"Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."
peace and best wishes to all...
-B
Kind of sad to me that God was not in his list of things to trust in. Without my trust in God I would have been very lost in my sitch. Even when I was spiraling, deep down I knew that God had a plan for me and my life....with or without my W.
Last edited by Steve85; 10/09/1812:37 PM.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
i hear what you're saying Steve...from what i've read of Jobs i don't believe he was a deeply religious man in the traditional sense. at least his "trust in something" is inclusive enough for each of us to define what it is that we trust in ya know? for me while i do believe in God, the degree to which i "trust his plan" has been deeply tested throughout my sitch.
for me the main thing is that the calamity of the BD precludes so many of us from being able to have the patience AND foresight to envision the ability for the dots connecting from this to something better, BUT once we transition ourselves to those "future dots", it becomes so easy in retrospect to see the necessity of letting go of the previous.
just journaling a bit on something i've run across in my reading...
over in terrapin's thread he talks about how his W says she has no sexual attraction for him and then Grace21 replied saying: "Women need lots of emotional attention, non-sexual touching, and lot's of verbal affirmations way before they hit the bedroom. . I wasn't getting any of this from H for years, so no wonder I wasn't into it." earlier in a separate blog i had been reading a male counselor was admonishing men that courtship is an ongoing, forever thing and how a man needs to focus on giving his love to the relationship always. the more i read of that the more self reflection it's caused in me. point blank i never did much about maintaining the courtship after marriage. sure we went on vacations and i said i love you, but i never really courted her post baby. i will say that W's reluctance to go out on dates after baby and her unhappiness after baby would have made it difficult, but i did not commit to trying to continually court her after marriage/baby. also i never conciously thought of "giving" to the relationship. i don't believe at all that i was a concious taker, but i also didn't dedicate myself to giving to her if that makes sense. and then i read Grace21's reply and...at minimum i find a huge opportunity for personal growth within myself.
thing is this...my parents have been married 50+ years, my father was my model for how to be a husband. he was a great father, but who knows how he was as a husband. when i speak with my mother about my W and sisters not getting their emotional needs met she can't relate to them at all. best she can say is that she doesn't understand. in fact in talking with W's mother on the same topic, she can't understand it either. so to me i don't believe my model for modern relationships with women works. my father didn't know any of this stuff that we talk about here and quite frankly my mother never expected him to know about any of it either.
i guess what i'm getting at is i honestly just don't know if in the future i truly have the ability within me to provide the levels of emotional intimacy that it seems so many women in their 30s-40s seem to require. that's not meant as a rant against their expectations, but an honest assessment of my to date level of understanding about what it means to be a husband. it's not that i'm willfully withholding from my significant other, more like i'm only just now becoming self aware to the level of effort ladies of today expect. then the kicker for me as a modern man becomes...given what I "think" that level of effort is, reflecting on it i'm completely not sure that i could ever meet modern ladies expectations...and even if i could, i'm not sure how much i'd have to sacrifice of my own life to make that possible for them. these thoughts have me wondering if i want to try again some day.
apologies if this is a ramble/makes no sense...wondering if anyone else kinda gets/feels what i'm thinking.
Interesting topic. I agree with Grace and the experts that say that women need to continue to be courted. But I also agree with the what you are implying that this is a relatively new phenomenon. And I think I know where it is rooted.
Baby boomers and older met, fell in love with and married each other. And you stayed together through thick and thin. Marriage vows, deeply rooted in Biblical teachings, were taken seriously. The fact that you spoke these vows in front of God, spouse and family were binding. So when things got rough, the majority of couples toughed it out. Because those vows meant something to both people.
Nowadays, it appears that people take the vows from a very selfish place. "I vow these things as long as I am happy and my every need is fulfilled!" Vows with selfish caveats. I believe through the 50s the D rate was around 25% in the 50s. In the 60s, with the sexual revolution it jumped to over 30%. Then with the feminist movement taking root, by the 70s and 80s it exploded to where we now are around a 50% D rate.
I was thinking about my sitch this past week. I commented to one of our female posters, that was trying to hold onto her H for dear life despite his repeated affairs and just a complete lack of trying in their MR, that I wish my W was that committed. When I am giving 100% in my MR she is committed to it. But once I start to let my guard down is when she is ripe for an OM to swoop in.
Now, my stopping trying isn't good. But is it really justification for an affair? Look at the vows most of us make: "I, ___, take thee, ___, to be my wedded husband/wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I pledge thee my faith [or] pledge myself to you."
I compare my mom's generation with my W's and there is a distinct difference in the attitude towards commitment and marriage. Factor in that most D (I think near 80% according to MWD, but I am going by memory here) are initiated by women. I think we start to see it. My dad would come home after a long day at work. Barely say anything to my mom or us. He was quiet through dinner. Then after dinner he'd go immerse himself in his hobbies, or the evening news, etc. And my mom never even contemplated D. I don't know what their sex life was like, and I am not asking. It probably wasn't great, but there is such a big difference between Ws not being into sex due to inattention by their Hs, and being ready to bolt the MR for an OM.
Also factor in all of the ways we have to communicate today, between smartphones, and social media, the internet, etc. And the problem is just exacerbated.
ballast, I too have asked myself if I have it in me to be the doting, attentive H that my W so seems to need. And maybe there are Hs out there that are just naturally like that. IDK. But it seems that the needier the W, the more jumping from relationship to relationship she engages in. Yes, it is always dangerous to stop meeting your W's needs. And I was guilty of this for years, and then was angry and bitter because my sexual needs were not being met. Please understand, i am not giving bad Hs, of which I was one, a pass here. But there has to be a better answer than leaving the MR, D, cheating, etc.
Last edited by Steve85; 10/16/1812:33 PM.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
his W seems to be all over the place feeling wise, he never did enough emotionally yet she can't definitively say how and she is anxiety ridden on working on the MR while time apart has been a weight off her shoulders.
there's so much level of expectation of today's lady that is so completely ambiguous that they can't even define it for us guys and we are not mind readers as Wanted1 says. i believe in marriage, in love and want that for the future, but honestly given what i read/see perhaps it's best to not try again. at some point guaranteed over the rest of my life i'd slip/take my foot off the gas in trying to emotional fulfill my lady and then the MR is done for. not saying i should not be constantly trying to keep my W emotionally fulfilled, but I think the level of need now simple outweighs my ability to give it and even if i slipped and asked what it was a modern lady needed, i don't believe they can actually tell me.
again this is a self reflection/evaluation for me based on things i'm reading/seeing. if i don't believe i can meet the needs of a modern woman, then much better to simply not give it another shot to save both them and myself from a failure somewhere down the road.
ballast, again, I have to agree in general. My W on BD said the following types of things:
1) You are mean and controlling. 2) You are never here and isolated when you are. 3) You should never have got married, you are too selfish and independent.
Yet after BD she was not open to me being nice and letting to of control. The last thing she wanted was for me to be there and be present. And even when I tried to show her how much I wanted to put her first, and needed her she didn't want to believe it.
It was as if she didn't want remediation for 1, 2, and 3 (after all, wouldn't she have said this all to me much earlier than she did?), as much as she wanted to use 1, 2, and 3 as an excuse for what she had already decided.
Here are my needs, but I don't want you to meet them, I want to dump you and find someone else to see if they can satisfy them.
Now granted, by time they get fed up and either get an OM, or move on from the MR, etc it is generally too late to 180 on the complaints in order to fix things. That is why GAL and detachment are so important along with the 180s, but still it seems as if the modern woman wants a guy that, as you pointed out, reads minds and that she should never have to verbalize her needs.....until it is too late.
ballast, and I think this is why DBing is about a 50/50 proposition in saving the MR. Even if the LBS does everything right, the chance of saving the marriage is 50% at best.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
I get what you are saying guys. I´d also include the triggers for MLC there and its disruptions...selfishness, anxieties, chilhood unresolved problems, toxic environments, wrong influences..., there´s a lot to put in the brain mixer...
So what Steve says: DBing is for the DBers
WW H(me): 53 W: 48 T: 27 M: 22 S: 18 Piecing since 03/2016 Saw the light in the storm
Interesting topic. I agree with Grace and the experts that say that women need to continue to be courted. But I also agree with the what you are implying that this is a relatively new phenomenon. And I think I know where it is rooted.
Baby boomers and older met, fell in love with and married each other. And you stayed together through thick and thin. Marriage vows, deeply rooted in Biblical teachings, were taken seriously. The fact that you spoke these vows in front of God, spouse and family were binding. So when things got rough, the majority of couples toughed it out. Because those vows meant something to both people.
Plus there was a TON of peer pressure to stay in a M no matter how bad things got. Divorce was a dirty word before the 60's. Perceptions changed a lot in the 60's and 70's- women returned to the workforce and divorce became more prominent. Seems like we've shifted from one extreme to the other, we've gone from people not getting divorced under any circumstances (which clearly is unhealthy in some situations) to people getting divorced for basically no reason at all other than they just don't "feel like being married anymore" (which is pretty much what my ex told me). Surely there has got to be a middle ground between those two extremes!
my "model" for husband/marriage experience was my dad naturally. my folks were 50+ years married so was W's folks. neither my mother nor her mother can make sense of this. for their generation as you all allude to, divorce was not considered. as my mom said in those days who else would we marry/where would we go. absent social media/tech of today, if those Ws left they had WAY less chance of finding OM. so my "insight" is molded based on the prior generation, but clearly what i'm finding is that my generation of ladies is WAY different from their mom's and THAT means to me i was woefully unprepared to meet those increased expectations.
one of my sister's is D'ing her H. 15 years together, great father, provider, but she says he can't meet her emotional needs. says he's a great man, she doesn't deserve him, but can't stay with him. smh. ask her why/what he does not provide, she dodges. simply can't answer the question. now i have lots of buddies, all good men, love their wives and families, but pretty much every single one of them would blank face me if i asked them if their emotional needs were being met. not saying that's an excuse, but i do believe it's a reality. so then as Sandi once said "men don't understand regular women's actions, so no chance at men understanding a WW"...so if she's right, now we have a guy who's not inclined to his emotions, plus doesn't "get" women, he just knows he loves her and tries his best...for sure like dang near every man at some point, he slips/screws up/stops courting, etc...after some time he's BD'd and of course has no idea what happened. so then he goes to MC IF he's lucky and it's either too late, he's wrong, he'll never change/can't change, etc. that fool likely never had a single clue he had a problem nor did his W give him a single chance to fix it/change it. he was supposed to know all along and she's closed/written him off. the kicker to me these days is that these ladies who walk away and pick up another guy...we're not all that much different, i mean at some time that new guy is gonna fail in your mind just the way the one you left did.
like i say i have learned much of what i'm guilt of. i did not do a good job of continuing the courtship, i did not focus on giving to our relationship as i should have, i should have spent more time talking with her buildling the foundation of safety and comfort for her in me, there's a TON of ways i have learned more about what i could have done. in fact if i had the lifetime vow between the two of us i could have implemented much of that. BUT feelings/needs for ladies of today seem like a constantly moving/infinite loop of contradictions. if a guy went right and she says you should have gone left, go the other way and you'll still be wrong.
i dunno...i plan to implement a whole bunch of things in myself, things that i have learned i didn't do/ways I could have been a much better spouse. but i really do wonder if i will ever be able to satisfy the needs of a modern lady. relationship needs/wants of today's women just seem so completely higher, confusing, perhaps unattainable to me and as is exhibitied herein daily, many W's have no idea exactly what they want even to themselves. again i love ladies, would love to be in a forever relationship, but i just really truly worry that no matter how much effort i put into their feelings/emotional needs/you name it, good chance i'd still fail and not have a clue why nor how.
sorry again if i rambled, bottom line i'd like to believe that the work i'm putting into myself would show tangible results in future relationships but for many various factors i'm really questioning if any of it would make a difference anyway.
have reached a point with the attorneys where our settlement agreement could be completed shortly. feeling...honestly i don't know how. the inevitability of this i guess i've always expected, the sadness of it i've held at bay for many months now. w just walked away, gave us up. i'll never understand it, but i guess perhaps for whatever reason that's the way God wanted it to play out. i loved her, heck probably still do, but i've just turned off all of those feelings. beyond dealing with her for our D, i have no interest in any further relationship with her. the contradiction in my feelings of love for her, but not wanting anything to do with her are very strange to me, but again they are brought on by circumstances that i did not want and wish had never happened. D is now back with W. before she left she told me how she doesn't like going back and forth from place to place. i told her i don't like it either and that i'm so sorry this has to be the way it is. as always W not wanting me is MUCH easier to accept than the loss of time with D and the impact my W's "happiness" has had upon her. i mentioned some time ago about the idea of "dots in the future", how those future dots require the changes in my current life to complete. it is still a challenge from my current aperture to see the promise of those "future dots", but i persist and endure if for no other reason than the love i have for my D and her future. what a complete waste. i hope truly that the destruction my wife's selfish motives have wrought somehow in the future show they were for the best.
