I’m sorry that this is happening in your family, Hopeful.
In terms of answering your headline question, while it certainly has lots of MLC flavours (and if it is MLC, time will tell bc it will get worse and more inconceivable before it gets any better, sorry), i’d suggest that you have enough info to answer your own question to some degree without labelling it. The compulsion to label it, understandable as it is, is often an unconscious desire to reassure ourselves that there is a visible way out or a need to figure out how to make it go away by doing x or y, isn’t it?
From what you have written, regardless of the label, you have a wife who is experiencing some kind of internal upheaval, who is at best no longer actively engaged in your marriage and who sees you as an object of blame for a lot of things that truly are not and never were your responsibility or in your power. Painful as that is, it is important for your own sanity that you develop a clear eye about what belongs to you and what doesn’t. It’s not unusual here that our spouses seem to almost have a kind of warped codependency in their attitude towards us....we go from being a kind of ‘saviour’ or safe place to being the opposite. And that is rather mindf**king to experience, isn’t it? And difficult to balance how to treat their words and actions as significant enough evidence that we are in new marital territory which requires a change in our own perspective as we adapt vs taking their words and actions as some kind of reliable truth about us, the past or the future.
So, putting your wife to one side for the moment, what you are dealing with is a significant change in your marital and family landscape. When you will need to develop some new ‘operating rules’ and boundaries to navigate how things currently are, as opposed to how they were or might become. For most of us, once we lay down our fixing tools and questions of them, that means digging a bit deep on what is do-able and acceptable to us as a way to live regardless of what is going on in their heads at any given time. Including our own POV about marriage, family and how we look after our own wellbeing and that of our kids if we have them. In that process tbh, it’s not at all unusual to find that some of our assumptions - about ourselves, our spouse, our priorities, the way we look at the world - can change, sometimes in ways that surprise us even. So, right now, you get to decide what marriage means to you when your wife is disconnected, doesn’t want to be intimate with you and doesn’t want to answer your (understandable) questions or provide much reassurance to you as a partner.....how do you do you, and do fatherhood and indeed normal life, if she is emotionally AWOL from the We?
Starting small usually helps imho. More day to day or week to week than trying to predict months out. We tend to call that stuff GAL as a kind of shorthand here....the stuff you do or don’t do that gets or keeps you in good shape physically, mentally, spiritually and practically.
Going by her ‘list’, please don’t be manipulated into taking responsibility for things that are/were not your responsibility. It will drive you nuts and it won’t help anything. So, as an example, this cult religious group that you were both involved in....unless you put a gun to her head, you both own bits of that choice and the consequences of it. You own your bit....but don’t pick up her bit too.
This kind of experience can be a bit crazy-making - bc these crisis folks say things that are hard to make sense with and tbh they change their POV and sometimes lie a lot. I would advise you to find a decent individual therapist to support you as you figure out how to navigate what is going on and how to respond to events in the most emotionally healthy way possible. Sometimes when life gets s$it hard, it needs a village imho....and this stuff is really, really hard for most of us, male or female.
Based on your w’s current behaviour, I would accept that she has told you she doesn’t want to talk about some of these things atm and can’t/won’t reassure you in the way you want. So, stop asking.
stop talking about the relationship at all, stop looking to her for clarity or certainty or comfort. A STFU smoothie is called for. If she wants to talk, and initiates that, you can choose if you want to be available to listen. Or not. But listening means an extra STFU smoothie or two usually. Learn about validating how someone feels, or acknowledging what they have said, without needing to provide solutions or demanding answers. Or indeed agreeing with them lol. Learn about boundaries. Learn about the difference between responding vs reacting. Learn how to think and feel without needing to share your thoughts and feelings with a spouse who can’t or won’t care much about it. Look at how to get more of your own needs met without your wife’s active involvement and get honest with yourself about how you feel and what you want to do with those feelings. (And please avoid any emotional or physical dalliances with other women....there is not a single thing in your situation right now that will be made better in the medium term by adding more players
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I told her we should go get counseling, but she wont do it.. She's 'working through this on her own'.
Is this a midlife crisis, or just a marriage that is in some serious need of work, and a much more supportive husband?
Which is why, in a way, this is not exactly the right kind of A vs B vs C question, is it? Could be some mix of all or none of the above. Whatever it currently is, there is no We work there in your wife’s eyes. So, you can’t do any We work that requires both of you until/unless that changes. And your supportiveness is of limited use imho bc she’s not inviting you to play. Acceptance, yes. Not behaving like an a$$hat, yes. Even a little Grace at times perhaps. But no We atm...sorry...imho it’s a version of marriage that is a bit more like parallel parenting than co-parenting if that makes sense. Separate train tracks rather than a shared one, maybe running in parallel and within eyesight, maybe with time diverging further apart or maybe coming closer again.....bc of course none of us, including you, can know an unknown future. But we can see - as you can see - that you are largely no longer on the same train or track as you used to be. And that takes some adjusting to after decades of a marriage partnership, doesn’t it?
So, if you mentally put your wife to one side as a non-active player regardless of the reason or label, what’s left in your life, Hopeful?
What do you see as your priorities at the moment? Or the risks?
And how can we best support you?
What am I dealing with here?
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