STOP doing that. And if he won't let you stop doing that, leave him. But stop just agreeing with whatever he wants. You are not doing yourself, your marriage, or even your husband any favors by doing that.

You might want to fill out this form and give it to your husband. It sounds to me like there are a large number of problems that you would rate "serious enough to threaten our marriage unless resolved." He needs to be working on all of those.

Marital Problem Analysis

He needs to relisten to his call with Dr. Harley, because there was a lot more said there than just giving you undivided attention, although that is majorly important. As I pointed out to him, his disrespectful judgments and his independent behavior are major problems that are going to drive you away. Would you agree with what I said to him about those?

He knows I'm doing it, and he knows why. My response whenever he asks is, "Whatever you want." He knows it doesn't fall under POJA but he keeps doing it anyway because it's what he wants. For me, it's just a peaceful way to get through the next four years. It's not worth the conflict to me. And I don't submit to the things I really don't want to do (ie. sex.) Besides, the occasions are pretty rare, and the rest of our daily lives are pretty independent.

I think he'd probably tell you he is working on them. At least that what he always tells me. Our current relationship is the result of years of his working on it. That's why I was asking how you determine if he's making progress.

I agree with most everything that was posted to him. Was there something of yours in particular you're asking about?

Conflict aversion is self destructive. You're hurting yourself more than you are hurting him because you're not getting what you want and you're preventing him from even knowing how to meet your needs in those circumstances. It's a lose-lose. You can call it peaceful if you want but it's actually passive aggression and it's your problem, not your husband's.

I understand that you don't want to be vulnerable to him yet, and that's fair, but at least be honest with him. Otherwise he doesn't have the tools necessary to make you happy. Also lying is never the solution to anything.

Ironically, I'm not the one that's conflict averse, he is, and he will readily admit it. I'm just not bothering because it's a wasted effort on my part. Expressing my opinion just results in his defensiveness, criticism, sarcasm, and then subsequently ignoring it. If he ever gets back on, you can ask him his perspective on this. We've been through it so often, I'm sure my description is pretty accurate. Even the 5-minute discussion (3 minutes of dead-silence on his part while I waited for him to respond) on the trip about his carelessness with the dog mirrored this exactly. Besides, I have point-blank told him that it isn't POJA, that I'm only agreeing to it because he ignores my position anyway, that it's only for the next 4 years for our son's sake, so I can't see how it's lying. (Did you read the conversation posted on his thread? It gives a pretty good demonstration of how things go with us.)

"Working on it" is code for "doing nothing."

Your marriage has no hope of recovering as long as you continue to do this. BOTH of you need to stop your marriage destructive behavior.

Your husband was trying to decide whether Disrespectful Judgments or Independent Behavior were the most important problem. I told him that BOTH of these problems were going to destroy your marriage if he didn't solve them, and he needed to focus on eliminating BOTH, ASAP, rather than worrying about which one was higher priority.

Would you agree with me on that?

Did you look at the Marital Problem Analysis questionnaire?

Yes, I agree, but then I already believe our M is hopeless. I've proven I can apply the Harley principles and have reengaged and done so numerous times in the past. At this point, however, I won't be adjusting any of my behavior until my H proves that he's capable of following the Harley program (he never has before.)

I would definitely agree with you. That's what I was trying to explain earlier, that the focus on eye-contact is rather irrelevant when he's still exhibiting all his other LB's, which make me not even want eye-contact. I wish I had presented something different on the radio program with Dr. Harley. I was somewhat unprepared because my H wanted to do the call, so I thought I was just there to confirm/deny/clarify whatever my H wanted to present. Instead, Dr. Harley put me on the spot. I tried to come up with an example of something simple, not realizing it was going to play out this way. I'm not finding any real value in it, especially since he's presenting like he's doing such a great job, yet I don't see it that way.

I have looked at the Marital Problems Analysis that you posted. In fact, I'm pretty sure we filled it out or some version of it before during one of our rounds of studies. Now, I'm pretty comfortable in my 4-year plan (it started out as an 8-year plan so I'm halfway there!) so it would be hard to rate them at this point. None of them are that big of a deal when I'm not trying to have a M with him.

JDD, if you don't want a marriage with your husband I recommend you truly separate vs continue with this "in-house separation"...that can also be detrimental to your boy. Your son does not have to live out a backpack visiting two houses as your stepchildren did.

Sadly, your H is a lot like my exWH.

What do you mean he was diagnosed with a lack of health boundaries?

A dear and extremely intelligent friend of ours was trying to help us years ago. He attributed my husband's poor choices to his having poor boundaries. It's related to what Dr. Harley refers to as problems with being impulsive. He's read books on boundaries, has supposedly sought counseling, got tested for ADD, etc. Apparently he forgot.

I've been keeping up with my H's thread and have had a few thoughts about his posts and the responses. I don't care to join in his thread but thought I'd at least share some perspective here.

First, SugarCane, OMG!!!! If you were here, I would give you a huge hug and $500! Your feedback on my H's posts has done soooo much for my self-esteem! Everything you said is EXACTLY how I feel! I've so often felt like I must be crazy (supported by H telling me I am, of course) because I am so put off my his communication style. It literally is crazy-making. So you interpreting it exactly the same way I do is SOOOOO validating for me. Or at least comforting because I'm not crazy alone.

Thanks to everyone else, too, for putting your time and energy into our mess. Even if we aren't successful in saving our M, your efforts are still invaluable to me. Sometimes it's just nice to get another person's objective perspective. I'll be a better person because of it, regardless of the outcome.

So, some thoughts. Shall we start with the affair? I'd like to fill in a few holes that my H left out. The OW was not just a girlfriend, she was his high school sweetheart, the "love of his live" as he reiterated in his emails to her, with whom he had had a sexual relationship with. He apparently remembered her on her birthday (30+ years later), googled her, discovered she was recently divorced (available!!) and decided to send her a birthday card with his contact information. Note, not our home phone number where I might answer the phone or overhear their conversation, but his personal email address. After she contacted him back, he proceeded to exchange a series of emails with her reminiscing about the past, questioning why they ever broke up, and catching up on the status of family and friends, with added emphasis on how happy he was to hear from her and how much he enjoyed talking with her. Among the glowing adjectives describing his siblings and children, I was mentioned as "the woman he married" followed by "marriage is tough!." She inquired if he ever came to her city, his hometown. This went on for a couple of months before I accidentally stumbled across one of the emails that he forgot to delete, which happened to contain a string of all the prior email exchanges.

To this day, I feel like he's still describing it as if he didn't think there was anything wrong with it AT THE TIME, because he didn't recognize it as an affair. I don't care if you call it an affair, an emotional affair, or "just catching up with an old friend," why would he have been so discreet about it (not telling me, private contact info, deleting emails, etc.) if he thought he was doing nothing wrong? I feel he's still defending his innocence, still minimizing his actions, still rationalizing it, in spite of his supposed "shame" over it now. Never in eight years have I heard him admit anything like, "Yes, I knew it was wrong; yes, I knew you'd be angry/hurt if you found out; but frankly, my dear, I didn't give a damn!"

To his comment "I have been respectful and given her undivided attention," frankly I don't even know what he's talking about. We barely interact. I purposely put off doing my homework last week at home so I could keep myself occupied during the long drive and not have to interact with him. One of the few times that I did, I complained about his driving style, what he refers to as "managing the cruise control," which boils down to doing whatever lane-changing maneuvers are necessary to avoid disengaging the cruise control. He heard my complaint, then did it again within 10 minutes. This was described to you as he "annoyed" me.

To his not sending the daily emails, his explanation is a bunch of b.s. True, he didn't bring his laptop, but he DID bring his ipad and his smart phone. True, we did go to my family's on Thursday, but not until 3:00p.m., so he had all morning. Blah-blah-blah about it being a holiday for everyone. His emails would have just sat there until Dr. Harley read them whenever. He still seems completely nonchalant about this whole thing and perfectly comfortable with his excuses.

He does this because normally it does work for him, because normally it accomplishes exactly that. Normally it gets him the validation he's looking for, and then he has another person/tool/program to use to beat me over the head with to prove that he is good and I am bad. The thing is, I just can't filter his b.s. anymore. Every time he does one of these and I have to clarify the gory details of what really happened, I re-live the pain all over again. It's too hard. I just don't want to do it anymore. I just want to get on with life.

I don't really think he's looking for help, at least not help directed to him. He leaves out too much information. It's like going to the Dr. but not giving him all your symptoms or minimizing them and still expecting him to be able to correctly diagnose you. It's irrational. But I've seen what he does, just like here. He denies his faults and focuses on me. This is a guy who went to a sex therapist (because he was completely unresponsive to MY complaints and instruction and he was cut off until he did) and the only information he came home with was her advice that if I'm better at a particular household chore, then I should be responsible for it.

I realize that stepping out of the process will most likely be the final nail in the coffin. But the thought of life without him has become more appealing than life with him. It's taken me lots of years to get here, but I'm finally okay with it.

Wait a minute! Did you just call me crazy?

Thanks for filing in the details, JDD.

And yes SC...you are crazy!

I'm not sure if my prior post just got overlooked or if it was intentionally ignored. Hopefully it was just missed, as it's important. And I'll keep this brief.


To address your previous concerns and to be clear:

Going forward, regarding his family and in general, he can correctly assume that I only do things anymore that I am ENTHUSIASTIC about, and no longer do things that I'm RELUCTANT about, so the Thanksgiving trip is a non-issue.

Furthermore, I am also INCREDIBLY ENTHUSIASTIC about my H's individual activities. Already for several years, I've been enthusiastic about them, even encouraging new activities. I don't know why he's making out like they were still a problem and dropped them. In fact, I would be ENTHUSIASTIC about him picking them all up again. Ironically, I consider that to be one of the only conflicts we've ever really arrived at POJA.

I can't make it any clearer for him than that.

I know you're trying to help, but please do not send my H to me to "find out" something or to get my perspective. I'm done. He needs to leave me alone. I'm doing my best to keep this precarious arrangement as functional as can be for the next couple of years only. If he continues engaging me when I've specifically asked him not to, it will mean I'll need to file for divorce sooner rather than later. I'm already leaning towards that anyway.

Thank you for your consideration. Please pardon the intrusion.

Back to your regularly scheduled program.