Im probably being dim but Im not quite sure what you mean.
Ive got listeners on the buttons, how will having those listeners in a separate thread help me pause the program?
Cheers
You dont need to, when you open the GUI it automatically runs in its own Thread which will continue to run after your main method finishes. The listeners on the buttons can call methods directly.
Do not prat about with notify and wait, you dont need to go anywhere near it for GUI programming.