I posted for the 1st time here on the Forum about 6 weeks ago (Dec. 1?). I didn't tell H I'd posted, but he did know I was reading the Forum off & on (looking for posts similar to our situation). After posting back & forth a few times on my own thread, I abandoned it, partly due to the fact that reading & writing was extremely time-consuming & I got distracted with other things: ie. trying to get thru the Christmas season, plus buying a car cuz my old car was dying, etc. I just lost momentum.

Meanwhile, H (known here as ZEL) came across my post last week or so & has since posted his own thread. I was wondering what advice anyone here would give to a husband & wife each posting on the Forum?

I think I read somewhere that we can post our own threads, but we should stay OFF of each others? Is that right? I must admit, I get a little frustrated when I see in his thread that he has misunderstood & thus misquoted stuff I "said". He doesn't LISTEN to what I'm ACTUALLY saying. Love Buster :-( ...but I realize the point of these discussion forums is for both of us to have interpretive support of Dr. Harley's materials.

And on the subject of support, my next question: how do we know if we are eligible for the private forum or other forms of assistance? We've bought the online weekend seminar, the HNHN CS set, the LB CD set. We were given an access code for the online seminar, but I don't know if we can use it for other sorts of help? Someone asked me this on my thread & I don't know the answer.

Thanks for any assistance :-)

It is best if you stay off of each others threads.

The private forum, for folks using the online seminar program, is a place where you and your H can directly access Dr. Harley. He alone will respond to your questions. It sometimes takes a couple of days. You can also telephone or email your coach.

Hi, CL,

If you did the online seminar, you should have an address for contact your MB coach, and I encourage you to start there for help accessing Dr. Harley's private forum, as well as for help with your marriage.

Regarding husbands and wives posting, the advice MrWondering gave me when my wife and I started posting here was that it was probably unrealistic to try to not read each other's threads, but to not respond to each other, not to post on each other's threads, and not to have any sort of back and forth where we rebut what is on each other's threads. I can testify that that kind of back and forth is very damaging to marriages!

I would encourage you not to be judgmental toward your husband for not understanding you. That kind of judgment is disrespectful and is a love buster. Do your best to factually and unemotionally explain your perspective to him (and to us) - we will be happy to help him understand. Sometimes it takes awhile for a man to understand a woman, and vice versa: men and women look at the world very differently.

Can you help us understand the obstacles that you see that are preventing you and your husband from living together again? I posted to your husband yesterday, making the best guess I could about what was wrong - was my post accurate?

CL, I understand from your husband's thread that he objects to your contact with a certain male friend but that you keep in contact with him anyway.

Dr. Harley's position is that anything that is done over your spouse's objections will eventually lead to the ruin of your marriage. I have seen it happen here several times.

The Marriage Builders program does not work unless the tools are used and the rules followed. One of the most important rules is the policy of joint agreement:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3500_policy.html

Never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse.

This program doesn't work if you make exceptions to the rules.

Your husband is not enthusiastic about you communicating with your friend, so you will need to stop that and give your husband the ability to privately verify that you have done so.

Are you willing to do that? If not, your marriage does not have any hope of success.

See, I would find it judgmental to say that he doesn't listen. Lots of times I try hard to listen to my wife and I still just don't understand what she said at first. Sometimes it takes a little time for me to understand her (and vice versa), because we are so different. She doesn't tell me I'm not listening. (She used to say that, and it really hurt! She is a much nicer person now because she is not judgmental toward me like this any more!)

In general it's judgmental to tell your spouse WHY he is doing something - you can't read his mind, and he knows better than you what he is feeling and thinking.

Anyway, that's just a sidetrack from the very important question - are you willing to follow the Policy of Joint Agreement and cease contacting your male friend and practice openness and transparency with your husband? Because if not, I'm not going to give your marriage much hope.

Marriage Builders is about husbands and wives learning to understand, respond to, and address each other's complaints. The most important complaint we are hearing from your husband is that you have a relationship that is making him unhappy. We want to hear your complaints as well and help get them addressed.

Did you two finish viewing the entire online seminar? I believe they won't let you access the private forum until you have done so... I could be wrong but I am going to guess no because the coach would have talked to you about that as soon as you were done and had reported that back to her.

Are you still in contact with that male friend from high school?

Have you read Dr. Harley's article about opposite sex friendships?

Here.
The Risk of Opposite-sex Friendships in Marriage

I notice you were asked about the friendship with this other man on your previous thread. We can't help you if you don't answer our questions.

OK, I'm back... I will try to address these replies now, then go back to my first & only other thread & work on that. But once again, it's late & I'm tired. This is what I meant initially by how time-consuming all this is. It's very difficult for me to type 2 or 3 lines & feel I've communicated clearly, especially when it involves something as important as my marriage.

On my 1st & only other thread, I spent hours typing & didn't feel the return on my investment convincing worthwhile, which is why I lost interest & kinda dropped out. Even now, my heart isn't fully in this... I only got on last night because H, since having discovered a few weeks ago that I'd posted, has been bothering me to reply. After UA time yesterday (& him mentioning it yet again), I decided to finally come back here & address the thread... only to discover he'd already been on here a few hrs. before me. He must have been frustrated too, by our UA time last night spent arguing, er, I mean having Intimate Conversation, & decided to seek advice here too. That's all fine, but I had a hard time reading him writing on a public forum that my family thinks I'm selfish (kinda upsetting to hear he's cavorting w/my family behind my back?) & that I said I wanted to go off & find some other guy to be passionate with (NOT at all what I actually said). I am trying to be patient & respect his right to say what he needs to say, to get the help he needs thru this Forum, just as I was looking for help too. I mean, we did agree to try the Dr. Harley books/CDs/online seminar together. I guess this is part of the deal... it's just not easy, that's all.

Please know that I am trying very hard to avoid being seen as disrespectful to anyone on the Forum. I don't mean to say I didn't appreciate the replies to my 1st thread, because I did -- very much so. It's just that a.) it was my 1st time trying a "forum" & b.) it seemed rather overwhelming, ie. a lot of work, once all those replies came in.

Lastly, I am not sure I feel that great about trying to explain really personal ideas to complete strangers... but again, I am trying to be as open-minded as possible. Please understand it's not easy for me to come here, knowing I don't fully agree with everything Dr. Harley advocates. I DO see merit in much of what he says. But it's very difficult (& takes much time & consideration) to subscribe to things that seem to go against what I believe about relationships. Thinking this way makes me kinda feel like I don't belong here.

There... that said... I'll try to answer the other stuff now..

Thanks. We put H on the task of finding out how to use any direct-access benefits we may have garnered by purchasing the online seminar &/or the other stuff we've bought. H was the one who made the purchases, has the intro emails & codes, etc.

Thanks. I don't remember seeing a contact address for an MB coach? Not sure how we missed that, but I'll ask H to look for it, since he was the point man for all of our MB purchases.

Is your UA time scheduled when you are both feeling your best, having the most energy, and doing things you both enjoy?


Any time spent arguing is not the same as Intimate Conversation. Have you read these articles?

Dr. Harley�s Basic Concepts
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3550_summary.html

LoveBusters
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3400_lovebust.html

When you say that this goes against what you believe in relationships...

How do you feel about relationships?
Do you feel that you should change who you are for your husband...or do you feel that he should accept you as you are?

I can understand this & agree. Makes a lot of sense, about avoiding the rebuttals banter. I can promise to stay off his threads, tho yes, it will be hard not to look at them & discuss with him in person later. Case in point: I saw his thread of last night has disappeared cuz I tried going there earlier today, when I was with/talking to him, so I could quote/ask him about what he wrote about my family saying I'm selfish. When I asked if he'd deleted it, he said no, it had been censored by an administrator & that he'd gotten a private email about it. (That kind of thing increases my discomfort in being here. By the way my husband acted when I asked him where his post went, I got the feeling he was somehow lying to me about it? I'm not trying to be judgemental... I'm just saying I had a funny feeling about his response.)


This is wonderfully worded. I will try harder to be unemotional & factual. This kind of expression is difficult for me. I am not in the habit of assessing every word I say. It's a new habit I can try to learn -- but in learning, again, it's so time-consuming! Impatience often prompts me to choose saying stuff quickly over saying it carefully. I will try harder at patience too.


I don't know if your post was accurate, because I either didn't see it or don't I remember it? (H told me his thread was deleted by an administrator) but here are some reasons why I don't look forward to moving home:

I prefer sleeping alone. When I did live at home, H & I would often have disagreements just before or shortly after going to bed. This would result in either laying awake continuing to disgree, disruptive sleep that comes from being emotionally upset at bedtime (ie. wide awake from stress), or one of us getting up to go sleep in the guestroom. After enough nights spent in a bed alone, I discovered I get really good quality rest that way! No one waking me up when they go to the bathroom at night. No one waking me up cuz they get up at 5am, while I wanna sleep til 7 or 8 or later. And when I'd asked to have my own room at home, that idea was not welcomed. By moving out, I got what I wanted -- a whole bed to myself w/no stress before bed & no repeated nighttime wake-ups. A good night's sleep every night I'm here. (Please note I do agree to sleep 2X per week overnight w/H in the same bed over there.)

Oh gosh, this is going to take too long to explain... I'll try to rush it. Other obstacles = very little alone-time (we work together & live together). I had to leave the premises to be alone. H chirps up in background when I'm on phone, when I'm trying to read something, when I just wanna be alone while working on an art project, etc. He's always around & if I wanted to be alone, I had to leave the house... which isn't helpful if I have to take "gear" with me (ie. art supplies, etc.). This is in part why I became a night owl, I think. Staying up later than H was the only way to approximate being "home alone"... in turn, it caused us further drift. (ie. we have entirely different daytime/nighttime habits) By my having a separate residence, I get to be away from him more. I was hoping this would make our time together more special & valuable, but it turns out, H's distress over my living elsewhere makes much of our time together even more unpleasant.

By now moving home seems to me like running into a burning building. I guess my main obstacle is this: Currently, I'm happier living apart. To date, we haven't been able to successfully POJA this matter (no luck coming up with a jointly enthusiastic solution that would make me happier at home than here).

This point seemed to be a very large concern by your H, and there were 3 consecutive post inquiring about the status of this OS, Opposite Sex "Friendship", which you obviously skipped over and did not comment on.

That jumps out as a significant Red Flag threat to reconciling your marriage to a healthy and mutually romantic level.

Will you be open and honest about this relationship, so that the fellow posters can adequately assist the two of you?

LTL

Yes, we finished watching the entire thing, did all the questionnaires, everything in one 3-day period as instructed, just like we were really there for a weekend (tho it was online). I didn't see anything about a Coach & if we got an email from him/her, H would have been the one to receive it, as his email was given since he did the purchasing/payment arrangements.

Can you please answer this?

Aw, see? I'm feeling overwhelmed. While I was typing to Markos, 3 more replies came in... & I still haven't caught up replying to the stuff that came in today! Please know that I will do my best to reply to everything, but it's 12:30am & I'm getting tired... & it takes a lot of concentration to prevent being taken as "disrespectful"... I'm losing steam... but I will try to address this "other man" thing before going to bed, since everyone's all over that issue like white on rice :-)

Oh my goodness... I am not "skipping over" anything. I was simply trying to reply to the easier, shorter things first. I know I'm going to miss some things people asked here, but I will try to explain. First, lemme go read all replies about the "other guy"... then I'll give one reply to try to get it all, OK?