Dealing with WAW Part 3

[25yearsmlc]

2 things....

First - Pilot, for you specifically...

I see the whole compliment issue for you as a BIG red flag. I really do.

I just want to mention that it IS withholding of you to measure so much. (Meaning in part, the whole "she has to do/say it first" habit you have).

If I recall correctly you also were not one to say "ILY" very much, whereas your wife and her family were much more verbally expressive. So for you to keep being quiet on those issues, is disturbing. It was a big need of hers that would "cost" you so little, for you to resist changing that is a red flag to me. Truly. It does seem, well, selfish. OF course I could be wrong, but the word "Stubborn" and the word "Selfish" CAN Overlap. And stubbornness usually means "resistance" to something, like how you resisted uttering "ILY's" more often or even just once a day, or an authentic specific compliment seemed to put you at a disadvantage b/c you fear it'll be seen as pursuing. I think it'll be a 180 for you so she can't argue that you never say a nice word to her...this is such an easy way to do a 180 on something noticeable, I don't get your hesitation.

YES yes I understand your claim that you don't want to be seen as pursuing. But you are being oddly rigid about a suggestion generically listed in some guidelines by Sandi. It's not a law or "Rule" that prohibits all forms of pursuit that we are discussing. You imply that for you to be viewed as pursuing is some mortal sin; it's NOT.

It's a trait your wife has (WOA being a LL, and for most women, being complimented is a bare minimum requirement).

I'm pretty independent and feel like I have decent self esteem. But I once stopped dating a guy b/c he so rarely complimented me.

I knew he found me attractive - He told someone else that about me, but not me. Why?

Maybe it meant a loss of power to him, Or maybe he didn't want to be seen as "pursuing" me too much...?? Maybe he feared I'd take him for granted if he complimented me (I actually think he believed that, though maybe not consciously).

For me, it seemed selfish for him to withhold words of kindness. There were times I did dress up for him, which he never seemed to notice and I tell you this b/c at the time, I shared with my friends what was going on and it was unanimous, they all thought I should give him the boot, and I did. They said it was "too big" a red flag and that "it means something else in some other area of the R"...(I had smart friends).

The real reason was that I worried if I kept dating him for long, it would mean hits to my ego. I'd be doubting myself in time, wondering if he was attracted to me, or someone else more, or if I wasnt deserving of a kind word in his eyes, or if I had NO personal traits he felt worth flattering,

I knew he WAS stingy with compliments --but I didn't stick around to learn why. "Too much of a red flag". In reality, we all feared his stinginess with kind words meant other things would also be lacking...

So, food for thought...and I don't mean to belabor this point, yet it's probably a lot more important to women and your wife, than you realize.

In conclusion, I'd like you to consider (and post here if you can - but you don't have to),

the role you played in the marital problems. I'm unclear about what you believe your role was.

What is it you believe you erred by doing/not doing?

What would you do differently if you had it all to do over again?

And If your wife did have an affair, EA or PA, WHY would she?

What would SHE SAY were her reasons/justifications?

Bear in mind that it is a rare woman who has an affair - and does not feel justified. Men are more likely to have affairs in which "more sex" or "variety" is the only motive, than married women.

In one "affair study", almost 90% of affair women surveyed, reported dissatisfaction INSIDE the marriage as a leading cause, whereas only about half the men did. That's significant, and it might be why more marriages fail after a wife has an affair, than when husbands do.

I used to think it meant that husbands were less forgiving than wives (and there might be truth to that), but now I wonder if it's b/c the wives having affairs, tend to care more for their OMs than cheating h's care for their OW's...

Pilot, you need to dig deep inside you for this....REALLY deep and really bravely, b/c honest self assessment, and genuine personal growth -

require both bravery and honesty...

What do YOU believe your biggest flaws are, as a husband, as a father and as a man?

Think long & hard about that.

More generically now, let's talk about

when a LBSer becomes or almost becomes, a WAS.

I had that nearly happen to me.

But lest we forget, we came here first as LBSers. WE came here and we all said to our hypothetical (or real) spouses,

that "Love is a choice!!" and it certainly is, at least partly that.

So We have to apply that same mantra to ourselves, too.

We've been demanding that our WASs' not leave us or our families, b/c "THEY are unhappy" --we implored them to stay and work on the marriage.

Remember?

But wait, now WE don't "feel like it"???

Anyone see a tiny streak of hypocrisy there? Cause I see a big streak of it.


Marriage vows CAN be very hard to keep.

When is it that vows are hardest to live by??

When WE DON'T FEEL LIKE keeping them! -- & Because we don't know how we feel about our spouses.


(Which is exactly what the WASs said to us in the past, when they left us).

So we either apply the same standard to ourselves that we've been insisting our spouses live by,

or we STFU and never ever complain about them leaving us b/c we are now, in essence, leaving them.

Two wrongs don't make a right, and there are HUGE streaks of revenge in this scenario anyhow. We may not know it consciously but there absolutely is a part of us that wants to "even things out".

Make sure to identify those double standards and to eliminate them. It's a long hard process but WE are responsible for that.

It's what we've expected from our WASs, and it's literally the least we can expect of ourselves.

It's time for us to put our money where our mouths are, to live by the words we imposed on others, to walk the walk, to model the desired behavior for our families.

Make sense?