Bingo, he owns the poja decision as his own entirely. A masterful command of what you need to feel cared for, taking the brunt of it. That will reassure you more than anything.

As to your other points, I agree showing up unexpectedly is a good idea generally, it just sounded like you intentionally made it stressful with kids rather than going in from a position of strength. I'm not familiar with flooding for anxiety, so if Dr H has given you specific advice on that I bow to your greater insight there.

I do know that he expects a man to take the lead in reassuring an anxious wife and for men to create a safe marriage where women feel cared for generally. It just reads like you are doing the leg work and that's what causes anxiety. I would revisit Dr H for specific advice on managing your emotions in this situation, because unfortunately you are the one leading.

I've been emailing them, but I haven't gotten a response lately. They must not be getting my emails or are too busy. The last I heard from them they said they would wait to hear from my husband. I have written a couple more emails since then and no reply. Maybe they are still waiting on him.

I would hit Notify and notify the MODS so they can get a hold of Dr. Harley and let them know.

Will your H talk with them?

He might.. Sometimes he feels like it's too hopeless though.

Joyce emailed me and we agreed to be on the show. We are waiting to hear a time and date.

My husband and I sort of stopped talking again. I don't remember why. He is working with that girl right now. I can't stomach it. I feel so sick and can't even think of going near the place to show up and surprise them. I don't even know how to handle him coming home tonight. How do normal people function through the pain? It's so much that I might decide to go to my dad's tonight with the baby to spend the night. There has been no talk of transferring stores anymore. The odds are that it will happen Saturday as "planned" are probably zero. I have no idea how much longer I have to sit through this. I've pitched all kinds of ideas like asking for minimum hours, scheduling around her, trading schedules with someone else, calling in, asking to trade stores ect but he won't ask. He feels that his manager is angry enough about the situation. I really wish he never told them what was going on between us....

Hershey it is rather a remarkable coincidence that his manager's attitude coincides with an absolute INSISTENCE on your husband's needing to work with this one specific person.

You know full well that a manager wouldn't care so long as it was handled. That she wouldn't give a hoot about shift swaps, rearrangements etc - they only interfere with your husband's ability to be with this one particular person. The only person bothered about that is him.

You might consider his manager's outrage about any changes to be fictional.

I've considered that. The thing is, he explained the whole situation to the rest of the women at work. I had NO idea that he decided to explain the whole situation to them before he decided to do it. Apparently the manager didn't take it very well and neither did the other women because although some interactions he had with his original coworkers bothered me, it did not have quite the same effect as when the young girl that is exactly the type he used to pursue when he was single started working there. Apparently all of the women there are extremely offended and strongly dislike me now because I didn't find them to be the same type of strong threat. According to my husband, the manager even asked him "What are we, ugly dogs?". It's sad because they have no idea that he never pursued women like them before we were dating (as far as I know) so they have no idea why I find the young girl such a big threat as opposed to them.

It is absolutely gut wrenching to me that 1) he told everyone everything 2) they had that reaction (according to him) and 3) that he defends the informing of everyone in charge (which is everyone he works with except the new girl because they are all either managers or lead sales associates).

Number three is what is really eating at me tonight. My husband is absolutely sure Dr. Harley would side with him on this. Do you guys think that's true? To my understanding, it goes directly against the policy of joint agreement because I NEVER would have EVER been okay with him airing this situation to ANYONE he worked with, and also it has had the effect of turning the entire workplace against me and it has made the situation that much worse because the manager (according to my husband) doesn't even remotely want to accommodate my feelings (which, why would she? I'm not married to her? I expected my husband to keep my feelings to himself and protect me by finding sneaky ways to manipulate the schedule until he could leave) and has had the OPPOSITE effect in which she seems to PURPOSELY schedule them together out of spite...? Possibly?

This isn't the first time either. He told his old boss all about our problems too. He was a male. And the guy came to hate me and again, any scheduling issues were far from accommodated because his boss made up his mind that my feelings of jealousy were selfish, immature, and irresponsible.

To be honest, that is the way my husband feels about my feelings. While I one hundred percent agree that my INITIAL reaction of hitting him was all of those things and more, now that I am simply expressing my extreme discomfort of the situation, he feels free to tell me how I am all of those things for feeling that way.

Just a last night he was scheduled to work with her again. He found out she was going to stay until close when she was only scheduled until 8. When he told me (at 9) that she was going to stay later, my first thought was "great! You can leave since there will be two people there and that is considered fully staffed." He didn't want to leave, Okay, policy of joint agreement. I tried understanding why he didn't want to leave. He didn't want to miss out on the money ($9.50). I reminded him my dad overpaid me at my job by almost $80 so we actually had that $9,50 covered. Then he said something along the lines of he wanted to look good in their eyes and be responsible with the store. I understand that. I suggested that it doesn't look irresponsible since the other coworker used to close by herself all the time and only two people were scheduled that night anyways. He began telling me how irrational I was being. Then he found out she would be leaving at 9:30 instead. I reminded him that he hadn't had his thirty minute break yet so he could take it now and avoid her for the last thirty minutes. He immediately took the break but once he got out to his car he got very angry with me telling me how I was micromanaging his life because of my irrational feelings and that I need to choose to not be upset over this. I let him know that I was worried she wouldn't leave at 9:30 and her ride would fall through after she clocked out and she would stay until close while off the clock. I wanted to make a plan for if this happened. He didn't want to make a plan. He was sick of talking about it. Okay. I can see that from his perspective if really there is no communication between the two of them how this would be a little exhausting. But it still worried me that he might spend the rest of the night with her potentially wandering around the store bored and trying to start up a conversation with him. He thought, THAT I was even SUGGESTING the scenario was so absolutely ridiculous and I shouldn't even consider the possibility. Okay, but what if? He says angrily that he'll just leave. But he wasn't okay with that before? Why now? I suggest what about my sister watching the kids and I come up there and hang out with the baby. He tells me if I come up there and start trouble he will call the police.

Backstory: four years ago, I did come up to him at his old workplace. A grocery store. He was a vendor so any shopper can come up and talk to him. I was trying to talk to him and he said if I didn't leave he would get someone to escort me out. He did have someone escort me out because I began crying at what he said. So he is worried it will be another scene like that.

But still, I had been very calm in suggesting my sister as a babysitter and I had proven that I could keep my cool the day I mentioned in this thread by shopping with all my kids and being checked out by her. He was the one yelling at me. I don't know. If NOTHING fishy is going on, it's kind of weird, right?! Or no?

Okay I kind of got off track. Do you guys think he should have told his coworkers about our situation?

I have another question. When it come to POJA, my husband seems to feel a way that I have never heard described on the show. There are things that bother me that he does that if I do, wouldn't normally bother him. But because it bothers me and that means he has to stop, he wants me to stop too - for the sake of fairness.

Example: I will get an app on my phone. He sees I have the app, asks me if you can chat with people and if I have a profile and all that, and all is fine. Then, he gets an app. It bothers me that he has it. According to POJA, he should not use the app until we can agree. But then he tells me he doesn't want me to use my app. My app now bothers him because it isn't fair that I had an app that he wasn't upset by, but I have "chosen" to be upset about his app so he doesn't want me to use mine either. Is this weird? I've just never hear POJA discussed this way. Any insight?

A couple of rules about the POJA, the goal is not to be "fair," but to avoid doing anything that makes your spouse unhappy. For example, it might bother you that your husband throws his socks on the floor but it doesn't bother him when you do it. Therefore, he should stop throwing his socks on the floor, but it is ok if you do.

Another essential rule is goodwill for the other person. Your husband doesn't have that when he tries to force you to do something just he is asked to stop doing something. But then, you can see he does not have good will towards you.

Your husband should not have any social media at all as a means of affair proofing your marriage. You should not have social media either for the same reasons.

POJA question: at first glance I thought that too. But when I took a second look at the problem, the fact that it was "unfair" in my husband's eyes DOES in fact upset him. At that point I figured it was important that I get a second opinion about how POJA works. Maybe it's worth asking Dr. Harley about?

My husband doesn't really demand that I stop doing something at the same time he "has to", he instead reminds me that it's not really fair to him if he has to stop and I don't. He tries to be "fair" when I want to do something he isn't comfortable with either.
Example: last Sunday I wanted to take the kids to church. He wasn't comfortable with it because he was afraid I would run into an ex or be introduced to any male that would give me a hug as a greeting, but because he was going to work and had been while I was really struggling with him working with his co-worker, he deemed it fair enough for me to go and therefore was "comfortable" with it and told me to go.

My problem with this came later when he reminded me that he had a problem with me going to church and I went anyways. To me, his idea of "fairness" doesn't seem like it is accommodating either of our feelings at all. But again, I had to do a double take because when something that HE did bothered ME and I was doing it mySELF without any negative feedback from HIM, his awareness of my "hypocrisy" (his word, but I can see that) does seem to really, really upset him. And POJA does say to stop doing ANYTHING you do that bothers your spouse (excepting health and safety issues).

We stay away from all main forms of social media as far as I know. I say "as far as I know" because it is extremely easy to be secretive of that kind of thing. All it takes for iPhone is quickly downloading the app in the bathroom, logging in, doing what you need to do, erase your log-in info and delete the app again. There is a history of the apps you have downloaded, but that's not helpful in cases like ours where we have had our Apple accounts since before marriage and used social media while we were single. But even if that wasn't the case, all it takes is logging out of one apple account and logging into another, downloading the app, and repeating the steps above. This ensures that your phone will have no web browser history of your actions. You can also accomplish this in safari's "private browsing". It would be extremely easy for him to do that at work without any fear of being caught, so I always leave room for error when I say we aren't using social media.

The only things that come close to social media are apps like "clash of clans". This app allows you to have a name and a profile, but with no real info on who you are except the country you might be from. It gives you two chat room options: 1) global, where you are directed to a new chat room every time the app closes and opens back up again. This makes it to where you never come across the same people twice. 2) clan chat, where as long as you are in the same clan, you can see everything that is written (there is no private messaging), and you can pop in on each other without being aware of each other's presence. It is a pretty safe game as far as accountability goes.

There are other apps like "ruzzle" that allow you to personally chat with your opponents and add them as friends, as well as make profiles and such. We agree to keep our profiles anonymous and tell each other if someone tries to privately message us. If either of us starts to be uncomfortable, we delete the app. As stated above, that doesn't stop us from using the app again without each others' knowledge, but as far as I know this has been the guideline for us.

"POJA question: at first glance I thought that too. But when I took a second look at the problem, the fact that it was "unfair" in my husband's eyes DOES in fact upset him. At that point I figured it was important that I get a second opinion about how POJA works. Maybe it's worth asking Dr. Harley about? "

Once again, the POJA is not designed to be "fair." That defeats the purpose entirely. This is not a quid pro quo. The goal is to find solutions that make you both happy. As far as social media, it is not recommended for any married couple because so many affairs start that way.

"He tries to be "fair" when I want to do something he isn't comfortable with either. "

Please educate yourself about the POJA because it is clear you don't understand. He should not be doing things you want when he is uncomfortable with them. Remember the basic principle is "never do anything without your spouses enthusiastic agreement. " if he does, then that would be SACRIFICE. People who sacrifice tend to keep score - just as your husband is doing - and when the score is not even, they become demanding and angry. JUST AS YOUR HUSBAND IS DOING.

So, you don't need to "ask Dr Harley," you need to do more reading and listening and asking on the forum.

It is not generally recommended that you jump right into the POJA when you start with the program, though.

" because he was afraid I would run into an ex or be introduced to any male that would give me a hug as a greeting, but because he was going to work and had been while I was really struggling with him working with his co-worker, he deemed it fair enough for me to go and therefore was "comfortable" with it and told me to go. "

That is like saying you are ok with him shooting up heroin as long as he approves you smoking meth. Your "compromise" does not make either of those choices healthy. This is a reckless abuse of the POJA.

The solution is to avoid doing things that harm your marriage. Don't go places where you will run into an ex. He should not go to work with that coworker because of the problems you have had. You are not supposed to use the POJA to make destructive decisions about your marriage. It is not about "compromise," but about reaching decisions that are GOOD for your marriage about which you are BOTH enthusiastic. Eliminate anything that is harmful to your marriage.

There's a difference between one of you DOING something that upsets the other, versus NOT DOING something and you're upset you don't get to do it.

According to Dr. Harley, it's a love buster if one of you DOES something that bothers the other, but doing nothing is not a love buster. So if I want to slow roast a turkey for Christmas and my wife would be bothered for me to do that, and I'm bothered that I didn't get to roast the turkey, that's not what Dr. Harley would call a love buster. It means we need to find other things that would make me happy instead of roasting a turkey, that would also make my wife happy. Maybe we could get Chinese food instead, or take a trip, or have a picnic, or roast a turkey some other time. The alternative could be anything - I won't be resentful any more after we fill our lives with events I look forward to, even if I never get to roast a turkey.

Now, if I roast the turkey anyway, my wife will be unhappy, and there is no way to fix that whatsoever, so I must avoid roasting the turkey at all costs.

To make another example, suppose I decide I would enjoy looking at some naked girls on the internet. Suppose my wife isn't enthusiastic about that, for whatever reason. It's not a love buster for me to refrain from looking at naked girls on the internet. I may feel upset, but that resentment disappears when we fill our lives with an alternative that makes me happy that my wife is also happy about, like having a great sexual relationship together.

So for the naked girls example... We've actually had this problem come up. There are movies that have naked women in them that I am not comfortable with him watching. However, I would be fine watching them by myself. He feels this is hypocritical of me and that i should stop watching everything that has naked women as well. He becomes extremely resentful if I do. Despite the REASONS that it upsets him, in the end it still upsets him.

What I'm hearing you say though is that we are not completing the POJA. I still am unsure that the fairness argument is not a good reason to stop doing what I am doing in accordance with POJA. To me it almost sounds like picking and choosing what is a valid reason to be bothered by something. Whether it hurts, is annoying, or feels like hypocrisy, it all builds resentment if it keeps happening. Maybe the fairness reason is truly valid and what we are doing is wrong is not finding that alternative that makes us both happy. Maybe that's where we are going wrong.

I am curious about what melody lane meant about not working on POJA first. I don't think I've ever read/heard that anywhere? If not POJA, what are we supposed to be working on first?

Hypocritical is a disrespectful judgment. You can't negotiate until those are gone!

And until you can negotiate, neither of you can watch naked girls, because the other is not enthusiastic.

It doesn't matter WHY he is not enthusiastic - if you watch it when he's not enthusiastic, it's a love buster. However, if he is thinking you are hypocritical, he needs to SHUT UP when that word comes to mind and instead just say "it bothers me for you to watch that."

Are Melody lane and Marko's coming to two different conclusions? I just want to make sure I understand 100 percent.

It might be worth mentioning that I am usually curious about the reason he is upset by something. That is probably how the word "hypocritical" came up.

I'm pretty sure we have the same conclusion: never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse.

As for trying to understand his point of view, that is guideline 2 in the four guidelines for successful negotiation: http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3350_guide.html You can't there until guideline 1: you can't try to find out his point of view until you know he is not going to drop disrespectful bombs like calling you hypocritical.

Prisca and I found that typically asking the other person "why?" was bucking for a fight. Most of the time it was a challenge to the other to justify his or her feelings which is not what POJA and FGSN is about at all. Even when it wasn't intended that way it was usually received that way.

Yes that is what I am noticing in our marriage. Any ideas on alternative way to ask?