Ok, this is so disrespectful, and is a huge love buster. How would YOU feel if somebody was calling you disorganized when maybe you just don't feel like doing what they are trying to force you to do? My H is much the same, he has a perfectionist issue..it's his way or the highway. And he lets me know I'm failing to measure up. It's terrible. And it makes me HATE him. Sometimes the visual that pops into my head is that of a monster.

again, wow. Very disrespectful to say how efficient you are, and how much of a bad fit you are (aka, wife is inefficient). She is a HUMAN BEING. There is no one way to do everything. You were not blessed with knowing the "right way" to live life. You are not showing your wife respect at all.

I strongly suspect she is depressed because she is married to a man who is not at all respectful, and in fact is downright mean to her.

Probably you think you are listening, but in fact you hear her and then judge her. Have you ever listened to her without trying to "correct" her? I bet she wants someone to REALLY understand her pov. And from what I've seen here I doubt you actually listen with the intent of understanding her. I bet you (like my H) listen to judge. The reason she complains when you mess up, is because she isn't in love with you, and also you screwing up make her think you didn't listen in the first place.

My H does the same thing. But I don't believe him. He is mean, and I don't trust him. His compliments actually seem like they are a ploy to get me to spread my legs. So he seems like a liar in my eyes. you can't compliment someone and criticize them in the next breath, and have your compliment mean anything. You DO criticize your W. Every time you do that you tear down any credibility you have. I, too, don't allow my husband to touch me. I brush his arms away and say "don't touch me" because I hate him. I bet your wife feels similar. He feels like a lying sneak to me, and the stuff you say feels so similar to my situation (so similar I've wondered if you WERE my husband). He talks just like you. It's very disrespectful and has caused me to not only lose my love for him, but actually to hate him.

Again, I would be willing to bet she doens't think your thoughtfulness is genuine based on the time she's spent with you, and how hurtful you have been. My husband could have kept me happy with little things from the getgo, but now, I just don't even want them. Don't buy her clothes. Seriously. Do something romantic and THOUGHTFUL. Clothing is not it, jmo.

This is just a DJ. To say she values materialistic stuff. Do you even understand WHY. Do you even ask her why she wants something? I get the feeling you don't care, you just DJ her right off the bat. Maybe she is accumulating assets/clothing/TVs/furniture so that when she finally leaves you, she won't have to worry about buying so much? Because her H is such a jerk? Seriuosly, this is disrespectful.

I would bet you might not be meeting many of her ENs at all. Everyone thinks my H is super dad too! He coaches soccer, is involved, all of it. But at the end of the day, WHOSE admiration do you most want? It should be your wife's. She's smart, she does not admire you because you are abusive. In fact, she sounds like me. My walls are up, I push my husband away and don't want his hugs either. She's probably in and out of withdrawl and conflict with you...and you do not help her to stay out of withdrawl because you hurt her more than anyone else. Stop hurting your wife!!!


If she was in love, she WOULD get over things. She doesn't get over things because more of the same is coming. And she knows that. Have you actually given her a reason to truly forgive you? Are you actually a CHANGED man who will never hurt her in that way again? My husband's favorite word is "sorry" and unfortunately it means nothing now. He's an abuser who says sorry but then just does it again. So likely, she is having trouble forgiving someone who is just going to keep hurting her over and over and over and over.

As for ruining the MB program, well why did you accuse her of an affair? She wasn't having one, so why did you link your accusations to the MB program.

I can tell you one thing: the MB program can save your marriage and can teach you to be a good husband. If you decide to do it. I'm hoping my H will! you don't need to call it MB to be a great thoughtful spouse who NEVER treats his wife disrespectfully and considers her opinions and doesn't act independently. If you just work the program I'm sure she would come around...but you have to commit to doing it for a LONG time. years...and she would come around. She has walls up to protect herself from you. And now you've linked MB to a husband accusing his wife of having an affair in her eyes. When most likely she just feels very much abused and withdrawn from you. If you want to save your marriage, stop hurting your wife!

And I will just say that the more you write on here, the more you sound like my husband. You aren't him, but wow, I feel like he is very much like you...so I think I'm in a unique position to understand your wife.

There's a lot of similarity to the way I used to treat my wife. She is also a runner and when she places high, I'd be the first to congratulate her. When she does something awesome with the kids, I'd be sure to praise her. I also took great joy in all her accomplishments. But she truly felt that everyone (including me and her) saw her accomplishments as less than mine.

Between you and me, when she placed first in a race, I bragged to all my buddies about it. But it wasn't about her getting a pat on the back, it was for me. I wanted people to pat me on the back (for nabbing a hot wife and providing so unselfishly for my family), and they did! Shamefully, I can admit now that at the time I felt like some sort of great benefactor to my W. How great of a man am I, providing all this for my family. Heck, the work I do ENABLES her to train so much. Any other husband would put her to work once the kids were in school. Without me, she wouldn't have this great life. How dare she not grovel at my feet thanking me and showering me with admiration?

I'll tell you why not. I was a disrespectful jerk...for years. Not only did she not admire me, she eventually HATED me. My wife withdrew into the ultimate IB, starting a secret second life. Didn't work out very well for me when OM started giving her the admiration I wasn't [really] giving her.

What did Steve suggest you do?

My wife's response to speaking with Steve:

"I am completely opposed to MB and have no desire to follow anything it stands for. There are many reasons why I feel this way."

Then she dropped a bomb on me that she "plans on being gone the entire weekend including Monday." Not asking, telling me. Aside from one night with my sister wouldn't even tell me where. Hard to take someone serious and build trust in a relationship with stuff like this. As I told you before, she is the most unreasonable person in the world, and she is treating this as a game that she needs to beat me at all costs, and if that means we end our marriage, well then at least she won. Unreal. What a great start to my suggestion from Steve directly.

Next step is to find the next best for of education to meet our goal of a happy romantic marriage. As of this moment it is getting some referrals to marriage therapists in our area.

Yes I have a need for admiration from my wife, and I get none, in fact always the opposite, but I won't suppose as to the reasons why, that is a DJ.

Next step is to find the next best for of education to meet our goal of a happy romantic marriage. As of this moment it is getting some referrals to marriage therapists in our area.

Was anything recommended about you returning home vs staying out of the house?

When I gave it my last effort at saving the marriage ex also spoke to Steve, and then we went to an MC in our area on our insurance. I asked her a lot of questions before we started like Dr. H advised in the article here. But it turned out the MC just said what I wanted to hear to get us in the door, and then gave us a lot of advice that just made things worse, about accepting one another's issues when they were actually things that we needed help finding lasting solutions for. I emailed her and told her how disappointed I was but she didn't have the skills or the mindset to help us find the answers we needed. Some folks are great for IC but not MC.

I hope your results are better. You can look up reviews online. How about the online course?

[
We are gonna negotiate that, but we will be largely seeking a therapist that believes in marriage, and that marriage needs to be mutually beneficial.

I give you this advice because I want you and your spouse to be in love with each other, and I'm sure that you want that, too. But most marital therapists disagree with me on this issue. Because their advice is so pervasive, and so destructive to the love of couples that follow it, I use whatever opportunity I have to defend this crucial position.

The difference between my approach to saving marriages, and the approach of most other therapists, is that I focus on building romantic love (being "in love") between spouses, rather than simply focusing on conflict resolution. As it turns out, I also address conflict resolution, but I do it in a way that builds love between spouses.

Since most marital therapists fail to address the romantic love issue when they try to help couples, their approach to conflict resolution usually fails to build love, and as a result, the couples divorce, even after "resolving" some of their conflicts.

An example of this current effort to "resolve" marital conflicts is found in a book by Jacobson and Christensen, Integrative Couples Therapy (Norton, 1996). In this training manual for marital therapists, couples are to be encouraged by their therapists to lower their marital expectations by becoming more understanding of each other's dysfunctional background. Irreparable wounds inflicted during childhood should inspire empathy toward a thoughtless spouse, not disappointment. Awareness of each other's limitations should lead to acceptance of each other's behavior and a willingness to meet one's own needs, instead of expecting each other to meet those needs. The suggested goal of therapy is to teach each spouse to make themselves happy, and not look to each other for their happiness. While this approach to therapy may resolve a couple's conflict, it most certainly will not lead to love. When couples follow this advice, few love units are deposited and many are withdrawn. In the end, the couple is likely to divorce.

The same sort of advice is given in Getting the Love You Want by Hendrix (Holt Rinehart, & Winston, 1988). While the book title seems to address the issue of romantic love in marriage, the author's strategy for couples is to learn to accept each other's marital failures, rather than doing anything to overcome them. I guarantee you, if you follow this strategy, you will NOT get the love you want.

I think many counselors believe in marriage but just don't have the skills or a PLAN to recover a marriage. If you don't have an effective, ironclad plan, then all the skill in the world will not help your marriage. What you need is a counselor who believes in the steps in THIS plan and has the skills to motivate you and your wife to follow these steps. If a counselor has any plan OTHER than the steps outlined here, I would be very cautious because it is doubtful that it will work.

One of the prevailing themes with marriage counselors is the practice of accepting your spouse as she/he is just as NED experienced. That is a road to marital disaster. Dr Harley cautions against that philosophy in one of his newsletters:

here

[
To quote Steve verbatim yesterday on the phone, "We are not the only game in town." He went further to say that it is ok to interview and understand the tenets of each program and furthermore that we can even request our own program. As it stands my wife is opposed to MB, but that doesn't mean that she won't in the future.

She is opposed to Marriage Builders, or she is opposed to the STEPS of Marriage Builders? Is she opposed to spending time with you? Is she opposed to eliminating disrespect? Is she opposed to creating an integrated marriage that is romantic and passionate? Is she opposed to eliminating independent behavior? Is she opposed to falling in love with you?

If she won't follow those steps, I ASSURE you that you are wasting your time, regardless of what you want to call it. You can call it the Marriage Builders program or you can call it the hootenanny express, those are the steps to a happy, romantic marriage.

If there is a way to create such a marriage without spending 20 hours of UA time together I would like to know about it. Because Dr Harley has proven that you won't have a romantic marriage without that step.

You can follow MB concepts without ever mentioning MB to her. You don't have to use the terms "Lovebuster" or "Undivided Attention time" or "Emotional Needs" in order to start treating her with respect and taking her out on dates to make her feel cherished.

These concepts are what work, and they work just fine without the label "MB" attached to them.

[ MB might be the best, but not the only, and I think suggesting that it is MB or divorce, isn't really being objective Melody. I'll continue to bring it up respectfully, now and again, but until she I stop lovebusting and she starts believing forgiveness, I doubt she'll consider it at all.