It's a hard stance to wrap your head around. There is a fine line between being assertive and being aggressive, between standing up for your values and being confrontational.
No one is advocating being confrontational. We want you to be assertive. This means you treat your wife with respect even though you don't respect her choices.
But you don't try and romance her while she is with OM. That is going to backfire on you, but the sad part is you probably won't realize it until much later.
Because, if she is getting what she wants, she's not going to complain. She is going to continue to eat the delicious cake you are serving. But when you discover that nothing is changing, she's still with OM and you're still here, you may try the assertive stance.
And she will get angry and push back as she would react if you did it now. You can save yourself a lot of time to draw the lines in the sand now.
You do want to avoid confrontation. That part is correct. If she gets angry about you doing what's best for yourself and your daughters, is that a bad thing? Does that mean you allow her to do as she will without any response from you?
Just things to think about. It probably sounds harsh, but I don't mean it to be. A lot of people come on here and want to believe that their situation is somehow different. That's usually never the case.
But a woman who is cheating on you does not respect you, and she cannot love you if she doesn't respect you.
I'm sure Hope would agree with that as well. I agree with much of what she has posted, but I feel some of it is being cherry-picked to mean that the key to salvaging your M AT THIS POINT is laying on the empathy and romance.
If you read the DB/DR books, that is NOT DBing.
That is something that would have helped your marriage prior to this point.
It is "marriage building" and something you would do if and when she is on board with R, has dumped the OM, and is not blatantly disrespecting you as her husband.
It is not a technique to use now.
You can be kind, compassionate, and assertive.
THAT is the combination women like. Leave out assertive and you've got the "Friend Zone" guy. You don't want to be that guy.
---(G)GGG
Me 54 Him 63 M 23 T 29 0 Kids Funny Farm of Rescues 12/12 OW-- 5/13 ILYBINILWY: A denied 9/13 Proof OW: ENDED 2/14 Got D papers on my BD I kicked him out for my sanity 9/14 He wants to "talk"?
