I wanted to post it under my story also. Thanks. -------- My friends, This is a hell of a topic. May I chime in? Thanks. Check out Dr Harleys stuff: http://www.marriagebuilders.com/index.html His stuff may be helpful. I like some of Harleys stuff, especially the Love Bank, The Policies and the Most Important Emotional Needs. But then again this stuff shows up in various forms through out the marriage fixing literature and communitys. From reading about everything under the sun about what we are going through, I think it comes down to a lot of selfishness and selfcenteredness on the part of the WS. We sometimes beat our selves up for what we/they did, but they strayed. They have committed the Ultimate Betrayal. It seems no matter how we justify, explain, dissect, credit, discredit, etc. It still comes down to this one action,
THEY BETRAYED US.
They strayed. If we had followed all this marriage building fixing, divorce busting stuff before our nightmares, BS and WS, we probably wouldn't have these problems. I really believe that. To bad we didn't know this stuff back then. Now that they have strayed and won't come out of La-La land after all our hard work to make things right, I think it reflects poorly on them, not us. Somewhere deep down in side, they know. They know what they did was wrong. They know that they have destroyed thier integrity. They know that they aren't trustworthy, etc. These are the basic building blocks of any and all relationships, marriage, kids, buisness, etc. They know this. I think they are raging mad at us the world, universe, everything when we won't step down to thier level, to behave as they have in some way, to be "bad" like they've been. When we are good, and noble, and kind, and patient, and do the right thing, they can't handle it. They attack us. They can't justify thier behaviors. They know, somewhere deep down inside, that they are/have flawed, to a fault. This is part of why they act so rotten to us, cause we are doing the right thing. I feel your pain too. I'm there too. I sometimes wonder that this hurts us so much because we have seen the light. We've learned what it takes to make a marriage work and that we are willing to do that work. That we want to do this with them. That's why this hurts us so much. That we want to do this with them. We've learned what love really means, what affairs really are, that we can reconcile and build anew, forgive, etc. They haven't learned that. We love them and it hurts. Really bad.
