Quotes found on Divorcebusting (7)

[LH19]

Whether you want them to be or not, your actions are the true message you send to others. You may verbal tell someone you are unhappy with them, but if you then give them something nice or preform an act of service, you are actually expressing that you are willing to do what they want even if they don't deserve it. That's a message of WEAKNESS and a display of LOW VALUE.

[LH19]

"You can't win the war against the world if you can't win the war against your own mind." - Will Smith

[SteveLW]

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Thanks everyone for the support and prayers. Greatly appreciated. Things are better, and I am back to working on MR 2.0 and trying to improve things. However, I still have pangs of thinking maybe I should I have just insisted she follow through on her plan to get a job, get her own place, and D. I wonder often what that would look like today. I guess I am being a typical human-being in that I want my cake and eat it too.

Glad you are back on track.

I guess one of the things I think you need to look at is this.
People cycle up and down, hot and cold.
This obviously includes you too.
So in DB we suggest you sit back - take a deep breath and wait
for the cycle to complete before you make a big decision.
Having your cake and eating it too are fine for the long term but
be careful that you make decisions about it in the short term.

LOVE is a CHOICE not a feeling,
so be sure it is what you are choosing to do, for the right reasons.

[Ready2Change]

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It’s easier to focus on what’s wrong with other people because then I don’t have to focus on what’s wrong with me. And I always have 3 or 4 fingers pointed back at me. .,... but now my own demons are staring me in the face and telling me, You’re going to go through this again and hurt another innocent beautiful creature if you don’t fix it. That’s what I’ve been told here, over and over, but I don’t think I was ready to hear it until now.

[Ready2Change]

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Here's what's behind her blaming you and re-writing history: she knows she's doing something she shouldn't, she knows she's wrong, but at the same time, what she's doing is really exciting and makes her feel really good!

That's a bind -- she shouldn't do this, but she can't help herself from continuing.

When that happens, people will initially beat themselves up and feel very guilty for what they are doing, but human nature is that you can only feel bad about yourself for so long and then a preservation instinct kicks in.

When that happens, it goes something like this: "I'm doing a bad thing, but I'm not a bad person. So if I'm not a bad person, someone else must be *making* me do this, and *they* must be the bad person"

Since you're the only other one in the relationship, they'll latch on to you as the cause of the problem, and will then re-write history, invent things, and look for any little thing you do that supports they stories they are telling themselves.

It is a very sophisticated form of self-hypnosis so that they can justify and continue their behavior without the attendant guilt they had been feeling.

If you're then remorseful, apologetic, and pursue them, it reinforces that you must be acting this way because you did something wrong, and it makes your situation even worse!

Your very best move here from a psychological perspective is to completely go the other way. You leave her versus her leaving you. Don't accept anything she's telling you about this being your fault, just outright reject it. Don't compromise on that, don't think you'll be a nice guy and meet in the middle, feel free to make her angry. She needs to believe that you consider yourself to be more valuable than the treatment you've been getting.

You need to establish your value, by not allowing yourself to be in a relationship with someone who is not faithful. You can't control what she does, there's no way you can do that, but you CAN control what treatment you will and will not accept.

Moving away from her emotionally is scary and seems counter-intuitive, but its absolutely the best move you can make.

Think back to dating -- who is more intriguing to you, a person who easily falls into your arms, or a person who is hard to get? Which one is more attractive?

[Ready2Change]

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I am going to give you the secret to saving your marriage.....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......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....

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.

[Ready2Change]

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H and I are going to try a 2-3-2 schedule. M,T with one parent, W,Th,F with other parent and Sat,Sun with the parent who had the M,T that week. Switches every week. i.e. H, H, W, W, W, H, H and the next week... W, W, H, H, H, W, W and then back to H, H... We’ll see how it goes...

[Ready2Change]

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Just because she's not the person you thought she was doesn't mean it's time to be rude, you're better than that. Keep your chin up and don't stoop to poor behavior for any reason.

[Ready2Change]

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Why is she doing it? Below I will post everything we have learned over the years on why WAS's do what they do:

"_______________________________________________________________________"

There you have it, the shortest book ever!

Seriously though, the short answer is she is cake-eating. She likes the comfort and security of the M but she also wants to be "free" to pursue a different life if and when she so chooses.

[Ready2Change]

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This whole thing as I am learning is not about making her want you back; its about making yourself a man that anyone would want to be with. She may see the changes and think twice; she may never look back. Either way if you work on yourself you come out ready for taking on the world.