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What is Just Compensation?

Our schedule is this:

Monday - I work
Tuesday - I work then wife works
Wednesday - I have day off, wife works until 11am
Thursday - I work then wife works
Friday - I work
Sat - I work
Sun - Day Off

There is plenty of potential time to spend together and we have a few friends who are willing to mind the kids for us. The counsellor I have been speaking to recommends at least 15 hours a week spent together without the kids, which is very doable with our schedule.

I appreciate the comments however I do not believe our work schedules would "kill any marriage" on their own. I believe if I am committed to making my life transparent to my wife and give her the time and space needed for her to work through the hurt and anger, it is entirely possible. The only thing I can not predict is whether my wife will in time be willing to work at it with me.

Opposite shifts will kill a marriage because it is impossible to create an integrated lifestyle. Dr Harley does not recommend it at all. That is one of the first problems he would advise you to resolve. Couples should be going to bed together and waking up together and going to work during the same time.

Who is Dr Harley??

MelodyLane

Fair point however I have a conundrum.

If I change jobs so that I am there to wake up with and go to bed with my wife:

a) we still can not afford childcare
b) we have no family support to pickup eldest from school and/or babysit the youngest
c) as my wife is presently at a point where she does not want to consider reconciliation, I am sure she will not be willing to seek to change her shifts to better facilitate our marriage.

Do you have any suggestions or should I work on giving her time and space until she may perhaps consider reconciliation and then approach the work situation?

The founder of this site. It's his advice everybody is giving you.

If you go to the top of the page you'll see the concepts.

It sounds like your counsellor knows a little MB since they asked you to spend 15 hours a week together - but the rest of your lives need to be integrated too.

No you have taken that too literal. The counsellors suggest over the course of a week to aim for at least 15 hours of time together alone without kids. Of course there needs to be time together at other times, with the kids etc. We have much more available time than perhaps those reading this thread realise. We also do go to sleep together most nights as I wait up so we can spend a little time before sleep.

I do understand in an ideal world these concepts may be 100% accurate however the world is changing and some of us have to take the work we can get.

Bottom line - I am 100% committed to working through these problems we are having. I have identified the areas where we had not invested time which I can trace all the way from the start to the affair. I know what I need to do to eventually rebuild the trust in our relationship. And I know what is required in order to allow us time to develop and prosper as a couple.

I appreciate the comments as they have helped me find clarity.

The only thing that will prevent reconciliation is if my wife decides after she has had time to process, that she is still unwilling.

But withdrawal is also one of the three states in relationships. You have intimacy, conflict, and withdrawal. It is not the same withdrawal as that of grieving, and you don't treat it the same. This withdrawal is caused by a strongly negative love bank balance. You have to stop all love busters and start making deposits. When someone is in the state of withdrawal, they resist allowing deposits. Little by little as deposits do sneak in, the person starts wanting to argue with you about what is wrong. That is the state of conflict. This is actually a good thing, because it means you are actually getting through to her love bank. Do not argue back or do any other lovebusters. Just keep making love bank deposits. Eventually, her love bank balance will reach the romantic love threshold, and you will be in the state of intimacy.

Do you see the point? The solution to withdrawal due to grieving is to give the person time and space. The solution to the type of withdrawal you have is to restore her love bank balance for you. That is a completely different approach.

The absolute best way to understand the approach Marriage Builders teaches is to listen to the daily radio show. It is available worldwide on-demand from the website or via a free mobile app on your smartphone or tablet. Information on this app is on the Marriage Builders home page as well as in your devices App Store. Listening to the radio show is like a free counseling session with Dr. Harley. You need to take advantage of this.

The love bank is unconscious and doesn't actually require a decision. Her feelings toward you will be based upon her experiences around you and how many there are.

Think about it - you never 'decided' to have an affair but each little interaction led you on into the next one until you realised your feelings were not as mild as hoped. That was a terrible discovery for you but it would be a very pleasant one for your wife because it would safeguard her relationship with her 'best friend' and helpmeet if she were in love with you too.

Of course she would need to feel safe from future infidelities and this is where changing your schedule would also help. You could be going anywhere with anyone currently and the natural solution to her mind would be simply to withdraw for safety.

I would be thinking of how you can get a shift that is the same time as hers AND pay for child care. If you think on it and look around for options I am sure you can find something. But setting up a lifestyle that will sustain a marriage has to be one of your priorities. You can't possibly have an integrated lifestyle when you work opposite shifts.

Yes that is a concept of Dr Harleys he has been trying to get over to counsellors for years in his books. When he started practice counsellors did not recommend dating at all! Even now, many of them fundamentally misunderstand the principle as yours appears to. It's 15 hours UA time (out of the house, four four hour dates, before 11pm, no sports, movies or spectator events) and 15 hours family time. However that is for a HAPPY relationship and is basic maintainance. A neglected marriage or affair would need 20-25 hours.

Fred, are you here to find out about Marriage Builders or are you here to blog about your counselors? The advice we are giving you is from Dr. Bill Harley, clinical psychologist and founder of Marriage Builders. He specializes in infidelity and authored the book Surviving an Affair. He has saved thousands of marriages using these concepts.

Because the advice you are getting from a counselor is most likely to conflict with this program. Most "counselors" have no earthly idea how to save a marriage and are downright dangerous when there has been an affair. Marriage counselors have an 84% failure rate and have a higher personal divorce rate than the general population. We mop up their messes every day.

We can help you if you are here to find out and use this program. But there isn't anything we can do if you are here to blog about counselors and not follow our program.

I wouldn't give her time and space at all. I would always be available.

I don't say you should give up your job - only that I don't see how you will ever have a romantic relationship that lasts for life in that job. If you need to keep the job I would make peace with being friends and co-carers.

If you can change it, I would try your very best to do so before your wife meets someone else. If she meets someone else she isn't going to want to house share any more. If that happens you will need to find the money for two residences - so I would say it makes more sense to spend that money on childcare now than on two homes in the future.

Fred, to be clear, I believe your wife wants to work this out or she would end the marriage and/or separate. The fact that she got a legal fake separation tells me she wants to send a strong message but is not willing to truly separate or end the marriage. She probably feels very trapped. But that gives you an opportunity to win her back.

Fred, I really hope you decide to follow Dr. Harleys plan.

Here is the difference:
Dr Harley: do and show
Counsellors: talk, talk, talk

You have talked lies for your entire marriage. It was, in her mind, probably a sham now. You don't need to keep talking - your word means NOTHING. In fact, you'd still be lying today of OW didn't out you.

You need to DO. SHOW. Change by demonstrating extraordinary care.

Again, remember, your word is worthless. How can you make proven lifestyle changes?

Your old marriage was a lie. It is dead and gone. You dont need to pay $ to talk about reviving it.

How can you show her that you can give her the one she always wanted?

If you used the avenue of Facebook, whether your music page or your personal page, to pursue inappropriate conversations with other women, then you should DELETE your FB pages altogether. There is no reason to have a FB page, people survived many years without them. Just having that page will be a temptation for you and a trigger for your wife.

On more than one occasion in your thread, you make statements like this. I have *even* done (fill in the blank)...which comes across as you doing some grand, extraordinary thing to protect your wife.

Ending contact with the person who bridged your affair with OW, an act that devastated your wife and marriage, does not seem to me to be an extraordinary thing to do, does it?

If you have all the answers, why are you here?

My advice to you is to send your WIFE here. Ask her to start posting, so we can help her work through this and come out healthy on the other side. If you are really committed to doing right by her now, you would not hesitate to do this.

Did you listen to the clips in here?

If you listen to the clips then you will educate yourself on who Dr. Harley is.