Another great thing to take note of about Extraordinary Precautions: they help build closeness in marriage! They help build the kind of marriage the couple always wanted. Dr. Harley and Joyce have lived this way for their entire married life. They are still in love. Neither one of them has ever had an affair.

Extraordinary precautions are not a punishment. They are an enjoyable way to live!

I couldn't agree more!

Yep. Thought that was the norm too. FR was nearly the end of us. Still my biggest challenge to overcome. The continued lying and deceit. I hope someday I won't have to question every thing that looks suspicious.

Some WS's become such expert liars right to your face to the point that credibility is a LONG road to recover.

X2

Taffy is frustrated when I question his honesty. It is a shock to him to realize how impossible it is for me to automatically trust anything he says, even now, a year into recovery. SH says it is because Taffy is further along the recovery road than I am, so he forgets the degree of damage FR caused.

His perspective is, "yes, I was lying then. I am NOT lying now..."
But my bull cr*p detector is busted on "HIGH"

FWW had a clean break from her side. POSOM tried to contact via E-Mail 28 days after NC. I intercepted them. FWW gave me her cell and all pass words to E-Mail. She would not even take her phone back after three months. Only after I had her # changed did she take it back.

This was very strange to me. I had read Dr. Harley's books and here on the MB site about withdrawal so I was geared up for a fight to win FWW back that never came.

To her credit she knew her weakness (cell phone) and would not even log on to the computer unless I was with her.

So true markos! DW and I were visiting a some friends to pick up a copy of Dr.Harley's video we had loaned them and DW told our friend that she needs to give MB a try, Because it works, our marriage is better than it ever was.

Our friend responded, yea I can tell I've been watching you two. Coming from someone who has known us for over thirty years this was a big confirmation for us that we were well on our way to where we wanted to be...

In love with each other and in a great marriage.

That's wonderful, wle.

Thanks as always wle for sharing.

Thanks, but you guys are the lights along the path!

markos pointed out that EP are an enjoyable way to live. Have you noticed when trying to explain this to someone who is struggling in their M they always think it would not work for their situation.

Like what they have been doing is working out so well! The famous yea, but...

Oh, I never thought they'd work for me!

Well, guys, I apologize for getting so far behind here. Thoughts for last week, Chapter 6:

The wording for Plan A has changed quite a bit. Plan A consists of exposing the affair, and expressing a willingness to resolve marital problems. First off, Dr. Harley is now extremely explicit about exposing an affair. As for "expressing willingness," it's apparently that during an active affair it is nearly impossible to meet the wayward spouse's emotional needs. Betrayed wives will typically drive themselves nuts trying to meet a cake eating wayward husband's emotional needs. And betrayed husbands despite their best efforts will find the love bank closed due to competition and the contrast effect. Sometimes the best you can do is abstain from love busters and let the wayward spouse know that you want to build a marriage where their emotional needs will be met (and vice versa).

Dr. Harley's comments on an apology at the end of chapter six are very helpful, in my opinion. When I remember myself as I was four years ago, I remember that I wanted an apology for everything. I'm not talking about affairs, here - every single offense, real or imagined, every little inconvenience.

The truth is: apologies alone don't make a great marriage, and in fact, a great marriage can be built even after the devastation of an affair without an apology.

Incidentally, years ago I also used to wonder why when I apologized it didn't make everything right for my wife. Now it's completely obvious: apologies without a behavior change are meaningless, and are an offense in themselves.

Thoughts about chapter 7, the first steps on the road to marital recovery

Here we see how Dr. Harley relates affair recovery to addiction recovery: there is a withdrawal phase. During withdrawal the wayward spouse feels depressed and hopeless. I've heard Dr. Harley say often on the radio that depression is a feeling of irretrievable loss. So it really stood out to me when he pointed out that in the case of the loss that is felt during withdrawal, there is a crucial difference: usually the wayward spouse can stop that feeling of loss at any time by going back to the affair!

Several times in this chapter Dr. Harley talks about the fact that love bank deposits early in recovery may not be very effective. In fact, I actually felt anxiety for Lee as I read that Dr. Harley warned her that her efforts might seem like wasted effort - I think I've seen plenty of situations where that early energy and enthusiasm is followed by disappointment, with less energy and enthusiasm given later, when it's really needed.

Dr. Harley's program of affair recovery focuses on the one crucial thing that most marriage counseling in general misses: restoration of the feeling of romantic love. As he says, it really is that simple. Most everything else I've seen out there seems to be geared towards encouraging people to accept romantic love as "unrealistic." I can see why that wouldn't be very motivating for most people.

Of course "simple" is relative. It's "simple" to just make love bank deposits and avoid withdrawals - in theory. In practice, most of us start out full of habits that make withdrawals. Dr. Harley repeats in this chapter something I've heard him frequently say: that in most cases he has to start a couple out on learning to eliminate love busters first. The marriage is a bleeding patient and husband and wife have to stop the hemmorhaging. I found it interesting that he observed "In many cases, once the biggest obstacle is overcome, the couple can overcome the other without much help." i.e., once they stop using love busters to deal with each other, they can usually meet each other's emotional needs much more easily!

Affairs truly offer no painless escape. The depression that accompanies withdrawal is a frighting thing to witness.But being together as much as possible during withdrawal is what Dr. Harley says achieves the best results.

He says that the best examples of recovery he has witnessed involved couples that were forced to be together almost 24 hours a day for about a month.

The exact opposite of what you want to do is what is the best !

Yes - this is by no means an instinctive process!

I've heard him describe in detail how your emotions protect you - when someone has harmed you enough that your emotions have concluded the person is a danger to you, they make you want to do things to drive that person away (demands, disrespect, angry outbursts).

It works great. Give into these, and you will successfully drive the person away.

Of course, if you actually want to recover, then you have to accomplish a feat of mind over matter and not do and say everything that comes into your head.

Some more observations from chapter 7:

It was Kevin's own willingness to follow the EPs that got him through withdrawal. He had to force himself.

Going back to the OP causes depression to return with a vengeance.

Lee's willingness to quickly straighten out whatever had been missing in their marriage: how many times have we seen a BS post here with their first message being about physical attractiveness or some other need, and the real problem is the ongoing affair that their spouse is having?

Dr. Harley notes that as the symptoms of withdrawal fade, love bank deposits become increasingly more effective. One of those symptoms is depression, and I've heard Dr. Harley observe before how depression makes it very difficult for either spouse to make love bank deposits - the depressed spouse obviously isn't much fun to be around, and the depressed spouse is also not very receptive to their spouse's efforts. (If you're reading along and depression alone is your problem, note that for a depressed wife Dr. Harley says the first problem to look at is the relationship - solve the problems in the relationship and in particular start spending enough time together meeting the important emotional needs, and the depression usually goes away!)

Antidepressant medication: Dr. Harley recommends this in a lot of scenarios. Here he recommends it for the wayward spouse in the early stages of recovery. Elsewhere he recommends it for a betrayed spouse. For many of us this can be a very emotional step to take - it feels like an admission that something is wrong with us, that we can't handle life or fix our problems. But really, antidepressant medication works very well to reverse the feeling that there are no solutions to your problems that will work. You can be sitting there with the solution staring you in the face (Marriage Builders) and say that will never work, make all kinds of excuses, etc. - and antidepressant medication can help you look at the situation rationally, even out the emotions that are prompting you to do something different, allow you to rise above them and actually solve your problem.

If you are struggling and antidepressant medication is recommended for you, I suggest you go for it. I used ADs at the beginning of this year (2013) for about 3 months. We seemed to have hit an impasse in our relationship and I saw no hope of getting past it. Well, there was hope, and a lot of it hinged on me sticking with things and doing what needed to be done even though I did not feel like it. And with ADs in my system for awhile, I found myself willing to do that (and also willing to detach a lot from a lot of the emotional drama that I personally tended to create). If you are struggling with this decision, I'd love to encourage you to just do it.

Dr. Harley recommended that Kevin spend ALL of his nonworking hours with Lee and his children. What a great idea!!! In fact, Dr. Harley usually recommends that couples not have any independent recreational activities until they are each other's favorite recreational companions. I can see how that would push people toward 30 hours of UA time rather than 15.

Respectful as always, Dr. Harley manages to address the viewpoint that an emotional affair like Kevin's is somehow not really an affair. He doesn't invalidate the viewpoint, but he explains that an EA can be even more of a threat than a PA, and explains that an EA usually would go on to a PA if given the chance.

Here's a quote we need to hold onto around here and repost as needed:

Looking at Chapter 8
Speaking about Jon, " He wanted to lecture her on how thoughtless she had been. He wanted to remind her of the pain he had endured. He wanted to punish her just to even the score."

When trying to avoid LB withdrawals this is the first "Urge" that needs to be dealt with.

I know this was the hardest to control in the beginning but so vitally important to start MR.

This really had and impact on my FWW. She was expecting some kind of retaliation or AO, DJ or the like. By not giving in to what I "FELT" like doing went a long way towards our R.

Ordered my book yesterday from this site

Fantastic. Jump right in.

Sample no contact letter from revised Surviving an Affair


My apologies for not keeping the book club going - we will start again soon!