You've been "skipping over" the issue of another man for weeks. You left the forum and quit posting when asked this in Dec:


Your silence has answered the question

Ooo, I just read thru all the replies that came in while I was typing to type back to Markos. THIS IS MY FAVORITE! Seriously, I am enthusiastic about explaining this... AND I can use my friendship with the guy from high school as an example, yay! :-)

Again, I preface this by saying I DO see the sense & success in much of what Dr. Harley outlays for repairing lost love. I wouldn't be here if I didn't. And I certainly wouldn't be putting all this effort into 20+ scheduled "leisure" hours w/H, plus 2 overnites per week. HOWEVER, I am having a problem with this "dump your lifelong friend if your spouse is uncomfy" issue.

Jedi, re: "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?", my answer is neither. I believe that part of my lost love w/H is because unknowingly, I did in fact change who I was when I first met H & started to like him. Dr. H describes this in HNHN. How a woman would attend sporting events, for example, even tho she hated them, just to be with her man. That was misleading, tho unintentionally. She willingly had his interests at heart, at the expense of her own in the long run. I didn't know it at the time, but I was doing this in small degrees too. For example, I liked hiking mountains, so did H. No misleading there... but I have always hated that when we hiked "together", he would disappear on the trail up ahead of me for a length of time, then stop & wait. When I came into view behind him, he would smile & say something nice, maybe kiss, hug or share a snack with me, but then start walking ahead & out of sight again. That was not my idea of hiking "together." At first, I didn't tell him, not wanting to "ruin" our outings. Eventually, I did tell him, but he didn't change & I guess I didn't expect him to... so I left it... but I couldn't change either, I couldn't learn to enjoy that way of hiking together. So, we stopped hiking. It wasn't fun for me & I simply didn't want to do it anymore.

OK, now, about my male high school friend... (oh, & yes Brainhurts, I have read the Risk of Opposite Sex Friendships in Marriage, read before & read it again, just for good measure). I am "in contact" with a male friend from high school. He & I grew up together, rode the school bus daily, his mother still lives 3 houses up from my parents. Yes, we are close, but we do not speak but 2 dozen times a year. I contacted him last week because he's an administrator at a hospital in Philadelphia & my Dad, who was recently diagnosed with cancer, was being referred to a nearby oncologist in Philly. I alerted my friend & also asked his opinion of the Oncology department. Prior to that, my friend contacted me to ask my opinion of an usual gift he was considering for his wife for her birthday (I was in high school w/her too, btw) -- some pearl-filled oysters the recipient must crack open to retrieve each surprise. He wanted to know if I thought it was gross or a fun idea. I had read that email aloud to H & sent his response to my friend as well, since H was sitting with me when I opened the email.

I am not attracted romantically to this friend. He's like a brother to me. Better than that actually, since my own brother doesn't relate as well to me! There has been nothing of what I consider inappropriate between us, tho I confess, when I was 13 I did have a crush on him & vice versa. We were too young, afraid & inexperienced to act. H knows all of this.

Here's my dilemma: I don't feel that anyone, spouse or otherwise, should feel they have jurisdiction over who I should/can or shouldn't/can't be friends with. I've read on other threads instances where some spouses even objected to their partners' same-sex friends, for reasons of "bad influence" or such. I would be upset if any of my friends insisted that I dump any other friend of mine. I believe that my choice of relationships is just that -- MY choice. And in choosing a relationship with me, my spouse or any other friend of mine, should know they may not like or approve of all my other friends, but that it's MY responsibility to judge &/or deal with them as I see fit. What's more, I have several close male friends, all of whom I had before I even knew H & all of whom I've been in "regular" contact with for the duration of our marriage in the same aspects that I am now. It has never been an issue for either one of us.

That said, I understand that it's an issue now. And I am considering how H & I can POJA this matter. As you can guess, I am not eager to end contact with a close friend I've had longer than H! This same friend has been supportive of my efforts to work on my marriage & has done nothing to undermine it. My friend has been happily married to his wife of 23 years (3 kids, too). I have purposely consulted him for advice on how to keep things going w/a spouse long term, as I see him as a bit of an expert on successful marriage. I have shared verbatim some of my emails to & from him with H.

I don't know how to "enthusiastically agree" to end contact. H suggested I end it for one year. I might consider that, but asked H if I can explain to my friend why I'm doing it. H said yes, but then we get into this whole matter of accountability. We don't know how to agree on a way H can verify that I'm keeping my end of the bargain, short of my word.

Again, here's where I differ from Dr. H, I think, on relationships in general. I don't agree with anyone having complete free access to all private communications I have with everyone I know. I am mostly open on this. H & I share a cell phone plan, so he has access to everything there, plus he knows all my FB/email/blog admin passwords etc. & has free access there -- all save ONE privately passworded email account. This is an account I keep specifically for, well, private communication! I do believe that spouses have the right to individual relationships with others. For example, my sister may want to tell me about her sex life... but she may not want to tell my husband! I have another friend who needed to talk to me privately about a health issue which is embarrassing to her, but she knows I have direct experience with. She does NOT want my husband to know. I feel that to be in good conscious, before giving that last password to H, I should have the right to screen & delete things that were intended for my eyes only, then send a blanket email to everyone saying "from now on, anything you write to me is no longer private & may or may not be seen by H"... but I'm pretty sure that according to Dr. H, that kinda defeats the purpose of full disclosure.

Here's my other dilemma w/this idea: even if H & I agreed that announcing "me is really a we" would be fine for a year, it wouldn't simply provide a way for H to check that I don't contact my high school friend. It would change the level of intimacy I enjoy with my other friends. I know I would not enjoy the same level of friendship with at least half the people who now enjoy knowing I keep their confidence when they want/need to share personal things. My girlfriends are not gonna dish freely on a variety of topics if they know my husband could read them.

I'm open to ideas on how to POJA this issue, but please, as Markos reminded me, try to guard against disrespectful judgements? I will try hard to consider suggestions.

Wow. Have you read my other threads here about WHY I never responded to that 1st thread of Dec.? And while you were judging my "silence" as guilt just now, I was busy typing a full explanation of the "male high school friend" thing.

Let me be clear: I am not in love with anyone else.

I admit, I do wonder what it would be like to feel in love again (with H or anyone, really) because yes, I miss it. I did have a brush w/feelings for another guy back in 2010, but I became disillusioned soon enough & ironically, he had experienced that kind of "attraction by association" before. We discussed the phenomenon. It's how I first became aware of the term "emotional affair". H is aware of this.

I do question what has caused my loss of love w/H & we have been working on this for 3-4 yrs. now. At first, loss of hormones (perimenopause) was suspect & is still not ruled out. Depression is another consideration, where I may be unhappy with life in general & simply "blaming" H cuz he's nearby? Lovebusters & unmet needs, definitely a factor we believe, now that we've discovered MB.

Melody's comment about a "new point of comparison" was interesting because I believe mine was actually an old point of comparison: that of having felt in love w/H & others in the past. Also, a point of comparison with other married couples because as I started experiencing loss of feeling in my own marriage, I questioned friends about their marriages. Some have mediocres arrangements by now, but most, to my surprise, were still fully engaged in their spouses & of those, at least half had really satisfying sex lives. So yes, there is a "point of comparison", definitely.

Chicken little,

In summary, you are basically saying that you will not give up this opposite-sex friendship that hurts your husband and you do not believe in having complete openness (in reference to email, phone, whatever) with your husband.

Realistically, let's look at this situation: your marriage has gone down the tubes for years now, you've admitted to attraction to another man in 2010, you don't even live together as a married couple. So, while you disagree with some things Dr. Harley believes in, I would suggest that this is part of your problem - you don't believe in doing basic things to sustain a happy marriage. So, naturally, your marriage is falling apart.

Your independent behaviour is leading to divorce. You do not put your husband first, you do not even put him second, or even third. He seems far down the line. Would you like a happy marriage? If yes, then you will have to recognize how much you contribute to the destruction of it and realize that your ideas about what is right in marriage is quite faulty.

Your view of marriage is type of relationships that people that live together as boyfriends/girlfriends have.

CL, I've skimmed your posts, and I didn't see a direct answer indicating that you'd read this.

As Dr. Harley notes, as long as you are unwilling to give up the friend, your marriage has no chance for success.

I am sorry.

CL,

A marriage, for people who deeply believe in the obligation and commitment, should be viewed as The Most Important Relationship of your life.

If that premise is accepted and embraced fully, then ANY other interpersonal relationship or activity that hinders marital progress, or even intentionally threatens or harms the union should be eliminated.

I do understand your long held view, yet the simple question for each circumstance comes down to; Does this other friendship or activity help or hurt my spouse and my marriage?

By using The Policy Of Joint Agreement, both parties should be willing to brainstorm for an enthusiastically agreed upon resolution. Sometimes, my own thought process does not allow for me to readily see other viable alternative as a solution, therefore i may choose to tap into marriage friendly advice from outsiders who have already been there and done that. Eventually, many of their suggestions may also become part of my own 2nd nature response.


***EDIT***

As far as other Same Sex Friendships..... What truly should be more important? The external friendship, or your own marriage?

Your answer will be quite revealing to yourself. If your friendships are more important than your husbands feelings and your own marriage, then you would fall into the Renter or Freeloader category instead of the Buyer philosophy that is imperative for a long term marriage to continue to blossom..

Try using the POJA with your H and come back here for outside helpful suggestions.

LTL

Wow - I posted, got in my car to go get donuts for my family, and heard this absolutely perfect Marriage Builders Radio broadcast:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/radio_program/play_segment.cfm?sid=04144

Dr. Harley says that this kind of situation is an instance of an even bigger problem affecting the marriage: an independent life, a secret second life, and a failure to blend.

I'd encourage everyone posting on this thread to give this show a listen.

There is no hope for this marriage as long as you keep your friend over your husband's objections. In any marriage if something is made so important that it will be done/kept over the spouse's objections, that will eventually cause the marriage to fail.

And even if you don't agree with this, CL - I don't see what gives you the right to make this decision for your husband. If it's a risk he's simply not willing to take, what gives you the right to put him through that? That makes you a dictator and him your slave.

Everything we do in marriage affects our spouse. Even when we are apart.

Successful marriage is a relationship of extraordinary care - a relationship where husband and wife commit to not doing everything they feel like regardless of how the other person feels, because some of what they feel like may be hurtful to their spouse. Unless you are willing to care for Zel in this way, and vice versa, the marriage will never really work out, as Dr. Harley describes in this radio show I just posted.

If having opposite sex friendships isn't a red flag to you, what about how it makes your DH feel?

Have you read this?
The Four Rules for a Successful Marriage

But wouldn't the solution to that problem be found in recreating the romantic love in your marriage? For example, if my car breaks down in my garage and I want a fully functioning automobile, would I move out of the house and drive to Cincinnati, Ohio? Or would the logical next step be to fix the car in the garage? Do you see how moving out does not make much sense to objective observers in light of what you say you want?

The solution to falling out of love is to take the necessary steps to fall back in love, not to LEAVE. This is why your leaving does not make sense unless there is another person waiting in the wings. The fact that you would place this "friendship" before your marriage is troubling in addition to your "secret" email account.

Many of the things you are doing are direct causes of the problems in your marriage. When you have opposite sex friendships and a secret second life, a passionate, romantic marriage is impossible because you prevent integration. When you say you shouldn't have to give up OS friends for your husband, all you are saying is that you don't care about his feelings. My husband and I are in love, but the reason is because we don't do things that upset the other. I don't WANT to have outside relationships that upset my husband because I care about his feelings. Dr Harley wrote this to another poster and I believe it applies here:

Excellent segment....Thanks for sharing!

You have some great people posting to you, CL. Hope you are listening.

Huh. I think lots of people have different ideas of what marriage should or should not be when they get here. I know it was that way for me. But their marriage is often in the ditch so they are usually here to LEARN from someone who has a pretty great track record of fixing marriages and has a very successful marriage himself.


That's great that you are open to POJA - but you don't understand what POJA means at all from what I have read so far...

In fact, to take it a step further, I don't think you understand that marriage is a relationship of extraordinary CARE. If you recently viewed the online seminar, you should remember (??) that Dr Harley says that is the underpinings of the entire MB program.

I see a whole lot written by you about your feelings, your thoughts, your desires, your needs....not much about what you are willing to do to CARE for your husband and take his feelings and needs into consideration.

I just logged on at 4:17pm Saturday. After last night's chaotic process of trying to type a non-DJ reply to one person while 3 others were typing new replies saying I was "skipping over" things, I have revised my strategy to help me feel less overwhelmed. I just read that I missed replying to one of Markos's post altogether, so I will start with his post... & then proceed to reply to each post after that, in the order they were issued. If you replied after 4pm today, I may not get to typing a reply tonight, but I will try. I plan to try being more concise tonight.

Thanks for your patience! I'm a newbie to the forum, don't know the software very well & I'm still new to Dr. H's philosophy/approach, so I'm doing the best I can in trying to understand both :-)

Oh, I missed replying to this one, too, sorry! Yes, I have read those articles. In fact, both H & I have read the entire books His Needs Her Needs & Love Busters. We have not listened to all of the CDs in the sets yet, tho. And yes, we've both read much of what's on the website here (Basics plus lots of Dr. H's response to letters, etc.)

I was under the impression that "working on the marriage" time counted as UA, when it involves Conversation... so if H & I are trying to hash out Joint Agreements to our problems, that doesn't count as Conversation? The subject matter is intimate (ie. our marriage & its issues). So when we're listening to the CD's together & doing the discussions, that doesn't count? I could have sworn Dr. H said in the online-weekend seminar that it did count, just like any time spent planning/scheduling the time together (the "dates") counted too.

And re: "Is your UA time scheduled when you are both feeling your best, having the most energy, and doing things you both enjoy?" I think H & I would agree the answer to this is mostly no. We keep very different hours. He is a morning person, has the most energy early in the day, then likes to be asleep by 9:30pm or so, but get up at 5am-ish. I'm most alert later in the day, staying up til midnight or later, then sleeping til 8. My energy is low in the morning & gets increasingly better from mid-afternoon thru evening. We have at least one date per week that's on the weekend, so we can both be alert, but it's not 4 hrs., it's usually an all day deal... like tomorrow, we will be going on a day trip from 8:30am til dinnertime or so, not sure yet how long a day it will be. Other times, the UA time is in the evenings after work (starts at 6pm, involves making dinner, eating together, then maybe the Dr. H CD's & workbook or playing ping pong or trying to POJA stuff while H rubs my feet as AF).

Are you going to cut off all opposite sex friendships? To protect your DH and your marriage?

Geez, I'm not sure... I was gonna keep replying to these posts, but I'm now not sure what to do. I just got a text from my friend saying that my H called his mother & is doing that whole EXPOSURE thing! He is accusing him of having an affair with me & is threatening to notify the hospital where my friend works. My friend just contacted me to ask that I try to reason w/H, but meanwhile, he also said he will have to call the police & his lawyer, just to be sure my H doesn't put him & his family at risk. This friend said my H has been calling both his home phone & his cell non-stop for an hour now.

I'm not concerned about my OS friendship right now. That will be fine. I'm concerned that my poor H will get sued or get a cease & desist visit from the police :-(

What's worse is that I don't know what to do. H didn't tell me what he wants me to do to help diffuse this. I guess I will go call the police here & see what they say. I fear for my safety here & the safety of my housemates (2 of whom are male) if H is starting to wig out :-(

Sigh. I know H believes that this will somehow repair our marriage... but it's really hard for me to understand how this is helpful. Right now, I feel really embarrassed & sad for him.

Maybe it would be best if your "friend" left you and your husband alone. A married man has absolutely no business pursuing a relationship with a married woman. Why wouldn't he just stay out of your marriage?

Oh my goodness. Melody, my friend's just an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire of a panicked spouse. His wife already knows & is totally comfy with our friendship. I'm very sorry that my H is hurt by my not being attracted to him anymore, but falsely accusing innocent people of wrong-doing is just... wrong.

I'm not going to do a thing re: my friend, other than apologize for my poor husband. I just want to know what I should do? I don't even have my Dr. H books here, as they are over at the house w/H, since we often work on them together (the CDs).

Where are all my Dr. H advisors now? I'm listening.

I think this means my UA day trip w/H tomorrow is cancelled? [black humor chuckle]

You do not need to feel sad or embarrassed for him. He is trying to save his marriage. You are trying to fix your marriage, you say, yet you are confiding in a married man AND, I read for the first time (did I miss it?), living with two men?

That's more than some of us did when we were single and dating - here you are married to one man and confiding in another while living with two others.

Until you recognize how destructive your behavivour is to your marriage, you simply cannot expect your poor husband to sit by and allow this to continue while you tell us you want to 'save' your marriage. Your marriage skills have landed you living the life even single girls don't enjoy, you really need to give your head a shake!

Well, he is not really an innocent bystander, though. A married man who hangs around married women and comes between a marriage is a creep. Surely your "friend" knows this is not appropriate? Most normal married people would not tolerate some opposite sex outsider hanging around.

I would apologize to your husband AND to this man's wife for your inappropriate relationship. If your husband decided to sue this man, he would be forced to cough up all your emails, texts, phone records. I don't think either of you would want that, do you?