Interpretation of MWD and DR regarding infidelity

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zig,

I can share my perspective on what the options are. When I got into this mess, I felt terribly guilty, I probably took on way too much of the responsibility, because I really WAS a good husband before. In any case, I figured if I allowed my marriage to go to sh!t, I better take a really close look at myself, or I'd probably end up back here again with someone new. Therefore, I dug in deep, and it was painful and it sucked, and I'm still not done, but the rate of change has slowed as I get closer to my goals.

Here's the options I discovered:

1) Keep working -- keep having faith that time and consistency will finally make a difference. The Marriage Builders website suggests that if you are successful in removing all the "love busters" that prevent you from making love bank deposits, and are also successful in meeting your partner's needs and filling their bank, that eventually, you'll tip the scales and they will be back "in love" and reinvested in the marriage. The site says that doesn't happen slowly, it's like a switch gets flipped -- but it can take two years or more! It takes crazy, crazy patience. I'm not sure I believe that, but they claim success stories. In any case, option one is head down, keep working.

2) Acceptance -- Accept that your sitch "is what it is" and just decide to live with it. Stop looking for improvement and "just be", taking what you're getting and making that enough. Some sites say that dropping expectations never works and you're just fooling yourself temporarily, but this is an option you can pursue -- just say "good enough". I think this more applies to a situation where you get stalled in piecing.

3) Move On -- Decide you're done. I was thinking about detachment the other day, and detachment is really a campaign to snuff out the romantic love that remains for your partner. As long as you have romantic feelings for them, you are not detached. Once those feelings are snuffed, you can truly move on. Once again, going back to Marriage Builders philosophy, eventually your spouse will completely run down your accumulated "love bank balance" and you will simply not be interested in persisting. I don't believe you can will yourself to get there faster, I think it just happens. That's when you "drop the rope" as Denver, LITB, and Starsky all eventually did. It seems this is *sometimes* a wake up call to the WAS who finally realizes that you really are gone, and are likely not coming back. It seems like that's the first time many of them really think about what they're doing. There are certainly many other cases, however, where the wakeup call never comes and the WAS does NOT come back -- unfortunately that's probably the majority of the time. The other issue is that if you've dropped the rope and your love bank is empty, you may not WANT them back. You're certainly susceptible to them for the same reasons you were initially, but now you've got scar tissue.

That's my $0.02 on your options.

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