looking for other perspectives (very long)

"Paula" wrote in message
...

"shinypenny" wrote in message
om...
If you truly loved him, you wouldn't have hesitated as long as you
have to prevent further contact with him. You'd have already
instituted a third party to handle visitation, taking yourself out of
the romantic picture so as not to cause further conflict to your
lover.

Actually, no we haven't. We've talked about it and will again.

I told him about this thread yesterday and about some of the
responses that I've gotten. I agree that while he and I have
contact he is not really working on the marriage. And I talked
to him about that. He agreed ... we'll see if he will agree to not
see me. There's more to discuss, and we will do so.

You might consider sitting down with the three of you,
you, he, and his wife. Hearing his side of the story is just that, his
side.
With all of you there he can't sugar coat plans to either of you.
His wife will hear all of what you want her to understand, not
just what he is up to telling her. It will be hard, but if I were his
wife I'd like to know what I was up against. She most likely
will also help push for a third party. She might even volunteer
to be the third party.

I hit send to early.

I wrote:


That last one actually has a lot of significance, I think. Losing a
loved one is very often a major trigger for those who fear intimacy to
go flying. Why? Because it makes you realize how fragile life is, how
you could lose the person you love the most, the person who's your
life-mate, the one you depend on. That's scary as hell. It is not
uncommon at all for people to be vulnerable to infidelity when they
have lost someone close to them, such as a parent or child. It's a way
of putting distance between those they love the most, so the idea of
losing that love isn't so scary.


Maybe you should think about this, and how it applies to your own
actions.

Having a child is an awesome experience. And, it's scary. Scary to
have this little creature totally dependent on you. I know I worried I
was doomed to screw it all up. A child's love is so perfect, so
unconditional... that's scary in itself. And the parent/child
relationship is one of the most intensely intimate relationships on
this planet...

Birth of a child, btw, is yet another common trigger for infidelity to
occur in a marriage.

Which leads me to ask you, Paula, if you might be running scared as
well? You seem to be spending a lot of time and effort on an iffy,
fantasy relationship with her father. Does this help to take the
pressure off the budding relationship with your daughter and make it a
little less intense? I have to imagine that your love for this child
you thought you could never have is quite intense, and the fear of
placing all your eggs in this one fragile basket.... well... it might
be a lot safer to find a second basket, her father.

Yet another angle to consider: are you pursuing this elusive childhood
issue, that of resolving the abandonment by your father, as a way of
avoiding becoming intimate with the most crucial person that you
should love? That person is yourself. Because, frankly, you're not
acting as a person who loves herself very much.

Something to think about, anyway.

jen (who probably over-analyzes and thinks the vast majority of people
fear intimacy, cuz I've spent quite a few decades of my life fearing
it myself!)


P.s. if you do read Secret of Bees, that's the whole moral of the
story... in her case, it was her mother who abandoned her. The moral
was that there's a mother within all of us, and the heroine found her
own strength within, not from other parent figures in her life.

JWB wrote:

"Bill in Co." wrote in message
But progress is defined by actions, not just words. What progress?


Holy ****, I agree with you.

LOL!

Doug Anderson wrote in
news:1GHvc.2888$%F2.226@attbi_s04:

enigma writes:
i'm sort of of the mind that maybe a lot of problems
aren't because divorce is so easy, but because *getting
married* is.

Hey, have you been reading my old posts? I think I said
precisely the same thing a while ago.

i don't think so... i'm posting from m.k. & i think you're
posting from a.s.m. i'm not married, so i don't hang out
there

and since divorce *is* so "easy", why do people 'cheat'
anyway?

Well, that one's easy. Because they don't want to give up
whatever they are currently getting out of their marriage!

i guess i just don't understand that. if one is unhappy
enough to cheat, one should just be honest & leave. but then,
a lot of social stuff just baffles me.
lee



--
It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still
differentiate
between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing
the vital
connection between them. -Leo Buscaglia, author (1924-1998)

Doug Anderson wrote in
news:aHHvc.45549$Ly.2019@attbi_s01:

enigma writes:

Doug Anderson wrote in
news:T2Gvc.12002$sI.10641@attbi_s52:

enigma writes:

"_calinda_" wrote in
:

Ugh... Flexible. I'm sure the spouses of the people
having affairs are happy that those around them are
so flexible over the whole thing. They must take a
great deal of solace in that fact. Disgusting.

wow, you must *really* hate poly folks! no way to cram
them into your nice, neat suburban nuclear family box,
huh? lee

Maybe she just hates folks who lie to people they claim
to love.

perhaps. i have discovered that most folks just can't wrap
thier heads around the idea that poly *isn't* cheating.
but then again, i have trouble wrapping my mind around
only
having enough love for one...

Perhaps again. But your response to calinda seemed to be
the response of someone who can't wrap his or her head
around the concept that cheating *isn't* poly.

well, no. i am poly. it's a lot of work. i'm not prepared to
say it's *more* work than a standard relationship/marriage,
but it is at least as much work.
i do have trouble with the idea of 'cheating'. i can not see
why anyone would do that to someone they supposedly loved
enough to enter a committed relationship with. but i'm getting
used to being accused of cheating on my primary when i'm with
my secondary... so, i'm undoubtedly reading the comment of
"disgusting" from the wrong perspective.
lee

--
It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still
differentiate
between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing
the vital
connection between them. -Leo Buscaglia, author (1924-1998)

On 4 Jun 2004, enigma wrote:

Doug Anderson wrote in
news:1GHvc.2888$%F2.226@attbi_s04:

enigma writes:
i'm sort of of the mind that maybe a lot of problems
aren't because divorce is so easy, but because *getting
married* is.

Hey, have you been reading my old posts? I think I said
precisely the same thing a while ago.

i don't think so... i'm posting from m.k. & i think you're
posting from a.s.m. i'm not married, so i don't hang out
there

and since divorce *is* so "easy", why do people 'cheat'
anyway?

Well, that one's easy. Because they don't want to give up
whatever they are currently getting out of their marriage!

i guess i just don't understand that. if one is unhappy
enough to cheat, one should just be honest & leave. but then,
a lot of social stuff just baffles me.
lee

I don't think people always cheat because they're unhappy. I
think some people wind up cheating simply because the
opportunity presented itself... and maybe in a moment of unexpected
desire they think to themselves, "Hmm, maybe I *can* have my cake and
eat it too...."

dragonlady wrote:
In article , "Tai"
wrote:

I just don't understand how anyone has the time to run two romantic
relationships, let alone two familes! It sounds like skimping for
all, to me.

Tai




Poly isn't always more than one family. Sometimes, it's one family,
and each partner may have additional relationships -- but not with
children.

I was referring more to the OP's situation which isn't polyamorous. Here
there are two families with their similar and competing needs for the man's
emotions, time and money.


Sometimes it's a small group -- like a marriage of 3 or 4 people
instead of 2.

And, when you think about it, you're capable of loving more than one
child; why not more than one partner?

But it's different!

Our children are only on loan to us and we know they'll eventually leave and
move on with their own lives. My relationship with my husband has a quite
different set of expectations to the ones I have with my children.

Yes, I can quite easily love more than one man but I can't give each of them
(three would be a stretch) the amount of time and attention they would
deserve and we'd all end up being shortchanged. Others may be able to
compartmentalise their lives more easily than I could but I want the
intensity of connection that is only possible to have when you have just one
romantic love to concentrate on.

Leaving aside the emotional aspect of that it wouldn't be possible for me to
find the time, anyway. My life is too damn busy!

Tai

enigma writes:

Doug Anderson wrote in
news:1GHvc.2888$%F2.226@attbi_s04:

enigma writes:
i'm sort of of the mind that maybe a lot of problems
aren't because divorce is so easy, but because *getting
married* is.

Hey, have you been reading my old posts? I think I said
precisely the same thing a while ago.

i don't think so... i'm posting from m.k. & i think you're
posting from a.s.m. i'm not married, so i don't hang out
there

Yeah, I know. I was just joking.

and since divorce *is* so "easy", why do people 'cheat'
anyway?

Well, that one's easy. Because they don't want to give up
whatever they are currently getting out of their marriage!

i guess i just don't understand that. if one is unhappy
enough to cheat, one should just be honest & leave. but then,
a lot of social stuff just baffles me.

Of course you are right about what they _should_ do.
But you didn't ask that. You wondered _why_ people do
things. People do things they shouldn't do all the time, usually for
good reasons.

enigma writes:

Doug Anderson wrote in
news:aHHvc.45549$Ly.2019@attbi_s01:

enigma writes:

Doug Anderson wrote in
news:T2Gvc.12002$sI.10641@attbi_s52:

enigma writes:

"_calinda_" wrote in
:

Ugh... Flexible. I'm sure the spouses of the people
having affairs are happy that those around them are
so flexible over the whole thing. They must take a
great deal of solace in that fact. Disgusting.

wow, you must *really* hate poly folks! no way to cram
them into your nice, neat suburban nuclear family box,
huh? lee

Maybe she just hates folks who lie to people they claim
to love.

perhaps. i have discovered that most folks just can't wrap
thier heads around the idea that poly *isn't* cheating.
but then again, i have trouble wrapping my mind around
only
having enough love for one...

Perhaps again. But your response to calinda seemed to be
the response of someone who can't wrap his or her head
around the concept that cheating *isn't* poly.

well, no. i am poly. it's a lot of work. i'm not prepared to
say it's *more* work than a standard relationship/marriage,
but it is at least as much work.
i do have trouble with the idea of 'cheating'. i can not see
why anyone would do that to someone they supposedly loved
enough to enter a committed relationship with.

But you do realize that people _do_ do that even if you can't see why
they would, right?

So when they do, it doesn't have anything to do with being poly, which
is a whole different kettle of fish.

"Joy" wrote

My response above wasn't to the OP, or even about the OP, but rather to
Marty Billingsley, who was talking about people he knew with happy marriages
that started out as affairs. He went on to add about these folks:

They are indeed lovely, wonderful people. Maybe folks around here are
a bit more flexible in their outlook than people in calinda's circle.
Affairs aren't condoned, but neither are adulterers shunned. The days
of the scarlet letter are over, at least around here.

IMO, implying that lovely, wonderful people should be "more flexible in
their outlook" than people in calinda's circle came across as having rather
a callous attitude toward the injured spouse - some of whom really and truly
get screwed.

Joy

This is true. His argument seems to be that the ex-spouses seem to
have recovered nicely and got on with happy (happier?) lives.

I have to say I'm a lot more comfortable with that approach when there
are no kids involved.

Rupa