SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

The Save My Marriage Solution

Can I Save My Marriage With An Ultimatum?

Have you been asking yourself “How do I save my marriage?”

Have you thought about giving your spouse an ULTIMATUM? Something like, "If you don't stop XYZ, this marriage is over."

Is your spouse having an AFFAIR, hooked on PORN, addicted to DRUGS or ALCOHOL, a WORKAHOLIC, too emotionally close to an OPPOSITE SEX FRIEND, or OBSESSIVE about a hobby or activity?

How do you get your spouse to STOP behavior that's destroying your marriage?

An ultimatum is an interesting idea. I bet a friend or family member even suggested it. I'm sure it's crossed your mind. Maybe it was even advised by your counselor. But will it work?

If you want to be able to say “I saved my marriage,” do NOT give your spouse an ultimatum. It will NOT work. Let me explain why. And let me explain how YOU CAN get your spouse to end their affair or stop their addictive or obsessive behavior.

Ask Yourself: Will An Ultimatum Save My Marriage?

In a sense, it's empowering to think, and even say to your spouse, "Your behavior is unacceptable. And if it doesn't stop, I'm leaving you." An ultimatum offers the ultimate role reversal. It puts you, the victim, in control. Understandably, that's appealing. And there's no doubt that in the SHORT RUN, you'll FEEL better. But it also FEELS good to eat dessert after every meal. Just because something FEELS good does NOT mean it is good. The question you have to ask yourself is: Will the LONG TERM effect be good? Will an ultimatum give me the result I want? Will it lead to me saving my marriage?

The answer is NO.

Now I know what you're thinking, "XXXX, what about TOUGH LOVE? Don't I have to set borders and boundaries?"

If you give your spouse an ultimatum, you'll establish clear RULES for your marriage. You'll set borders and boundaries. But where will the MOTIVATION come from for your spouse to live by the rules? In other words, the rules will be clear, but why would your spouse WANT to adhere to them?

If your spouse is a sex addict, a workaholic, an alcoholic, having an affair, into porn, or involved in any other type of obsessive or destructive behavior, the problem is NOT a lack of rules; it's a lack of MOTIVATION to live by the rules.

Your spouse knows their behavior is wrong. Even if they won't admit it, even if they justify it, deep down they know that their behavior is immoral and that it's destroying your marriage and soiling their soul. The problem is that they don't care. The problem is that they lack an internal MOTIVATION to do the right thing.

Your spouse has to WANT to stop. The key is their inner motivation, their WILL. An ultimatum imposes rules from the outside; it does nothing to address the lack of motivation on the inside.

Bottom line: although giving an ultimatum feels good, it misses your target.

Tell Yourself: I Can Save My Marriage Only By Connecting With My Spouse

Your target is your spouse's inner motivation. And how do you affect someone's inner motivation? The secret is to CONNECT with them. Let me explain.

Life begins as a connected experience in the womb of our mother. When we're born and that physical connection is severed, we yearn to connect again. How we go about creating that connection and how well we succeed becomes the story of our life.

People who make healthy and meaningful connections with other people feel happy and fulfilled. (Research proves that the single most important factor that determines happiness in life is CONNECTEDNESS.) People who lack a real emotional connection with others will grasp at anything in an attempt to fill that void in their life. That's what leads people to sex, drugs, alcohol, hours of mindless TV, falling in love over and over again with new people, or an obsessive commitment to money, success, work, or a hobby. These trappings offer a MOMENTARY filling. But the cause of the emptiness your spouse seeks to fill is a lack of a meaningful CONNECTION in their life.

When you create that connection with your spouse, you accomplish two profound things.

First, you eliminate your spouse's desire for their destructive behavior. You take the wind right out of its sail. You cut it off at its source. They don't need it anymore. There's no more hole to fill. YOU filled it!

Second, you offer your spouse a permanent filling for a hole that's been insatiable probably since their childhood. (Your spouse's destructive behaviors can probably be traced back to a disconnected relationship they had with their mother or father). And their DESIRE for your connection, a REAL and LASTING filling of that hole, will trump any momentary interest in seductive pleasures.

So how do you get your spouse to stop their destructive behavior? You create a connection with them.

Now here's the kicker.

The chances are very good that YOU have no clue how to deeply CONNECT with your spouse.

Disconnected people tend to marry disconnected people. In other words, you picked your spouse BECAUSE they're disconnected, and that was safe and familiar for you. (Your spouse is probably like your mother or father.) You didn't have to make a real connection to your spouse and that's why you fell in love with them. Your spouse didn't need what you couldn't offer. Do you see how that worked? It's totally dysfunctional, but it's true.

Now don't misunderstand, I'm not saying that your spouse's inappropriate behavior is your fault. But it is your RESPONSIBILITY. Meaning, that you can choose (if you want) to do something about it. You can impact your spouse's choices and save your marriage. But you'll need to learn to forge a real connection with your spouse, and you'll need to learn to do that WITHOUT your spouse's cooperation.

When I signed off SI last time, this article/blog popped up. I can not believe this what this man is selling. And poor desperate people will pay for his crappy "advice". The last paragraph is the most disheartening of all of his............. I am at a loss, is fantasies the right word?

Saving your marriage is not always the best solution. I could bend over backwards and do everything in my power to please my spouse and that would maximize my power to save my marriage. It doesn't mean that my spouse is rational enough to not manipulate these circumstances into their favor.

There is a difference in fighting for a healthy marriage and fighting to a marriage. And I feel this article starts with advocating fighting for a healthy marriage and ends up with just fighting for a marriage at any cost.

I do agree with the notion that an ultimatum might cause your spouse to work on it but it might not be for the right reasons. This could delay the growth into a health marriage. But it might be your only shot. No one knows how the other party will respond. That is the big unknown. That is why there is no one playbook to reconcile your marriage. For it will always take two people to save and grow a marriage.

When I first started looking online for something to help me digest the A, I signed up for a "free" (not so free after all) pamphlet on how to save my M.

I had not found SI yet, but even I knew it was utter trash when I started receiving his emailed propaganda.

Basically, take the last paragraph and add to NOT set boundaries, allow WS to walk all over me and use me like a doormat. Be NICE to the F...ing asswhole, and maybe just maybe he would want to come back to me.

FTShit.

I have since sent it to the spam folders of oblivion and don't have to read that stupidity and drivel.

I think many of us tried that "connection" thing. Only problem is that they weren't interested in connecting with us, they were too busy connecting with the AP. Then they just treated us worse and we received another D-Day for our troubles.

I also take issue with him referring to it as an "ultimatum". You are making a choice for yourself, "you" will no longer continue in a relationship where you spouse disrespects you.

I bet this guy is/was a Wayward.

So if we're all so "disconnected" in the first place, why aren't we all running around screwing the neighbor, looking at porn 24/7 and abusing our partners? Oh wait....that's only reserved for the delicate/i'm just a passenger in my life/mummy didn't love me enough/teddy made me do it/self-serving bastards who make up the other half of the "disconnected" relationships on this planet.

The chances are very good that YOU have no clue how to deeply CONNECT with your spouse

Oh I could tell this man the way to "deeply connect" all right. With a large poker up his arse that's how.

I wonder if he's got a program for the WS's?

You have to laugh

EJ

Oh I could tell this man the way to "deeply connect" all right. With a large poker up his arse that's how.

Waaaaas drinking some delicious chai tea. Now I'm wearing it from my nose cuz I snorted with laughter!

so, not only am I probably disconnected and seeking connections (I was born and all, and sought out another disconnected person), but I'm responsible for permanently filling the hole in my spouse with "connections", while my spouse is just going to sit there, without cooperating, and be filled, then tah dah, all better? wow.

Saving my Marriage....all these years I've been doing it wrong*. Where's my wallet?

*snark. pissy polly today, sorry.

there is a difference between an ultimatum and a boundry.

Ultimatum requires action from them.

Boundry requires action from you.

Your boundry is that you will not remain in a marriage/relationship with an un-remorseful partner.

So if you judge them as unremorseful and not making the effort to go in that direction, then you leaving is you enforcing a boundry about how you live your life.

You making an ultimatum and leaving when they don't comply is you ending it on the basis they failed.

Either way... one keeping your power, the other is giving it away.

Probably most people already knew this.

So...he's writing that I shoud do the "pick me!" dance and order a huge cake.

Yeah, because that works so well. I could barely read it to the end.

Well I did agree with two things:

One, ultimatums are bad. Love what Kalipeia said about setting a boundary vs an ultimatum. I would further add that ultimatums are just a form of manipulation.

Two, connections are good. Lack of connection is often one of the basic problems when a marriage goes south. However, sometimes the connection can get lost by forces external to the couple or with internal forces within one spouse (such as mid life or mid career crisis that they refuse to share with their spouse, which is a rejection of connection.) But I think the attempt to connect without the help of one spouse is very much like the lessons in "Fireproof".

[This message edited by hopefullromantic at 5:25 PM, January 23rd (Thursday)]

I would like to think the possibility of our marriage ending would be MOTIVATION for the behavior to stop.

That part about when you connect they no longer have a need for anything else because you filled is complete BULLSHIT. If your WS is a sex addict you can not fill that void! If your WS has no self-love and seeks validation....again you can not fill that void! My WH were very connected the first time he cheated. We were in the honeymoon phase! The second time things weren't all that bad either. I thought we were happy. His reasons for straying does have to do with a connection but that is the connection within himself. It has nothing to do with me.

Vile steaming pile of shit. Ugh.

I took this guy's emails for awhile and he has some good advice but he's way off the mark on what causes As. He seems to think this is something you can fix quickly and move on with your life. Umm....no. I came to suspect he's much more interested in selling his materials and workshops than he is in being honest about infidelity.

Yeah, once I achieved a connection with my FWH, all was much better. Connection #1 was the toe of my right foot traveling at high speed into his sphincter. Connection #2 was a crowbar laid across the front window of his sports car. Connection #3 was his clothing raining down upon him from our, er, MY upstairs bedroom. Connection #4 being the legal separation paperwork that I let him know would be served as soon as he was hired into a new job.

Those connections seemed to work really well! Gave him lots of motivation!

Skan reached out in a variety of intimate ways.

What a load of utter tripe. Ridiculous man, hope he gets cheated on and sees how far his 'advice' takes him.

Now don't misunderstand, I'm not saying that your spouse's inappropriate behavior is your fault. But it is your RESPONSIBILITY.

Nope. Nope. Nopie nope nope. Paying whores is NOT my responsibility. I cannot do anything about his choices and possible mental illness that drove him to basically live a double life. Nope.

Is that guy named Douchey Von Doucherson?

The guy is nothing but an idiot but I agree some will read it and think "wow" this article speaks to me, and they will try to take his "advice."

I don't really like the word ultimatum because it can be misleading when you are dealing with a "misbehaving spouse." For example, there was a point in my first M, where my XH asked me to give him yet another chance. And I made some attempt to do that, but gave him an "ultimatum" that he could no longer drive truck, long distance. My reason was not really to "control" him but for my own piece of mind. If I could keep track of his wherabouts better day and night, at least I had fewer worries about getting an STD (to say the least).

I knew when I gave him the ultimatum that it would not control his desires or fix my M, but that was not my goal. My goal was to protect myself.

He actually quit driving OTR for about two years. Then one day he said, "What would you think if I said I wanted to go back OTR?"

I only said to him "Do what you want." I'm sure he "heard" that as I just wanted him to be happy and therefore he should do what he wants and I'd remain married to him (I never added the statement I'd remain married to him when I said do what you want...)

After his first couple of weeks on his new OTR job, he came home to find I was seeking a D! Boy was he stunned. He quit the job yet again and made yet another attempt to get me to agree to stay married to him. Last for about a year until he cheated again, this time not when driving OTR. Not sure how he hooked up with her but it does not matter. I filed for a D two days after that D day and never looked back. So I guess back to the beginning of the article...it never was for me because I was not asking myself "How do I save my marriage?" Most anyone can save their M if they want to "put up" with being cheated on and treated horribly forever, I suppose. The talk about "connecting" with them, filling voids and holes, is a load of crap, implying you can fix somebody other than yourself. No, you can't. People can only fix/change themselves, especially by the time they are adults.

[This message edited by Bobbi_sue at 4:19 AM, January 24th (Friday)]

I read this to my WH and even he said it is not the responsibility of the BS to fix the marriage because the void many WS feel is the lack of self love and self validation. He even recognized the blame being tossed to the BS in the e-mail. I was actually shocked by his answer. It may actually be sinking in with him now!

I actually tried some of this advice. Ugh. Wish I could slap myself upside the head now. I did a 180 in how I was treating my WE and practically kidding his a$$. I would send him sweet texts, poems, thank him constantly for every little thing he did, make his favorite meals and sweets. These a are changes I should have made before or never let the good behaviors go. However, that wasn't what caused him to stray no matter what he has said in the past. My changes while appreciated I found didn't change his behaviors. He was still talking to and meeting up for lunch with her even though he said it was over. Even with me becoming the "ideal" wife. I learned after the last dday (even before finding SI) that he had to "get it" and want to change. Though things are not perfect and WH doesn't still get it 100% he's finally on the right track. It took me leaving with the kids for a few days to open his eyes. He bluntly told me that even though he noticed what I was doing he didn't appreciate it. Also he said he wasn't doing the work on his end. He's finally starting to do his part.