EXPERIMENTING with physical touch with W

[SM34]

WOW a lot has been posted since I last checked. Not sure why everyone is tearing me up. I feel like my butt hurts =).

I'm here on this board to get help to achieve my goal, to fix my marriage. I post questions so that people can help me with things I can try. For the most part, that has worked out very well.

25 has helped me understand where I went wrong in my M. Adinva helped me expand on the points I need to do 180s on. Others have also helped me either by offering tips or by posting their story and thereby letting me (and others) learn from them.

Adinva I never meant to have you think I feel you are a failure. When I say that i don't want to follow the methods of people who failed in saving their marriage, I really did not mean the ladies. I was referring to the men who offer me advise that seems more on the lines of helping me get over my M and moving towards divorce, and how to cope with that. And none of them wants to trust me when I say I CAN HANDLE THE DIVORCE! I just prefer to try to save my M. To me it seems it is a self fulfilling prophecy....if you plan for the worst to happen, it will happen.

Adinva I would like to comment on the FOUR points you listed.

Point 1:

As far as the ladies go, you are obviously dealing with a person of the opposite sex than the person I am dealing with. So what is effective for you will probably not be the same as what is effective for me. I'm interested in what you have to say because you are a woman, and can offer valuable insight from a woman's perspective! I need that! Whether you managed to convince your husband to give your marriage a shot or not does not affect the quality of your knowledge because that is not the knowledge I seek from you. As a side note, you are NOT a failure because you got Divorced, if anything it is your husband who is missing out! =)

Point 2:

I disagree a little on this point. There are definitely patterns that relate to my sitch. When a W is having an affiar, there is a definite pattern I see when I read the successful stories. This is probably NOT the case in sitchs where the W is not happy and leaves the M or moves out of the house etc.. and there is no OM. But when it is an Affair situation, that WAS is not thinking in a sound manner. They are not capable of reasoning! So when people keep telling me to work on myself and have no idea how I should be acting towards her in order to make her see that for example we cannot be friends if we divorce, and that her and I cannot take our D3 out to the park together, and I won't be there to help her fix every little thing because she has a new man now, then to me that sounds like someone who speaks from experience of a sitch that does NOT involve an affair. For example, Sandi has been able to give me excellent advice on how to treat W to help her begin to see how ner new life will be. Those are the insights I am seeking!

Point 3:

I am not satisfied with my good points and I don't just think that there is nothing I can better in myself. I know i screwed up, and we have discussed what went wrong, and i have a list of 180s, and I am working on them. But do I need to mention that in ever post? I'm doing my best to change the negatives in myself in my own time. We all already went over them many times. Leo, on this same point also you seem to want me to post about my battles with my 180s. If I post about anything else, i must not be working on myself. That is not true. You just have to take my word for it, besides if I am lieing to you then it is only me who will suffer right? I want help with the things that I ask for help with.

Point 4:

This is a complicated one. It is hard to explain the marriage dynamic of a different culture to someone from outside the culture. I will try to give this a shot. In our culture, people are much more realistic as far as the expectations in marriage. There is not this Hollywood painted picture of this fantasy life. In my opinion, and yours might be different and I respect that, this fantasy is at the root of the divorce problem in USA. People think there is this model life and if their life deviates at all from that, even if just temporarily, they want out so they can find someone else. With a divorce rate of 50% you cannot argue that there is something wrong right?

It goes back to one of the most fundamental ideas in American culture, which is "The Pursuit of Happiness". Every American is entitled to be happy, and I agree with that. But where my people tend to be different is in how they achieve that happiness. It is not to be sought after at all costs! We LBS know this right? We look at our spouses and say "There was another way you could have been happy without leaving me". Thats precisely what I was trying to explain about our culture. People look at their marriage and say, "Now that I am married to this person, what can i do about his/her selfishness/anger/depression etc?". They do not ask "how can I get out of this marriage so I can be with someone who is not ....". Of course in certain circumstances you MUST get out regardless of which culture you are in...those are situations of physical abuse, drug abuse, child abuse, chronic cheating etc... But I am just focusing on issues that you would probably view more as compatibility issues. If each spouse is willing, they can move their position a few steps towards their spouse, and meet somewhere in the middle. But if they aren't, then the pursuit of happiness will make the person look elsewhere....and then you have a Disposable Marriage culture.

So my wake up call that my W wasn't happy is true, you are right about that. But my wife comes from a culture (and has family history of this) where the way in which you deal with being unhappy is to move on. Or even RUN from your marriage. Her mother did it, and now she is doing it. I am sure my parents have had problems in their 42 years of marriage. In fact, I have seen them disagree on things. I have also seen very contrasting personality traits that would wreck a marriage in a culture such as this one. But because of the fundamental concept they hold which is that marriage is forever, they each take a step closer to each other to bridge the gap. They understand that happiness is from within, and as long as your spouse is a "good person", happiness can be achieved in your M, but you have to be willing to sacrifice a little, and met half way. There is not such thing as the perfect spouse, or the perfect marriage. If you chase the perfect marriage, you will be chasing it for your entire life (look at the divorce rate for second and third marriages). MWD talks about this in her books, the idea that couples should work on their differences, because moving onto someone else is almost always worse.

I don't want my wife to realize its not so bad and come back and put up with it for the rest of her life. I never said that. In fact, I have owned up to all of my problems. I recognized that my financial difficulties and my stress levels, the fact that I was not living a healthy lifestyle, took a toll on my body. It drove my sex drive into the ground. I now take the vitamins I was advised to take by my dr, I work out, and I feel so much better.

When I talked with my wife during BD (which was useless because she is in affair fog and can't think straight) I asked her to give our marriage 6 months. I told her I have seen a dr and I'm getting all my problems straightened out. I told her I am working to fix our finances. Nothing mattered to her because she thinks she loves this OM. Not sure why everyone here finds that so hard to understand. It is quite simple! People who are in an affair, or if you don;t like that term then we can call it a new relationship, are overwhelmed with hormones etc.. and cannot see the positives in their M. So, I have worked out what I did wrong, I have fixed or am working to fix all of them. What I need help with from all of you, is how to go about getting my wife to see that. That is why I focus on this in my posts, but inevitably i get the SAME response every time. You are obsessed with your wife, focus on working on you, etc etc.. all the stuff I am doing already. And my all time favorite : You are Co dependent. That really grinds my gears to be told that every single day. =)

Leo says he thinks that I want my wife to be shamed. he has analyzed my posts and that is how I am apparently. I have said it clearly that I have no desire to shame my wife AT ALL. If I did, I would have told her father about what is going on already. Her father is a devout Catholic and a former LBS himself, and if anyone will shame her it is him! I want nothing more than for my wife to drop OM and go to counseling with me with the intent on trying to save our M. I don't want the shame on her. Also, shame on her is also shame on me! Any my daughter! And my family (yes in our culture your whole family is shamed in a situation like this). So Actually leo you have it all wrong. If I can keep this a secret the rest of our lives, THERE WOULD BE NO BETTER SCENARIO for me. So please stop trying to analyze me. You don't know me, and you don't understand me. Just help me with answers to questions i have, or if you don;t have answers to them just tell me you don't.

Crimson I think you have given me some awesome advise. I also feel we are quite similar in personality so I do follow your thread for pointers. However, my situation is different because again, I am dealing with a woman who is influenced by a lustful affair that she is wrapped up in. I wish she was level headed and just living alone like your W is/was. Then things would make sense to her and she could evaluate things objectively. I'm dealing with someone who is almost "mentally sick" in the way they reason things right now.

Some folks understand how a wife who is "under the influence" acts in a bizarre fashion and so they can help me in dealing with it, deciphering what she is saying or feeling, and having a strategy on how to act (not react) to her shenanigans.

Also Leo, when you say "guess what, OM didn't convince her of anything. In fact she is still making this choice". Yes you are right, and I realize it is her that needs to end it, not OM. But again, you are missing the point that she is blinded by the fog! OM plqayed on HER vulnerabilities. I'm not blaming OM, he just did what any horny guy who wants a married woman would do. He probed her until he figured out the weakness in our M, then he made himself out to be the answer to her problems. And my W decided, HERSELF, that she will take him up on that. Also, when you say "you, my friend are not detached. in fact you are co dependent". Again, that is not what is happening. It seems that to you being detached means you don't care about your Spouse, and i feel that is a sure quick way to end up divorced! So call it co dependancy, call it obsession, call it what you want...these are all fancy terms being thrown around. But lets please stick with just answering my questions as best you can, or not bothering at all. i am quite capable of moving on from my marriage if need be, i just would like to not get there if at all possible.

I hope I cleared up my thinking. I know this will probable be met by even more fire. But I don't know what to do anymore. I can start saying yes yes you are right, the affair was all my fault, I am codependent, etc just to keep everyone happy. But I wouldn't be staying true to myself and the situation I am in.

Please guys, I need to get back to the things Laurie asked me to do, and take note of, so that I can schedule my second coaching session and actually have answers for Laurie. I am requesting everyone's knowledge to get there! 25, Adinva, Crimson, Leo, all of you have valid and helpful experience, but for someone reason I am attacked, and labeled codependant and all this stuff that is not constructive. Please help me answer my issues. I promise you all I know what went wrong, I am working on my 180s, I am working on being the best husband I can be, and a husband only a fool would leave. I can't show you that in every single post because I don't have time. I am on a mission =)