I think that is still disrespectful, you are blaming her and that's just going to cause her to get angry. It seems like that you are trying to use marriage builders as a tool or weapon to get your way. The whole point is to have a marriage of extraordinary care for each other, to take her feelings and needs into consideration. I realize you aren't getting your needs met the moment, but it won't happen ever if you can't have extraordinary care for her first. If you just can't do that because of the situation and your feelings then you should be in plan B.

I would use that example that I just posted and put it to your problem.

"The problem I'd like us to solve is that, from my perspective, we are having trouble paying our bills and I am worried about our financial situation. I would love for us to problem solve ways that we could lower our overall costs and I would like you to consider finding a job.

How do you feel about our financial situation? How would you feel about finding a job? How would you like to solve this problem? Would you help me come up with ways that we can solve this problem together?

So there wasn't anything from Dr. Harley saying that having thoughts of disagreement with WS is disrespectful, right?

You seem to spend a lot of time trying to prove that you're right rather than listening to what other posters say. I read the thread that you're speaking of. Your thoughts were disrespectful. It wasn't about her working or not working it was about your attitude

You were "spoiling" your wife
It would be "healthier" for her to work.
"you met more needs" because you worked."

These are disrespectful judgements.

No, that's just blaming, pure and simple. The wife being a SAHM is not the "cause" of having trouble paying the bills, any more than the husband's salary being too low is the cause of having trouble paying the bills.

The problem is it's hard to pay the bills.

One possible solution is for the wife to go to work. But if she's not enthusiastic about that solution, that does not mean that she is the reason they are having trouble paying the bills.

The husband who says his wife being a SAHM is making it hard to pay the bills is engaging in a disrespectful judgment: blaming his wife. Husbands and wives cannot problem solve when they blame. So the problem will persist and the true reason they continue to have trouble paying the bills will be that one or both of them is blaming the other!

To some extent that is true and he does say that,

BUT

listen to the show from February 25, 2016 when it becomes available for the rest of the story. Dr. Harley DOES say to stop stewing in the disrespectful thoughts because your spouse can pick up on that even if you don't say it explicitly.

Plus, you can't solve a problem when you are blaming. So posting all your DJs and blame on the MB forum is one of the worst things you could possibly do even if you never express the disrespect to your spouse. One of the best things we can possibly do is teach people how to talk about their problems without the disrespect. So, for example, change:

"We can't pay the bills because you aren't working"

to

"I've got a problem - I'm having trouble paying the bills. Can you help me come up with a solution? What do you think we should do?"

So, will you please stop trying to prove that we are wrong when we call posters on the DJs they make about their husband or wife? We're not.

Dr Harley very much discourages spouses from having disrespectful opinions about their spouse. He does not say that it is okay to think it, but not okay to say it. He concentrates very vigorously on getting each spouse to learn and understand the other spouse's point of view, and to accept it without being judgemental about it - and that means not feeling judgemental, as well as not expressing judgement.

It is disrespectful for Lost to be dismissive of his wife's contribution to their family life. He only speaks of a spoilt princess who did very little except get her nails done and shop. What were his wife's reasons for wanting to reduce her working hours and be mainly at home? Do we get any respectful understanding of that, in Lost's descriptions? No, we do not. Did his wife get any respectful understanding of her choices about caring for her son?

It is harmful to his chances of recovery for him to come here and post such thoughts. He is reinforcing his disrespectful opinions when he does that. He is looking back at his marriage and seeing his wife more and more as a useless waste of space. And if he's not trying to recover his marriage, that's fine; he has the right to see her that way. Anyone has the right to see their spouse through the prism of disrespect, but doing so will not give them a happy marriage, if that's what they want. They have little hope of showing their spouse the attitude that the spouse needs to see in order to go back to the marriage.

In that statement above, I wrote "and if she sensed this, that might be something else that she does not want to return to". You conveniently left that out in your criticism of me. Dr Harley works on getting rid of disrespectful thoughts towards our spouse because, in all likelihood, we are showing that disrespect in our behaviour, even if we do not utter any disrespectful words out loud.

Why are you engaging in hyperbole? It does not help you make your point; it just exposes the weakness in your argument.

We are supposed to be talking about respect between spouses, here on this forum. We do this, as Dr Harley does, by looking at conflicts in marriage, not by bringing in extremely wrongful acts done by anyone in the world. We are talking about spouses here, or we should be.

Dr Harley does not say we have to "respect everything" - his advice is about resolving conflicts with respect in marriage. Of course you don't have to respect "everything". How does murder come into a discussion about how to cope with differences of opinion in marriage?

Don't be silly.

As well as the great disrespect that others have pointed out in the way that you blame her status for the fact that you cannot pay all the bills, it isn't clear why you are also blaming the fact that she is at home as the cause of your not talking and spending time together after your finish work. How on earth are the two related?

If you want to spend time with your wife, and you want this to be UA time during which your need for conversation is met, the solution is for you to invite your wife to go out of the home and spend at least 15 hours a week in environments where you can be affectionate and have conversations. And if conversations do not flow naturally between you, even in environments such as coffee shops or restaurants, or on the banks of the river after you've been to a free art exhibition, or driving home after you've wandered around a shopping mall, or an antiques market, or visited show houses (that you never intend to buy)...

...if conversation does not flow during or after your dates, Dr Harley has a lot of advice in how to develop conversational skills that your wife will respond to.

The solution to your wife's not wanting to spend time with you and talk to you is to make her enjoy spending time with you and talking to you. It is not to tell her to get a job!

TM - You are confusing the feeling of respect with the behavior.

The number of times you and Lost talk about "what I built" and "my money" is alarming. I would feel very insecure married to a man with those values.

I think the reason is that we don't feel an equal partnership in our marriages. We don't feel and even exchange of meeting of the needs. It makes us find it very difficult to sound respectful.

I'm sure that at one point he also felt that it was "ours"... but, when needs aren't being met you begin to feel that you are in it alone. Especially after an affair. It is the biggest betrayal... and marriage no longer feels like a partnersip.

When I married.. I did feel like we were doing everything together and everything was ours. With the affair.. you begin to feel alone.. no longer the feeling of US.

Also, I don't have an issue with splitting our stuff 50/50. I think lost has an issue with paying almony for the rest of his ww's life which is funding her affair... that's probably the biggest rub for him.

Your wife not meeting your emotional needs does not make you disrespectful. Don't put that on her.

You are preaching to the choir. Most of the people who have taken the time to post to you have been betrayed. Yet, they managed to eliminate their disrespect and save their marriages.

Those who spend their time arguing about how difficult it is, or justified they are, don't make it.

If you absolutely cannot control yourself, then you are not marriage material and need to move on. People who cannot control themselves do not have happy marriages, even if neither one had an affair.

Everybody here knows it's hard. Everybody here had to do it. Whining that it's hard solves nothing. Either suck it up and do it, or move on. You're a grown man and you can make that choice.

What do you think recovery looks like? How do you think you would get there from where you now are? Do you think you can get there by indulging your feelings?

Having followed your posts for some time now, you have to know that the image you present of yourself is one which would not be attractive to much of anyone. So, instead of arguing the case for why you must be right, why don't you try listening and learning for awhile. Some of us have recovered marriages. We know all about the pain of an affair. The thing is, we found the way out. If you would try listening, you might, too.

We are here becasue we want to do it. It's just hard and we are looking for help.

I gave amazed myself about how far I have come so far..but I know there is more to do.

Yes. It's hard. We all know that because we lived it.

1. Actually, he said clearly the other day he didnt want to give her his money

2. I dont care if you want to divorce your wife. You have every right. If you cant Plan A, PlanB.

You addressed this post to me, quoting something that I said earlier on Lost's thread:

I don't know how someone could read an article and so misunderstand it. You are claiming that this article means the exact opposite of what it actually means.

The article is not about the benefits of a woman's earning her own living vs the disadvantages of not doing so. It is not arguing that the dangers of being the breadwinner are that you make your wife dependent on you, or that she will inevitably feel dependent on you. It does not say that the best solution to their problems is for Sally to earn money.

It says that Greg ACTUALLY DID use his breadwinner status to become controlling. In fact, he became controlling before Sally became a SAHM; he criticised her standards of housekeeping before they had kids, from the word go, and no matter what she did, he kept on criticising. He did not respectfully complain; Dr Harley says he criticised: " He wanted you to keep the house clean, stay thin and trim, and have sex with him as often as he wanted. When you failed to meet his needs the way he expected them to be met, he would complain about it in the form of criticism."

Sally could never meet his standards. He demanded that she quit her job, which was also controlling. It was not Sally's decision to give up earning when she had her first child - it was a demand made by Greg, and you should know that demands should never be made in marriage. Demands are a means of exerting control, and enforcing your will, on your spouse.

After she became a SAHM, Sally felt that her non-earning put her at a disadvantage because of the way Greg treated her, not because in some basic way she felt that not earning money equalled dependency. She said she enjoyed being a SAHM at first. What made her come to hate her SAH role was that Greg made her ask for money and account for every penny; she said he made her feel like a prostitute. Dr Harley says:

"Greg, you may not have fully understood the control you had over Sally, and may have intended to give Sally the right to express her opinions, and refuse your requests. But because she didn't understand your intentions, for her, each request you made was a demand that she had no right to refuse.

In an effort to avoid feelings of insecurity, she made every effort to remove the risk of losing your financial support. She did this by trying to do whatever she could to make you happy so that you would not threaten her. But nothing she did worked. The harder she tried, the higher your standards became. In her effort to reach those higher standards she completely lost sight of her own opinions, feelings and needs, and found herself losing her identity."

Sally was depressed about her marriage and her husband's terrible treatment of her, not the fact that she did not earn money per se. It was Greg's withholding money from her when she would not have sex with him that made her feel that she was dependent on him for money, and that he would use that dependency to exert his will, and make her unhappy. If Greg had treated her as an equal financial partner, and not as a child being given an allowance for good behaviour, she should never have felt the way she eventually did.

"Until then, I had to come to Greg for every penny I spent, and he insisted that I account for every one of them. My performance as a "good" wife usually determined my allowance. I often felt like a prostitute. But after I found a job, however, the money I earned was mine to spend on what I needed. I even opened my own checking account and got my own credit cards. I no longer had to cater to Greg's whims or try to meet his unreasonable demands. Within a few weeks, my depression was completely gone. I was cured!"

When she got a paid job as a solution to Greg's financial punishment and control, which robbed her of her identity, she was hurt again by her husband's reaction to that - telling her that she was not caring for the children, and calling her a poor mother.

"Once I was freed from Greg's financial control, he went ballistic. He did everything he could do to try to get me back into his trap, but I resisted his efforts. He criticized my care of the children the most, and even told them that my job was more important to me than they were."

It was this final straw that led to her decision to leave her husband. She left him to be free of his verbal abuse and denigration of her as a mother. Even having a job and being in control of her own money did not make Sally happy, because Greg ramped up his abuse with his complaints that she was a bad mother. The only way for her to get away from his abuse was to leave the marriage, not simply for her to get a job. Getting a job provides women with the independence they need to leave an abusive husband, and Dr Harley tells women to get an education or training if they are living with abuse, so that they can get a job and become financially independent - but they should not be in a position where they are abused and having to leave, in the first place. Dr Harley does not routinely recommend that women do paid work. That decision is for them to decide with their husbands; it is neither intrinsically desirable nor undesirable - until a woman needs to leave, when it become desirable.

The solution to Sally's feelings of being disrespected in her role as a SAHM was for Greg not to disrespect her, not to dole out money as if she were a servant, and not to withhold money when he did not get enough sex. Sally felt financially controlled because she WAS controlled by Greg. If she had been treated as an equal financial (and in every other way) partner, whose work at home was valued, she would not have had to leave Greg.

You ended your quote from Dr Harley in the wrong place. You need to include his answer to the question:

"But, Sally, if the tables had been turned, maybe you could have seen what Greg was up against. Suppose that the only way you would enjoy making love is for Greg to first spend an hour meeting your needs for affection and conversation. Without either, you just wouldn't enjoy the experience. So you explain to him that he must meet your emotional needs in order for you to meet his. Is that control?

It depends. Suppose that talking to you and being affectionate is extremely painful to Greg. After spending two miserable hours with you, he finally gets to have sex. Would he feel controlled by you. You bet!

But, if his conversation and affection turns out to be a pleasant way for him to enjoy the evening with you, and it is capped off with sex, control will be the farthest thing from his mind. We only feel controlled, manipulated or used when what we do for someone else is forced upon us.

If you want to hold up what Sally did by getting a job as a solution, you need to acknowledge where the solution eventually took her: it took her out of the marriage and into a life without Greg, that made her happy. I don't understand how you could fail to see that Sally's "independence" from Greg was actually a tragic end to their marriage.

Dr Harley suggests that another solution was possible:

"But there is another solution that would free her of your control, and keep your marriage together at the same time. That solution is to create an interdependent relationship. I'll use the rest of this letter to explain to you how that can be achieved.

To quickly review, an interdependent relationship is one where you negotiate with your spouse to get what you need in marriage, and you give what your spouse needs in return. Negotiations begin with nothing assumed, except that you will try to meet each other's needs if it can be done in a mutually enjoyable way. No demands or intimidation are permitted, because it's through respectful and thoughtful negotiation that an interdependent relationship is created."

He does not say that she should get a job and stay with Greg. Whether or not she gets a job is not the issue. The solution is that they should make their needs known to each other, and then work on getting each other's needs in ways that are mutually enjoyable.

It might be that Greg had a high EN for family commitment from his wife, once the kids arrived. What this meant specifically was that he preferred that Sally stay at home with the kids. She was actually quite happy to do that:

"After Ellen arrived, Greg decided that I should quit my job and raise our daughter, which I agreed to do. I must say that I was very happy in that role, even though I remembered how it trapped my mother."

If they are to rebuild their marriage, He should not "decide" what she must do, but he could thoughtfully request for her to stay at home. She might well be prepared to consider doing that again. But in order to form the interdependent relationship that Dr Harley recommends, he would have to meet her needs as she would try to meet his. That would mean finding a mutual agreeable solution to his expectations about the housework, and crucially, it would mean no more doling out an allowance, making Sally account ask for any money she needed, and no more withholding money when he felt his needs were not being met.

The article does not support a single thing that you have been arguing about the SAHM.