Overall, it's imperative to FULLY realize that the attitude and skills required for successful piecing are not only DIFFERENT than those required for successful DBing . . . many of them are precisely OPPOSITE.
This is important to consider and an excellent point. DB-ing is partly to create doubt in the WAS or cheater's mind. It's a tough endeavor. A solo act. You are doing GAL and 180's to become your best self (in an ideal world) but in reality you are really doing it to save your marriage. Some of those activities you'll keep, some will slough off. Now that you are both moving towards each other, it's time to change from a solo to a couples dance. Some moves are the same, but some need to change.
Previously you put your own needs on the shelf. You forgave, validated, loved unconditionally and made yourself smaller.
One GAL you can do is actually start showing up in your own life and marriage. State your needs, wants. Create some healthy, loving, boundaries. ASK for what you want. This is not about being a jerk, it's about being a centered, actualized, confident man. This may be bumpy at first, but in the long run it will create MORE attraction that just being an emotional chameleon (shifting in response to your wife). According to "Nice Guy" theory, our attempts to fix everything and not show our weaknesses, needs or problems make us a teflon human. Nothing sticks to us. It's our rough edges that make us "sticky" and love-able. And it's a self-confident person who can allow themselves to be vulnerable and show their warts that is love-able AS THEY ARE. Being Super-Shodan means you never show weakness, never ask for what you want, and in the end, never become vulnerable, which is the key to intimacy. If you continue DB and 180 only as you have been, you are only trying to control an outcome, and not really engaging in a relationship. Your wife will like it at first, but sooner or later, she'll sense you are only "handling" her and are not being genuine.
So instead of 1. Just keeping up the self-effacing GAL activities that were DB-focused, or 2. Get exhausted and drop all of them, try, instead to, 3. Take up some new ones, that actually make you more real, visible and healthy in relationships.
It's been said that no woman believes that a man will stand up for her, until he's shown that he can stand up to her. Part of standing up to her, is learning to stand up for yourself. She can't trust a nice-guy chameleon. You can't trust someone who lies to you about her infidelity. So you BOTH have some work to do.
I'm still just over here, on my feet, doing the slow clap.
This is such a precious perspective for ALL of us here. Heck, for anyone who's married!!
Theoden, my man! Where have you BEEN all my life?! You and Starsky are, like, my long-lost brothas from anotha motha.
But seriously, Sho. You DO have this. You've come too far to give up and give in now. Make this STICK. You have this one opportunity. What Theoden (and Starsky all along) has detailed for you is a way to increase the odds of creating sustainable change in your M. "Sustainable" being the key word.
Wow. Incredible words of wisdom. Thanks for that, guys; I gleaned some great nuggets of golden information - and some affirmations/validations - in these posts, myself.
So give us your thoughts, Sho. Where ya at? Let us hear from you.
M: 40 H: 44 Married 14 years S11 & D6; D20 & D19 from previous M 2BDs/PAs, 8 years apart Piecing: April 2014
Thanks for the kind words. You rock! Dunno why I've been drawn back here. I was active 2007-2008 a lot. My marriage didn't make it. Mostly because I made the road back too smooth and didn't lay down boundaries. I tried the un-sustainable super-Theoden DB act and I couldn't keep it up. What I didn't do is man up and step into my own life. Most of my GAL and 180's were just ways to stop my wife from trying to end the marriage. I never actually sat down and asked, "Who am I, what do I want?" Mostly I should have laid down boundaries much earlier. I think it would have shown my wife to be an entitled cheater and I could have had clarity YEARS earlier.
Shodan -- Train makes a GREAT point. The goal is to create SUSTAINABLE change in your marriage. That takes 2 people to do. DB-ing is all about getting you THIS point. It doesn't really cover the piecing part so much. I think MWD should write a book on how to piece AFTER an affair. She says straight out that healing after an affair is heavily dependent on the cheating spouse being honest, open and transparent.
Divorce-Busting gets them to think twice. It puts us into a mode of working on ourselves, improving, making little or no demands, etc. It's important at first, but it's not going to carry the marriage forward.
Piecing a marriage together requires hard work on the part of the cheater/walk-away-spouse. Often, we are so happy that our spouses are back that we don't require them to do the real work.
An affair is a clear demonstration that they lack a moral compass. They need to experience and SHOW remorse. They need to quit. drinking. They need to be honest and forthcoming about all details of the affair. They need to stop all contact with the OM or OW. They need to take the initiative in marriage counseling. They need to show humility NOT entitlement.
By making it too easy on them we are robbing them of the opportunity for them to do their own work. It prevents them from transforming. It stunts their ability to grow a conscience.
By making it too easy on them, it makes the reconciliation easy and cheap for them, re-enforcing their sense of entitlement. A reconciliation that's costly for them (meaning it requires they put some skin in the game) makes them value their spouse more and the marriage more. We always value what is hard-won.
Of course, there's the possibility that making serious demands of the WAS once they want to return may turn them off. That's what we all were afraid of. I think, in retrospect, requiring them to do the hard work is really, in some sense, a litmus test. If they balk at doing the work, if they don't want to go to counseling, if they refuse to give details about the affair, if they don't really show remorse, then perhaps they are the kind of people who either CAN'T or DON'T WANT TO grow a conscience. It may save you time. My wife flat our refused to ask my forgiveness for the affair because she felt it wasn't wrong and she refused to discuss it in our marriage counseling. That was a red flag. I should have set a hard line then. If you don't want to talk about the affair in counseling, then we can't really move forward. Had she refused, I should have filed. I would have saved years of pain and suffering. Asking them to do the work is very clarifying. They either do it, or show themselves to be flaming pieces of sh*t. ;-)"
I was just reading your posts above and I think they spell out the mindset perfectly.
I am at the point of deciding what I want from any R going forward, and wrapping my head around the fact that if I stick to my guns on certain issues, my H may well follow through with D rather than rise to the challenge of being the man I need him to be.
And although that thought frightens me a bit because it will force huge changes in my life, I know that it's for the best.
I would rather that he lets me know off the bat that he's not really invested in making lasting changes, than steal more years from my life in a half-life marriage built on a shaky foundation.
The issues need to be identified, discussed, a plan needs to be in place to solve both existing problems and deal with future conflicts.
Historically, my H has balked at exactly this type of thing; planning, rules, doing things which don't "feel natural". It is a lot to expect him to change at this point in his life.
However, it's what I want, and I now know how important it is to me and my well-being and contentment in a M. (Notice I did not say "Happiness". That's a different thing.)
Sorry for the hijack, Sho---it's just that this is where I'm getting to in my sitch and Theo's words ring true.
Very much a page from the wise Mr. Starsky, if you ask me.
--(G)GGG
Me 54 Him 63 M 23 T 29 0 Kids Funny Farm of Rescues 12/12 OW-- 5/13 ILYBINILWY: A denied 9/13 Proof OW: ENDED 2/14 Got D papers on my BD I kicked him out for my sanity 9/14 He wants to "talk"?
