Dear Y-OH-Y

Welcome to Marriage Builders. You are correct that I am not hurt by being asked to at least suspend my posts to a particular person's threads. I did spend a number of hours, trying to think of how to help your friend. I understand that anger can be a healthy phase of internalizing concepts that are discovered in therapy.

But I post with the intent to cousel others, with a syle that allows others to reject any part of my advice, piece meal. I post my ideas freely, with a flurry, receiving the personal benefit of flushing out my own ideas, and furthering my own thinking on issues. It is nice that sometimes others actually realize a benefit. Sometimes the starter of the thread receives no value, but another reply on the thread picks up something helpful. Or a subsequent reader of the thread receives value. When I log on there are often a hundered or so visitors, who never post.

Plan B works motivationally, for a spouse who is a cake eater. A hypothetical might be best here, given the other emotions. If a live-in Wife, W has discoverd her live-in Husband, H is having an affair with Other Woman, OW, that makes her husband H, a Wayard Husband, WH. WH is eating cake, by having the support of W, living in, and OW, on the side. Plan B supposes that a good Plan A has been in place, and the W has been providing significant Emotional Needs and avoiding Love Busters, LB's.

The motivational structure of Plan B is that W withdraws her supportive activities from WS. The withdrawal, theoretically, motivates WS to see the immense value of W, and how little OW actually means to him. Then WH is motivated to meet the demands described in the Plan B letter. Bingo, WH dumps OW, the marriage is in recovery.

Plan B Works to re-start fidelity. Plan B can also be used for the purpose of protecting the W from further feelings of dishonor, by refusing to provide support, or cake, to the WH.

With children, there is some difficulty in entirely cutting off contact as described in MB. The support for WH can be evaluated by looking at Emotional Needs and Questionaires. Once the processes by which WH's needs are being fulfilled are identified, processes can be devised to cut off support to WH. Ideally support to the children will continue undiminished, and only the support to the WH will be suspended.

If cake eating is mostly going on at the residence of OW, and WS has not lived at home for a while, then the cutting off support by W, does not have the full motivational effect, intended by the design of Plan B. This is why the detailed questions about the suport your friend is providing for WS, are important to understand what motivations for re-conciliation would be generated in Plan B.

I have tried to ask questions to determine the legal rights of your friend, but she has not revealed them to me. Certainly that is her perrogative. I have not read over all the thread as recently and as carefully as I might could have, but I am concerned that she understand her legal status. In order for your friend to asess the risk of what she is contemplating, she needs to understand what she has, what she has to lose, and what things might change in the future. Those issues may be painful or difficult to assess. But that is the core, as I see it.

Perhaps I am wrong, and your friend has college all taken care of for her 2 sons. I do not mind being shown that I am wrong. I post thoughtfully to a number of threads, and I sometimes get thread facts mixed up. Some people are less tolerant of my errors than others.

Sometimes I go back and revise my replies, but your friend has not made that request. She just said, "Stop any further posting to my thread."

Welcome again,

As you see, your simple question generated paragraphs, and helped me formulate some thoughts that I had not expressed in detail, recently.

Quipper
Maried 28 years, raised 2 challenging kides, still struggling.

<small>[ October 26, 2003, 06:05 PM: Message edited by: Quipper ]</small>

Dear Orchid,

I have read your ideas, and I am thinking about your advice. I am not always as fast on the uptake as might be normal speed.

This was a quote from my response to Melody Lane

"Part of therapy can be becoming angry, and then, through thinking, the anger is put into perspective, and there is an opportunity for personal growth. I know I did not intend to jump on her (No2no) sensitivites, so I don't see how to feel guilty about it."

I choose people to post to from a variety of reasons. First if no one else has posted a reply, I will at least try to think up some questions to help flush out the issues for me, and hopefully for the starter of the thread. If a thread has only a few responses, and I feel that I have another perspective to add, I will often try to add some new dimensions and concepts.

I posted to No2nos partly because I saw that there were 6 or 7 replies recommending Plan B. I tried to point out, in my post, that the motivational dynamics for success with Plan B were not optimal for Plan B, in fact seemed totally absent.

My goal is good advice. If someone is upset because I have insulted them, with no real therapeutic intent, I would be wrong. If someone gets angry at me for telling it like I see it, then perhaps the lady protests too much, and I am actually getting close to a therapeutic truth.

It does seem that a number of posting women posting to MB, will recommend Plan B, under circumstances that I feel are suspect. Giving a male perspective should be of value to spouses considering Plan B. I do try to be sensitive to Gender issues, although sometimes I am not sure of the gender of the poster. If anyone sees that If am ever perceived as being insensitive to a gender issue, I would appreciate a pointer, from anyone.

I have already stated my intent not to post to No2nos unless invited back. I will take into account your advice that I should stick to posting to men for a while, but you need to give me more foundation for that advice, before I give it significant weight. For most of the higher traffic categories, I don't post to, from reading the thread title in the listing category. I have followed the thread starter from a less traveled category, and post in the high traffic category, as a follow-up with them.

It does not happen very often that someone asks me to stop posting to their thread. But I am fine if someone is tired of my line of reasoning. It is probably therapeutic for them to throw a poster of their thread, as it may help internatlize the therapeutic principles that the ejected poster was advocating. It is probably a good therapeutic idea for more thread starters to throw more posters off their threads.

I like TOOMUCHCOFFEEMAN's style. He posts once to a thread, makes it short, gives his references, and rarely comes back to a thread.

Perhaps the debate on my being asked off a thread will serve to make getting asked off a thread to be less of a big deal. I think our goal should be therapy here, not avoiding the anger of each other, where truth, planning, or feelings are involved. Certainly another important ojective is support. Theraputic comments, in combination with support, fosters personal growth. I try to balance both. When asked not to post further to a thread, my ability to support the MB poster diminishes. Thanks for picking up the suport for No2nos, since my hands were tied.

Blessings,

Quipper
Married 28 years, 2 grown kids, still struggling

<small>[ October 31, 2003, 05:15 PM: Message edited by: Quipper ]</small>