, etc.

As we continue on in this conversation we are going to get into the 2 types of resentment. Something you need to learn if you haven�t already.