Quote: You get what you put in, and if you don't give much love, you don't feel any.
And that is my point. I now KNOW I was not giving as I should have been, or really how I WANTED to be. I was letting my own ignorance and complacency fool me into believing that things were "all good". Sad.
Quote: So I take it from this that your W has thoroughly examined her motivation and placed responsibility for the A squarely on your M?
I'm not sure my W has thoroughly examined anything but I do know that once the bombs fell, it was one of those "ah ha" moments for ME and almost immediately I DID thoroughly examine MY part in all this and I know just from behaviors and things I did or did not do, I failed to live up to my own vision of my marriage. I started to figure out that she probably felt the same way. Once we started talking about things a month or two later, she confirmed that suspicion. Like I have said, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what was wrong with our marriage. It was not a subtle thing. There were MAJOR issues that we both reacted to, the sad part is it took W having an affair for ME to react to them. The affair WAS her reaction. So, yes, after whatever process she went through, I guess she DID put the blame for the A squarely on the state of the M. She said she lived in misery for a long time, and looking back, remembering my W's moods, her emotions, her crying (usually attributed to other things but...) and such, I can see how unhappy she was.
NOW, here comes the kicker. I KNOW a lot of her unhappiness could NOT have been fixed by a better marriage but I do think the forces that lead to the A COULD have probably been lessened to the point where she would have decided to work things out instead of trying to run. These are all things SHE told me, and as I said, I figured out on my own.
Does any of that make it true? Who knows, but it seems to function as truth to me, her and my C so it's what I am going with for the time being.
Quote: Yes, she wants to escape her life, but she is being attracted by something else. It certainly doesn't make it any easier for her to come to terms with this when she has someone validating her and helping her compartmentalize her experience.
Very true, which is why most experts agree that there is a cap on the amount of TRUE progress that can be made while the affair continues.
Quote: I never understood that M is a process. I guess I always thought of it as a state or an end. I never really thought that either of us would consider leaving - naive, I know, considering the high divorce rate.
Same here. I feel foolish when I think about how I used to see this stuff.
Quote: We influence whether they want to stay or go. I do not, however, believe that this dynamic is as strong when there is a third party involved in the M.
Again, I agree.
Quote: I guess what I really struggle with is whether an A is truly a symptom of a S wanting to leave the M, or whether it is something that happens and can make it likely that someone who's not operating at 100%, and therefore being fulfilled in the M, will see the M as something worth walking away from. It's the chicken and the egg argument
Well, to me, this is the pivotal question you need to answer before accepting DB as the "right" way for you to attempt to save your marriage because if you believe the A is a cause, not an effect, then you need to try to stop the A to get rid of the cause. If, on the other hand, you accept, as DB/DR claim, that the affair is merely a BIG symptom of the overall issues in the marriage, i.e. that the marriage was broken and the A is a result of that "break", then you can accept the affair and begin working on the things that really matter, the REAL issues.
