Transparency: For what true purpose does being "transparent" serve to you? How would that look to you? Does H have any input on this? Is H in agreement with you on this?
How can one delineate between transparency and control?
You cannot possibly ask H do X, Y, & Z by COB or assign a hard deadline using a Visio flow chart. You'd like that very much! Just be fully cognizant of the bleed over effect from the office into the home sanctuary.
We use words to try and delineate emotional states that are sometimes beyond the scope of words to fully pin down.
I do not want to put words into Raine's mouth, and honestly I think she is getting a lot of fairly critical advice for being so honest. I am not sure that I wouldn't retreat under the barrage of helpfulness. Which I am aware says a lot about me.
I do feel that the LBS is required to be 'perfect' and not human. Where human means wrestling with this stuff and not always winning, not always feeling what people feel we ought.
For me transparency is in part a reversal of the secrecy that was part of the affair. Adultery is never justifiable, however much the adulterer attempts to justify their actions.
But transparency is also emotional openness, a willingness to become emotionally intimate, without the shutters up.
It is not telling the other every past thing, but it is also NOT refraining from saying things that matter to the marriage This includes emotional involvement with another person, (let alone physical involvement) as a betrayal of intimacy, but also over money. Hiding things is what MLCers are good at, and it is they who get to decide what they keep hidden. This is not transparency
Psychotherapists have long observed that the betrayed take longer to heal emotionally than the betrayer, because their trust was broken by the betrayer. The betrayer suffered no comparable injury, and cannot therefore understand this.
For me, asking for openness and transparency is not about controlling the other - it is understanding whether or not the other person is willing to be transparent, and if they are not, then warning flags start appearing.
I understand some of why a person who has a MLC learns to hide things, but that is something they need to deal with, not bring back into the marriage.
