Wow! I haven't been quoted so much in a long time! 'Course, I'm not posting as much as I used to.
But everyone's replies to my "perceptions" comment and KAW's reference to an old thread of mine kinda clarified soemthing in my mind.
I think that the boards are a great help for us as we try to think outside the box. We start to think in terms of "what works" and try to stop doing what doesn't work by "doing a 180."
But I think there are some things we forget, as we apply this philosophy to our marriages.
Firstly, our SO doesn't know about these techniques. In all probability, they have tried them without putting a name to them. Just look at Michele's description of The Walkaway Wife Syndrome (speaking of getting back to basics )
Quote: After years of trying unsuccessfully to improve things, a woman eventually surrenders and convinces herself that change isn't possible. She ends up believing there's absolutely nothing she can do because everything she's tried hasn't worked. That's when she begins to carefully map out the logistics of what she considers to be the inevitable, getting a divorce.
I think that this can apply to a WAH too, but it's definately more prevalent in women in our society.
Anyway, my point is that all of our goals probably include influencing our SO to our way of thinking – at least to the extent that we want them to recommit to our marriages. One of the sources of most of our problems is that our SO can no longer empathize with us. They have probably followed a similar scenario as the one I have quoted above, but it didn’t work And now, we DBers expect them to “come around.” We do this without explanation. Of course, we cannot explain it. They’ve tried it, and it didn’t work for them. Why should they try something that didn’t work for them, just because you now say it’ll work?
When they don’t follow our logic, they’re “aliens.”
How do you suppose that attitude affects their empathy towards us?
So onto what KAW says...
Quote: Andy, I sent you a more detailed email, but simply put being consistant wasn't something different for nearly eighteen months and yet it hasn't been enough for CAW to change much at all in the timeframe. She is still seeing OM, still vacillates between him and me. I guess after 18 months, in the last six, I've been letting my frustrations get the better of me.
Andy, I guess I fell into that trap of 180 + 180 = 360. (I know you know where that comes from.)
Yes. I understand your frustration, and I know where the 180+180 reference comes from.
All I can say about that is that although 18 months seems like a reasonable timeframe, you hafta remember that CAW was totally oblivious to the point in time when the clock started ticking. Of course, so were you, but the fact still remains that it's your timetable. You have no idea when the clock started ticking in CAW's mind (and I've no doubt she doesn't know either), but you can't unring the bell.
This post is awful long, so I'm just finish it off with a link that might speak to you:
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