You let it go and the resentment dissipates when you create a happy, romantic marriage. You do that by following this program to the letter. Just want to remind you of something you have seen before:

here

They BOTH have to jump through hoops to effect recovery. They are BOTH supposed to be engaged in recovery. THEY ARE NOT. His resentment grows every month this goes on. Her resentment grows every month this goes on. They should both be working the program.

He will feel better because of the program. When he replaces the big, nasty festering wound with a great marriage, he will feel better.

Mel,

OK, yes, so the approach has been wrong.

I have these obsessive thoughts...and not letting go...and the resentment. Maybe I've been focused on THAT to get to a happy marriage.

Instead of focusing on creating the happy marriage that removes the obsesive thinking and resentment.

Ok, so, then, the problem is: what's hindering creating the happy, romantic marriage, correct? What's getting in the way of me being happy and letting go and not feeling traumatized any longer?

If I'm asking the right questions, then my answer would be:

1. I need to eliminate the LB that's making HFM unhappy.
2. HFM needs to eliminate the LB that makes me unhappy.
3. We need to maintain proper UA time

I think that's what I'm thinking.

It is up to the BS to present his conditions for recovery and line out just compensation. The WS shouldn't have to guess at what that is. It is the BS's job to set the plan for recovery.

You need to implement every single basic concept in this program. Not some, but ALL. If you do 1-3 and don't implement the PORH and the POJA you won't have a happy marriage.

Yes, I get that.

I thought we were accomplishing those 2 as well...but looking at it now, how effective am I really doing PORH if I'm not sharing how the LBs are hurting me? Or POJA when I might allow an AO to sabotage negotiating pleasantly or safely?

I love HFM and my family and I want to get this right. I want a happy marriage with HFM.

The Online Program will help you both very much. I had a great deal of resentment for a good while, but as we worked our way through the program, with the help of our coach and the private forum contact with Dr. Harley, and with the passing of time and the filling of love banks, the resentment has gone. Recovery was the hardest thing we have ever done. It takes a lot of guts, patience, and adopting behaviors that work in marriage.

The POJA and RORH are the foundations of a great marriage.

Eliminating all the love busters is critical. Obviously filling your love banks is crucial, but it's difficult to
fill them when the love busters immediately drain away the love units and then some.

Keep these phrases on the tip of your tongue:

I love it when you ......
It really bothers me when you......

No love busters.

We had a similar tv-watching incident a couple of years ago. I was getting more and more agitated at a show depicting a married man flirting with a single woman. I should have immediately turned it off as soon as I noticed how disturbing it was. Instead, I did almost the same as you, not following MB at all in my reaction. Thankfully, my H was kind and patient with me in that moment. He could easily have reacted to my anger but he did not. He displayed enormous love to me in this. If he had also become angry, the whole situation would have been explosive.

That one thousand dollars is the best money we ever spent. We still get to interact with Dr. Harley through the private forum when we have questions and he still monitors how we are doing, even a year out from completing the program.

Very good points. POJA is really an end result of the FGSN (Four Guidelines for Successful Negotiation) process. And if you'll look at FGSN, you'll see that the first step is to set ground rules to make negotiation pleasant and safe. i.e., eliminate the abusive love busters, because as long as the threat of those is hanging over the conversation (and the threat lasts for quite awhile after the last LB that occurs), negotiation is nigh-impossible.


I believe you are going to make it, and I believe that when you up the number of points of this program that you are getting implemented, you are going to see a lot more of the things you are looking for and longing for from HFM.

HFD, don't expect your wife to respond this way to your AOs. Her natural reaction is going to be to withdrawal - to get away from you and refuse to let you make any lovebank deposits for awhile (and rightly so).

What are her lovebusters?

Yes, exactly! I had an AO, which was a big love buster, and WRONG of me, but my H followed MB when I failed. If he had also had an AO in response to mine, things would have deteriorated very quickly.

Don't expect your wife to read your mind or interpret things the same way you do. If something is bothering you, you need to follow the PORH and just say so. And do it before it starts to make you upset.

Ok, now being completely O & H regarding my thinking, I obsess in my thinking, oh, how I obsess, I have a few obsessive thoughts about the affair, assumptions, probably but they are so ingrained in me they have become "truths" to me, and I operate from these truths as a matter of fact for my life now. And they don�t go away.

1. One truth is that I believe HFM believes she had the affair �because� of our marriage, because of me. That it happened NOT because of some flaws or traits in her personality, but solely because I was a bad husband and we had a bad marriage and it�s all my fault. There�s ownership for WHAT she did, but not WHY she did.

And I feel she harbors much resentment for many things about her life � some things out of my control � and her default position when she gets angry/sad/depressed is that only she was miserable in the marriage, that she should�ve left me, that only I left her �lonely�, that only she �hid� things wrong in our marriage, �protected� me. She�ll still say to me: �if I had left for a hotel, would that have made you a better husband?� Or �If I had confided in family/friends and told people would that have made you a better husband?� as if there�s a disconnect that SHE contributed to the environment of a bad marriage as well. That she's only responsible for the DECISION to have the affair, but not for having a part in creating a climate that made it POSSIBLE in the marriage in the first place.

The truth is I was miserable in our marriage, too. I was lonely, too, in the sense that she was not very pleasant person to be around for long periods of time�and so I chose not to be around her. There was a lot of Independent Behaviors. She did not attend to me. Everything else came before me, before us: the kids, the job, money, the house. She never considered me. For all the complaints HFM has about me or our old marriage, I have mine as well. And some of those are still present in the �new� marriage�.her LBs with the anxiety and depression and panic attacks. My needs were not being met, and I �expressed� that in unhealthy ways at times. But I never committed adultery, and that she did so destroyed me.

2. The second thought that I obsess over is that I assumed HFM always seemed more upset with how it ended. That this guy was a POS, but that under the �right� conditions, it could�ve worked�that she went about it all wrong, but wanted out but chose not to divorce and with a better person or having planned it out better it would�ve had better results for her. Like an attitude that says: �Well, society says that what I did was wrong � only because I was married. If I wasn�t�many people have multiple partners throughout their lifetime.� Like she was justified in trying something because she was unhappy.

3. The final thought is what about now and going forward with the OM? Meaning, what if there is ever attempted contact on his part? If there is a chance meeting? I don�t trust, feel safe with what HFM will do, because the �track record� for ending the damn thing was so spotty�.not going NC, not leaving the workplace, no NCL, not changing phone number, the lies about NC, holding on to directions/numbers, not �remembering� details, holding on to cards, allowing contact in 2011, etc. everyday feels like I�m on eggshells.

It was such a struggle, and took so much out of me, literally and figuratively. And my mind might be shot where all these thoughts might seem like I�ve cracked. I've allowed this thinking to remain in my mind.

These items are inherent in my thinking now and haunt me. Writing them down and seeing it looks so irrational, yet it seems so real and true to me. And I don�t want it too any longer.

Well, yes. We've pretty much all been there. Here is the plan to solve it. It's going to require a lot of work on both your parts, and you gotta lead the way.

Talking about where to affix blame is a natural inclination. But it won't solve the problem. It's not a step in the plan.

Fixing miserable marriages where husband and wife are lonely and occasionally cry themselves to sleep and don't even want to be around each other is what Marriage Builders does best. That's Dr. Harley's original insight.

Please tell me you've read How Dr. Harley Learned to Save Marriages. I know you have. I know this is what you want, and we are all here posting because we want to help you get there. Here is the action plan to do that:

How to Create Your Own Plan to Resolve Conflicts
and Restore Love to Your Marriage

Step 1: The First Step in building romantic love is to make a commitment to do just that
Step 2: The Second Step is to identify habits that threaten to destroy romantic love (love busters)
Step 3: The Third Step is to create and execute a plan that eliminates the Love Busters you identified in the second step.
Step 4: When you've conquered Love Busters, you're ready for the Fourth Step to romantic love: Identifying the most important emotional needs.
Step 5: The Fifth Step to romantic love is learning to meet the needs you identified in step four.

There is no step in here where she needs to own what she did, or where she needs to come to some realization about the fact that you were unhappy to, or whatever. Those kinds of "breakthrough" psychological moment mumbo-jumbo things are not needed and are not part of the plan. You don't need to dig into causes of resentment or whatever, because when you follow the plan the resentment will go away. However, trying to dig into causes of resentment often becomes a big excuse for not following the plan.

She will go through the exact same process as you of identifying and eliminating love busters, etc., but she is not going to be motivated to put much effort into that while you sit on the fence not doing it. It is nearly impossible to get a wife motivated to do this kind of thing when the husband isn't budging. Much of the energy to prime the pump here has got to come from YOU, dad, which is why we are prodding you so hard. Did you see the Avengers where Iron Man flew into that motor and turned it over and over again until he got it restarted, taking great personal risk for great gain? That's YOU, dad. Strap on your armor and start providing energy.

Caveat: as you know, dwelling on mistakes of the past is a serious impediment to restoring romantic love. It's an enemy of good conversation, so it'll make your conversation withdraw love units instead of deposit them. It's a love buster. It's one we have identified JUST NOW, and it's now one you've got to eliminate. No more talking about the affair and who is to blame and who has resentment. No more bringing it up. From now on you talk about the present, starting with, are you following the plan, at this moment in time?

...and I wanted to add (becasue I am sincerely NOT trying to assign blame) I understand that HFM's been doing alot of things right and working hard on 'her side of the street' and I still harbor some of this thinking and it could all be me and parts of my mind that aren't right or healed and I may be my own worse enemy when it comes to this impediment.

Thank you.

You guys don't talk about the A anymore, right? I know that was a big problem before. This will only keep the obsessive thinking going, not help it.

Dwelling on the past is a very common mistake, but a destructive one. You are doing well to recognize that this is what you are doing. Recognizing it as a problem is the first step to stopping it.

Now you must stop it. Don't let yourself think about her affair any longer. Eliminate any triggers quickly and calmly. Stop posting about her affair. And certainly never talk about the affair with her again.

Deal with the present. By creating a romantic marriage here in the present, the resentment over the past will fade away.

You believe she believes...DJ
She needs to agree she had the affair because of a personality flaw...DJ
Why she did it: we are all wired for it.


Those questions are harsh, I agree, but she is giving you some complaints you can work on. What problems did she hide? Why did she hide them? Why did she feel lonely? It seems she's thinking she's the only one that's lonely (another DJ) but she can only tell you how she feels.
.

Okay, try to safely discuss the ongoing IB.
Are you saying that her anxiety and depression themselves are Lovebusters or that she commits Lovebusters when she is depressed or anxious?


So, her sin is greater than any and all of yours by your estimation. Now what? Fish or cut bait. There's real potential in your marriage; it may be a good thing for you two to get the coaching.