Yep. Right in this thread. I am going to give you the secret to saving your marriage. But first you have to endure me giving a diatribe first.
When BD happened (initiated by me) in my sitch, I did what a lot of you newcomers did. I begged. I pleaded. I reasoned. I used logic. I pointed out how devastating it would be to our parents, our friends, our daughter, our church. I cried. I was sad. I pouted. I acted hurt (and I was hurt). I moped around for two days.
On day three I remembered that there were resources out there for this kind of thing. This wasn't my W's first EA. She had one in 2005 too. That was when I found MWD, among other "save your marriage" experts. I read MWD's emails. I read other expert's emails. I didn't follow through on a lot because in 2005 my W immediately said she wanted to save the marriage, didn't want a D, and was willing to work on us. In retrospect this was bad because I took the easy way out. This time though she wanted out. So I immediately began subscribing to mailing lists, paying for books.
I spent a lot of money in the next couple weeks. Bought a very expensive "save your marriage program". Bought countless ebooks. Went to the library and rented other books. I was an information gathering machine. My #1 GAL activity was reading self-help books, both personal and marital. I paid for private counseling sessions with some of the experts.
The techniques were wide and varied. Pursue. Don't pursue. Give her space (almost all agreed on this). Some advocated no contact, some advocated starting to do the little things that won her in the first place. The advice was all over the place.
I also began to read other's sitches and outcomes. There were those that pursued and pressured. Their results in successfully saving their marriages was low. There were those that convinced their spouses to engage in marital programs with them. Their results were mixed. Others that got their spouses to agree to counseling. Their results were very low. On and on and on.
Of all the experts' advice, there was one tactic that worked more than any other. It seemed the most counter-intuitive of all of the tactics. After all, as a LBS I wanted a magic bullet. "DO THIS AND IT IS GUARANTEED TO SAVE YOUR MARRIAGE!" I wanted to find the one thing to say that would fix everything. "SAY THIS AND YOU WILL SAVE YOUR MARRIAGE!" I wanted to find the on tactic that would give me the best chance. "Employ this change in your behavior and you will have a great chance at saving your marriage!" None of that worked very well when I looked at it.
In fact, I remember one expert suggested you find someone that your spouse really admired. And the next time you had the opportunity you told pointed out to them what that person would think of their decision. I knew for my W that person was her Grandmother that had passed away in 88. She loved her grandmother, who was a very pious, good woman that was with her grandfather for over 50 years until she passed away. My W greatly admired her grandmother and often patterned her life based on what her grandmother would have thought. She so wanted to do things her grandmother would approve of. So the next opportunity I got I told her "I wonder if you'd be choosing this path if your grandmother were still alive. She'd so want you to be the Christian wife and mother that you've always been." Yeah, that did nothing to help my sitch. If anything my WW attitude was "how dare you bring up my dead grandmother!"
So what was this counter-intuitive tactic that seemed to be the most successful at saving marriages? Do you want to know the one thing you can do above all others to give you the best chance at saving your marriage? Here it is:
Stop trying to save your marriage.
That right. Of all the advice I received about things I could do. Things I could say. Tactics I could employ. The one that got the most praise for actually working, and the one that worked best in my sitch, was to NOT try to save my marriage. Letting go. Giving up. Telling her that while I didn't agree with the choice she was making that I would do nothing to stand in her way. Dropping the rope. Moving on. That was what worked the best!
I remember the first chink in the armor of her resolve to leave the marriage. It was as we were leaving to go to Christmas dinner with her family. "I said, wow it just hit me that this will be the last time I celebrate Christmas with your family." She immediately launched into this diatribe about how she didn't want to say anything about leaving until after the holidays because she thought that once all of the holiday fanfare died down that maybe she would have a change of heart and not want to leave. And then she could spare us all of the pain and drama (remember I initiated BD).
The second time I saw her having doubts was once I established a boundary about if we were going to stay together I could only do so if she was open to complete transparency. She then said "Okay then I need to get my resume together." I offered to help her, and offered to buy her any books she wanted on resume writing and interviewing. She spent the next half day working on her resume, with my being completely onboard with her decision, until she came out of the office in tears talking about how she knew Ding was wrong, and that God hated D, and that it would be better if we could work things out.
Every time I pursued, pressured, chased, tried to get her to stay.............that was when she resolved to leave. Every time I showed her I was perfectly fine with her leaving, and even endorsed it, she start having second thoughts.
Newbies. DROP THAT ROPE. Get a life. 180 on your poor behavior for yourself. Detach from your WAS. Do all of that, but above all stop trying to save your marriage. By doing that you just might save it anyway.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
Steve, real question here. A lot of folks who have followed DBing and done the work and had patience and succeeded I've noticed have a close relationship with religion. Do you think this is a big part? Being a couple in which D is seen as "wrong" within their faith?
Steve, real question here. A lot of folks who have followed DBing and done the work and had patience and succeeded I've noticed have a close relationship with religion. Do you think this is a big part? Being a couple in which D is seen as "wrong" within their faith?
I'm curious to others thoughts as well.
Interesting that you bring this up. And to be honest with it it is a two part answer.
Religion can either greatly help you. Or greatly hurt you.
If you read the sitches here you will see there are a fair number of religious folks here. In those that are religious' sitches you will see that either the WAS went full bore and left their church. Or wanted to try to keep the sitch quiet and away from the church until they were ready to really leave.
In the former sitches the vast majority do not end in R. Once the religious WAS makes the choice to give up their faith publicly, they rarely go back on that decision.
In the cases where the WAS wants to keep it quiet until they are ready, it is about 50/50. Half the time they will decide that they want to save their MR, that they aren't ready to give up their faith, and they decide to stay. The other half of the time they eventually get to the point where they are ready to go scorched earth and D and leave their church.
Can it help? Yes. Is it a guarantee? No.
Also, one cautionary note. The LBS in the second camp often think it is to their advantage to out their WAS to their church. This almost always backfires. If you are a LBS that is religious and dealing with a WAS that hasn't revealed their walk away desire to the church. DO NOT OUT THEM TO THE CHURCH. That can become a bridge to far for the WAS to come back from.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
Steve, Amazing post, thank you for taking the time to write that.
Yail, I think belief in something is critical for us LBS and as Steve pointed out doesn't make much difference to the WAS. From my limited knowledge of the WAS nothing matters to them and nothing will stand in their way. For the LBS though having some sort of belief I think is critical but it doesn't have to be religious. It could be that God has better things in store for us and a master plan and that can help carry the LBS through with faith that it is happening for the best. An LBS could not believe in God or religion at all but I think they still need to have some sort of trust that it is out of their hands and they will come out of it on the other side just fine.
Following up Yail's question, two others: 1. Does having kids make a difference? 2. Is it true that R is more likely when the WS/WAS is the husband? I read somewhere that when the W leaves it means that something went horribly wrong and it was really the last resort, while we males tend to be flakier. Thoughts? Asking for a friend...
H: 35 W: 33 M: 11 T: 13
4/10/18: I discovered A and confronted ("BD1") 6/23/18: I moved out 8/31/18: MC ends ("BD2")
I can answer the kids part. It just makes everything so much harder.
H(37) W(35) D8, D5, S3 T20, M13 BD 8/31/18 EA Discovered 9/13/18 Mediation 10/3/18 W files for D 10/12/18 W moves out 11/10/18 EA confirmed 12/25/18 D Final 1/10/19
Burned, I have heard those stats about W leaving as well but disagree that it is because something went horribly wrong and it really was the last resort. You could easily replace H with W in a lot of situations here and my W is no different, she is acting exactly like a lot of the H's on here. I think a WAS is the same regardless of gender but I do think women go back on there decision less often then males.
My two cents on the W vs H piece - I personally think a great deal of this is learned gendered behavior in our society. Women are taught to nurture others and to almost martyr themselves for the good of the family. So in walking away, they've had to give up SO MUCH of their identity to get to that point that it is probably harder to walk back. And for some of them they may secretly resent the position they lived in their whole lives. The freedom to cast off the identity that has been pushed towards them since birth may be too enticing.
I think this may be why DB is so important, especially for H wanting a W back. He must be patient and back off to show that it is not his intent to box her back into the pressures society has pressed on her. She must feel confident in walking back to him as a PERSON and that they have the freedom to redefine their own marriage outside of societal pressures.
Of course H have pressure and roles in the family as well, I certainly don't mean that they don't. But I hope most of us see that the pressure for a W and especially a mother is often constricting.
An LBS could not believe in God or religion at all but I think they still need to have some sort of trust that it is out of their hands and they will come out of it on the other side just fine.
Agreed. I happen to not be religious at all. But there is something about quiet faith in the unknown that is needed. Maybe it's our faith in ourselves, or humanity, or biology. I know that I've had a couple of mini panic attacks over the past few weeks. During them I just gently remind myself, "You will not die from a panic attack. It will pass. Breathe. This will pass. Look around you - you are safe. You are safe". I have to remind my body that this is a fleeting moment and that the next one will improve. I try to look at myself objectively - as an animal on Earth. For me, it helps.
The other thing that helps is that I remind myself every success story starts with adversity. This insane pain we are in right now is what we need to get through in order to have our success story. Otherwise, we're just floating through life without attachment. I'm so very curious to see what my success story consists of.
