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Why is this not a thing?

As a BS myself, I was noticing that there's a relatively new "WS to WS" thread in the Wayward Forum by the wonderfully interactive HikingOut

And of course there's the ever-faithful "BS Questions for WS's" thread in the "I Can Relate" Forum which is on Part 13 now, with assumedly 50 solid pages of Q&A per each "Part" out of 13.

Maybe this has been tried and failed spectacularly like "New Coke" back in the mid-eighties long before I was here on SI or when I wasn't looking like what would happen if there was ever a male streaker for a Cleveland Browns pre-season game or a Tiddlywinks or Tic-tac-toe championship "strip poker" style game...

But I guess I wonder if the WS/FWS body of readers and posters here on SI have ever had any questions for those of us BS's who are certainly doing the lion's share of the questioning (rather than just answering or silently reading) here on SI.

Part of my ambition here is also for WS/FWS's to demonstrate or exercise some empathy skills for ALL of our mutual benefit as well, btw.

As a BS, I could really actually stand to see for myself and also for my own WW to see some examples of other WS/FWS's doing this kind of thing across the WS/BS aisle in this direction instead of just more-often-than-not in the BS's asking the WS's direction only.

And yeah, I'm hoping that my WW along with a few others can take a hint out of all of this, too, btw.

[This message edited by Cephastion at 5:42 AM, December 12th (Thursday)]

I’m not a mod (and I don’t play one on TV either), but while I think it’s a good idea, it might be very hard to implement.

I believe a WS can always ask BS’s questions by posting a thread in Wayward. The reverse cannot really happen outside of the I Can Relate thread. Also, the Wayward forum is protected. I can imagine if a foggy / whatever WS asks a question in another forum, there are many BS’s who may not be able to control their responses and it would require a lot of policing.

Perhaps a thread like that in Wayward instead of I Can Relate? I don’t really see much by way of questions from a WS to a BS so maybe WS’s don’t realize it’s a thing they can do? Might be helpful for many.

Would love to hear the mods take on this.

ICR is kind of a popularity contest. The threads that people find useful get a lot of posts. They get replaced when they fill up. The threads what people don't find useful don't get posted on and eventually fall off the page. The WS questions for BS thread has been in place for years now, but it's never gotten the same traffic as the BS questions for WS thread. It's probably because WS's with questions for BS's, they can and do post in the Wayward forum.

I think encouraging WSs who want BS feedback to use the Wayward Forum is the best solution, as it is protected and the mods can intervene if things get a little too heated. Because it's a protected forum, answers are less emotional and more practical, which is what a WS asking questions often needs.

I've been here through a number of iterations of how we deal with having a Wayward forum, and this is the best answer yet.

Cat

There used to be one. After awhile we were told to ask questions in wayward with “BS welcome” and no stop sign.

Ceph, I hadn't seen you around in a while!

Someone else (I can't remember who) asked this question in the Wayward forum. When the history was revealed and reasons given, that person then designated their thread for that purpose. Kind of like the WS to WS thread I started, it petered out after a short while.

While I do think that it's hard for many new WS to understand THEIR BS - most of what happens from a BS side is logical. Not everything of course - emotions run high, there is a roller coaster, etc. They have effects of trauma. But, I have never read anything here from a BS that didn't make sense as to why they felt the way they felt. I think the WS mentality contains far more distorted thinking that is hard to relate to and understand.

I am thankful for so many of the BS's here who do read in the wayward forum (I know it can be triggery over there) and do chime in and give us the perspective that really helps us be more successful rebuilders.

I’ve got 45 years experience being a Bs would be glad to help Ws. I think my circumstances have had severe pain and every feeling there is on earth. So if I can help one person understand why this not the road to take or help a Ws understand what’s going on in our minds you got my help.

[This message edited by Nolife at 9:41 AM, December 12th (Thursday)]

So I guess I'm gonna take a shot at this then and see what kind of stuff I can get to nibble at the end of my fishing pole.

It seems that I just have to change where I'm fishing and dropping a line in.

I guess partly what I see is a relatively closed sandbox in the wayward forum where a lot of people with the same kind of issues are trying to help out a lot of people with the same kind of issues.

Most of the questions related threads right now in the wayward forum on the front page of the forum for example are all about themselves or for other waywards it seems. I reckon that's to be expected in the "wayward forum", but I never thought to start a "WS to BS" thread in that forum myself before now because it's the "Wayward forum". But I guess maybe that's the way to catch a few bites...

But I think it's kinda like expatriot bilingual Martians trying to explain to other monolingual Martians the nuances and idioms of the English language along with the idiocyncrasies of Monthy Python and British humor and paradigms.

My own WW has so little clue how to even relate to me at times. And yet she has endeavored to explain the BS perspective both to herself and to others in her own way...

I am finding that part of the "wayward" mentality is to very often be "conflict avoidant". Such is certainly the case with my own wife and other waywards that I know and read about.

It stands to reason then in my own mind that most waywards are not going to naturally ask many of the "obvious" questions that a betrated would take for granted or boldly ask about themselves.

For example...there are MANY things that as an adult male, I never even THOUGHT would be in the mind of a woman or a child.

But if I read about children's "Letters to God" or to Santa for example...just getting to see from a safe distance what little Jim or Sally wrote without me even asking becomes very illuminating to me as to what's actually going thru a child's mind.

I have learned MUCH about what goes through a woman's mind by reading in the various forums here on SI to be SURE!

Like how a woman worries as much or even much more about what other women think of her as they do about what a man she's with thinks about her. How would I even know to ask such a question? But I learned about that from my wife and from others who post on here that I happened to read about in passing.

I would never have thought to ask a WS or even a BS about where the "A" spot was for example (I didn't even know that there was one actually) as opposed to a G-spot or any other of the letters of alphabet soup that I missed that apparently apply to the female anatomy and psyche.

(Last time I checked, men don't have alphabet soup spots in their genitalia so I'm learning as I go along.)

I am hoping to encourage people to read and question on such a thread just random questions and responses who are lurkers or conflict avoidant or just curious about what is said in the mind of the BS when we get asked about a certain set of inkblots what it is that we see.

[This message edited by Cephastion at 5:42 PM, December 12th (Thursday)]

Oh wow...Well I gotta say that I realize WHY I can't do that NOW!

Don't try this at home.

I feel kinda dumb at the moment because apparently you can't start a thread in the Wayward forum if you aren't a WS yourself.

Maybe I can bribe a reformed ex-Martian to do it though....

Just a generic interaction thread on there...

Are there any FWS'S out there curious and courageous enough to try?

I double-dog dare ya

The other issue has been when those questions get asked, there will be enough people saying “I can’t believe you asked that, you don’t get it”. Haha yeah, we usually don’t and that’s how we ended up here.

Lots of times in that forum though, we do say what we struggle with and as long as you don’t put up a stop sign just as many bs will answer as there are ws.

It’s not a matter of courage. I think many of the WSs who are reconciling are worrying more about what THEIR BS is thinking than someone else’s. And those of us who aren’t in R, well....

I participate pretty regularly in the General forum so I observe a lot that way.

I think many of the WSs who are reconciling are worrying more about what THEIR BS is thinking than someone else’s.

Well, true, but I think that's the case in reverse as well. I assume that every question that a BS asks me in ICR is in hopes of better understanding their own WS, not out of a thirst to know about my personal circumstances. Indeed, I think that many of them are driven to interact with us there as a last resort. Some don't have a problem with us personally, but others would avoid us like the plague if we weren't holding the keys to the strange logic of the wayward brain.

As it happens, I read BS threads a lot. I read JFO occasionally, and General, Reconciliation and ICR frequently. I only read D/Separation and New Beginnings if the title of the current top thread catches my eye. But overall, I read a great deal more BS perspectives than WS perspectives. This is in part for the very reason you want to see -- I'm trying to understand what my own BS is thinking and feeling, to grasp his pain and betrayal and anger and frustration and hopelessness. However, it's rare that I have a question for a BS that isn't answered within the top few active pages of one of those forums. There are many more devastated BS than there are remorseful WS on SI, so it's not really necessary to ask them to come to me.

[This message edited by BraveSirRobin at 9:53 PM, December 12th (Thursday)]

BSR said what I was trying to say but much, much better.

What I am partly trying to get at here is to try and cultivate at least 2 things that I see a deficit of.

1) For waywards (and BS's as well) to be more selfless in their thinking and asking and motives.

2) For BS's and other Waywards to SEE point #1 (and the possible glaring need or deficit thereof in their own thinking as well) in action as it occurs.

Empathy training in a way I guess is what I'm aiming for.

For example, there is a JFO forum. But it's restricted to BS/non-wayward only responses.

Deeply Scared was a FWS herself and became such a celebrated outreach-minded part of this whole SI thing. I see waywards on SI dealing with other waywards and also responding to specific Q & A style interactions from BS's and such, I guess... but I don't see the kind of empathy and reform and reconciliation exuberance that I saw in her and in a few others. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's there and I'm not looking in all the right places for it. I don't know...

I wasn't in JFO when I was first posting on SI and yet, I kinda was one in a way.

She reached out and responded to me.

She took the initiative to make me feel welcomed and wanted here. I didn't necessarily have to ask her a question. She asked ME some though. And it wasn't all just in this box of a certain thread or category. I am not at all against the boxes and categories and regulatory aspects of SI at all. They are absolutely necessary in this powder keg.

But I miss the sense of feeling like people were reaching out more naturally across the BS/WS aisle without having to be specifically asked to via some topic or Q&A format per se.

I miss feeling like people just want to know more about and to understand one another. Not only just because they will get something out of it for themselves or for their marriage or BS/WS...but idk...just for the sake of reaching out and getting to know one another more and understanding one another better in a more generalized sense.

I guess that's why I liked that "Who's also a Thread killer?" thread by Chili. It was so open-ended and fun. I got to know some people a lot better it felt like. And I think too, that I miss the hope-instilling aspect of seeing that in real time as it occurs. I need to see and think that others and my own WW need to see more of the evidence of the process of waywards reforming and BS's "reconnecting/reconciling" with waywards besides just the one that they feel they "have to" accept and reconcile with or deal with.

Perhaps a thread like that in Wayward instead of I Can Relate? I don’t really see much by way of questions from a WS to a BS so maybe WS’s don’t realize it’s a thing they can do? Might be helpful for many.--Mrs. Walloped

This thread of mine is partly evidencing some of what I mean here.

This is the only question that I see with a cursory glance of the posts thus far, and it's from what I consider to be a very reformed FWW.

If my own WW is any indicator, she almost never asks me anything. She's always either silent or on the defense..even when I'm not "attacking" or whatever.

I think that's a very unhealthy character trait that should be ferreted out and put on the examining table much like so many other things that we don't necessarily see about ourselves without expressing ourselves and letting others see what they see in our teeth or on our backs that we really don't want to stay there or be seen by our SO's or even anyone else IRL.

Mrs. Walloped actually asked a question. She did so on a thread where I'm asking WS/FWS to ask me and other BS's questions and also asking why this doesn't seem to really hardly happen on SI in that direction.

I understand HikingOut's explanation and stuff...but I don't feel like anyone really did the empathy thing with me here. I felt like my question was merely addressed and then people kinda moved on without asking me much of anything at all.

Because of Mrs. Walloped's response, I feel less "answered" or lectured or monologued or one-way radioed by a wayward now. I feel like she's trying to come alongside me and see my little pet issue here get some air and light and resolution.

Now that's not to say that others on here don't feel the way that she does. But I see these naval/navel exercises that my wife and other waywards engage in where it's all about themselves or their spouse and their thoughts and opinions and needs and wants and so on...

It's so rarely a question about others. It's so rarely selfless. Even an FWS paying it forward and contributing heavily out of guilt or remorse is still kinda possibly doing it out of guilt or a sense of wanting to feel better about themselves..which is NOT a bad thing at ALL, but...it's not really what empathy is all about after all either.

Maybe a better bait would be to just do an open-ended "WS to BS/BS to WS" thread instead of a Q&A based one. I'm kinda figuring out what I'm really after and what I'm feeling and trying to say here as I go along.

Am I making better sense to anyone else now that I've mentioned Deeply Scared and how she was on here? I miss the way she made people feel on here, I guess.

[This message edited by Cephastion at 8:35 AM, December 13th (Friday)]

I can completely appreciate these sentiments and I really like the spirit in which you are coming from on them.

I just want to say - that I have more BS's who PM me than any other group of people, and they check on me and they thank me, and they sometimes privately ask me things. If I post something on the wayward forum, I get more responses from BS than any other folks who have been there to strengthen my understanding.

The other part that you have to take in consideration is the participation over in the wayward forum is constantly changing. I could name a handful of us who have been here for enough of a length of time that they 1)mostly have gotten some clarity and 2) I have gotten to know. We have a much bigger amount of transiency than the BS forums. We are going to be naturally a group that either wants to work on ourselves or not. Some of the WS post behind a stop sign, and probably rightly so.

I don't know, as a wayward who participates here regularly, I do feel that community. We had a big discussion about that recently that was started by BSR, where that feeling varied. For certain, I think it's harder at times to be a wayward on this site because there are people who can't see us for anything past it, but I think that's to be expected. You have a lot of BS here who have really bad situations, and who are going to naturally see us through the lens of who their spouse is. I personally have tried to be more compassionate and supportive of new folks because noone really should be expecting that they already get it. We have to meet them where they are. I said on another thread, it's not as easy as telling them "stop being selfish", it's far more deeply rooted than that. But overall, I do feel there is a collaborative with the BS and WS.

Do I think that we could be more empathetic with each other? Yes, from both sides at times. But, at the same time what are we really expecting of a newer BS or a newer WS? It's a marathon and not a sprint.

But, I do like what you are saying, Ceph. I guess I am just seeing it from a WS side that we do get a huge amount of support from BS in helping us see their side of things and even in cheerleading for some of us to do better, or seeing an improvement. I think we all just have to be the change, you know? Those who have gotten to a point where they are capable of it, anyway, not everyone is going to be in a good place personally and it's going to effect their participation. I don't think it gets solved by adding another board, but in our day to day actions. I certainly appreciate this post though, and while I wish I never had to land here it would have been nice to see how Deeply Scared did things.

You have something in your teeth, Hiking dear.

I think very highly of you as I think you know.

But you are doing exactly what I'm talking about here.

And to be kinda fair here, I did ETA a sentence or 2 in my previous post about this very thing.

Mrs. Walloped actually asked a question. She did so on a thread where I'm asking WS/FWS to ask me and other BS's questions and also asking why this doesn't seem to really hardly happen on SI in that direction.

I understand HikingOut's explanation and stuff...but I don't feel like anyone really did the empathy thing with me here. I felt like my question was merely addressed and then people kinda moved on without asking me much of anything at all.

Because of Mrs. Walloped's response...

But I want you guys to see how this comes across to me...and maybe a lot of other BS's as well...very possibly including your own BS...who knows?

You still didn't really ask me a question. You were very polite and respectful and made me feel like you were trying to make me feel that way.

But...this quirky character tendency that I think might be all-too prevalent in "waywards" is only proving itself to be there. And I am not here to bash anyone that's here to help like you so feverishly do. I only want you anonymously to know if your fly is inadvertently down or you've got something in your teeth so that you don't have to live any less vibrantly than you could with your BS and others in your life.

[This message edited by Cephastion at 8:50 AM, December 13th (Friday)]

We cross posted, Ceph. Look at the times of the post. And, I am not arguing with you, I am sorry it comes across that way.

So, I guess I do have a question - you have been on a break from the site for a while, yes? I haven't seen you around. Maybe you have been lurking?

Hiking...we aren't arguing, are we?

I'm not saying anything of the kind.

But this is what I'm talking about right here.

I'm saying that BS's want to feel like we are understood and heard and we want to see reformed waywards show what reformed is supposed to look like

We want to see you guys ask us things

We want to see empathy practiced and exercised.

Would you mind starting a thread for me in the Wayward forum for "WS to BS/BS to WS" please? I LOVE the one that you started yourself that's WS to WS but I can't open such a thread on the Wayward forum and I'm jealous of what I see there.

And I don't want to start just a "BS to BS" thread. There's already a "Betrayed Menz" thread and those guys aren't my wife or wayward or necessarily empathy challenged.

If you or another former wayward don't feel comfy starting a thread in Wayward at my request, then let's talk about why that's a bad idea or a good one if we can.

Either way, we are likely to learn a lot more about one another in the process. And that's what I'm after really. Not making someone do what I want but about feeling understood as a BS.

I think you are a very fantastic part of SI. I really do. I'm not trying to make you feel argued with or shamed or anything of the sort! I want you and others to realize what you don't see about yourselves. I want us all to be happier and healthier on here.

This isn't about you at all really. It's about what a BS has to deal with and what we see. And it's about what a WS doesn't have to deal with and doesn't see.

And if the shoe there doesn't fit, then that's fine. I already used Mrs. Walloped's post as an example of what the right way to treat a BS in this situation looks like in my opinion. My hypothesis shoe doesn't seem to be fitting her foot as a "WS" or "wayward thinking" or behavior in this matter...possibly in any matter at all at this point for all I know.

What I do know is that she made me feel like she as an ex-wayward really did what I was asking for here. Maybe I could dialogue with her about possibly starting such a thread since BS's can't start threads in the Wayward forum. I wonder what she would say?