I'm not sure why my posts consistently inflame you so much. Often it seems to me that you look for posts from me to piss you off, lol, without reading them carefully. Maybe you do. Probably you don't. Perhaps you are still pissed off about something I wrote to you. If so, whatever I wrote is probably worth a second look. Often it is the posts that cause the strongest feelings that bear the closest scrutiny in terms of their usefulness in self-exploration. Maybe there is simply something in my style that puts you off or makes it hard for you to see my intended meaning. But, whatever is going on, it is really OK. We are two strangers on an internet discussion board. We don't have to agree. It is fine with me if you think everything I write is boneheaded, lol. What seems clear is that we probably aren't two strangers who can really engage in productive dialog at this point in time. Thus I generally choose to bow out of conversations with you. Please don't take my general lack of reply to your posts to me as an insult or feel ignored. I have no poor opinion of you. If you are on these boards, you are probably a very strong, very loving, very loyal person with intelligence and initiative. We simply mismatch in an online forum.
OT,
You're right -- we're simply not going to agree on a lot of things. But that's okay. I'm not the sort of person who takes such things that personally (as one might think), although I apologize to you and everyone else if I come off that way. (If one of my best friends in college, a devout Marxist-Leninist atheist, and I, a Capitalist and follower of Christ, can constantly argue with and still get along very well with each other, then you should have nothing to worry about.)
And yes, you have at times said things that have flustered me, admittedly. I tend to react to a lot of what you say because I perceive that you don't realize the full implications for what you often advocate. I do read them carefully, and put them in context with the prior conversations of the thread. I also pay attention to the fact there are other people who are reading these threads who are also looking for guidance -- and some things I see advocated by some folks (I'm not trying to single you out) are not necessarily good as a general prescription.
I do give everyone the benefit of a doubt and try to see their arguments from their perspective, but I will challenge those assertions that I think require being challenged. If being challenged is not something you wish to engage in, then I am sorry. It is not my intent to chase anyone off, quite the contrary. I believe everyone should lend their voices to the free market of ideas, but be prepared to haggle nonetheless. And yet in the delicate matter of a forum to help people through tough straits, I think we should consider our words a little more carefully when we're giving advice.
It might seem hard to believe, but I have agreed with you on a couple of occasions (hey, miracle of miracles, right?) I'll go even further -- it is on your recommendation to others that I am now reading PM.
Having said that, I can see where someone standing their ground on moral principles, setting boundaries, can be percieved as being "on a moral high horse". Especially if one wants those boundaries to be fuzzy and malleable. If I challenge such notions then perhaps it offers you an opportunity for your own "close scrutiny" and "self-exploration".
In any event, for what it's worth, I wanted to say thank you for suggesting PM -- so far I am finding it interesting.
Hey, choc, a whole bushel of dancing bananas from me (well, you know what I mean ....) Yay, both of you!!!!
It's a subtle vibe, I think. There can be an unspoken "stooping to conquer" Long Suffering Savior emotional projection coming from the betrayed spouse. It seems like since infidelity is the ultimate dealbreaker for a lot of people, and certainly indefensible from a Christian perspective, a certain amount of humility can get lost in all the righteous indignation. "*I* am fighting for my marriage and *I* am willing to take s/he back and be all Christlikey and forgiving; aren't I wonderful?" Which is rarely warranted, being as there are almost always plenty of faults on both sides to go around. Even if it's justified, it's counterproductive; who wants to come back to a marriage with a shaming, self-righteous Father (or Mother) Figure? and what basis is guilt for rebuilding a healthy relationship?
It's not about accepting behavior that outrages your standards ... it's about your attitude during the process of maintaining your boundaries..
A little of that human touch, indeed ... an environment of partnership and empathy and acceptance of mutual fallibility, even if one partner fallibled-up much more obviously than the other.
Choc, yer doin' great.
Last edited by Kettricken; 09/29/0909:50 PM.
"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." -- Frank Herbert
Thanks, Kett. What works for me very well, humility-wise, is to remember (and say to my wife frequently) that I have a ton of faults, too -- they're just different ones than hers are. A lot gets made in our family of her messiness and of course the infidelity "thing" is still there, unspoken, but so what? So I'm a world-class procrastinator, pouter, gotta-be-right-all-the-time knucklehead.
So yeah, that helps.
You hit the nail on the head with the "father figure" thing. I mean, who the hell wants to have hot monkey sex with their FATHER???
You hit the nail on the head with the "father figure" thing.
So, Pup, are you implying that you had indeed been guilty of acting like a "father figure" towards your W -- i.e., "shaming" and "self-righteous"?
Or, was it (as I suspect) that this was your W's perception of you, simply because you still held to your moral convictions, and not that you held anything over her head?
I think it's a little of both, and some of it is FOO-related and probably couldn't have been avoided anyway, only minimized. My wife went from living with her parents to marrying me and living with me, and her own Love Language profile shows she has a very high need to feel "taken care of" and secure. I think when you COMBINE this context and background with what I felt I needed to do to aggressively bust up her affair, and the strong boundaries that I insisted upon, I think it FED INTO that whole "father-daughter" dynamic and we then had some (and still DO have some) serious work to do as "husband-wife."
If you ask her (and I have), she will tell you that she very much respected the stand I took, that it made her feel loved and that she "mattered" to me. But she also agreed with me when I observed recently that in many ways ours had evolved into more of a father-daughter relationship than a husband-wife one, and even told me "That's EXACTLY what my IC said!"
I've had this conversation, at some length, with 25MLC; I don't think "shame" should EVER be used to try to bust up an affair and then to reconcile. And it's a fine line between "shame" and "holding up a boundary" and insisting on fidelity and even holiness in our marriage relationship.
I think the breakthrough for us came when I began to open up more and share my own shortcomings with her, and the Christian example of "no sin is greater than another" and "we've ALL sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Self-confessing some of my own weaknesses, sometimes seriously and sometimes through self-deprecating humor, and showing a more humble spirit toward my wife's shortcomings, has made a huge difference, and I THINK that's what Oldtimer is referring to.
It does, Pup, and thanks for your thoughtful response.
I asked because I wonder about just what you mentioned, that unresolved childhood issues make manifest in people's aversion to accountability.
I too agree that one should not try to evoke shame for harms done, nor should one condone those harms done either. You've taken the word right out of my mouth with regards to all of us falling short.
I have learned (the hard lesson) that glossing over your spouse's faults can be even more unhealthy to a M than pointing them out. The balance between the two extremes is that we have to, as the Apostle Paul suggests, speak the truth in love.
Unfortunately, some don't care to have the truth stated at all, especially if that means any form or degree of discomfort.
I am reminded of when Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well. He showed her the utmost of compassion and understanding when he addressed her, and yet he still spoke the truth about her sinful life. He did not shy away from that which was uncomfortable to her, identified her sins and offered her a path to salvation -- He spoke the truth to her in love, and in so doing raised her outlook upward.
Sadly, our modern world would rather choose to look upon His confrontation with this woman as "oppressive".
I agree with you on all counts, NoCode. Many people forget that our Lord, with His forgiveness, also said "Go and sin no more," and didn't hesitate to call it sin.
This was also the reason why I decided to give my wife some finite amount of time (altho I kept my "deadline" hidden in my heart, and told her only that "my patience won't last forever") in order to end her affair. Because, at SOME point, "loving standing" turns into "condoning" of the sinful behavior, and I wasn't going to continue to put my stamp of approval on her adultery. My kids, especially, were watching to see how I was going to handle it, and I believe that NEITHER a quick kick to the curb nor a looong-term "standing" was going to be the best witness of my own faith.
Everyone must weight for themselves just what that timeframe is, and how much they can stand. I think a lot of it has to do with how well you are doing with enforcing your boundaries, and how civil things are. For me, it was six months, and thankfully I only had to go three.
