3 Months in, Still fighting. Crunch time!

[MrBond]

"It's the elaborate justification of specifically which people, which gender, what background or success level, you are willing to listen to, because you know best, that makes people throw their hands up at what looks like arrogance and ignorance."

Exactly.

Plus you come across as a "teacher" trying to lecture us who have been doing this for a very long time. Makes you come across as being better and more educated than others.

[Tallula]

"It's the elaborate justification of specifically which people, which gender, what background or success level, you are willing to listen to, because you know best, that makes people throw their hands up at what looks like arrogance and ignorance."

Exactly.

Plus you come across as a "teacher" trying to lecture us who have been doing this for a very long time. Makes you come across as being better and more educated than others.

YES! I even hesitate to post this. I was done sharing awhile ago. And honestly, I feel like you keep referencing me with the serial cheater stuff, since my H is the only serial one I've seen here. I'm not even going to get into how my H, in fact, did not treat me poorly until he started this PA/EA. I was floored that he ever cheated, considering how well we did get along and how he treated me. Even he has said he was madly in love with me until a week before DB. He knew he had to tell me or he would just keep lying. Ok...I kind of did get into it. Oh well. It doesn't matter if someone has the exact sitch, is a W or H, MLC, affair, multiple affair...DBing advice is the same. Look at you, do 180s for you, get a life for you! Even the small goals you listed are about getting your W to do stuff.

The bottom line is, people are frustrated with the way you respond to everything. No one cares if you tell your W to leave. BUT you keep asking for advice, then telling people WHY that advice won't work. I just never responded to the advise I wasn't taking. But, I also didn't have 10 people telling me the same thing and then me trying to convince them they were wrong.

[keep_going]

SM,

Perhaps you are referring to my post - I believe only me and one or two other women fit your descriptors of the unwanted advice.

I am sorry if you felt offended, attacked or antagonized by my words. Yes, I don't believe I had posted to you before. I am on these boards pretty much every day and read a lot. I usually only post to those people after I know of their situation because I believe that the least I can do to show others respect is to be informed of their particular situation. So I am fully familiar with yours and had read your threads.

I am also very direct with my words and I don't sugar-coat things much. I do try to show empathy and support to others, yet I know I am not perfect and can see that it being my first post to you, it was probably too much. So again, my apologies.

The reason I decided to post to you is because I was in a similar situation to yours. My H was cheating and like your wife, he is not a serial cheater, but a hurt and confused WAH who was just done with our R. Laurie was also my coach. I think she is fantastic and ironically, she gave me very similar advice and a plan of action just like yours, almost down to the T. Please know that I am NOT complaining about her or her advice. In the end, it really didn't work out the way she (and I) had hoped for. Please know that I am not jaded or bitter about it - I understand her rationale and I ultimately chose to follow it because at the time, like you, I saw value in selecting that path.

Like you, I also saw some behavioral changes in my H and more friendliness towards me, as I continued to have a boundary-less R with my H at the height of his affair. Yet at the end, he didn't come back. The "plan" didn't work and I feel that MY own healing and growth was actually delayed and hampered my my own actions and what I see now as a lack of healthy boundaries. All that cake-eating just ate me away, made me even more angry and resentful towards him, made our situation extremely confusing for our young girls and kept me stuck and bitter.

I am no vet, but I have been at this for way longer than I would have liked and it's been one LONG and TOUGH road because of the mistakes I have made. I have been stuck and held on way too long to my pain, my anger, my victimhood while I also tried to find "solutions" and "plans" to get my husband back.

My only goal in posting to you was to make you think of things from a different place and for you to ask yourself some hard questions about what you want for yourself, your marriage and your family. It's your choice to ponder on them or not, to take the advice or not. I was merely trying to show you, like others that a succesful "plan" has nothing to do with a coach, a vet or a newbie.

It has to do with the fact that we can only control ourselves, look at ourselves and work on ourselves to become better spouses, better people, better parents and to get from life what we WANT and DESERVE and not live a life where we just learn to accept less. Because our spouse may or may not come back and if they do, it will have nothing to do with our "plan" to get them back and in the end, we will still have a life to live.

You are fortunate to have really great people posting to you and some of them you also seem to appreciate back, so I will not bug you anymore with my posts and again, I apologize if I insulted you in any way.

I wish you luck.

[SM34]

OK Everyone I am sorry I even mentioned this =)

If anything I like the sense of community here. I think we have all sometimes been given advice that we didn't like or didn't use, its just that for some reason i felt the need to actually say that yesterday.

I was only saying that sometimes, at least FOR ME, some of the advice given made me spin my wheels, especially when conflicting advise was given.

MrBond, I was not trying to teach you all anything. I know you have spent years on the board and i see the sheer volume of of your posts daily and it is obvious you are dedicated to helping people. That is admirable. That is why I said CLEARLY that the advise from you and other veterans was priceless for me.

I was not trying to teach anyone anything. I said numerous times in my post that THIS IS MY OPINION at this time, and that this opinion may change over time.

I'm not trying to be smart or more educated or to tell anyone they I am better. Again, I was stating my opinion as to what causes ME to get "stuck" with no direction. When two or three posters comment on my sitch in the same day, and their views are different, i think you can appreciate how that can make a noob confused. After all, I have only been at this less than 3 months!! I was trying to say it is easier to follow a set strategy when you have a DB coach.

Anyway, back and focused now. Lets get down to business!

25yearsmlc had commented on a post I wrote that referred to how I compliment my W, or the lack of compliments. I'm trying to work on that. It is not that it doesn't come naturally to me, it is that for over a decade my W has not always felt my compliments were sincere.

Any major problem is she would PROMPT me to give a compliment, and then when I did she would say I was only saying that because she prompted me.

Well now that she is not waiting for me to compliment her, I think I need to focus on making my compliments sincere.

Anyone know of how I can learn this? Are there any books that deal with complimenting? I might search online and read some articles.

As you can see, I like to read and learn. Then I can apply much better than simply saying "I need to be more sincere in my compliments".. I need to read the how to's.

Thank you all for sticking with me! I really am thankful for your help, despite sometimes seeming to not. I like to journal on here of different frames of mind that I go through (like yesterday I felt some conflicting advise was holding me back). One day I will read over all my posts and reminisce.

[adinva]

I think this is a brilliant example of a tendency that has frustrated many of your buddies around here such as me.

You need to be more sincere, so you decide the way to do that is to go find a book, some expert, someone other than yourself, to give you some pointers on how to be sincere.

I wish you could see how that appears. I don't know how to make it more clear.

When you first came here you were looking similarly at anything you could get your hands on to decipher the Mystery of Woman, and you have seemed willing to try on almost any idea no matter how absurd it seemed to the rest of us (women like bad boys, slap her around a little). You seem to apply either too little judgment or too much. You'll try on almost anything if it's said by someone who is male and reconciled with his wife after she had an affair. You're looking for the secret code, the map, provided by some expert.

Being sincere is simply the absence of strategy, really meaning what you say, not having any expectation of the result it will produce, being genuine. It's not something a book is going to tell you. The fact of reading up in a book how to do it almost negates it. The fact that you want to read up in a book how to be sincere in order to win her back is double- triple-negating it. You have a purpose in mind, a mission to accomplish with your newly learned sincerity. That's not how it works.

You just simply do it. You simply notice something you admire, say why you admire it, and have no agenda. If you do that and she seems annoyed, adjust. Maybe you were too blatant, maybe you were going overboard, or maybe after years she has learned not to trust your compliments.

By the way, her belief that you have an agenda and aren't really sincere is a problem that goes way deeper than the frequency and content of your compliments, are you aware of that?

[25yearsmlc]

OK Everyone I am sorry I even mentioned this =)

If anything I like the sense of community here. I think we have all sometimes been given advice that we didn't like or didn't use, its just that for some reason i felt the need to actually say that yesterday.

I was only saying that sometimes, at least FOR ME, some of the advice given made me spin my wheels, especially when conflicting advise was given.

Not sure why you felt the need to say it all either. It's obvious.

We all got conflicting advice at times.

We all had to decipher where WE FELT others were coming from, whether we thought they knew us/our situations enough, and as you said, whether they were coming from a place of bitterness or love in their heart. A lot of very hurt people are here on this site.

But We never needed to SAY A WORD. It is self evident.

For ME, the only consistently annoying thing in your posts is the lecture mode you get into, with a lot of superficial analysis that you think is insightful and useful for US. You are still not aware of when you do it or how patronizing it feels when you do it. It's as if what you just learned (assuming we even agree with it) is something none of us knew but now, thanks to you, we'll finally know it too. See how that reads?

You say you don't mean it that way, but then you repeat the behavior, again & again. ANYHOW....


MrBond, I was not trying to teach you all anything. I know you have spent years on the board and i see the sheer volume of of your posts daily and it is obvious you are dedicated to helping people. That is admirable. That is why I said CLEARLY that the advise from you and other veterans was priceless for me.

I was not trying to teach anyone anything. I said numerous times in my post that THIS IS MY OPINION at this time, and that this opinion may change over time.

I'm not trying to be smart or more educated or to tell anyone they I am better. Again, I was stating my opinion as to what causes ME to get "stuck" with no direction. When two or three posters comment on my sitch in the same day, and their views are different, i think you can appreciate how that can make a noob confused. After all, I have only been at this less than 3 months!! I was trying to say it is easier to follow a set strategy when you have a DB coach.

Anyway, back and focused now. Lets get down to business!

25yearsmlc had commented on a post I wrote that referred to how I compliment my W, or the lack of compliments. I'm trying to work on that. It is not that it doesn't come naturally to me, it is that for over a decade my W has not always felt my compliments were sincere.

Okay...as this post reveals, you pretty much don't get it when it comes to compliments/words of affirmation and being sincere.

You are indirectly blaming HER for your lack of words of affirmation.

You knew she felt unattractive to you, thanks to your past --which you say "she never got over," instead of owning the fact that you did NOT keep complimenting her, so of course she "never got over it"-b/c It's not a problem from the past. It exists even now.

AND thanks to your decreased libido AND lack of words expressing positives to her... this need went unmet longer than you seem to realize. But this matters a lot.

Elsewhere you blame her for your decreased sex drive b/c SHE Did not compliment you enough when times were tough ...notice any pattern here?


Any major problem is she would PROMPT me to give a compliment, and then when I did she would say I was only saying that because she prompted me.

So, you needed a prompt to compliment her? Okay, well, that is a problem you ought to have solved by now. It's not hard to compliment your wife.

Really...do you love her? WHY do you love her? Think about it...detail it...and start telling HER in a believable way!

Well now that she is not waiting for me to compliment her, I think I need to focus on making my compliments sincere.


You always needed to compliment her. It's a form of expressing love. Do you get that?



Anyone know of how I can learn this? Are there any books that deal with complimenting? I might search online and read some articles.


To me, this^^ is among the saddest questions you have asked here...how can this be so hard? I think I might know...

but Here goes...

thanking her for being a good mother/a good chef
/neat housekeeper
/loyal friend/funny-witty person/smart
/interested in current events,/ open to other cultures, politically aware, helpful to others, optimistic,/artistic, musically talented or musically aware & appreciative, having long standing friendships, being good w/names/ searching for truth, being a spiritual person...

are positive traits I'm sure she has some of,

which are compliments you can give her.

Or just say "I love HOW/WHEN you do 'x'"...but do not make it stilted and artificial.

If you give her a compliment and then stare at her for a reaction, (=payoff) then it's NOT a compliment. It's a tactic, and she will NOT believe in it b/c it won't be sincere. Do you get that?

I sense that your compliments from the past were NOT sincere and she picked up on that.

You knew you had blown it when she gained some weight way back when, and so, you threw her some scraps to placate her.

She did not believe them, so instead of working to learn how to do it better and to get in touch with what you genuinely appreciate about HER,

you THEN decided not to bother with compliments much anymore
(SHE needed them...but it was hard & the payoff wasn't immediate..so...)

So now, you are having a hard time knowing how to be sincerely complimentary. Yes I think that is sad.

But at least you have a DB coach and you can stick by A PLAN.

And I hope the above suggestions help. Really, I do.

As you can see, I like to read and learn. Then I can apply much better than simply saying "I need to be more sincere in my compliments".. I need to read the how to's.

We know you like to read (and then tell us what you learned/think).

But what I hope you'll do, is

Get in touch with your emotions here. Look at whatever positive feelings you have for your wife, setting aside the analysis and complaints and pain...and get in touch with what you LOVE about this woman.

Then learn to tell her, often, in SPECIFIC ways, how/why you love her. Nothing general. Too hard to believe it b/c it lacks thought.

Anyone can say "you look good".

Telling her you think her (INSERT body part/eyes/hair) are your favorite part of her, or that she "really knows what she is doing with--a creative food dish, a room she decorates, a project she builds or plans, the way she soothes your d and comforts here, the way she supports you in the business and gives sound advice, etc...THOSE compliments take thought and are specific.

Here is an acting tip that applies to real life.

"The more specific your behavior (& here, that means your wording)
the more believable it is."

"Specificity = believablility."


Thank you all for sticking with me! I really am thankful for your help, despite sometimes seeming to not. I like to journal on here of different frames of mind that I go through (like yesterday I felt some conflicting advise was holding me back). One day I will read over all my posts and reminisce.

[leopoldstotch]

If you need to read a book to learn how to compliment your W and if you needed to be prompted by her to compliment her then a sexless M isn't the only problem that got you into this mess. So you didn't compliment her or you were prompted to and you didn't satisfy her sexual needs. I'd bet my retirement that you don't know or you are in denial over the real reasons why she left you for OM.

I know you tell us how you provided for her and how you are better than this husband or that husband but the picture is starting to become very clear. You neglected your W, took her for granted. If you interact with your W the way you do here with us then therein lies a big problem.

[cat04]

I have been reading along, waiting to see the hoopla die down.

To be quite honest, this thread has been a little over the top and highly insulting in my opinion.

SM, you are a double major in two very analytical fields. Unfortunately, you are dealing with human emotion here and that is something that is difficult to analyze in the same way you can analyze other areas of life.

For ME, the only consistently annoying thing in your posts is the lecture mode you get into, with a lot of superficial analysis that you think is insightful and useful for US. You are still not aware of when you do it or how patronizing it feels when you do it. It's as if what you just learned (assuming we even agree with it) is something none of us knew but now, thanks to you, we'll finally know it too. See how that reads?

You say you don't mean it that way, but then you repeat the behavior, again & again.

I agree with this and if we can see it, I am sure that your W can see it as well. And I can bet that it makes you a bit of a frustrating person to live with.

So my first thought if you NEED to read and learn, would be stop reading things that are from a scientific approach and start reading things that talk about emotions and emotional reactions.

Learn about judgement and what that LOOKS like and how easy it is for us to appear judgmental even if we don’t mean to. You state your wife didn’t believe your sincerity and it is obvious that the emotional connection was lost between you. Because you come across as judgmental, even if you don’t mean it and trying to explain it rationally, doesn’t make it less hurtful, less insulting, or more sincere.

This is a perfect example…

I mean I am careful not to take advise from someone who is a noob, or someone who is offering advise from a place of "bitterness" or anyone who believes they know EXACTLY what I need to do.

Noobs…learn by reading and posting to others. While they may not have the experience of a vet, they are still smart people, with ideas that may or may not work. They have thoughts and feelings and opinions that are not any less valid than other people. And just because they are new here, they may also have tried things that didn’t work for them and are simply sharing the benefit of their experience. Just like a new parent tries to tell their child not to touch the stove because they will get burned, sometimes the experience of getting burned, is enough for them to want to help someone avoid the same experience.

Stop thinking like your wife is some lost little puppy who doesn't know what she is doing or " needs to get this out of her system". Because she's only been with you. Marrying the first guy you were with doesn't give you a free pass to sew your wild oats In your M.

This is also another example. And it has been a prevailing thought in your threads.

I understand it is easier to handle the idea of an affair, something that is hurtful to you, if you believe your W is “lost”. However, she is not stupid. She may be a little bit inexperienced and it is natural for her to wonder if she missed out on something, but she is not stupid.

And while there is some validity to “Affair Fog” because of the chemical reactions that happen in the brain when you begin a new relationship, again, she is not stupid. She understands right from wrong. Even if she is confused right now.

Unfortunately it comes across as you seeing her as a little bit stupid. And like you are just waiting for her to smarten up. And SHE can see that.

You have also kept talking about being WILLING to change IF she wants to work it out, and that raises huge red flags for me. I honestly can’t believe it hasn’t been said to you before…

Stop waiting for indications of improvement in order to begin that change, just start changing.

You can make changes and learn different communication styles while working on your specific plan of action that you have devised with your coach.

Okay...as this post reveals, you pretty much don't get it when it comes to compliments/words of affirmation and being sincere.

Read the 5 Love Languages, and reread it. Words of affirmation…words of affirmation…words of affirmation…repeat…

I too didn’t see a lot of conflicting advice. While I don’t know if I agree that the hard line is the best way to approach this right now (not that I disagree either, although I don’t think you are ready to try to pull it off), I see people saying the same thing. And the bottom line in that idea is for you to protect yourself a bit. People who don’t take that hard line at some point, people who continue to let the cake eating go on indefinitely, without change happening in their situation, eventually, end up feeling like doormats. They tend to develop feelings of regret, bitterness, and resentment, which are not good feelings to have and are harder to overcome than some realize until they are already there, in that space. And like a new parent, they don’t want you to touch the hot stove.

I hope you decide to think about some of this stuff, NOT analyze it, but think about it. I hope that you can look at your communication style and see why all of the drama that occurred on this thread occurred. I hope that you can step outside of yourself and see areas where you can make changes and improvements that will hopefully help you to see more positives in your situation.

Cat

[SM34]

Cat, and also everyone else who answered my last post.

I think you have hit on something here. My entire life I have been a science guy who was also a wiz at math. Now that I think about it, it is pdrobably because there is only one answer to a problem....the correct one.

You are right that my analytical skills are probably getting in the way of me stepping back and really looking at how I can become closer to my wife, in a genuine way. I need to just be naturally, be myself, the person she fell in love with all those years ago.

My analytical mind can also become critical at times, since there is only a fine line between analytical and.critical. I need to purge that from my character.

As far as the cake eating and also the waiting for her to snap out, I am trying to.not be that way. I try to project and image of someone confident who will survive this and be fine. I think it is working somewhat because I sense she is confused by how I act. She thinks I should be wrecked and very angry and dissapointed but I am not. Or I don't act it.

As long as I see progress I am staying this course. Plus I can't fake an angry hardline approach because I think people have to get there on their own as their sitch continues.

I think ideally the hard line approach is timed well with the waning of the affair so that you are not fighting those drug addict type feelings she is having. I think she is on her way to seeing this relationship with OM for what it really is.

I went back and reread the message she wrote to her girlfriend regarding the sex because she has told.the same friend that this was THE major reason she wants out. I am sure the other reasons are factors too, but this one was a deal breaker.
Anyway, the message says 'I don't know which way I like it. H. was always gentle and OM. Is kind of rough. I

[SM34]

Sorry phone was going crazy.

I don't know which way I like it. H was always SO gentle and OM. Is kinda rough. I miss the passionate love making where we lose ourselves in it.

Does that sound like she prefers my way? Does that sound like she is missing it? Even a little?

It doesn't matter anyway until she tells me.something about it or makes a move or.a.change. I am just wondering because if I get an advance I need to be ready.

25 told me a long time ago that there could be a'test' at some point. Maybe even for a reminder or a.comparison. and I need to be ready for that. So just wondering if at that point I would stick with my own style or change it up and give her something new. I guess if she ever wants to test the waters it is probably that she misses it the way it was and not for something new. Am I on to.something? Or am I over analyzing again?

Last comment. Sorry if I offended anyone lately. I am confused, tired and hurting. I just want to vent sometimes. Maybe I am.looking for.someone to blame for not having more progress.

On good days like today, I realize I need to.slow.down and listen and absorbed what is said.

Thank you all for being there for me!

Has there ever been a DB. Social eventq for us to meet? A little awkward but could be fun!