[Nas]

I can't decide if the problem is that I'm just not willing to accept that he doesn't love or want to be with me anymore (he said this multiple times), or if he is in MLC.

I think the hardest part is that we do have to accept what they say, whether they are entirely true or not. We can speculate but never know why they said it (and the speculation just spins is in circles). The prolonged pain of the LBS is from trying to get inside someone else’s mind and figure out what is true and what is not, which is an impossible task. it can’t be done. And the meaning that we assign to everything they say and do is coming from our own minds, we’re projecting it. It’s not reality. We can’t construct a reality out of the unknown, though we try to, and in the process we often break our own hearts.

What he has said is hurtful (and cruel), and I remember how hurtful those words were. It hurts to tell ourselves that they are true. It hurts in a different way to tell ourselves that they are not true, because that creates the never ending loop of projection, looking for confirmation that they’re not true, seeing signs in everything they do.

I also understand the desire to hear stories of a change from that horrible, cold lack of empathy. There can be comfort in knowing that others experienced that. What I can say is that you’re very close to it right now and it will look different the more you detach, the less you are focused on it. in hindsight, I would suspect that many LBS would say that the shift occurred when the LBS emotional state changed with detachment and the MLCer’s behavior stopped feeling so intensely personal, and through the lens of detachment, their perceived level of indifference or coldness lessened.