take a step back for a minute and look at what's happening.

You're letting you instincts control you thoughts right now. All of this started recently because you let your instincts guide you. You listened to what your giver was telling you and now your taker is out in full force.

Your giver and your taker are both whispering in your ear at different times. They compete with one another for control. Neither one of them agrees with the POJA! The POJA takes time and practice to become a habit that overrides your natural instincts one way or the other. The magic of this is that when both spouses do it, it satisfies both the giver and the taker inside of both of you.

Last year, I had a really good discussion with Dr. Harley on the radio show about how to POJA and not sacrifice on minor issues. I am attaching the radio links. Pay particular attention to the last half of the call.

Radio clip on Mr. and Mrs. Eureka's call
Segment #2
Segment #3

Okay. You want to know the truth? I blame myself for her second affair, and I often feel she does too. I guess I got carried away meeting her ENs as my own form of JC. The giver was out of control. Then the taker tells me it wasn't my fault so what the heck are you doing.

In the shower this morning, I thought about what my Giver and Taker would look like. I defaulted to an image of a devil and angel on opposing shoulders. But I guess they are actually both a little bit of each?

The more there is to resent, the more difficult it is to overcome resentment...emotional associations fade over time as long as there are no further associations with new painful events. In both cases, their husbands have not had an affair after the revelation, and so I would predict that if they have a normal recovery, where they learn to meet each other's needs, avoid Love Busters and learn to apply the Policy of Joint Agreement and the Policy of Radical Honesty to their decisions, the resentment would fade away.

If, on the other hand, either husband were to have another affair, the association would be much harder to extinguish. In fact, when a couple goes through a recovery after an affair, and then experience another affair, the resentment is often more intense and more persistent after the second recovery. With multiple affairs and recoveries, resentment is almost impossible to overcome...

... Resentment usually appears when an experience of the present reminds us of a painful experience of the past. For example, if a wife had been abandoned by her husband after a fight on a vacation, left to find her way home alone from Jamaica, the resentment of that experience would pop up whenever her husband walks out the door during an argument. Very often, continuing resentment means that whatever it was that caused the painful experience is still lurking in the background. And it jumps out every once in a while when evidence of it's existence surfaces.

The procedure for recovery that I suggest usually eliminates the root causes of infidelity, and that makes it unlikely that present experiences will remind a spouse of experiences associated with an affair. If the only time you feel resentment about a spouse's past affair is when your needs have not been met, when your spouse is engaged in a Love Buster, or when the Policy of Joint Agreement or Policy of Radical Honesty has not been followed, then it's the completion of recovery that's your problem, not resentment."

It sounds to me like giving up sacrificing, for you, will be harder than actually doing it all yourself.

W is pretty good at helping point out my sacrifices, now. I really have a hard time seeing it. I was turning her socks right side out before washing them the other day (thinking to myself this is annoying, why doesn't she just put them in the hamper right side out?) and she told me that was sacrifice.

Socks don't get clean if they are in a crumpled up inside out ball. That's a fact.

Socks don't get clean if they are in a crumpled up inside out ball. That's a fact.

Another thing you can do is refuse to wash them if they are like that. Toss them in a pile for her to deal with.

That's a fact.

The fact is that it is disrespectful of him to assume that the way he wants the laundry done is the RIGHT way to do it.

He could respectfully suggest that she turn her socks out before putting them in the basket so that they come out of the machine clean, but he should leave it at that if she does not want to, or if she grumbles, or says she will and then never does it. Educating your spouse is specifically identified as a lovebuster by Dr H.

Second, refusing to wash them and tossing them in a pile for her to deal with is unpleasant, mildy aggressive behaviour. That behaviour would be detrimental to the marriage.