My head is spinning with all that I am going through right now but I wanted to bring up this issue. BSs are often heard to say that while we are not responsible for the decisions our WSs made that led them to affairs, we are 50% responsible for the state of the marriage.<p>Is this always true?<p>When my H and I reconciled I took on a great deal of responsibility for the state of the marriage and tried to change overnight. My H was astonished at this. He waffled between saying it was all his fault with saying it was all mine. There were even some shared responsibility cases made by him. However, as time went on I realized that while I had withheld love, for example, there were many, many times where I didn&#8217;t withhold love, despite great personal pain to me when I was rejected.<p>I continued to do almost everything I could do to work on the marriage. I had been working on my self for years, going to marriage counseling alone, reading every book I could find. My husband claimed that he had certain needs and I tried to fulfill them. Every time he got what he wanted he upped the ante or outright rejected me. I was told he had no need for affection, conversation with me or recreational companionship. When I found HNHN he said, yes, he wanted what the stereotypical husband in the book wanted, attractive spouse, domestic support, etc. <p>I had already started growing my hair long (as he liked it), losing weight (despite an undiagnosed thyroid condition), bought a few new more fashionable clothing items, start wearing makeup (despite an allergy to even the most natural stuff and him initially telling me for years that he didn&#8217;t like makeup, changing his mind after D-day), changed my hair color, etc. I assure you he noticed none of it and that I had contemplated lighting my hair on fire and dancing naked on the lawn to get his attention. There were other aspects of his alleged needs I was trying to meet also, SF for one. We were doing it like rabbits for awhile. <p>Turns out he was lying about his needs. Tells me now that he has always dreamed of a relationship that he could talk to me like he does now, and has a strong need for recreational companionship, was even desperate enough to want to go grocery shopping together as one form of RC. Of course, conversation and recreational companionship is what OW was doing for him. <p>He has lied continuously about his feelings over the past twelve years, despite many efforts on my part to see if he was OK about certain things. He says now that I took his dreams of raising children a certain way away from him, yet whenever I tried to include him on parenting he said &#8220;That sounds good,&#8221; unless we were fighting. Then he would accuse me of being mentally unstable because I was too attached to our daughter(s). When asked repeatedly if he felt slighted after the children he denied this. I even admitted that I missed his attention that he now gave exclusively to them. He still wouldn&#8217;t admit it. <p>He lied about his feelings, thoughts, actions, personal history, the whole flipping shebang. He turned everything good or kind that I did into a negative. He had wanted me to be supportive of his work, take an interest. When I did this, he said he felt like we were just business partners, and that it proved that all I cared about was his paycheck, and whether he kept his job or not. Even our old MC, who was very charmed by my H, said that he twists every positive into a negative and he is the only one beating himself up.<p>On top of this, I showed him the affair section in HNHN, asked him not to go down that road with OW and instead he used it as a blueprint and later said that I gave him the idea. He pretended to work on marriage through Dr. Phil books while carrying on with OW. He was verbally abusive and threatened me physically for years. On D-day he assaulted me and eventually plead guilty to a domestic assault charge.<p>Despite all of my changes, he refused to see them because then he would have to work on himself. As he goes through IC now, he realizes that so many of his actions were deliberate attempts to destroy me, although probably not on a conscious level. He's got a thing going on where he emotionally confuses me with his father.<p>Yes, I was a ***** and angry a great deal of the time. No, I didn&#8217;t listen to him the way I should have. I love busted, sure. No, I didn&#8217;t want to spend time with him but we were to be going on our first date sans kids in years on D-day! I was trying! Everything I did to him he did to me 10x over plus he added several categories in a malicious attempt to destroy me.<p>Why exactly am I 50% responsible? <p>I am still changing, working on myself, seeking counseling, etc. I want to be the best me possible regardless of whether we are together or not. But I just don&#8217;t feel like shouldering all of this anymore.<p>He hides behind my role in the marriage to keep from seeking the help he needs in anger management, for example. He chose to lie, neglect, cheat, steal and abuse. I didn&#8217;t leave him but I certainly didn&#8217;t lie down for his abuse and allow him to walk over me. <p>Thoughts? Sorry so long!

Nursebetty,<p>So much of what you wrote here sounds like my previous marriage. Accept that my XH has never gotten to the point at which he can look at himself critically are realize his contributions to thing. <p>You bring up a very good point. Anytime two people are involved in a relationship it is what both of them make it to be. That is why the BS/WS share 50% in the responsibility for the state of the marriage at the time the affair begins. <p>IMHO, once the affair begins, the WS assumes a much larger percentage of responsibility for the state of the marriage because they are making unilateral decisions for both spouses. They have introduced a dynamic into the relationship that the BS is usually not even aware of. Once the BS discovers the affair, which they usually do, the amount of pain inflicted on the BS damages the marriage even more. <p>I do believe that there are relationships in which one spouse contributes more then 50% to the destruction of the marriage. What you are telling us here does sound like that is the case with your marriage.<p>That was the case in my previous marriage too. But then again, when I look back I can see things that I did to contribute to the failure of my marriage.. they were not inherently bad. But they did not work in our marriage. What I did wrong was that for a long time I make it easy for my XH to be the worst he could be. The first time he man handled me, I did not call the police and have him prosecuted. I knew better but instead I cowered and tried to ‘make nice’. That was the beginning of years of emotional and physical abuse. The fact that the abuse continued was MY FAULT. I had the power to stop it either by leaving him or scaring the h3ll out of him with law. Though, like you I spent my previous marriage trying to meet my H’s needs and bettering myself, I did enable his bad behavior. I allowed him to be the worst he could be. By the time I stood up to him and said enough is enough.. it was too late to save our marriage. The way I see it in my previous marriage, my XH’s 50% was his mean, abusive behavior towards me. My 50% was enabling it in so many ways it would take a book to explain them all.<p>Now in my current marriage, I feel that I have no responsibility for my H’s affairs…. Zero, zip. He was involved with some of the women at the time we got engaged. He continued those relationships and added more all the way through our engagement and up the d-day in the 9th month of our marriage. I take no responsibility a damaged relationship because he never allowed me to meet his needs from day one. <p>Don’t know if I made any sense here. Hope I did.

nursebetty,<p>I struggle with this daily, figuring out what I did to contribute to the state of our marriage. I plan to verbally and in writing take full responsibility for everything I can think of that I have ever said or done to harm H and our marriage.<p>My biggest "sin" is enabeling him to continue to do harm to himself, to me, and to our marriage. I tend to minimize the things he does wrong, and magnify the things I do wrong. For some reason I want to "protect" him from something. Perhaps I really want to "protect" myself from the truth?<p>Tonight I was able to detach emotionally from H's infidelities, and here is what came to mind. All types of A's are selfish, inconsiderate, and cruel, that we all know. They are also a very IMMATURE, CHILDISH, SELFINDULGENT way of coping with life. The word BRAT comes to mind also. BRAT in the dictionary means "an unruly child". One woman on MB said her H told her his A was basically "emotional masturbation". <p>I think I am probably responsible for about 25% of the problems in our marriage. I'm also responsible for putting up with too much cr@p. H is 100% responsible for A's. I became so EXHAUSTED trying to meet his needs that I could no longer meet them at all. He is a high maintainance guy. We have a high maintainance family, including chronic life threatening illnesses and one terminal illness. H's solution? REPLACE me, throw a "fit" of selfcentered, resentful, punishing behavior by pursuing OW.<p>FIL told me that H "just needs to grow up". I agree. I also need to grow up and stop making excuses in my mind for his behaviors. <p>I'm rambling, dont have a clue whether I even adressed your question. But NO things are not always 50/50. Maybe in a perfect world????

Betty,<p>I, too, very much identify with all of your contortions to improve your M through the years. I did almost all the exact same things to no avail.<p>I read somewhere recently (wish I could remember where!) that it is usually the partner contributing the LEAST to the M who has the A.<p>And like Replaced, I bent over backwards for so long and put such major effort into it (meeting all his high-maintenance needs) that I finally burned out when life dealt out too many blows at once.<p>I see his A as the culmination of a decade of disrespect, misogyny, and contempt where *I* was his whipping boy of choice. And I, like Zorweb, enabled it. I didn't call him on his disrespectful and contemptuous behavior as I should have. I always wanted to keep the peace at all costs because he would punish me no end if I dared to rock the boat by standing up for myself.<p>I think this is why I have such major resentment issues. I stuffed down my feelings in order to keep him happy, so like Dr. Harley says in his column about resentment, I have a lot more to forgive than just the A and post-A behavior--that's just the tip of the iceberg.<p>Part of Plan A for people like us is learning new behaviors that include non-LB confrontation and conflict resolution. I have just as much responsibility as he does for changing this marital pattern, and so far I haven't been doing a very good job. I've allowed multiple actions on his part to LB me without informing him that that is what is happening, and my Love Bank was dangerously low BEFORE the A. Now, there's nothing there. I've agreed to things I never should have agreed to because it was not the enthusiastic agreement POJA requires.<p>[ May 03, 2002: Message edited by: Conqueror ]</p>

One question----WHY ARE WE LIKE THIS?????<p>In defense of my H, he does acknowlege a lot of things he has done wrong, many times blaming himself TOO much. Then at a later time he says things or sends vibs that tell me that I am being blamed for everything.<p>One severe problem is that he assumes, misinterprets, and misunderstands a ton of stuff, then will operate for many years believing something that couldnt be farther from the truth. It just blows me away some of the stuff he has in his head.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Replaced:
<strong>One severe problem is that he assumes, misinterprets, and misunderstands a ton of stuff, then will operate for many years believing something that couldnt be farther from the truth. It just blows me away some of the stuff he has in his head.</strong><hr></blockquote><p>Replaced,<p>I think some, if not all, of this type of thing is self-serving. For instance, my H was SURE I didn't care about him and WANTED him to have an A!!!!! [img]images/icons/shocked.gif" border="0[/img] Now, he could have just been saying this after the fact to justify himself. Who knows?<p>Another thing he's told me since D-day is that he spent OUR ENTIRE MARRIAGE believing I still carried a torch for my ex-H!!!!! [img]images/icons/shocked.gif" border="0[/img] Now, Zorweb probably has some idea how much of a shock this was to me since we've compared notes several times about the similarities of our ex-Hs. Nothing could have been further from the truth!<p>But isn't it convenient how the things they assume, misinterpret and/or misunderstand always seem to enable them in justifying some unsatisfactory behavior of their own?

Conqueror,<p>I am 1000% sure of something. My H's way of viewing the world (and me, our family, our marriage), is directly tied to his childhood issues. It becomes obvious when we are under overwhelming stress. This has seriously damaged our life together. Makes it very hard to apply MB principles. We ALL have issues, some more severe than others. <p>There is something very spooky about all of this. It almost feels like I am being used for something without my knowlege. as if I am simply a part of some game that is being played. Getting too deep here!!! I just know there is a dark side to all of it that I dont even want to think about right now. I'm kind of scared.

Conqueror and Replaced -<p>I only have a minute, but do we have the same husband?<p>Radical stuff in his head with no basis, childhood issues being played out onto me, convinced I was carrying a torch for an ex-boyfriend (see my post of two weeks ago on soul mates, taking all blame, then none, etc . Ugh!

I will take the blame for my 50% share of the state of our marriage. I will take 0% blame for his A. Fulfilling his needs may seem to take 120% from me whereas if his needs were the same as mine, it would only take 30% of me. Fulfilling my needs probably seems to take 120% to him. He could easily quit helping sweep, mop, do clothes, watch and play with kids, tending to the garden, keeping the yard neat, maintaining the vehicles, staying awake night after night to hear me drone on and on about my feelings, etc. Yet he does these things because I need them. So when I feel like I'm giving more than he is, I stop and look at things from his point of view. Of the list above, the only thing he did well during the last 3 years of our marriage (prior to his A) was maintaining the vehicles. So do I say he's not trying now? He definitely wasn't trying in the right way back then, and neither was I. All of my efforts were misplaced. I was running myself ragged trying to do what the family needed, what I THOUGHT he needed, and I was missing the mark terribly. Maybe he was making the same mistake. Because to me he wasn't doing anything for me during those 3 years, and apparently he felt the same about the efforts I was making. So I've taken the 120% I was doing then, rerouted it and am now putting 120% into the things he needs instead of the things I thought he needed. And he's attempting to do the same.<p>BELIEVE ME, I LET HIM KNOW IF HE'S FAILING!! [img]images/icons/grin.gif" border="0[/img] It's a lot better than my old way of just sweeping it under the rug and hoping it will improve down the road.

nursebetty and conqueror, WOW, I probably don't come here enough, but I hadn't seen anyone with my WH's obsession that I'm still in love with an old boyfriend. He has used this throughout our 20 years together as an excuse to be verbally abusive, especially during his drinking years - the 1st 8 years and the last 2.5.<p>nb, I really relate to your question because I've been going to IC for about 9 months and gotten us into MC with 4 different counselors, he always ends it, I lost 30 pounds, work out regularly, go to 4 Al-Anon meetings a week, have read and tried everything I could possibly think of, run our business single handedly, yet continue to get blamed for all his problems and the failure of our marriage. <p>He, on the other hand, has quit working at our business and quit working all together while continuing to collect a paycheck and use the company credit card as he wishes, gotten evicted from 4 different residences and several local motels for trashing them and/or not paying the rent, gotten a DUI and totalled his car, and gone back and forth between me and OW while lying to both of us.<p>Every once in a while, he'll break down and apologize and admit he has treated me badly, but this is usually very short-lived. Then it's back to how he could never measure up in my eyes to old boyfriend, I spread rumors about him among our employees and all over town, I write things like this about him to people in MB, I never trusted him, and never believed in him. <p>Sorry for going on so long. I'm having a kind of bad day after a day of abusive phone calls from him yesterday. Usually, I'm able to stay pretty detached and focused on myself. But thanks for your question and especially for the info that I'm not the only one with an H who twists and turns reality to justify his own behavior.

jamup,<p>I'm thinking of removing all rugs from our house to prevent dirt from being swept under them. Those little piles of dirt grow into volcanic mountains. [img]images/icons/grin.gif" border="0[/img]

I think WSs in the fog, or even out of the fog sometimes, have an uncanny ability to do several things:<p>1. Find childhood issues they'd never talked about or noticed, suddenly become major justifying reasons for their As or for other shortfalls.<p>2. Find actions/misactions their BSs committed 25 years ago to have formed the basis of their distrust/anger/abuse/fill-in-the-blank of today. Especially when it has to do with As.<p>3. "Discover" that for 20 years they have "known for absolute sure, no-question-about-it" that their BSs felt X or Y about them, M, Rs, this-or-that and that they'd never had a reason to question that knowledge.<p>However, if I were to have neglected their ENs because I was working my a-- off to go from 40k to 95k per year after bankruptcy, that is an absolute unforgivable, unjustified-any-way-you-look-at-it, unforgivable no-no that caused the A.<p>Sounds to me like the fog's still around, and facing the harsh reality is too much to bear for these poor souls...is patience enough?

I think in cases like these, the best you can do is be radically honest with yourself, really confront yourself, and fully own the stuff that truly is yours, but at the same time stay grounded in reality about the rest and not buy into the distorted version. My hope is that by fully owning and making amends for the REAL stuff and standing firm about the not-real stuff, that the contrast may help him to self-confront. <p>IOW, if I exhibit a noticeably humble, remorseful, empathic attitude on the real stuff, then he may be able to see that I'm not trying to dodge responsibility for my wrongdoing or shortcomings, and then hopefully it would be evident regarding the projected things that maybe, just maybe I have some other reason for rejecting the blame for whatever it is.<p>But then, I could also be projecting MY logical thought processes on this "solution". [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img] <p>Jamup,<p>I know what you are talking about regarding efforts not hitting the target. I figured that out at the demise of my first M when I read HNHN. I finally understood that following the Golden Rule doesn't work in M because my efforts to meet the needs that are the most important to me had no effect on my H because he had totally different needs!<p>This time around though, it is a different story, which is why it is so frustrating. At least last time I was able to have an "A-ha!" moment where it all made sense when I read HNHN. This time, pretty much everything makes no sense, or even when it does (his needs not being met because of multiple health and grief crises), there is not a whole lot you can do about it to prevent it in the future.<p>I married a fellow BS this time, so I thought that helped reduce the risk of infidelity. I had already internalized HNHN, so I was well aware of the basic concepts. I even had us read the book together so that I could get his input on what his needs were so my efforts WOULD hit the target. Also, he's usually very vocal about his needs, so I would hop to and try to follow through whenever he expressed a specific need.<p>On the other hand, he would be offended when I would tell him he wasn't meeting my needs and request that he would. He would tell me that my needs were not legitimate and that I shouldn't have them. He would be furious that his efforts to meet the needs most important to him didn't have the desired effect on me, and my explanation about my needs being different just infuriated him more. He just doesn't get it.<p>In the end, though, it was a succession of life crises that inhibited my ability to meet his needs--things you cannot control or prevent. As I look back, I see that I could have tried harder to endure what was going on, get on antidepressants maybe, little things here and there where I might have been able to do things a little differently, but I was under major duress, and I'm not so sure that even my best efforts under those circumstances would have been enough to meet his very high-maintenance needs.<p>Sometimes life just hits you with so much that you can't keep all the balls in the air at the same time no matter how much you've learned and been able to apply previously. [img]images/icons/frown.gif" border="0[/img]