Busting this Divorce - Standing Firm

[25yearsmlc]

HP,
--- holidays do a number on almost every single newbie and the WAS which is why you find the vets circling around the DB forums to offer extra support.
I wanted to circle back to you as you posted a comment:

I've seen exposure work to end affairs many times over the past several months. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. My personal research (following many threads on many different forums) suggested that exposure was more likely to achieve reconciliation. Was I wrong? Well there's no way to know now, is there? Just as there's no way to know if exposure would have worked when it wasn't tried.

All success stories whose Ms have been restored you read about here were/are achieved with zero exposure (or nearly zero). They have never considered exposure and worked extremely hard on themselves that re-attracted their wayward spouses. I like DB so much because it is the best EVER self-improvement program for it forces one to look inward and examine one's beliefs, values, patterns and attitudes.

THIS^^^ is in alignment with the Div Busting approach, and exposure is NOT.

This is a place that advocates self work, and has a specific belief against exposure for good reason.
FTR, I have Heard that exposure has worked for a few people. Starsky says it did for him, and he says it has for others whom he knows.

I have seen it backfire a solid 20 times, at least. And I mean, big time backfire, btw. Never have I personally seen it work. In fact, I have only seen it do damage and in my heart of hearts, I've rarely If ever believed it came from a good place in the LBS heart...and not from a desire to punish or humiliate or shame the "wayward" spouse.
I've also never seen a shamed spouse return home, and stay,. Shame can only last so long before it morphs into something else.

One example of how exposure is viewed by others, is this: I'm an admin of my High School class FB page. (That's what you get for being class president Three decades earlier...)
Someone asked me to "delete a weird" message on the board. So I went to see what they were referring to, and it was a post from the wife of a classmate.

The wife blasted a female classmate for "stealing" her h "at the last reunion" and warned the rest of us to "protect our h's" so it would not happen to us at the upcoming reunion.

MY reaction was one of pity for her, the wife, and concern for the two classmates and their reputations. (I had no idea if the claim was true).

The guy who called the post to my attention in the first place, described the wife as "a real nut job" and a few others said things like "wow, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned". Not a single one of them blamed the h OR the OW/classmate. They recoiled from the wife! They viewed her as damaged goods and a few said things like "No wonder he left her".

I felt that our class's FB page was not the place for the wife to make such an accusation. Anyhow, it was deleted. But I'd bet anything that the reaction the wife wanted, was SO NOT what she got... Which also made me pity the wife.

Just had to say this ^^ b/c again, exposure is NOT a tenet of DBing yet it keeps being brought up again--Sure, discuss it, but the promotion of it, that does bother me. I don't see the goal of it as working, either.

Remember that the underlying philosophy here, is the concept that we must work on ourselves and not focus on the OP or our spouse, and the troubling reality that an affair does not "cause" a troubled marriage; it is a symptom of one.