Well, I don't know. Wanting to be with you and wanting to work on your relationship so that the relationship can be sustained are two different things.
A woman might not be "feeling it," but is willing to put the work in because she knows it's the right thing to do and that the relationship is worth saving. A woman may also change her mind about walking away (for the time being) but may not be willing to put the work in to rebuild the relationship. Sure, "wanting to be with you" is a good thing, but not the be all end all.
JMHO Of course, that's from a male perspective which may be of no value at all.
Bingo...
My daughters want to be with me all the time. They have no idea of how to build or maintain a relationship.
My wife wants me to be in the family, as a father, as a friend. If she's feeling it, it's awfully deep and repressed.
Careful in trying to mindread your spouse. When there's no doubt in their mind, it's a world of difference from a spouse tiptoeing around the pool. When they're all in it's like someone doing a naked cannonball.
I agree your situation is different when you are the one who cheated and I do believe your approach has to be more nuanced than the usual tough love script.
Your wife has every reason to doubt you for the same reason Robx urges plan 2b. If you were really attracted to her, you wouldn't have cheated and she knows this deep down.
Now you're telling her you want the marriage and if she's still listening to you, part of her wants to believe you and the rest of her is scared and doesn't believe you really find her attractive enough to not cheat and make it work without hurting her again.
You can't pursue her because that just plain doesn't work. You can't talk her into it because words, especially from a cheater, don't count. Your non-pursuing actions are sending her an ambivalent message. That's not necessarily bad but if you overplay the 'I'm not sure I'm interested in reconciliation' angle you'll only confirm for her that you still don't really care for her. OTOH, if you leap at the first sign of R they often feel all you are interested in is 'getting them back' so you can carry on as before and hurt them.
I think you hit on the right response when you said 'you might be interested in R if things could be different' that at least opens the door for some honest counselling to address why you were unhappy, what you've done and need to do to move beyond that, what she's done and can do to make herself more happy and attractive to you and meet your needs.
I don't disagree with anything else you've been told as general rules, I just think when you cheated first, you're not dealing with a textbook WAW and the situation is more delicate.
A woman might not be "feeling it," but is willing to put the work in because she knows it's the right thing to do and that the relationship is worth saving.
That woman is bored and unfufilled and will be looking for a lifeboat. Eventually the thoughts of the right thing do are - "I need to save myself, life is too short."
Women lead with their feelings, so if she wants to be with you she will do whatever it takes to make it work. Her feelings will be backed up by her actions. The key is to keep her attracted.
This is why men will live in a so-so marriage. "it's manageable, how much work would a D and new R take?" A man can make a decision like that and be OK. Women need their feelings stoked more to keep it hot.
If you read in the "piecing" forum you find lots of couples who don't understand this and they are still in "so-so" marriages where neither spoude is happy. Learn to read the real message.
husband - "When you say no, do you really mean yes?"
wife - "No."
Benny Hill Show
M22,H45,W45 S21/18D12 Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
This just goes back to if a woman wants to be with you in the right way you will know...
You will not sit there and think "well, maybe she wants to be with me, but does she want to build a lasting relationship too?"
Honestly, how in tune do you expect someone to be to even know that is the case?
To quote Gucci "You're making this more complicated than it is".
If a woman WANTS to be with you in the RIGHT WAY, there will be NO QUESTION about whether or not she wants to build a lasting relationship... She will just start to build it.
Thats what "piecing" is, right?
Like I said... If you are sitting saying to yourself...
"Well, she wants to be with me, but does she really want to build an actual relationship?"
She doesn't.
Isnt that the POINT of "being with" someone?
To build a relationship?
Otherwise, what the hell are you doing?
Staying together for the kids?
Thats no good.
Being together because of co dependency?
Also a mistake.
If you are NOT together with the sole purpose of building a relationship, whats the point?
You can say "trying is the right thing to do" till the cows come home, and a WAW might honestly feel that trying to repair your M is the "right" thing to do... But if she isnt INTO IT...
She may be today and not tomorrow when her feeling might change? If she's into me today and then I get seriously handicapped would it last? Isn't there something big missing here?
She may be today and not tomorrow when her feeling might change? If she's into me today and then I get seriously handicapped would it last? Isn't there something big missing here?
Even though I'm starting to understand and embrace the man/woman dynamic we're discussing, deep down something is rubbing me the wrong way. Maybe a naive piece of optimistic foolishness from my childhood, but what about the idea of real commitment? What about the idea of having someone you can rely on to not abandon you in challenging times? We throw around these statements like "Your W is bored and unfulfilled", which is supposed to explain why she's bolting out of the marriage. Although one part of me sees that as a challenge to overcome, another part of me calls that BS. If the husband is saddled with the job of keeping his wife entertained and fulfilled, he will eventually fail. Eventually his own life challenges will cause him to drop the ball, and if the result is a wife who feels entitled to cheat and leave him, then why bother getting married at all? Why bother pretending to have this ILLUSION of commitment, when in reality it's "I'll stick around as long as you entertain me."
If women are truly prisoners of their feelings, and if their feelings are utterly dependent on the actions of their husband, then life marriage is a flawed concept, and we should stop pretending it isn't. One human can't be responsible for keeping another from being bored and unfulfilled for life.
Quote:
That woman is bored and unfufilled and will be looking for a lifeboat. Eventually the thoughts of the right thing do are - "I need to save myself, life is too short."
The problem with that is, they don't try to save themselves, they go out to find another man to save them. If they embraced the idea of saving themselves, they wouldn't consider their marriage to be failed, but rather themselves.
Maybe a naive piece of optimistic foolishness from my childhood, but what about the idea of real commitment? What about the idea of having someone you can rely on to not abandon you in challenging times? We throw around these statements like "Your W is bored and unfulfilled", which is supposed to explain why she's bolting out of the marriage.
Maybe if we all selected mates and felt attraction to qualities like trustworthiness, consistency, truthfullness, and so on, you'd have a stronger point?
Those are important qualities. Don't get me wrong, but the "truth" is that most of our relationships are based on attatchment, and attachment is based on a lot of other things too: their is attraction, perceived strength, humour, and most importantly how they make us feel about ourselves that factor into attachment.
This is why self-soothing and self-validating are so important. Without such skills, our relationships are simply about attachment, and they are unfulfilling because they are really about dependency and codependency.
So... in the real world (assuming you aren't going to spend the rest of your life trying to attain enlightenment in some Budhist Monestary), attachment requires some understanding, care, and feeding of its own, and it helps to develop your own ability to self-soothe and self-validate along the way so you aren't completely dependent on others to be fulfilled in a relationship.
M-47,W-40,No kids D-filed 5/27/2010 Piecing - 10/21/2010 -=Soon to be banned=-
