You said that it is hard to work on things without W cooperation. This is not true. You can change the dynamic of your R by changing yourself only. That's the only thing you have control over. This has worked for me. I saw an immediate improvement in my H behavior when I started to implement DB. Please read DR, if you haven't already.
I would start my acting "as if". How would you behave if you knew everything was going to turn out fine? Create a positive environment around you.
Absolutely no R talks.
Christine
JJ
Read about Divorce Busting® Telephone Coaching here!
Show her that you are a better man than the OM by your actions. Be understanding and compassionate. Also avoid pushing her by asking her if she still loves you. She obviously does not like that question because it puts her on the spot.
Don't focus on her actions and words and don't react to the OM. Focus on yourself. Make yourself better and put together some goals for yourself and your sitch. Monitor the baby steps and make adjustments as needed.
This is the time where YOU have to find that inner stength. Things may get a lot harder before they get easier. The key, however, is how you change yourself, not those around you. How do you do that?
Improve yourself in terms of how you communicate and relate to others. Improve your appearance by working out and buying new clothes. Improve your fathering skills by being a better dad to your daughter. (This is a big one because your W will see how your R with D is. If it improves dramatically, your W will start see that you're truly changing)
Make a list of goals. Watch out for baby steps. Don't react to OM; BE BETTER THAN HIM IN HER EYES.
Also, remember to layoff the questions that put her on the spot. That's a big no-no.
This will take time, Craig. It took a while to get to this point. It will take a while to get back. Be patient. If you are a man of faith, be humble and ask God to give you strength. It does make a big difference.
JJ
Read about Divorce Busting® Telephone Coaching here!
Take it from me. There are always things that come up to challenege our ability to get our significant others back. The thing is you can drive her to him if you react to much to his presence. You can not control him. You can not control her. You CAN CONTROL YOU!
Craig, look at why you are reacting this way. Are you reacting this way out of love? Are you reacting this way out of caring? Or are you doing it our of fear? Think about why you are doing this. If it is a good reason, no jealousy and fear are not good reasons, then stick with it.
Calm down. I say this to myself and eveyone else. If you get flustered or taxed you are much more likely to overreact and stop DBing. Remain calm... a calm person is more able to be a better friend.
THE HARDEST THING. Stop needing your wife back. Wanting is okay but wants are not things that drive people into depression and jealousy. If you have a hobby this might be time to pick it back up and go full bore on it for a bit.
Craig... believe in youself, your cause, and the love you have in your W.
We are here for you buddy,
Don't Give Up. Don't ever give up.
Weary
JJ
Read about Divorce Busting® Telephone Coaching here!
Please help me! My H served me divorce papers 2 months ago, after a separation. Ever since, I have been going through the threads on DB BB and have also read DB.
Applying the DB techniques has really helped me and after 2 months of DB, my H has begun to call me and ask how I am doing. He came home the other night and we talked for almost 6 hours. I was positive, cheerful and confident.
But now, it seems that my H is trying to reconsider his decision. He is looking for answers and wants to know how I feel about what happened to get us to where we are....in short he wants me to take most of the responsibility for messing up our relationship and also apologize to his family and friends for hurting them....I don't think I should be apologizing to anyone but to him.
However, since I feel I am getting a second chance should I just take full responsibility and apologize even though I don't agree. He would like to pin the blame on me and expect me to make future changes to make the marriage work.
Please advise....I don't want to mess up a second time but I am not sure if I am the only one who should be accepting responsibility for what happened.
You have really taken the DB goal-setting and behavior and made it work for you - great! I encourage you to continue staying focused on your goals. And what are your goals? Will apologizing get you closer to them? I don't know your circumstances, so I am not sure why it is important for your H to have you apologize to family and friends. However, I would wonder that if by your apologies, it helps him to "save face" so that he feels more free coming back to you...is that possible? Would that be a possible outcome?
And, if you choose not to apologize, how will that impact your M goals? Is this a situation where it is more important to be right or to be loved?
Keep in mind that just because you are giving 150% right now, that doesn't mean as your R gets back on track that your needs can't be addressed later. And they should be - when your H is back committed to the M.
So, hold onto those things that are working for you! Then, take a clear look at the best possible consequences that could come from your future actions. I support your efforts!!! _________________________ Laurie Divorce Busting Relationship Coach
JJ
Read about Divorce Busting® Telephone Coaching here!
He left in July and I found this board and “went to work”. It was the typical “roller coaster” ride but we got to where everything was going great. He was reaching out to connect, emailing, calling 3 and 4 times a day and trying to figure out how often we could meet to see each other. We were going places and having a great time together.
Then a week ago we got in a conversation about the R. He got upset and hasn’t gotten over it yet. He is now angry and resentful just like at the beginning of the separation. He will email with “little” things but not like he was. If he calls and I say do you want to "do something" he gets upset and says he feels trapped (hadn’t “those” conversations for a long time). However, even when he says he feels trapped and he also ends it with saying things like – “So let's just leave it alone for now - sorry.” So, I don’t feel he’s totally shutting the door.
My question is what should I do? I’m thinking just go back to step one and start all over again since it feels just like it did 4 or 5 months ago.
Friend;
Going back to what worked before may feel discouraging, but there is wisdom in learning from it. It sounds like it was very effective, so it would be foolish to discount it.
Take a good look at last week's conversation about the R. When did it start to go bad? Again, you have more knowledge and experience now than you did before, use it to your advantage.
You are pursuing a worthy goal - use what you know and stay positive.
I have followed your post some but wanted to jump on to give you some thoughts. From my side I went through this seperation hell for over a year, I did not see my wife for fourteen months, was involved in three court cases (I was absent from them) and I would have talked to her four times in the four months leading up to these cases - I was living 15000kms away from her away.
Through the time of our seperation I was on the recieving end of some great verbal 'abuse' by my wife. She said she hated me, I was going to hell, I was untrustworthy, a liar, a minupulator, etc etc. Through the time she accused me of two affairs of which she said she had proof and a whole range of other things as well (none of which was true).
Mate my greatest shock in all this was a week before the final court case (which was going to last a minimum of three days in the court) my wife contacted me out completely unexpectantly and wanted to get back together. The end result is we are back together and moving along well.
Through this time I made every DB mistake that is possible to make. In the end the one thing I did well was detach from her and make her see what life by herself was going to be. What I am saying in the following is a combination of (1) myself being able to detach from the hell and emotional turmoil of seperation that you are going through and (2) from a number of conversations that I have with my wife since we have reconcilled. My story is spread across newcomers, seperated and surving but I have no idea how many pages back they now lurk.
Firstly from what you are written you have a very good chance of fixing things up in your sitch BUT you have to start detaching from this. There are some things that you have to learn that you cant control and stop fighting them. As hard as it is questions about OM, cell phone bills, etc are just going to alienate your wife and push her further away from you. One of the hardest things your going to have to do is suck these questions into you and not say anything to your wife. When things are getting too you - go to the gym, go for a walk or run or just vent here. Do NOT bring up your suspicions to your wife it is just going to highlight the reasons to herself why she 'left' you, and believe me at this stage she is looking for things to justify her actions to herself.
So a couple of things that I have found out from my wife that I am almost certain pertain to you sitch as well.
Your wife loves you and thinks about you continuously. They do not turn this off overnight, she is just very confused at the moment about her feelings.
Your wife misses you and the closeness that you had. She is trying to replace it at the moment with nights out with friends, etc. But watch mate, these friends will come and go and she will look at you as the constant in her life.
Your wife is angry at the moment and she will direct that anger to you. As the seperation progresses she will start to loose this anger and will likely push your buttons to get you into a fight so that she can then validate her feelings of anger towards you to herself. Remember it is always easy to put the blame on someone else other then the scarey step of accepting that some fault does lie with themselves.
Your wife does NOT hate you. She is confused about the feelings and the turmoil that she is experiancing at the moment. That confusion will come out in some truely aweful things that will be said but while she may 'think' she feels this, she doesnt. Accept the confusuion, dont fight it as you will only push her away and validate her feelings to herself.
Your wife remembers just about everything you say in this time. You dont have to keep reinforcong it in the hope that she 'hears it'. I am continually amazed at the things my wife is able to recollcet that were said in comments a year ago in the mdist of our darkest period. They do hear however at the moment they just are not ready to validate or accept what your saying.
Mate these are just a few of the points that I have picked up from my conversations with my wife (there are many more). In the end I did nothing spectactular, there are many far better 'dbers' on this board then I ever was or ever will be. The one thing I did was detach - in my mind my marriage was over and I got on with life. She then had to relaise what 'independance' truely was and to her credit and my good fortune she took the step of holding out the branch of reconcilliation and it was probably one of the bravest things she has done in her life.
You have many things going for you in your current sitch but you have to be patient and detach as best as you can. Now this does not mean turn away from your wife, ignore her, be mean, etc. It means look after you, look after your children and make sure you are happy and as much as you can project that happiness (my wife said that it was when she saw I had got my confidence back in myself and I stopped the begging, whining, 'acting' stuff that she got her attraction back to me). This will show more to her then any statements of 'look how much I have changed'.
In yourself you have to see that this whole db stuff is more then another 'tactic' on how to get your wife back. I think in honesty many on the board would say that this is how they are using it and get frustrated when they dont see immediate results. I know it took me quite a few months until I stopped using it as this 'tactic' and say it as a means of working on me and making me happy. In the end I would have been happy with me even if I had not reconciled.
This aint easy, in fact if your like me it is the hardest thing you will have to do in you life - it is something that I never want to go through again. You will make mistakes just remember it is not the end of the world when you do,
I wish you all the best and I hope for your success.
Andrew
JJ
Read about Divorce Busting® Telephone Coaching here!
This DBing stuff is way more like a marathon than a sprint. My experience is:
Learn to really listen to her so she can feel your presence and know you hear her without judgment of the desire to fix or correct--a way of hearing that simply says how you feel is important and I want to bring that into my experience. Some of peanuts posts on compassionate listening are wonderful. In my experience, it all grew out of learning to hear w. I avoided OR talks, though, and we learned to do this talking around things that weren't emotionally charged, like the kids, her co-workers, etc. Alot of the Deida polarity stuff--which I personally 100% believe in--will grow slowly out of compassionate present listening, but it takes time.
Give her lots of space and detach from all the drama. Things unwind slowly. Especially give om no space in your mind. I know--very, very hard to do, but can be done. Prayer and meditation and outside interests seem to be the key. Almost all om's screw up if we let them and we let them by retreating. Once they think they are "ahead" they seem invariably fu%k up. Pressure is your worst enemy. Even when you think you are not in any way pressuring her, get quieter and look closer.
Be her friend first, unconditionally. This is way harder than it sounds. I used the best friend test. If I was going to say or do something regarding w, I asked myself if I would say or do it with my best friend. If the answer was no, I didn't do it. Even now I continue you this. Sometimes I really want to look at w's cell phone log to see who she's talking to, how often and when, etc. But I would never do this to my best friend, so I don't do it to her. I was able very slowly to build a really strong friendship with my w. She hated me and the thought of having sex with me made her want to puke--those are her words--but I knew how to be a really good friend, talk to her like a girlfriend and not a guy--or worse, a husband--and how to validate her emotions and speak to her without trying to solve or fix anything. In time, she grew to totally enjoy my company (and I hers) cause I wasn't pressuring her for anything. We were just hanging out. Om hated this and at one point told her she couldn't come see me any more. When I heard this, I knew om was dead (although it took many, many months for him to be really dead) I knew..quietly. There's no ranting, raving divorce lawyer power threats that can possibly work as well as quiet unconditional friendship. But it too takes time and requires some skills. I think with Deida you are off to a good start. The Way of The Superior Man and The Way of The Superior Lover are filled with practices that build these skills.
Focus on what works-I totally agree with Cliff and SG: try things and see what works, but don't try all kind of stuff at once. I'm uncertain about all the don't be so available and going dark, etc. stuff. I think it is more like be available in different ways. Deida has a chapter about how the feminine will return to your weak points over and over and over again and keep testing you there. That has absolutely been my experience. I don't think w consciously intends to test, she just does it with the same amount of forethought as breathing..its her nature. So, knowing she's going to go there you can prepare yourself to not respond or respond completely differently when she arrives. Now that's a 180 that will leave her dizzy.
Success is built on small victories-Silently celebrate your success without letting expectations that the next time will be even better sabotage you. Of course you still have a chance and time really is completely on your side. Note the small, almost imperceptable seeds of change and remember what works and what doesn't. You're doing good--patience, patience and then more patience. My wife and I are discussing the general timing and logistics of her moving back into our house. You can get to that conversation too, through patience and doing exactly what you did in your phone call--great success is built out of these small victories.
I don't know Einstein--don't look for fast resolutions -PATIENCE, my thing slowly recovered by very small almost imperceptible steps so don't look for big Hollywood style happenings--its more the accumulation of small acts of self-less kindnesses and responding to things in very unpredictable ways (which of course make you interesting) and then the ability to feel into and through her. Be patient, be kind and love her from a place of strength and wholeness rather than a place of need and desperation.
JJ
Read about Divorce Busting® Telephone Coaching here!
Sweetie, first of all, I think your h is more confused than devious. I think he is afraid of losing his family...but is weak about losing something else.
But does it really matter what STAGE he is in? Those stages were simply guidelines...sort of like the list of things ALL MLCers seem to say (ya know, from the booklet on what to say as you leave your spouse.) They came from one person's idea of what happened in her sitch and certainly that can help us see some similarities and perhaps some ways to handle them. But your husband hasn't read THAT book.
He is lost and unable to get his act together. And some things you do might help him and some might hurt, but you can only try and watch and see what you think is happening and helping or hurting.
There are some who will say that it is up to him...sit back and eat popcorn. But when it is your life and your family on the line, I say to reread Michele's books. She says take action to save your family. Certainly change you BUT change you to bring about a change in the marriage dynamic.
I don't recall a place where Michele says...let them go do their thing and wait patiently by the curb.
But then, that is just my opinion...
Lots of hugs, gd
JJ
Read about Divorce Busting® Telephone Coaching here!
Thank you everyone for the well wishes and advice. I have to say, I am taking it slow but I feel much more optimistic now. He even went back to counseling yesterday. I hope he stays with the program! I'm not sure how to react to some of the things he does but I'm trying to be nice about it. He just wants me to do the same things the ow did and I don't want to be compared to that woman.
you said you do not want to be compared with the OW, and your H is asking you to do certain things. Well, I understand, but you might want to think about, what he is saying. This experience is a growth experience for the both of you, and maybe it is time to expand your Horizon, not what she did, even better.
He did what he did because something was missing in his book. Why not build on this knowledge. Sex stuff maybe - any book about relationship will tell you to make the bedroom exciting and try new things. Cooking? time for new recipes.
You might be angry about him doing things with the OW and be stubborn about it, but maybe if you overcome that stubborness, you might find out that the new experiences your H brings out of his MLC might be pretty exciting.
Let's face it, when you met your H, you were probably happy, that he had experience in certain areas. Let's calm down and relax. Your H has to live with the thought, that he almost lost his family due to his MLC, depression. Let's try to accomodate him a little bit - give a little, take a little.
This is painful, but you are strong and have come so far. I am truly happy about what is going on in your marriage right now, and I hope that you guys make it.
Rap
JJ
Read about Divorce Busting® Telephone Coaching here!
As to the question of "giving up" - there's a difference between giving up and letting go. Loving detachment - understanding and accepting that you can't control his behaviors or choices, stepping outside of your own pain enough to have some empathy for the confusion and pain he is in, working on improving yourself (we ALL can use some improvement) - these are things we all can and must learn to do - they are different from "giving up". I don't think you should "give up" on your H - he is ill and may need you some day. But you certainly need to "let go" - your constant attempts to reach him are only driving him away. (BTW - don't assume that he doesn't notice your changes, or that he doesn't hear what you are saying, just because you don't get a response - my H remembers one thing I said to him that I would have sworn he didn't even hear, much less absorb - and told me months later how important it was to him.)
What if tomorrow, you appeared looking your absolute best, with some new changes, smiled and were cheerful, DIDN'T try to engage him in any conversation, and simply said "Thank you" nicely and left? Even better if you could cut off the interaction first and imply you were in a hurry to be somewhere?
Then, maybe aftera few non-threatening contacts like this, H would be receptive to a simple note, in which you validated that you understand that he can't cope with the girls right now, and probably is a little worried about scaring the girls. Tell him that you understand he is going through a really rough time, and that you are taking good care of his girls for him, so that someday when he feels well enough he can see them again.
But don't give him this note until after a few episodes of "painless" contact. If you keep pursuing he'll cut off that contact too. If you stop pursuing, he might eventually start to wonder what you are up to.
JJ
Read about Divorce Busting® Telephone Coaching here!
