Keep Your Hands Offa My Mojo

[Kimmie Lee]

OMG!!

SP, I guess when an h walks, it's the mans fault. And when a w walks, it's still the man's fault.

*snicker*

[hoosiermama]

just re-read my last post, and realized it could be perceived as passive-aggressively commenting that Mrs. SP's perception was the only correct one. Which is not at all what I meant, and perhaps proof that I should leave your engaging writing style to you and not seek to emulate it! What I meant is very straightforwardly asking the questions I asked, because it IS what I'm struggling to understand about relationship in general and myself in relationship in particular...given that perception is reality, how does one combat festering resentment after the almost inevitable slights of a marriage? Yeah, there's Schnarch and there's Stosny and I'm reading them but still...it's what led Mrs. SP down her path, it's there for so many of us, and it's very much about perception. What does SP have to say?

[JayMan]

And while we're at it, a flipside of the coin. I'll ask forgiveness in advance for cynicism.

What if the WAS and the LBS are BOTH different? Pardon my intrusion, but it appears that whatever relationship the dynamic duo of Mr./Mrs. SP had, something wasn't healthy. I'm absolutely certain of it in my case.

I wonder if, in the flurry of lust and infatuation that makes up a new squidgy romance, your interests are in changing yourself to make the other person happy, even though your fun-loving wonderful self would've been enough.

In the heat of the moment, and the 6-times-a-day-couplings, it just seems natural to gloss over the yucky things. Meaning, to me, that many if not most romances start with an illogical assumption that the other person is perfect, as is evidenced by the utterings of many WASs on here when they reference an affair partner.

Of course, as time proceeds, you don't want to let go of that "perfection", so you continue it, and maybe lose a little bit of yourself as you go along, just flakes shredding off until you are a bitter shell of who you once were, or perhaps living under cake makeup that you put on..

To me this is exactly where GALing comes in - because it separates you from your wandering spouse, and allows you to return to those roots of who you were. And the success of N.U.T.S (apologies, SP) and other items are thusly incredibly important because this return to your roots must be permanent, else wise you find yourself returned hence from which you came.

It is my contention that the wayward spouse returns in these cases because you finally shed the facade, or put back on the shining armor of days gone by. I can recall simply relaxing - the fun and funniness come on their own, just being ME.

Now, another thought along these lines that I'm sure has crossed many minds: is the WAS an alien, or just a return to their true selves? My WAW went from being a loving, generous, moral, caring, amazing mother and wife, to a selfish, arrogant, affair-consuming, so-so mother. Am I to believe that I lived with a facade for almost 8 years?

Has SP found his smashing original self or become a new man?

[Gardener]

HM,

...given that perception is reality, how does one combat festering resentment after the almost inevitable slights of a marriage?

A question I struggle with on and off. When it's on I tell myself two things:
1)If I'm feeling resentment again, then detachment is getting away from me. So I mentally forgive. Can't forgive and resent at the same time.
2)"Resentment is like drinking poison and hoping your enemy will die from it."
Actually, ignore the quotation marks since it's really a paraphrase of something I recently read (I forget where and by whom at the moment).
Fwiw.

[aliveandkicking]

OMG!!

SP, I guess when an h walks, it's the mans fault. And when a w walks, it's still the man's fault.

*snicker*

Silly. Maybe when a marriage breaks down, it is both partner's responsibility.

[aliveandkicking]

Has SP found his smashing original self or become a new man?

"Original self" + evolved and improved.

[SmileysPerson]

given that perception is reality, how does one combat festering resentment after the almost inevitable slights of a marriage?

This is such a good question, and such an important one, that I hate the fact that the only response I have at the moment is such a cliche -- communication.

Let me back up a bit. What's wrong with marriage? Not the institution or the sacrament, but the "thing"?

It's hard, and no one ever TELLS you that it's hard. "She's The One," "you complete me" -- this bullsh*t has so completely over-romanticized what is, at the end of the day, a remarkable thing -- two strangers linking lives in pursuit of a common goal -- that we assume, and understandably I think, what with the romance-centric way we look at life, that it should be easy -- if we even articulate that much.

So wind it up and off it goes.

What we don't think much about -- even when we get it in that pre-marriage counseling (I mean, let's face it, yada yada that's never going to happen to us, we're Us!!) -- is the essential role of maintenance. (Which is, I think, a better term for "communication," as it captures a lot more of what needs to go on -- there's sexual maintenance, for example.)

It's in the maintenance that, cf @aliveandkicking, the "future" SP could have materialized as the "present" SP. But once one -- in my case, Mrs. SP -- decides that the transformative dynamic is not going to happen, one is denied the opportunity.

I write that not in a blameworthy, finger-pointing way, but simply as reflection (I'm sure there's a reciprocal for me, vis-a-vis Mrs. SP).

So there's really 2 questions here, and 2 responses (not "answers"), only 1 of which I think I'm in sight of:

how does one combat festering resentment after the almost inevitable slights of a marriage

With respect to the Spouse, I think you just have to come out with it. Murder will out, after all. You just have to have the guts and the courage and the trust in the relationship to say, "Hey, that just pissed me off." If you hesitate, I think, as I so often did, it speaks to something missing -- either in yourself or the relationship or both.

As to stopping those feelings IN yourself....that I haven't a clue about. And one thing that makes it difficult for me to get focus on is that I believe -- really, I do -- that resentment isn't always a bad thing. I mean, if you've been slighted, then you DESERVE to feel that. So how does cope with the corrosive effects of resentment, especially over time, while still honoring the feeling?

Onward and upward.

[Dia]

FWIW, being willing to just up and out with it means that the resentment has no chance to linger, no chance to fester. At least that's what I'm experiencing so far.

I think a large part of the resentment puzzle is that we resent most that which we allow to continue. We resent being complicit in our own suborning. We resent *ourselves* perhaps as much or more than the actions of our spouse or others. I'll even take back the word 'we' since I'm speaking of myself here.

Long before I was setting boundaries and speaking up when something hurt me with H, I was doing it with my sister and parents. And just the speaking up - even if it brought about no change whatsoever in my sis or parents - cleared the resentment. For the longest time, I thought that speaking up wouldn't change anything, it would, in fact, just create more conflict so why do it?

But when I did it, that's not how it worked.

*I* felt better, stronger, less victimized when I spoke up. Even if it did cause conflict. Even if it didn't bring about any change in others. Because even so, it brought about change in *me*.

It's ironic that it's my mother who always told me that no one can walk on me unless I lay down and let 'em. And it's ironic that it's my mother who's been pissy with me once I stopped laying down for her. That's ok. She can be pissy if she wants to. That's her choice. Mine is simply to stop laying down. It's the proverbial road less travelled, and it's made all the difference in the world for me.

[hoosiermama]

It's not a cliche. There are probably a million answers to this, and you have some excellent input on your thread, and it's really what it all boils down to, for me anyway.

I found myself paralyzed by resentment, not once but twice, and so this is an important issue for me. I doubt, at this point in my life, that I have it in me to be in another long-term committed relationship. But if I do, I want to know that I have some resources, some tools to avoid ending up where I was, again. At the moment, what keeps coming back to me is that I made bad choices to begin with. That I forgave until I lost myself, that I communicated but wasn't heard. That really, most of the time I gave it all I had but it takes two. And two of us just weren't doing it. And I can live with that answer.

[SmileysPerson]

What if the WAS and the LBS are BOTH different?
This is one of the challenges of reconciling or thinking-about-reconciling. Neither person is "the same," so what you're really aiming at is a new marriage that just happens to have the same physical persons in it as before.

I wonder if, in the flurry of lust and infatuation that makes up a new squidgy romance, your interests are in changing yourself to make the other person happy
Ed: What is the referent for "the other person" -- which other person are you talking about here?

many if not most romances start with an illogical assumption that the other person is perfect,
Assuming facts not in evidence. But if you want to play with the idea, maybe ALL romances HAVE to start that way. You're not going to go on Date #2 with She Who Farted Through Dinner, now, are you?

you don't want to let go of that "perfection", so you continue it, and maybe lose a little bit of yourself as you go along
Facts not in evidence. Probably as many iterations of how as there are people.

It is my contention that the wayward spouse returns in these cases because you finally shed the facade
With all due respect, you're promoting (as is often done on the boards) a curiously uni-directional model here. Wayward "returns" because LBS "returned" to LBS's "true self." Well where is Wayward in this? Is Wayward static? Was Wayward her/his "true self" when s/he got the hell out of Dodge? What of Wayward's facade?

This is a dynamic -- not static -- interaction. Which is what makes it so infinitely complex. Perhaps Mrs. SP -- flirting as she is with the idea, if not the reality (yet?) of SP -- is doing the same thing. Maybe there's a kind of DB'ing for Waywards.

So she changes; he changes; she observes his changes and changes; he observes her changes in response to his changes and changes. And they still "miss" the target, because now neither is the same. And reconciliation is a bridge too far.

Let me wax statistical (h/t @Coach, @Thinker, and our Big Midwestern City friend who has departed these boards).

What you're sort-of promoting here, @JonF, is a kind of (wikipedia link) linear regression. It's always struck me, in fact, that that model is at the heart of the DB method -- find out what was "wrong" (the explanatory variable(s)), change the value on that variable (she hated that I wore jeans, so now I wear linen trousers), and -- boom! -- you should observe a different outcome (you become the person only a fool would leave -- ta-da!).

Fair enough.

But the Walkaway isn't a "dependent variable" -- isn't a static outcome or observation.

What we have here is a strategic interaction in which both parties are engaged in (internet link) Bayesian updating. Each person is changing his/her beliefs (in lieu of probabilities) about the other in reaction to observable somethings in the other.

My WAW went from being a loving, generous, moral, caring, amazing mother and wife, to a selfish, arrogant, affair-consuming, so-so mother. Am I to believe that I lived with a facade for almost 8 years?

Surely not. But you are to believe that (a) she has changed (though perhaps not/probably not in a permanent way), (b) that that change was (at least from her POV) necessitated by some countervailing set of changes in @JonF, and (c) that whatever changes you make to "bring her back," at the end of the day Back -- Cue Peaches & Herb -- will depend upon --

(1) her next-round evaluation or (i) @JonF, (ii) the marriage itself, (iii) herself, and (iv) @JonF + marriage + herself, and

(2) @JonF's round-after-next-round evaluation of (1).

Which is probably why reconciliation is such a low-probability event.