There will always be disrespectful people, people may yell at you, flip you, ignore you..... so what do you propose to do about that? Give them a lecture? Tell thedisprespectful cashier at the checkout counter that you expect them to respect your boundaries? Good luck with that.
Since you brought it up, and since this JUST happened to me on Tuesday, I'll give you an example from my own life.
I took my S19 to his dermatologist appointment, and on our way back home, I needed to stop in Lowe's to buy a lockset for our front entry door. Ours is sticking, getting old, and I wanted to change the finish on it anyway.
Well, I"m an IDIOT when it comes to locks, and I find them horribly confusing. Left-hand doors, right-hand doors, different finishes, single-keyed deadbolts, double-keyed deadbolts, single-barrel, double-barrel . . . arrrggg!!! So I figured I'd ask the guy in that department at Lowe's for some help.
He was behind his little counter, waiting on another customer, and I went and stood patiently behind the other customer. The clerk, seeing me standing there, peers over his glasses and says kind of warily "Can I help you?" I said "Well, I'm confused and I have some questions, so I'll wait -- just take care of this other customer first, I'm not in a hurry."
"Well, it's gonna be awhile," he says, all negative-like, and not even making eye contact with me. "I've got three other orders to enter after this, so what is it you needed to know?"
I kind of stammered out my question, and he starts throwing all kinds of lingo at me, and to make a long story short, he was just plain RUDE, and so I finally said "Nevermind, I will go somewhere else, like to Home Depot." He was kind of taken aback, and he said "I didn't say I couldn't help you, but I'm kinda busy here!" and I said "No, that's not it, sir, you're treating me like an idiot, and ridiculing my questions (he was, too), and I don't appreciate it. I will go somewhere where they treat their customers better," and I turned with my son, to walk away and leave the store.
Realizing he'd been a jerk (or fearing maybe I'd go to the manager?) he said "Now come on!!!" or something like that, but I just kept going. A really nice guy at Home Depot didn't have the item either, but found a piece of paper for me and wrote down EXACTLY what I needed, so I could order it from their website, which I just did, today.
So no, Angel, I wouldn't accept, say, a cashier at a grocery store treating me rudely. I would calmly say "I don't appreciate you saying that -- I think you should apologize." I find that that usually does the trick, and if it doesn't, I'd probably go and talk to the manager if I didn't have an option for another store.
I learned this from my mom, who's GREAT at it, but it does take work. She'd be playing cards or dominos or something with my kids, and she'd warn them maybe once "Please don't do that, (my son's name) -- I don't like to play that way" or something similar, depending on the situation. And if her grandson did it again, she'd just calmly say "That's it -- we're done. I don't like how you're behaving right now. Maybe we'll play later when you're ready to play nicer," and she'd tell him to pack it all up.
She only had to do that like ONCE with each of my kids.
In my experience, the "happiness/success" scale that I see from people is something like this:
2b. The betrayed spouse lays down a HARD, SWIFT boundary, realizing that everyone makes mistakes, and decides that they can forgive their cheating spouse ONCE, but they've got to immediately end their affair and return and work on the marriage with them. This is usually best done in conjunction with a strong self-improvement program on the part of the betrayed/left-behind spouse, or else the wayward spouse won't see anything that they'd even WANT to return to.
Starsky
Jumping in here. Starsky, this was your approach? At what point did your SO decide that it was worth it? When did you lay down the boundaries? I'll have to go find your older topics
Me& h + S M: 13 t: 14
H moved 2/12. Own apt 05/12, EAs, PAs, gfriends, oh my! I'm done. 12/12
"I get knocked down, but I get up again.. you're never gonna keep me down" Chumbawumba
When my h was going through his crisis last summer, I was in tip toe on the egg shells mode. I went tip toeing like that for weeks, fearful of saying or doing anything wrong that would send him out the door. I remember how exhausting this was on me.
When I found out about his ea with the ex ow, it broke me wide open and it really propagated that fear of doing something wrong that could push him further into the tunnel and out the door, running back to ow.
Because of that fear, I didn't set any boundaries. I didn't approach him and say "I will not tolerate this, you cannot communicate with her and stay with me".
I wanted to say that, but I didn't. I just held it all in.
So here is what I learned from my H in MC about that...
Because I did not stand up to him and tell him I won't tolerate this, it actually perpetuated his behavior more, and it increased his lying and his justification to continue keeping his secret going as he felt he had no one holding him accountable and, here's the big one....
He felt like he was safe to continue his fantasy and his lies because he didn't believe **** that i would actually leave him*** and set off for a life of my own. He did not see me that strong, but he was wrong.
He saw me as weak, and he admitted that clearly to me. And man, hearing that really felt bad. I don't want anyone to see me like that.
What attracted my h back to me?
This is what he told me .....
When I stood up to him and said, "I will not have this. You cannot communicate with her and be with me, period. You cannot see her, cannot work with her, all of it must be cut off or that is it".
Bam.
What happened next. Well, he did not like that. He said, "Fine" and he started about with his plans to go. Told me "No one tells me what to do".
I knew that once I told him how I felt and what my boundary was, that this was the turning point. I put an end to the tip toeing on the egg shells, gathered myself and up and stood straight again.
So we reached that turning point in latter September and it caused him to be thrown into a period of major decision making.
But while he was making his choices and decisions, I went forward and began living as if..... I'm going to be a strong single woman. GAL'ed, started college again, started to go out with friends, started to live my life..... while he sat in the garage and did his smoking, thinking, and listening to teenage music again.
I was terrified .... but I had to come to that point because I just refused to drag it on further. I did not know for sure if I would make it without him and I cried my eyes out when he was gone but I just kept going and the further I went the more I knew I was going to be Ok.
Once I realized I would not die, and would be Ok he started to see that on me.
Once he started to see that the tip toeing was over, and that as some people say "sh*t is getting real here" that is when he realized...... as he put it..... "Hey, I don't want to lose my family, I don't want to lose my wife".
And he said that he felt attracted to me because I stood up and laid it all down for him to see.
I did tell him to make a choice because there was no way in hell I was going to live with another woman in this marriage.
What did Princess Diana say about her marriage? There were three of us, and so it was a little crowded.
May sound crazy but, I admired her strength for leaving her marriage. I read her own authored autobiography on what she said about pulling herself together and getting her life together for her and her children and it really inspired me.
Angel, I was just not about to have it and so, I laid it down.
If my h cycles again and comes back and says he's out the door then yeah I'm going to be heart broken, but this time I will know what I will put up with and what I won't and so does he.
@Starsky, it is amazing the crap I no longer put up with off people since going through all of this.
I used to be more soft spoken and quiet, but now I really do demand respect even from strangers.
I went to Mc Donalds to grab a coffee about a month ago. It was slopped together pretty badly and tasted like coffee grounds. So I took it back and kindly asked for it to be redone. The woman got nasty with me and said, "It's going to take time for me to brew more coffee" and I said, "Maam, you don't have to speak to me in that tone, I'll wait for it to brew though". She did end up apologizing.
Now before all this I probably would have just left and forgot about it and never said a word.
I know that I have changed because I want to be respected now.
It's like in that movie The King's Speech where he shouts, "I have voice!"
btw, I really need to say this, and Angel, sorry to hijack your thread
But I could not have found my strength alone, not without the help of some wonderful people on this board. Angel, 25, Jack, Diem, many others. I came here really broken inside not knowing where to turn.
So here is what I learned from my H in MC about that...
Because I did not stand up to him and tell him I won't tolerate this, it actually perpetuated his behavior more, and it increased his lying and his justification to continue keeping his secret going as he felt he had no one holding him accountable and, here's the big one....
He felt like he was safe to continue his fantasy and his lies because he didn't believe **** that i would actually leave him*** and set off for a life of my own. He did not see me that strong, but he was wrong.
He saw me as weak, and he admitted that clearly to me. And man, hearing that really felt bad. I don't want anyone to see me like that.
What attracted my h back to me?
This is what he told me .....
When I stood up to him and said, "I will not have this. You cannot communicate with her and be with me, period. You cannot see her, cannot work with her, all of it must be cut off or that is it".
Bam.
BINGO. I hear this all . . . the . . . time on marriage forums. It is what works, and it's very consistent with DBing. In fact, I consider it like "DBing+" in that you still have to do the 180s, the GAL, and figure out your own role in the pre-affair marital dysfunction, and you still have to begin making yourself into that better person, whether it's for THIS marriage or for some future relationship if this one doesn't work out.
Other than pure abject FEAR, I don't understand the resistance to this approach, because it serves a dual purpose -- both of them GOOD:
1. It improves YOU and makes you feel better about yourself; and
2. It's ATTRACTIVE to your wayward spouse, giving you the best chance at drawing them back to work on the marriage.
Yes, you likely will see some short-term blowback, just as you did, Ctflor, and you have to steel yourself for that. But even during THAT, I found that I felt sooooo much better about myself for learning to stand up for my own integrity!
Jumping in here. Starsky, this was your approach? At what point did your SO decide that it was worth it? When did you lay down the boundaries? I'll have to go find your older topics
LIO, I laid down my boundaries almost immediately after I discovered my wife was having an affair. The earlier the better, in my opinion. My wife was completely unrepentant and refused to end her affair for two months, when I finally decided to file for divorce. I continued this stance and a month later (about 3 months total), she ended her waywardness and came to me crying and wanting back into the marriage. It took a couple of years of fits-and-starts to fully reconcile, but today we are very happily married and have celebrated our 50th birthdays, our 25th wedding anniversary, and the birth of our first grandchild (a little girl, about two years ago). We still have SSM issues, but the marriage is otherwise very strong, we are best friends, go on dates every weekend, and there's been no repeat infidelity.
My experience was similar to yours, in that when my wife came out of her "fog," she THANKED me for fighting for her (she also said "don't get me wrong, you P*S*ED ME OFF at the time!" lol), and said she respected me for what I did.
Thanks Starsky, but I still battle with my inner anxieties that he could go back into the tunnel, or change his mind. I realize that there are risks with this. I still have the occasional nightmare of him walking away.
I'm not perfect, but I do have some belief in myself that I will be okay.
We are doing really well, and he's giving 100% to our M for the past winter and spring.
Just to add my H too said many times he appreciated how I fought for our M and our family and hung on even when he had his head us his a##!!
I believe now that the "fog" is real. Doesn't make anything fair but it is real.
I agree with you that the fog is real. My h and I have had conversations about things he said and did last summer, and there are a few things he does not remember fully.
