Gamma,

I don't blame you for wanting to know the truth.
But what did we learn from A Few Good Men?
Can you handle the truth?
Or are you better off letting sleeping dogs lie?

Jedi,

You wrote Can you handle the truth? Or are you better off letting sleeping dogs lie?

It's difficult to say how any of us will handle the truth, but can there be true forgiveness when one spouse refuses to reveal what happened. I think there are many marriages in this state of quasi recovery. I think the truth about this will allow me to decide an appropriate action.

In the 20+ years before MB I never forgot what happened and it haunted me, I had nightmares about it, since MB, for the most part, I no longer have those dreams. It wasn't so much a sleeping dog as it was a guard dog I felt wary about.

In any event I'll see what OM2 has to say soon. Perhaps a golden hammer will bring down a steel wall, as a Russian saying goes.

Gamma

I understand wanting the truth Gamma. But 'OM2' (not really an OM since it was pre marriage relationship) was back in 1988 am I correct? Good grief man, that was 25+ years ago! At some point you need to either decide to LIVE without the truth, or divorce. This obsession is no way to live.

Unwritten,

As a slight branch off from this discussion, it is often stated that the relationships from a long time ago should be written off and that it no longer matters.

Why then are the cheaters so reluctant to come forth with details, given that it is supposedly ancient history?

I've stated before that the best just compensation is honesty.

Gamma

Gamma, regarding OM2 ... 28 years is 28 years. Almost three decades. Your wife is not mentally even the same person anymore and my understanding has made changes. So tormenting yourself about 28 years past will only keep the past alive.... AND this was premarital and you were aware of it prior to marrying her.

Also, you mentioned you didn't beat OM1, (who was also actually also premarital relationship she had) but did in a sense something worse. What did you do?

Oh, Gamma, please do seek professional help. This is so unhealthy. What kind of information are you looking for anyways?

That is good advice where just compensation is owed and warranted. It is neither in your case because you were not married. I echo the others in my hope that you seek help for this obsession. Think about how many years you have wasted on this issue?

AG,

You wrote, What kind of information are you looking for anyways?

Sexual details of which I got nothing. Based on those I would divorce or not.

About OM1 it does not matter anymore.

Gamma

Melody,

You wrote, That is good advice where just compensation is owed and warranted. It is neither in your case because you were not married.

So in such cases where according to you there is no compensation owed or warranted, why does the spouse continue to withhold the information? While I agree with Dr Harley that I cannot demand that my W makes her confession, so I am waiting for a voluntary admission.

I echo the others in my hope that you seek help for this obsession. Think about how many years you have wasted on this issue?

Melody perhaps being female you may not feel this point, the years are wasted because I had marginal or no sex. My state of mind during those years is secondary.

Gamma

Under such a threat, it is no wonder your wife will tell you nothing about her past.

You won't be getting those details, though, so you need to either assume the worst and divorce, or let it go. Since you frequently report that your marriage is great, I would encourage the latter.

Let it go, gamma!

Gamma you said that you will see what OM2 will say soon. Are you plotting another meeting? Didn't Dr Harley specifically tell you NOT to do this?

I don't post in here very often, but, geez, Gamma, fixated much? As the members have diligently and repeatedly pointed out, your obsession concerning your wife's premarital relationships is incredibly unhealthy. What your wife did almost 30 years ago before she married you is none of your concern, and you seeking out specifically the sexual details amounts to nothing more than creepy voyeurism. Are you concerned about how you measure up? Whether another man was able to please her before you? If you are seeking answers to questions as such, the problem isn't that she won't divulge her past, because her past belongs to her, not you, but that you need therapy, and ASAP.
If you value your marriage and your wife, you'll stop harassing her, especially over subject matter that des not concern you. Talk about love busters!

It's not true to say that "her past belongs to her, not you" and that this is "subject matter that does not concern you". If you were familiar with Dr Harley's work, you would know that.

Dr Harley encourages historical honesty between spouses. He has prepared a sexual history questionnaire that is available on this website, and that is used in the home study and online MB courses. It encourages spouses to reveal their sexual histories to each other. It covers questions such as the age of the first sexual encounter, and whether there have been same sex relationships. It does not ask for graphic details.

The point for Dr Harley is that your spouse should know as much about you as you know about yourself. And when it comes to sexual misdemeanours, He argues that if one spouse did something in their past that indicates a weakness, then it is in their interest to tell their spouse about it, so that they can both guard against that weakness in the future.

Therefore, historical sexual honesty is firmly encouraged. However, what Gamma has been doing is, first, treating the relationship that his wife had as an affair. It wasn't an affair, because, as has been said several times, he knew that his wife had this relationship at the time he got engaged to her, and well before (at least a year before) he married her. He has no knowledge that it was a sexual relationship - his wife has never said it was - yet in his mind he has spun the story so that this man satisfied his wife sexually to such a degree that nothing Gamma could do since ever matched it. Gamma has deduced that his lousy sex life is due to whatever happened during that relationship, and he has mentioned his wife's unwillingness to perform oral sex as evidence of that.

Second, despite having married her knowing that she had the relationship, and after she said that her relationship with Gamma would never be the same, Gamma has asked his wife about it more than once, and she has refused to give details. She has sometimes claimed not to remember the details (of what, I am not sure) and she has given Gamma the impression that she is worried about what he will do with the information. If she is worried that he will divorce her if the details are too much for him, she is, of course, correct.

Third, Gamma has engineered a meeting between his wife and the man, in the hope that their surprise encounter will reveal something to him. We have discussed the cruelty and stupidity of this move many times on this thread.

Fourth, Gamma is fostering a fake friendship with this man, whom he and his wife had not seen for about 25 years, in the hope that he can wheedle a conversation with him about what happened during the relationship. If he can't relax the man into confessing, he hopes to offer him money for artefacts, such as love letters and trinkets, that will reveal the truth (as if a man who has been married for 30 years to someone else would have such things in his possession). The attempt to talk to this man has been going on for about 3 years now. Gamma has had phone calls with him, pretending that he is just catching up with an old colleague. This appears to be the third time that Gamma will try to be at the annual event that the man attends, in the hope that he can move the investigation along.

What is wrong with Gamma's actions is not that his wife's pre-marital sexual history is none of his business, because ideally, it is - but that he is obsessed about this and has spent about 3 years fostering a fake friendship with this man, to find out whether and what kinds of sex he had with his then girlfriend, and with the intention of divorcing if he hears details that are unpalatable.

In an MB marriage, a spouse would not be frightened about talking about a past relationship, because the request for historical honesty would not be a selfish demand, and would not carry the risk of punishment. However, Gamma's wife knows that this is a deep obsession of Gamma's, and despite his claim that she is happy with the way he treats her (which is not surprising, if your read his history and read how he was treating her before he discovered MB), she knows that he is brooding, angry, and poised to leave her after 30 years of marriage, because of an old boyfriend over whom she lost her head, and is now embarrassed. He thinks he is being smooth with her, but she knows how dangerous this subject is to her own future.

In an ideal MB marriage, we would have a spouse who tells us about their past. Sexual historical honesty is in fact an ideal. However, if we have a spouse who isn't on board with that concept, we have a choice to make.

Most of the people who post to Gamma would not pursue the details of this pre-marital relationship, of which we were aware when we got engaged. Gamma was aware that his wife fell for this man. He was aware that she was infatuated. She told him that the relationship changed her feelings for him. He knows that the man ended the relationship and pursued the woman to whom he is now married. If most of us had known that then, and still decided to marry, we would not be pursuing the details 30 years later, with a spouse who is unwilling, worried and embarrassed to talk about them. Most of us would leave the past in the past, and focus on the marriage as it is today. If parts of it are unsatisfactory, such as the sex life, then we would use MB concepts to encourage our spouse to to be more fulfilling. We wouldn't pursue any act, such as OS, if the spouse indicated that they were unwilling to perform it, but we would try to get our spouse create a more fulfilling sex life. That is what Dr Harley recommends; focusing on the present, and making it superb. The past should be left in the past, misdemeanours and all. Historical honesty is recommended (but Dr Harley has pointed out that it is not essential for an MB marriage). Dwelling on the past, and threatening a spouse over it, is firmly NOT.

Dr Harley himself has posted to this thread and advised Gamma to leave the past alone, given his wife's unwillingness to talk about it. Gamma won't do that. Instead he misuses MB concepts such as Just Compensation, which are for an affair (which this was not, and Gamma knew about it before he married) and which do not involve punishment, to justify what he has doing for years with respect to this relationship.

No argument we make is ever going to persuade him to stop. Dr Harley has posted, and Gamma told me that of course he will carry on doing what he is doing. Sadly, the recent post that revived this thread simply offered Gamma the opportunity to go around in circles again, making the same points about Just Compensation, asking rhetorically why his wife won't just give the details, and explaining why the sexual details matter to him, a man, in a way that they do not matter to women - the majority of posters here, who cannot understand him, by definition.

Everything we say to Gamma is completely pointless, but I wanted to address your point, blueangels, about historical honesty.

If she has told you she won't discuss it, it needs to be dropped completely.


Your marginal sex life has absolutely nothing to do with a pre-marital relationship she had 30 years ago. It has everything to do with the state of your marriage. One does not have to be male or female to recognize this.

If you want to improve your sexual relationship, you need to drop this silly obsession and focus on making your marriage great.

awesome post, Sugarcane!!

Seriously? It's more than 3 paragraphs long!

That was a great post, Sugarcane.

Cheers, DQ!

SC,

Will take awhile to digest, in the meanwhile I will let you know if I go to the UK so we don't accidentally meet and trigger a 50 mega ton matter anti-matter reaction.

Gamma

Haha.