. . .its not a bad thing to simply state what you need out of a relationship, this does a couple things. First it shows her that you are strong and you are not just going to accept what happened, in fact you learned from it, taking a leadership role in your relationship and standing up for yourself and stating your needs... this relationship or the next ... notice I dropped the seed of what I NEED from my spouse, 'whomever' that will be (The image of us with someone else is something they typically are not prepared for). Secondly it lets her know what you expect from her as a W from this point forward ... your demands/boundaries may be out of the question, but that does not matter .. its what YOU NEED ...
This ^^^ is golden stuff, Defacto. The people I've seen DB successfully (Pearlharbr comes immediately to mind) were masters at positioning their "demands" as more of a "Hey, I don't know if *you* can be this person or not; I'm just telling you it's what *I* need. I totally understand if you don't think you can do this (I think Pearl actually went so far as to tell her wayward boyfriend that she didn't think he could!), but I'm not going to accept anything less than this in a marital relationship going forward, whether that's with you or with someone else."
Powerful flipping of the power dynamic, and it's really just learning to assert (and enforce) your own boundaries in life.
