Interpretation of MWD and DR regarding infidelity

[Accuray]

I'd guess that for MWD, if it took 5 years to DB and save the M... or more... then a success is a success, a M is saved, and her job is done...

I think Oldtimer wrote about this once -- that the WAS and the LBS roles are really closer together than many think and they will often reverse given enough time. My MC also said that the tragedy is how long it takes to heal a relationship. He said that 95% of the time one of the two give up before *sufficient* time has past. The problem is that there is no rule for what is sufficient, because there are so many variables. I think a lot of it has to do with just how bad things got, and how long the "bad" state persisted before it blew up. If you had a bad argument and were asked for divorce in the heat of passion, that's going to be quicker to turnaround than a spouse who was dissatisfied and resentful for 10 years!

It is my opinion that, many people who find their way here... well... they probably should have read the DB/DR books a year or two before the registered on this site. If only more people were more proactive in working on their M... BEFORE it needed work...

Yeah, I read that 95% of the time people are starting marriage counseling 2 years too late. My good friend's wife had the foresight to see that if their current marriage trend continued, they would get into trouble even though things weren't bad yet. She made them go to couples therapy and it actually pretty quickly made everything a lot better. After the bomb it seems to have a really crappy success rate.

I think like anything else, people don't believe it can happen to them -- I certainly didn't. Reading self help books would feel like asking for trouble where none exists. I certainly thought this kind of thing would *never* happen to me, so I had no motivation to even think about addressing it before it was too late.

So when they come here, there's huge amounts of fear in them which may come out in the form of clinging, controlling, snooping, daemonizing their spouse, anger, even possible suicidal or violent tendencies, major depression, etc...

Part of why a lot of us, I'd say pretty much all the vets, promote a "chill first" support...

It seems that in most cases its impossible for a newbie to chill. I don't know how to help people with that, I don't think we can, they have to go through it and come out the other side. From my perspective, all we're trying to do is help them to minimize or avoid any further damage while they panic.