The Four Phases of SSM Recovery

[Bagheera]

Is this breakdown making sense to anyone else?

Hmmm...I didn't make myself very clear.

I was more interested in feedback on the four phases themselves, and not so much the time-line that I took to go through them --> which will vary significantly from situation to situation.

What prompted this thread is that nearly every frustrated, HD spouse who comes here is initially looking for a way to jump to Phase 3 immediately (ala NTE, Cinco, etc.). I honestly would have been doing the same thing, but for two reasons: (1) a job-related 6-month separation which forced me to look at my own life and work on MYSELF exclusively, while my wife was thousands of miles away, and (2) I hadn't found the SSM book yet to shove it under her nose prematurely.

Looking back to two years ago, my wife and I were each leading our own separate and parallel lives, staying together "for the sake of the kids," and both of us had 20 years worth of anger, resentment, and a complete lack of trust in the other to meet our marital needs. If I had found and given a copy of The SSM to my wife at that time (a) she would have seen it as an attempt to fix HER only, and (b) she would have told in no uncertain terms that there was a LOT more wrong with our marriage than a lack of sex. And she would have been right.

However, as it turned out, I got lucky. I had the time and opportunity to wake up, work past my own frustration and resentment, reclaim my masculinity, and take the lead in fixing our relationship. I then found the right books to educate myself in men, women, and relationships enough to see what I had been doing wrong for all those years and begin to fix it -- and really begin to understand and meet my wife's (very different) needs. It was only after a few months of applying what I had learned from the M/V books (and others), that I found the SSM book, could introduce it to my wife, and then get her fully on board toward fixing our foundering sexual relationship.

It's this 'progression' that I wanted to share, especially with those still caught up in their own bitterness (but who still love their spouse and desperately want to find a way out of that pit).

-- B.