However, with all due respect for your experience PT, I think you do a disservice to the DB approach by adamantly opposing it here, which I think is misplaced, and wording it the patronizing way you do. "Cheaters always lie," and statements like that, project a "one size fits all" rigidity, & that bothers me. Of course You are entitled to your opinion and expressing it. But your tone/wording can seem smug, fyi.
25,
It's certainly not my intention to be smug or condescending. I have very little time to spend around my job and homelife (both of which are VERY demanding right now), and I try to get around the boards to help as many people as I can, as I have felt led to do this and feel I have a gift for it. I could call my style "plain" or "matter of fact." I don't mince words, and if I smell an affair, I will point it out, as I have studied them for years and see the financial, emotional and even physical pain they can cause to entire families.
I say "cheaters always lie" simply because they DO. I happen to think it's sad as hell, but that's been my observation and I've never seen an exception to it. Even FWAWs/AWAWs on these very boards tell the same thing about their deceit. It is also my experience and study that almost all affairs follow one of only a very few basic "scripts," and -- if applied -- you can use their predictive behavior to help the betrayed spouse be better prepared. I think that's a GOOD thing, and most find it comforting that "this is normal."
If you are "bothered" by either my bluntness or my generalities, then that's your issue, not mine. I do value your takes, as I know others do also, and I think we all have something of value to contribute. I try to contribute what I feel is MISSING from much of the conversation, so I tend to gravitate toward those areas that may appear anti-DB. (This is why I mostly post to people -- men especially -- who are classic "pleasers" or "Mr. Nice Guys", and not to those who are legitimately (pre-affair) controlling, as they need a different approach and there are dozens of others here who are capable of helping them). Most of my approach is, in fact, about 80% aligned with MWDs teachings.
Finally, you say you've never had an affair or been betrayed by one. I'd ask you to consider that you can't possibly know PERSONALLY how one is affected by one. They say that it's worse than rape, and Dr. Harley used to say that in his speeches and talks and one day he talks about how a woman came up to him and told him the horrible story of how she was gang-raped whens he was younger. She was later cheated upon by her husband, and she affirmed to Dr. Harley that yes -- it was worse. I think it is because one is perpetrated by a stranger, to whom we can find someplace in our mind and soul to say "this is evil; this is a bad person," whereas our spouses are the ones we love above all others, and who were supposed to forsake all others for us. It is the single most painful thing that has ever happened to me, and I still bear the wounds, as do all of us LBSs here. Please know that those wounds do influence our advice and our words, no doubt.
