Gamma, do you intend to use MB or not?

Do you intend to use Dr Harley's advice specifically to you, or not?

If this is really what you think, then it is understandable why you believe blogging about your obsessions and ignoring direct advice by Dr. Harley are acceptable uses of the forum.

We are all students of Marriage Builders. What qualifies us is not just our personal experiences, but how well we have learned MB principles and successfully applied them in our marriages.

If learning and applying MB principles to your marriage are not your reasons for being here, then you are in the wrong place.

All,

We have been misusing the term OM in this thread.

We really should be using PMBMF30YA (prior man before marriage from 30 years ago).

Gamma, that is one longstanding grudge. Wow.

Yep.

Why would you torment her about being on the phone with PMBMF30YA for example. You even referenced that she thought "THE" conversation was happening.

Yet, you never set the record straight, or apologized for stringing her along.

You see, you are a stringer-along intentionally because it keeps all the power on your side of the relationship.

Ultimately, this all comes down to exerting power over your wife by keeping her afraid.

You remind me of the guy who finally gets a girl to send him a picture of her in her bathing suit and then uses that to blackmail her for more (repeat, repeat). Now he owns her.

You have been blackmailing your wife for years and years, trying to drag another piece of information out of her that she knows will break her home (and possibly her financial security), no matter how trivial that information is. You have obsessed over it for many years.


Don't you think it's time to let this obsession rest? For all you know, she didn't even have sex with him. You have ruined your life for some obscure situation, irrelevant to you, of 30 years ago.

From your signature, I assume you are a Christian. Aren't you so glad God doesn't obsess about something you did 30 years ago? "Of whom much has been forgiven, much is expected." (paraphrased).

The New Testament is full of Christ's unconditional, full and free forgiveness of prostitutes and adulterers. Your wife is neither.

Don't you think it's about time to let this go? And to sincerely apologize to your wife for all you have put her through for stringing out this obsession for so long?

Sunnytimes is right on all counts. The only other thing that I want to mention is something that helped me greatly�God is Sovereign. I meditated on that a great deal and realized that this was all part of God's Plan for my life.

But us staying together and building a better-than-we-could-ever-imagine Marriage must ALSO be part of God's Plan!

So I figured that it was high time for me to get to it and start following orders!

Gamma, in comparing marital A's with your wife's relationship with OM2 pre-M, I was meaning to come across with compassion and state that obviously your situation is traumatic to you in the same way that ours (post M) was traumatic to us. In both situations we are having to deal with those bad mind tapes.

So WHAT is so different in your case? None of us WANTED to stop focusing on those mind tapes either. Because we were in the throes of great trauma and were afraid to let go for one second, lest we be cast further into that pit somehow.

And yet all of us HAD to learn to lay the mind tapes to rest or else we could not even begin recovery.

And so I am suggesting that if you will make the (conscious) decision to STOP letting the thoughts into your mind at all, THEN you will finally begin to heal.

You obviously do not want to leave your wife, so how about making the first steps to begin to ENJOY your lives together?

My H's affair went on for almost thirteen years Gamma. I know that you did not know that, so no biggie, but I think it fair to say that if anyone could understand what "wasted years" feel like, it is me.

No, my discovery and healing that began (after finding MB) was not tidy. There is no way on God's Earth that I "know everything" about the A. Yes I did most certainly have to deal with a faulty memory after twelve years.

Could it be that the difference between you and many of us is that we dared to trust those who had gone before us?

In my case, I trusted MB and Dr. and Joyce Harley, and most of all God (!!) Dr. H told us both that in order to fall back into love, we had to create an enjoyable PRESENT.

Is your PRESENT enjoyable? From your point of view? From Mrs. Gamma's point of view? If not, why not�and FIX it together (with POJA). If so, then build on that!

STOP thinking of the past. The next time that you notice Mrs. Gamma being afraid that you may be going to bring up the past, go to her, HOLD her, and tell her that you never want to hurt her by bringing up the past again. If YOU will do this Gamma, and give it time for Mrs. G to begin to trust you at your word, then YOU will begin to heal�.and once you have healed a bit, you will start to FEEL those LB deposits. It will take time, but it will happen!! We all promise!

What are you smoking?

I have never encouraged people to not get the truth.

Easy for you to say get a divorce. As to hang around, you don't like it lump it.

I know what Dr H said to me I can read.

Gamma you can forget the past.

You can sit down with your wife and say we are not getting up from this table unless you tell me all or we are getting a divorce.

Stay the way things are.

Dealing with OM/s is useless.

So two of the three choices you stay married.

It boils down to what is more important. Having truth. Having marriage. You want both. Though pushing for it can cost you both. Then you will have neither.

You diddling here with all this OM nonsense is you just spinning your wheels. No traction.

Gamma's first mistake was to marry her after she said that.

The recommendation to divorce is for mental health - and for the health of the marriage, honestly. There are two paths that have some chance of success. Divorce is far more likely to make the other spouse cooperate than hanging around playing disrespectful games trying to get the truth to emerge, and it is far healthier for the betrayed spouse than playing such games. So I'll always be here to let people know when divorce would be better than what they are doing, and I will certainly continue to oppose people who hang around encouraging people in a hopeless and dangerous quest to find other alternatives.

Remember that Gamma is not a betrayed spouse.

He's spinning an obsession into a belief he was betrayed.

He had full disclosure about her feelings for a prior romantic interest prior to marriage.

Divorce is probably healthier for both Mr and Mrs Gamma than these games; however, I don't think it will help Mr Gamma's problem of not being able to stop thinking about how he feels about Ms. Gamma's prior romantic interest.

If anything it would amplify the resentment, bitterness and obsession because now he lost all of these years of happiness, half his assets, his marriage and has disturbed his children supposedly on account of a romantic interest his wife had over 30 years ago.

He'll be in the same spot but with even greater consequences.

Why on earth is this thread "in recovery"???
Its the farthest thing from....

X2



Goodness me Gamma; that's all anybody here wants for you.

If you want your marriage, a REAL marriage, you've got to stop the love busting. Now.

The million dollar question is: Will you?

NMWB77,

So as not to extend someone elses thread I'll respond to you here.

In response to my post, Funny thing is I engineered a meeting between the OM and my W and the OM still had very strong feelings for her.

You wrote, Did you do that before or after learning about MB principles?

After.

What on earth possessed you to do that?

Because I think my W now believes she can skip that part of the truth, without ever confessing the details and I have few avenues to get at them.

God Bless
Gamma

Makes no sense.

Sugar Cane,

I wrote in another thread, I can say personally that when my W and OM2 met again after 20+ years, OM2 responded as if he had met a long lost love.

You wrote, How stupid of you to have tricked them into meeting each other, so that this could happen.

Perhaps you should write your rebuttals to me here so as not to dilute other peoples threads, I understand that you are more CANE than SUGAR for me LOL.

I'll be sure to read them.

Gamma

Perhaps you shouldn't post your insane obsessions on somebody else's thread.

The reason I did post, and will always post, rebuttals on the thread where you made the point, is because the poster in question needs to know the backdrop to the advice you are giving.

They need to know that when you talk about "OM2" you are talking about someone your wife was involved with more than a year before you married her - when none of you was married - and that you knew about her involvement when you decided to get married.

They need to know that Dr Harley has personally advised you to let this matter go, since you were not married when it happened and your wife does not want it brought up.

They need to know that you engineered that meeting between your wife and OM, against the advice of Dr Harley that old flames should be avoided, and against the specific advice of people on this thread, who tried to stop you from tormenting your wife this way.

Wherever I see you post about your wife's non-married non-affair, on a thread of someone needing help, I will point out to that person that this was not an affair, and that it happened about 30 years ago long before you were married.

Gamma,

Having read your thread and your reactions to various other topics on this forum, I am concerned that there is a very high risk that you are obsessed to a degree, bordering on paranoid delusion disorder.

Normally, it is the right thing to do to get all the information. In your particular case though, your wife seems right in not providing you with any information regarding relationships before marriage. You will only twist this information to construct your unwavering convictions. Nothing she has said in past, nothing she will say in the future and nothing members from this board and Dr. Harley say, can convince or satisfy you to leave your obsession alone.

You have been ruining your marriage by your very one-sided way of thinking and I recommend that you seek psychiatric help or help from Dr. Harley himself, before you wreck your life and that from the people who are dear to you even further.

Please get serious help.

HappyH,

You wrote your wife seems right in not providing you with any information regarding relationships before marriage. You will only twist this information to construct your unwavering convictions.

I don't think I am twisting the information in any way, or to put it differently when you have very little information anything is possible. It's difficult to make a decision when you do not have the truth.

Now I do not think my W had threeways, or was excessively promiscuous at that time, but I do believe there is a great deal I have not been told, except for my W not coming clean I have no "unwavering convictions"

Why do you think it's ok for a W to lie to her H?

As for ruining my marriage, after I made changes due to MB my wife has said and continues to say that she likes the way I treat her very much.

Gamma