Am I Creating a SSM Part IV

[Burgbud]

The efforts of this board focus on the person posting here, not the spouse out there. You know this all too well.

I don't know that "all too well". I know that perfectly well. It's the same as every other forum I've perused on this board; the same as MWD describes in her books. It's hardly a novel or threatening concept to me. But your use of that phrase illustrates again a propensity to be condescending rather than simply discuss as one would with a fellow grownup.

You may pick up a condescending tone hear because those that post regularly and have been here awhile have done a tremendous amount of self evaluation. ... So if a person keeps deflecting and dodging, it becomes frustrating to us (well, at least to me) to see this continual denial.

I'm not sure I understand. You were trying to explain to me why I may pick up a condescending tone here, but I fail to see why folks who have been here awhile and have done a tremendous amount of self evaluation would become condescending when they became frustrated. It seems to me the exact opposite would occur; I would expect those who have done a tremendous amount of self evaluation to be able to handle frustration without becoming condescending.

I can see exactly what Heather and her H need to do. I could see exactly what Mojo needed to do.

I think that's a lot of omniscience for one person to carry around. I don't think this board provides you enough information to know exactly what either Heather or Mojo need to do (more on that later). And you know almost zilch about Heather's H, so that goes double for him. Sometimes you say we're all just adolescents of varying stages when it comes to this stuff, yet here you claim to know exactly what some people need to do. That seems contradictory to me.

We can play nice and hold hands, just like on the other boards. But I have seen more growth, more learning, more awareness on this board in the short time I’ve been here, than anywhere else. If an occasional 2x4 is needed to do keep that going, then I say so be it.

I think you know very little about the other forums on this board if you think they all just play nice and hold hands. That opinion is more evidence to me that you're willing to form strong opinions on the basis of very little information.

As for the 2x4 business, I guess I need to have the term defined. As I understood it in other forums, hitting someone with the 2x4 meant, basically, pointing out where that someone was contributing to their own misery. In this forum it seems to mean insulting, condescending or patronizing somebody. I have no issue with the liberal use of 2x4's under the first definition. I see absolutely no need at all for the 2x4 of the second definition.


What I’ve seen of the MLC board does not impress me in the least. All I saw was major spouse bashing, whining on the pity pot, telling each other to dump the SOB spouse and lots of hand holding. WTF? How is that going to move anything forward? All they know to do is GAL and wait. Big whoop. A monkey could tell you that.

My only experience with the MLC board was following the thread of a friend, Oh_So_Blue. I suspect you remember her, at least a little. Her H had dropped the "ILYBINILWY, I want a divorce" bomb almost a year previous to when I became acquainted with her thru a group of local DB'ers (local being a relative term...some in the group live 300+ miles from each other, but OSB and I live pretty much in the middle of everyone). Her H had moved out of the family home into his brother's basement a few weeks prior. She was devastated. He'd come home on an irregular but frequent basis to eat, help, watch TV, pick something up, spend time with the kids, or ML. But she never knew when or if he was going to be there. Sometimes he spent the night, sometimes he didn't. It made her nuts.

Most MLC'ers advised her to GAL and try to detach (where "detach" means to detach her emotional state from his activities). You hated that. You wanted her to engage him when he came over, to make him feel special, to bring the level of chaos in the house (multiple pets, etc) down so he'd be more comfortable. You insisted that her kids needed to see a therapist immediately, though her D refused to go.

And I think you were exactly right and I think you were giving her great advice for saving her M and helping her kids. You gave her more valuable solutions than anyone else, by far. But you only knew her from her posts...she's an upbeat, people pleasing type of person and her basic cheerfulness always shone thru. But you didn't talk to her on the phone as she commuted home and noticed she'd been crying (she always tried to cheer up when she talked to me, but it's pretty obvious when someone has just stopped crying to answer the phone...and since I'm one to belabor the obvious I always asked her if that was the case and it always was). You didn't know how torn up and responsible she felt for what her kids were going thru and how it would affect them. You really emphasized how much her D needed counselling and she despaired when her D refused to go. A parent can force their 13yo to go to a therapist but they can't force them to participate.

So in short, though you gave her lots of great suggestions, she was in too much emotional turmoil to implement them and that made her feel like even more of a failure. She needed to GAL, she needed to detach from her H, and she needed a huge break from the emotional rollercoaster. (Maybe the MLC'ers were, in fact, giving her useful advice.) If she'd been able to recharge her batteries and become emotionally stronger she would have been well served to start trying out your ideas. As it was, she fell off the map about 8 weeks after I got to know her. She doesn't answer the phone, return messages or reply to email from me or anyone else in our bunch who knows her. I noticed about a month ago that she has an active online dating profile so it seems probable she hadn't reconciled with her H as of then.

I'm not sharing this story to make you feel bad or guilty. I don't believe that would be useful to anyone and you were doing a really good job with the information you had in front of you. I bring this up only to make the point that if you assume you know exactly what somebody needs based on what that person posts on this board, you're assuming an awful lot.