12-20-2021, 12:10 PM
(12-19-2021, 09:44 PM)Shannon Wrote: Would your relationship have fared any better without the program you used, or would it have been a longer, slower death of the same sort? By the sounds of it, it was already suffering some serious issues before you used that program. I appreciate your point, but having been through what you're referring to myself, I'm of the opinion that adding sexual attraction will neither save nor destroy a relationship that is going to die anyway.
Do I think that the relationship would've fared better without the program? Only if you mean "ended sooner" when you say "fared better." Not that I'd credit the program as the sole contributor, as I've already mentioned.
Do I think that it'd have been a longer, slower death without the programming? Hrm. Confusing question. Was a decade of receiving unnecessary (and sometimes abusive) phone calls (after the near-year-long break-up) not unusually long and slow already?
She'd hated me before she'd ever met me and, from whatever truth I'd ever gleaned, never really stopped. If that's not a serious issue, I'm not sure what is.
It seems as if you think that I'm blaming mind-programming for ruining/not saving/not fixing a salvageable relationship. I'm really not. I think that, post-hoc, it'd contributed to prolonging (via memories, nostalgia, shared history, in-jokes, etc) what really needed to end, not anything that I'd wanted to last longer.
We didn't run it to fix or save anything. We ran it because, like many people, I'd thought that a couples program for a healthy relationship would be a lot of fun. We'd run it a year before she'd admitted how much she'd been lying about, back when the relationship had seemed healthy -- but was nothing of the sort.
I don't believe that the program was at fault for anything. I also don't believe that it'd been scripted poorly. Or that I'd seen any downside until years later.
I just think that I'd foolishly chosen to run mind-programming with someone who'd secretly hated me for years, someone who'd spent years afterward angrily contacting me while groaning that she didn't want to think about me at all. Of course, I've seen similar situations with couples who hadn't run mind-programming, so, as I've said, I'm not holding couples mind-programming as a sole contributor, but I'm also not sure that there's a huge difference between memorable moments inspired by couples mind-programming and memorable moments inspired by couples therapy, a couples retreat/vacation/road trip, etc.
More to the point, I know that other unhealthy relationships exist. Are they unhealthy in exactly the same ways? I'd hope not. But I don't think that all of them are obviously unhealthy to their participants, and they might be unaware that adding a little extra glue might make future contingency plans stickier later.
Might not matter as much in a sexual, non-romantic context, but I'd mentioned it here in case it does.
