SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

YEP!!

10 points to floridaredman

Pulp fiction..do i get 10 points???

YEP!!

10 points to floridaredman

YAYYY!! I won something..

Ok back to our regular programming

Broevil, your too funny with your Pulp Fiction quotes and engine rebuiling. I have a girl crush on you. lol. :)

I'm totally kidding in fun.

While doing 180, I discovered I love fast cars, trucks, monster trucks,race cars, hot rods, tractors, hot wheels, etc.

I have a girl crush on you. lol

Definitely a boundary violation.

UO was the the one rebuilding engines, but I do love cars!!

Best Valentine's day ever was spent at a Monster Truck Jam!!

[This message edited by broevil at 1:40 PM, June 14th (Friday)]

Ok, here's the thing that I keep running up against (and not in that good Las Vegas way)...

I get you're trying to get a handle on boundaries and that you never had them, but I bet you can look back and see that you actually did. Did you ever assert yourself with Chico? Make your wishes known? Put your foot down? My guess, is yes.

I think many have quite a bit of experience with boundaries. They may be shitty, poorly erected or placed in random places (usually a form of maze we construct when we want work arounds) but they're there.

The reason I hit on the rules portion is, let's be honest, marriage vows or relationship contracts are rule based often. Isn't that kind of what vows are? How'd that work for us?

If that thought process isn't tackled "rules" don't work. Most of the members of this forum actively posting are fairly new. Fresh in the trauma of dday and doing whatever they can to help heal and keep the marriage/relationship in tack.

I have a clerk that is bright, energetic, fun. She also is bi polar in her work performance. When she's on she can leap tall buildings in single bounds. When she's not she needs a map and a guide dog to navigate around the office. She's been "addressed" by me and the honeymoon period starts. She tells me the steps (rules) she'll take to make corrective actions and improve. And she does. Beautifully. For a bit. Then the relaxing, resenting (what, I STILL have to do that???), sliding comes.

She's about ready to go. There have been no work done on why she believes it's ok to barely meet expectations. She's charming and funny as hell. That's been a real boon for her up to now, I'm sure. But it's lost it's appeal.

I understood your question. I was giving my boundaries. Not accepting shit from myself or others that are not part of my value system. When that is hard coded you know it because you can feel yourself doing it. You know when what you're doing is not feeling right. You also know when someone else is doing something that feels off.

I may be off base here. I didn't choose to reconcile. I have been on here for 3 years and lurked a bit before, though, and I can say without many exceptions, I have seen others state they have no boundaries that have NO problems slapping those suckers right out there when someone posts something that doesn't set right.

I definitely agree with you, UO.

...in the long run.

it has to start somewhere though, and if superficial abstinence is that place, which it is for most addicts, then so be it. start from there and build on it.

it would be awesome if recovery always started with grand introspection, but that's far from typical.

Oh so true. Through this whole processes grand introspection was definitely not my first step.

Avenged Sevenfold song Buried Alive always resonated with me and I focused in on one phrase...meanwhile the mice endure the wheel. That's what rules and following them without a clear understanding always felt like to me. Becomes meaningless without anchors. Those can happen pretty much out of the gate. Not a finished product at all, but baby steps that are solid ground and as long as there's that the next step presents itself.

Just my view

Did you ever assert yourself with Chico? Make your wishes known? Put your foot down? My guess, is yes.

No. We both thought about it for a while and neither of us could remember a time when that has happened.

I don't know if I had boundaries so much as a wall. Tall and thick. No one could get too close.

Overall the people I got involved with either walked all over me. Or I took complete advantage of them.

I don't know if I had boundaries so much as a wall. Tall and thick. No one could get too close.

Exactly. That's what I'm talking about with the "shitty, random"

Walls and boundaries are created as a response. A response to our life experiences. When we have a healthy safe childhood chances are we are allowed our voice. Given the chance to make our desires known and our space respected. Boundaries result because we're comfortable with ourselves and our interactions with others.

Walls are what happens when we're not. We randomly erect these barriers towards actions (and therefore the people taking those actions) that trigger us from those negative experiences. Walls always result from negative.

So, someone seeking intimacy or getting too close will never know. Your internal fortress needs to be defended. You certainly won't communicate. You'll be paralyzed. Your parameter is being breached. Danger. Ever seen a cornered animal?

Here's where the problem I have with rules is. If that reaction to those "breaching" that wall and the core of that isn't worked on there is no hope for rules to work. There can be no trust because there can truly be no honesty from the one that erected the wall.

It's a survival mentality. Under siege and bartering for "food" using what currency you have to get what you need.

Both processes are done for the same reason. Our responses to life and those in our lives.

One is positive, healthy, communicative, enables strong relationships and safe interactions.

The other is barriers formed with no warning when breached and defended with no descriminstion on who is friend or foe. Perceived weakness in other's will be the "food" source we need without the feared "breach".

Don't know if that made any sense, but lack of sleep and kidlets is a horrible combo...also How To Train Your Dragon 16,000 times can wear on one.

[This message edited by uncertainone at 9:24 AM, June 15th (Saturday)]

I don't know if I had boundaries so much as a wall. Tall and thick. No one could get too close.

Overall the people I got involved with either walked all over me. Or I took complete advantage of them.

I was like this as well.

I'm a madhatter - my A was an EA with an ex, and my FBS and I have spent years now talking about boundaries. Each of us needed very, very different ways of building boundaries (he had an A a few years later, different type of boundary issue for him).

For me it was about acknowledging the potential outcome of situations as I participated in them. In the past I played the subconscious game, never outwardly acknowledged in my thinking mind, that as long as I could conceivably cage a situation as an innocent or friendly one, I was in the clear. Intellectually I certainly knew that in many contexts, what might otherwise be friendly and innocent behavior - hugs, a certain frequency of conversation, particular questions about someone's life or spouse, certain kinds of comments about myself or my life - would encourage men. Or make them curious, or make them look at me in a different light without anything outwardly changing between us.

So for me, it wasn't about rules (though rules were definitely necessary in taking the place of boundaries, before I established them inside myself) but about my subconscious intention, or my willingness to look at the potential social outcome of my words and behavior.

Yes of course I knew that the male coworker I spent so much time with could be spoken to in an outwardly innocent way that would nevertheless subtly change our professional relationship, but since there was no overt flirting, I allowed myself to do this. None of these men were affair partners because over a certain line I would have been forced to acknowledge that this is what I was doing - so this was all just "normal" interaction for me that happened to lead nowhere, but was all representative of my nonexistent boundaries.

Nowadays it's second nature for me to see those situations coming a mile away - or even just the potential for those situations to present themselves - and avoid them. Certain conversations, certain modes of communication, certain frequency of communication - they just set off a silent warning in me now. And because I have personal perimeters that are so firm and so much farther away from my center than they used to be, I have actually changed the way that men relate to me. We sense so much without being able to put our finger on specifics. My guess is that what men sense in me is nothing intimate. Friendly, goofy sometimes, relaxed - but on an intimate personal level I'm just not accessible.

But to get there took years, and while that was still in the works, I did need to give myself rules. The rules mimicked what I wanted to someday naturally present, showed me what good interaction felt like, and kept me and my marriage safe while I developed the real boundaries I needed and wanted. So for a while I had a set of rules that reflected my own challenges. At some point I realized I was no longer following rules, so much as I was just reacting to life normally - and my "normal" had changed, expanded, contracted and shaped itself into a more solid inner person expressed outwardly.

My FBS, who became a WS himself, had a completely different set of challenges and boundary issues. My boundaries were nonexistent, or like swiss cheese. His boundaries were mostly solid with one or two huge holes in them. So we had different paths to take to get where we each wanted to be, and where our marriage would be the most secure (and, finally, truly intimate).

^^^^^^ YES YES YES!!!

THANK YOU!!

I see me all over this post!

The rules mimicked what I wanted to someday naturally present, showed me what good interaction felt like, and kept me and my marriage safe while I developed the real boundaries I needed and wanted. So for a while I had a set of rules that reflected my own challenges

What kept you obeying them? "Good interaction" doesn't always feel good. What kept you in line when the wheels came off and until those boundaries were built?

You know, this thread has sat with me quite a bit and I finally figured out why. Thanks broevil!!!!!

I remembered a guy in our group of friends when I was growing up. The "nice guy". Always there for you (females in particular) always getting walked on. Always bemoaning how he got taken advantage of. I'd see him, though. How he'd set them up and lay the guilt traps. Go above and beyond for that pay off. If it didn't come feel ripped off.

Our group would always tell him to stand up for himself and get a backbone (we didn't understand the whole boundary concept or had even heard of it).

It wasn't boundaries he needed. It was respect...for himself and others. He reduced the women to prizes and devalued himself. Didn't have any confidence he could just be himself honestly and wait for another to appreciate. The years of his unspoken expectations and resentment when they didn't happen took its toll.

I think there's a huge part of me that goes on alert when I hear "rules". Probably because I never did well with them or those that imposed them.

I think there's a huge part of me that goes on alert when I hear "rules". Probably because I never did well with them or those that imposed them

Me too. Rebellion has always been a problem.

These are my rules.

What keeps me obeying them is a drive to be a healthier person.

Gotta take baby steps towards proper healthy boundaries!

Thanks broevil!!!!!

You're welcome!

I've gotten so much out of this thread!

Chicho and I have been exploring this whole thing all week. All of it, boundaries, rules, recovery, self respect, self validation, the list goes on!

It's been exhausting and awesome!

Thank you, for your posts. It's helped a lot. Everyone's have

[This message edited by broevil at 11:56 AM, June 18th (Tuesday)]

What kept you obeying them? "Good interaction" doesn't always feel good. What kept you in line when the wheels came off and until those boundaries were built?

Force of will, love, and the desire to stay in my marriage.

And honestly, good interaction DID feel good. I just exchanged "feeling good for sneakily getting attention" for "feeling good for doing something positive". Different reward system, and it required a lot of thought and pre-planning at first, but it wasn't entirely a negative experience and had its own, different rewards.

eta;

Chicho and I have been exploring this whole thing all week. All of it, boundaries, rules, recovery, self respect, self validation, the list goes on!

It's been exhausting and awesome!

Broevil, we went through that, too! We still sometimes talk about things in terms of boundaries, and it's really helped our communication in general. Also it's funny when things all click into place - and then later you encounter a situation and you can see perfectly how boundaries play into it, as if before it had been something murky and hard to articulate that just "felt wrong", and now it is clear and more easily defined.

[This message edited by circe at 12:33 PM, June 18th (Tuesday)]

I think there's a huge part of me that goes on alert when I hear "rules". Probably because I never did well with them or those that imposed them.

I think it's semantics. Just like if you were diabetic, avoiding sugar could be a 'rule' or just 'doing what you know is right and healthy'.

Different reward system

I love this. That's EXACTLY what I had to focus on. What my "rewards" were and how I got them.

The almost unbearable rage I had when I was a child was released everytime I fought. I learned fighting FOR someone else that couldn't fight for themselves got me even a bigger hit because I'd have the physical release as well as fighting against the bullies I lived with by proxy.

No altruism involved at all. Sheer relief. Same with honesty. Since lies were covered by the master (mommie) truth was a weapon.

Took me years to figure that shit out. Still working through some of it. Difference between what you posted and my experiences was it didn't feel good. Not at first and sometimes still doesn't.

@circe

I read your posts on this thread.. again and again..

Could you let me know what kind of rules you started off with? And how did you work on having a different reward system?

Rules verse boundaries: What comes to my mind is somebody driving the speed limit and not speeding. Are they doing it to avoid a ticket or are they doing it because they understand driving within the speed limit is safe for themselves (so they can continue supporting the people who are rely on them), for their passengers, and for the people around them...and understand that when its raining they may need to drive slower. Is their motive a fear of or a fear for, selfish or selfless, ignorant or wise.

I enjoy the deep discussion generated by this group.

Welcome back UO.