My reasons for not initiating a divorce are 3 things.
1 - I love my W. I believe in long suffering, and the commitment I made in marriage. What if several months or years after a D she comes back around? Unlikely I know...
2 - I've said over and over to my kids that I don't believe in divorce. I think they'd hate me and lose respect for me if I was the one that initiated it.
3 - I have some serious religious and moral beliefs around divorce. The whole Idea of it is a complete moral and spiritual failure in my mind...
But, on the other side, my W has said clearly that she's done, and she doesn't love me. And she backs it all up with treating my like dog sh%$ every day in front of our kids. On top of it, we have some serious business and financial issues that she's completely uncooperative with and leaving me to try to resolve them all alone without any help or input by her...
This is seriously the toughest spot I've ever been in...
I understand very clearly your beliefs about divorce. I still share those beliefs many years later.
I cannot change this, even though he left our marriage...still doesn't mean that divorce was the right thing. I was able to obtain a legal separation which allowed us to divide our assists...he filed for a divorce 9 years after we separated. He never explained why, he sent me a text message to tell me.
It changed nothing really, he continues to be in contact with me. He owns that divorce, not me.
There is a Christian movie I watched called Fireproof...at the time, I thought it was rather hookey but after sleeping that night, when I woke up the next morning it struck me "you never leave your partner behind in a fire".
It is said that MLC is the mother of all depressions, a crisis of identity. Even living it, it is hard to comprehend...yet we see the changes in our spouses, the 180 degree change in them.
We used to always joke about how we each have half a brain and together we make a complete brain of 1 person. There's probably some codependency involved in each of us. Whatever...
Our best friend became a stranger and has done wild and painful things....many reasons and a combination of many factors but I also believe that there is spiritual factor as many here have written how their spouse turned away from their faith.
We must not allow this to destroy us...and so we "preach here" or some do that we focus solely on own lives.....I have been able to do that yet still remain aware, that the person I loved for 35 years is in a bad way...and his crisis, in some ways similar to other developmental stages ( the terrible two's, adolescence, perhaps even menopause/andropause) is something that happens to them. We are the collateral damage.
It seems like MLC's coming from a traumatic childhood is a common theme around here. I know its a huge part of my W's issues. I'm wondering if there are any MLC'ers who haven't had traumatic childhoods?
From what I know, my husband had loving and caring parents and he was very close to them. I felt his mother was emotionally distant and I have some suspicion of things that might have happened to himn during his childhood......MLC is a perfect storm, biological, hormonal, developmental and spiritual factors that all create the perfect storm.
Thanks for posting and expressing your beliefs about marriage and divorce.