Disclosure: arguement and debate sure to follow.<P><BR>SNL and anybody else that wants to comment,<P>I've thought a lot about your comment yesterday. You said that guilt was a useless emotion. You didn't really want to go into the dynamics (to much to be discussed). I see it so simple.<P>Why is guilt a useless emotion? Why is not sadness or say loneliness a useless emotion? In my experience guilt has served me well. When my W had an affair guilt led me to look at my part in our relationship. It opened my eyes for the first time to the past few years when W was screaming out for attention. She didn't actually scream but she was crying out and I didn't know how to listen. I felt guilty because I knew something was wrong but I was so stuck on blaming my W for my unhappiness in the marriage that I was doing things that went against who I was. Guilt humbled me and taught me how to prevent myself from hurting another person in this way again. This guilt has allowed me to see that my son is "yelling" for help. If I didn't go through the guilt I wouldn't have known there was a problem. I would just chaulk it up to bad behavior. I might not know how to fix the problem but I am aware of it and I know how not to add to it now.<P>I'm not going to argue that you can manipulate a person into guilt and it will be good for them or you. That has to come from within to be effective. It is also wrong. No good can come from it. If guilt comes from within you can learn lessons and you can then learn how to forgive yourself and become more content with yourself.<P>We all know that sadness serves a purpose. Being sad allows you to grieve a loss. Are you sad because of your loss of OW or are you sad because of your loss of your M? Both? Something is coming to an end if you're sad. I hope you're not dismissing guilt just because it's not convienent for you. If you truly feel no guilt or regret (the same thing IMHO) then no need for you to even respond to this.<P>I hope you don't think I'm trying to push you into feeling guilty cause I'm not. I honestly fell that some good can come out of guilt. Just sharing my experiences. Is your view that guilt is useless tainted because you can not see a purpose for it in your motives or agenda? You said you were selfish, I can't think of a better gift to give yourself than letting yourself feel a little guilt (if it's in you). That will only help you become a better person. <P>I believe guilt is a tough emotion. By admiting it we place ourselves in a vulnerable position. We are admitting we did something wrong. But with that comes freedom. Freedom to forgive ourselves and to expect forgiveness from others. If they don't forgive then it becomes their problem.<P><BR>who

maybe time for more later, you essentially said (I think) guilt was useful in getting your attention, and subsequently that bore fruit, I said that in my post. Beyond getting your attention, guilt is useless. It serves no purpose and is often wrongly applied. Guilt is a hey you emotion, at which time your rational brain needs to assess what to do with it (including ignore it) based on what outcome you desire. Since I operate as much as possible rationally, I have little use for guilt, it doesn't solve any of my problems, it just exposes my comfortzones. Excessive guilt is a huge mental health problem for many, and one main source of low self-esteem. Plus it is used as a control mechanism by others, ie trying to make someone feel guilty, or make choices cause of guilt. Bad bad bad.

I've missed the beginning of this discussion about guilt, but have thought an awful lot about it lately.<P>My H (WS) experiences a tremendous amount of guilt - something I usually try to alleviate rather than promote in him. Because it paralyzes him. Recognizing that you made a mistake is one thing, feeling guilt over it usually accomplishes very little. Mistakes are human, if we can look at them, maybe forgive ourselves a little, we can see where things went wrong, fix them maybe - avoid the same situation reoccuring in the future. It seems that once guilt moves in, things get pretty messed up. Once my H feels guilt (usually in massive quantities) simple problems get so complex that they feel unsurmountable. The chain of reaction to his guilt usually moves this way. <P>1. He gets pissed off at me as a means of self defense. No matter what the situation.<P>2. He mentally/emotionally shuts down. Is completely unable to remember how a situation happened, sequences of events etc. (Yes, this could be bull****, but I don't think so, I see him struggle everytime)<P>3. It usually takes weeks to work through the smallest issues, with lots of tense moments along the way.<P>If guilt is not part of the equation, he is an intelligent, sensitive, thoughtful person, more than capable of analyzing a situation and seeing where things screwed up. Guilt just makes a terrible mess out of even the smallest of problems.<P>I would love to remove guilt from his mind for just a while - a life time maybe. It clouds his awareness of what a great person he is.

snl,<P>Sorry, but I don't think you understand a word I said.<P>who<BR>"When my W had an affair guilt led me to look at my part in our relationship. It opened my eyes for the first time to the past few years when W was screaming out for attention."<P>snl<BR>"you essentially said (I think) guilt was useful in getting your attention, and subsequently that bore fruit"<P>The A got my attention. MY guilt over the decline in my M instilled the changes and the building of MY character. Unlike many here my W did not try to make me feel guilty and blame the A on my behavior. My guilt over my behavior (that came from me) before the A caused me to make changes about my behavior that I wanted and needed.<P>snl,<BR>"It serves no purpose and is often wrongly applied. Guilt is a hey you emotion, at which time your rational brain needs to assess what to do with it (including ignore it) based on what outcome you desire."<P>Completely disagree. As you can see I am proof that guilt has served a purpose. I will agree that it can be wrongly applied. That's what makes it so scary. Just because it's a "hey-you" emotion doesn't make it useless. Couldn't the rush in feeling of love be considered a "hey-you" emotion. Is that useless? <P>snl<BR>"Since I operate as much as possible rationally, I have little use for guilt, it doesn't solve any of my problems, it just exposes my comfortzones."<P>Don't know what to say. That's your decision to make. Just trying to show you that is was helpful for me.<P>snl,<BR>"Excessive guilt is a huge mental health problem for many, and one main source of low self-esteem. Plus it is used as a control mechanism by others, ie trying to make someone feel guilty, or make choices cause of guilt. Bad bad bad."<P>That's why I said,<BR>"I believe guilt is a tough emotion. By admiting it we place ourselves in a vulnerable position. We are admitting we did something wrong."<BR>and<BR>"I'm not going to argue that you can manipulate a person into guilt and it will be good for them or you. That has to come from within to be effective. It is also wrong. No good can come from it. If guilt comes from within you can learn lessons and you can then learn how to forgive yourself and become more content with yourself."<P><BR>who

ROF,<P>Thanks for the reply. I hope you don't think that I'm a huge fan of guilt. My W sounds a lot like you're H. I watched my W loose 25 lbs. by throwing up because she felt guilty. I remember being in such a rush to forgive her. I thought that would help her. Wrong, nothing I can do about it. She has to choose her way. I am happy that she is finally back on anti-depressants and seeking counseling. She made these choices and I know it's going to take a long time but I'm happy for her finding the strength to address it. She was so much worse off before without help. I'm not saying she will get rid of it completely but at least she has a better outlet than bawling for hours on end and puking her guts out. <P>ROF<BR>"I would love to remove guilt from his mind for just a while - a life time maybe. It clouds his awareness of what a great person he is."<P>I hear you but I doubt that's possible. At least that's what I've come to believe. As the BS it is pretty conflicting to see a WS like this. You just want them to quit hurting but at the same time you know that you would probably do the same thing to yourself if you were in their shoes. It feels pretty helpless to watch someone you love living in the guilt and hoping they can get to forgiving themselves. Kinda like wanting somebody to forgive you for something. You want it but you can't necessarily get it from them.<P>who

WHO,<P>I agree with you whole heartedly. I feel that SnL's logic has not served him very well, because he fails to admit as a possible solution things that are not logical to him.<P>Unfortunately, I see this behavior often in my line of work which is mathematically and very logically based. People want to apply linear logic to situations that are not functioning that way.<P>I will offer an example. In arithematic 1+1 =2 . However, try that with children. Adding a second child to the family sometimes makes things, twice as time consuming, difficult, etc. At other times the second one makes little difference. Yet other times the two of them are Too much to handle. In short, the system is not a simple mathematical system. The answer varies depending on the situation, the time of day, the age of the children, on and on.<P>I believe that "feelings" such as you are talking about have a very useful purpose and you offer a wonderful example. What SnL's logic fails to admit, is the very fact that he doesn't have "feelings" for his W makes it impossible for him to accurately analyze his situation or anyone elses. If he ever developed "feelings" for his W, then his "logic" must be changed. Suggesting that his "logic" is very much like the elementary arithmatic when applied to humans, it is ephemeral, thus not "logic" one can build life altering judgements around.<P>You see he must assume that OW feels the same way about marriage. He has never said if her H knows of the affair. He has never said if this is her only affair, making him "the one". The "fit" he says he has found in her, may only be his "fit" not hers. Or the "fit" will disappear if her H doesn't know about this but finds out. He is operating off of a very limited data set here.<P>So WHO, don't worry about SnL's "logic" it is his to struggle with, and it isn't very "logical" [img]images/icons/smile.gif" border="0[/img] to apply "logic" to a nonlinear multiply connected system.<P>I do think you are right. Most of our reactions to situations do have some basis for good and survival. But as has been pointed out if one swings too far with any of these "feelings" the beneficial aspects can turn into big negatives. <P>Must go, but I thought your post merited a response because it does offer an example of the usefulness of "feelings" and how to turn them into something very helpful.<P>God Bless,<P>JL

I talked to my WH a few days ago about guilt and he honestly answered that he has no guilt nor does he feel remorse. I was floored by this answer. He says that he knows he should probably feel guilty, but doesn't. Should I be concerned? I just told myself that he is still in the fog and dropped the subject!

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Moving Forward:<BR><STRONG>I talked to my WH a few days ago about guilt and he honestly answered that he has no guilt nor does he feel remorse. I was floored by this answer. He says that he knows he should probably feel guilty, but doesn't. Should I be concerned? I just told myself that he is still in the fog and dropped the subject!</STRONG><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><BR>MF,<P>That's a tough one. The experts will tell you that M's where the WS feels remorse and compassion towards their BS have the best chance to recover. <BR>I will tell you there were times early on that I couldn't see any of this in my W. I really thought there was no hope for our M. As I learned more about my W, I learned that she has always had low self-esteem although she is one of the most beautiful, caring, outgoing, and thoughtful people you will meet. It was all a mask. She basically blames herself for anything that goes wrong. She internalizes everything. I don't understand this and I'm sure that's what SNL is talking about when he says guilt is riddled with problems. I don't think her problem lies with guilt but with forgiving herself. I know she is blaming the A on herself (rightfully so) and see's no way that she can ever forgive herself for what has happened. She has told me this time and again. I think that has a lot to do with why she can't seem to get past it. She has/had a lot riding on weather it (the A) succeeds or not. I think that she blocked out her guilt for a long time because she knew she could not deal with it. The longer she continued in the A the more her guilt started to show up. Now that she's feeling the guilt she can't get out of the pain because she doesn't know how to forgive herself.<P>I don't know if that made any sense but It took me a long time to see it. I would say that you do have a problem though if your H continues to deny his guilty feelings or really does not have them.<P>This is only an opinion and one thing that I agree with SNL about is that guilt can be used wrong and a lot of emotional damage can occur. Guilt is tough.<P>Good luck,<P><BR>who

Well hard as it may be to believe, I just don't have the energy for a philosophic discussion of guilt. So will not respond to JL or who (sorry guys). First we would have to struggle over definitions, before we could even proceed, I suspect we have somewhat different ones. I will note that people commit suicide over guilt, hardly a desireable application, on the other hand sociopaths feel absolutely no guilt about anything (they are incapable), and that sure is not good. I guess my position is just as I said, guilt is useful as an attention getter, and that is all, at which point your rational mind should assess and decide what the guilt means, and act on it or ignore it. In your case you assessed a need for change and I assume your rational mind figured out what and how to do, guilt played no role in that, far as I can see (but I suspect we are having a semantic conflict).<P>Jl, interesting observation re math and interpersonal behaviour, I agree it is not linear. And I indeed have been "guilty" of trying to manage my life more that way than not. But I am changing that. Draw what conclusions you will, but when I realized I was having inappropriate feelings for ow, all the analysis said stop, but I decided (and I did decide, it was not an accident), to ignore my cognitive side, and make an emotional decision for once in my life. That is what you just said you know, let emotion rule more. But that has consequences too.

SnL,<P>An interesting take on my post. But you didn't read anything I have ever posted that said let emotions rule. It isn't all or nothing, and your take on this is exactly what I was saying to WHO and in response to you. <P>You cannot take "logic" and solve these issues. You cannot ignore feelings and emotion. By the same token as you so aptly proved, working on nothing but emotion with no feed back from facts, reality, or even rational thought, is not going to work either.<P>That is what has troubled me so much about your many long posts. You seem to oscillate between trying pure logic and pure emotions. You like to impute to others your own views, but you don't seem to realize that this landscape is in color, not shades of grey or more accurately black and white.<P>Frankly, if I take what you have described about your marriage as true, then I would have left long ago. Why? because there were "facts" present that strongly suggested you really didn't have a marriage.<P>My own preference for handling things of this nature is to look at the "facts", the behaviors, assess how they make me feel, and then respond with a reasoned approach that seems consistent with what I think I know about the "facts". <P>It doesn't necessarily make me feel better, but it is like firing someone who isn't cutting it but you like. One must on occasion do somethings that are right but make you feel just awful.<P>So my point, is that to say guilt is a useless feeling is to ignore the very positive effect guilt can have as illustrated by Who. As you point out, a sociopath has no sense of guilt or sin except as it makes him feel good to do whatever pleases him/her.<P>I personally operate on the dictum that the two great motivators in life are: Fear and Greed. Both of these terms being applied in a very general sense, greed is not just about money. It was recommended to me by someone I knew and trusted that if you should run into someone not motivated by these things; stay away from them. They are dangerous.<P>Sort of a cynical point of view but in my over 5 decades of life and many years of traveling, I have found no exceptions. People fear many things, and are greedy for others, yes even being thought of as the best minister. [img]images/icons/smile.gif" border="0[/img]<P>So my take on your addressing guilt as a useless emotion is that you are wrong. It does serve a very useful purpose because it reminds us when we stray from our own core beliefs. But, as you and others, including myself have stated anything can be taken to excess and abused. Even feelings.<P>God Bless,<P>JL