I meant a personal, not monetary, investment -- of course I don't think you are trying to make money off of people! Believing in the importance of exposing affairs in most cases is an important part of who you are, I take it. You seem quite passionate about it. That's all I meant. Sorry that you felt personally attacked.
As for: "blowing up his Ws life, humiliating her with her family, and so on," I simply take these to be pretty direct consequences of exposing an affair to others and in particular to family members. OF COURSE it is hugely disruptive to have one's affair exposed. OF COURSE it is humiliating for one's parents and children to learn about an affair. Some people think these costs (whether intentional or byproducts) are worth the benefits and effective tools to reconciliation. For instance, you do, I don't. I'm pretty sure most people who go the exposure route after careful thought on these boards, as you did, do it from a loving place with the intention of helping themselves, the WAS, the family,and the M.
Regarding my phrase "not beating up," I assure you that I meant it metaphorically and I was talking about GH's approach. I don't often see people on these boards confessing to or supporting physical abuse -- that was the farthest thing from my mind. What I do see far too often is LBSs who go into emotional attack/blaming/guilting/judging/yelling-rant mode over and over and over again, trying to make the WAS "see the light" through extreme unpleasantness. Basically, a WAS is going to avoid the LBS as much as humanly possible to avoid this kind of assault. Grasshopper is very good about not slipping into that kind of attack mode, he is very aware of how to intentionally move away from that kind of approach.
Now, as for YOU Mr. Puppy, even in a metaphorical sense, I can't recall you acting in that beating-up mode or imagine that you would. I didn't mean to suggest that you did. But, looking back, I can see that such an accidental implication could follow from my less than careful transition away from my paragraph praising GH's to the following thoughts. So, yes, I very sincerely apologize for that unintended implication.
To be clear, when I said that you were a counterexample, I was only thinking about you being a counterexample to how to handle affairs with respect to making the A a central urgent issue and exposing it.
Regarding "moralizing," we've had that conversation. Some things you said to your W early on struck me as moralizing and it seemed to me that you later changed your approach. Indeed, I complimented you on it. I believe at the time that you disagreed, holding that you never moralized. But, like I already said, we have different perspectives on that. All I can say is how things look to me. When I said it before, I didn't mean it as an insult but as a compliment of your personal growth, a sign of detachment, of strength and compassion. Today I pointed to it as a marker in what I perceive to be a shift in you that was very important to your success. Really, I didn't mean it as an insult.
My post was (1) intended to let Grasshopper know that in fact I think his approach is in general a good one and the only sort that really seems to lead to reconciliation to me, and (2) to encourage him to listen to you about boundaries even though you are coming from a very different perspective.
Indeed, the second point was really my main point. Cuz, I still think GH is a wee bit weak on the self-respecting boundaries, which is maybe, just maybe, why he veers off to the controlling side of things. If we don't create and maintain effective self-respecting boundaries in our lives, then it seems to me that we'll be a lot more likely to try to control others who are doing things that would violate boundaries if they were in place. For instance, consider GH's controlling behavior around the hunting boy. If GH had already had some clearer boundaries in place, I think things would be going a bit differently for him... "No friends who aren't friends to the M." "Immediate and complete transparency whenever requested." Unfortunately, now he's gotten himself into a pretty tricky place through his controlling behavior that makes it hard to put in place clear, direct, but non-controlling self-respecting, marriage-enhancing boundaries that aren't ultimatums. You are very, very good at this. It is developing this skill that I'd say is the biggest part of your success. Should you choose to share it with him, I was encouraging him to open his mind to you and LISTEN.
So, to summarize, I promise, my intent was not to attack you. I have no idea how your M is these days, but I know you've done your best, worked hard, grown immensely, seen enormous positive change in your R, and so on. You are a good guy. I really didn't anticipate that what I wrote about your perspective on the importance of exposing affairs would either surprise or distress you. But I can see how there were accidental implications that I did not mean to make. Apologies. Now, please help GH with his boundaries.
