[Standing Strong]

Something that I've been curious about, that hasn't made sense to me is why are mental/medical professionals unwilling to call MLC..... MLC?

I was watching an old episode of Marriage Helper on YouTube last night (They are really good) and they read off a question from a viewer about MLC.
The guy (Joe) says.... "There's no such thing as MLC".  "What people call MLC can happen anytime at any age, and it's just people trying to put the problem in a box".... "What people say is MLC is just grief from an unfulfilled dream and the reality of it not coming true: It's grief".
Maybe on some simple level this is correct, or maybe more correct in terms of an MLT....... but absolutely not correct in the throws of a major neurological catastrophe which is true MLC.

I was thinking about that (a little surprised) but then began to thing of all the professionals I've talked to: MD's, counselors, therapists..... all of them shy away from "MLC". Why is that? Their own little orthodoxy and we're all heretics?

The MD I talked to: Explaining how his fellow MD's wife went berserk and blew up their life in a most confusing way "We never figured out what happened with her".
The counselor: "I've never heard about this before..... can you tell me more?".
The Therapist: "We don't call it that (MLC), but we know something happens inside the mind".
DB Coach: "MLC is a lack of intimacy, you have to build that up". 
Pastor: "It's the devil"

A case of confounding the "wise"?
Arrogance? You play in my sandbox or not at all?
All have aspects of the truth, but none have the "big picture".
I suspect it comes down to perspective.

It's just so strange that for something so widespread, it is either dismissed or taken for something else entirely. Bad training? Refusal to see something which defies knowledge?

Why do you think the professionals are so lost, and what ridiculous lines have you been fed by them?

Not to say LBS's know everything, but what is taught here is correct and the pros are ignorant in this area.

-SS (MLC Heretic.... LOL!!)

[marvin4242]

SS: trauma therapists are not lost about this and if not talking to layman can easily decompose what we call MLC to multiple underlying conditions and states, they cam discuss what may have been at the root, what starts happening, what behaviours happen when it all triggers fully. I could talk to one therapist who could finish my sentences about what my wife is doing and how she looks etc. The trauma therapist was not lost at all and we would discuss the actual underlying mechanisms.

But MLC is not a diagnostic condition, it is a more “layman” description of a set of things that happen. It covers both a spectrum of disorders and intensities, and it sits on top of existing personality traits. And it is not a condition trained in psychology, so it can’t be diagnosed and sometimes therapists have not experienced the full onset of this reaction from their work (like a marriage councilor or someone who only deals with non PTSD or non trauma patients).

So they have a hard time believing it, specially when it comes from layman descriptions.

[AlvinTheMaker]

I think your question already contains the answer    People shy away because of... fear.

The name of MLC has been widely killed off in scientific publications.  If a person of science admits MLC is real.... you basically lose your creditability in eyes of peers.  And for person of science.... creditability is everything.

Of course this creates the chicken vs. egg dilemna.  Things cannot change unless somebody does some new research on topic that popularizes an alternative perspective.

Alvin.
 

[OffRoad]

I think part of it is that people are only as good as their own experience and what they actually draw from that experience. If I put my hand in the fire and get burned, I extrapolate that the fire is what made my hand hurt and get blistered. But what if someone else held my hand in the fire. Will I extrapolate that the fire is what made my hand hurt and get blistered, or that the person holding my hand in the fire is what made my hand hurt and get blistered? Depends on my experience (and age and intelligence quotient, but that is another story). And in actuality in the latter case, imo, both would be true, but that doesn't mean I still can't get burned by fire without someone holding my hand in it, and that doesn't mean that a person can't find a different way to burn me without the fire. Just like if you have never experienced a spouse leaving you in this crazy way, you might have no comprehension of it.

Examples:

The MD I talked to: Explaining how his fellow MD's wife went berserk and blew up their life in a most confusing way "We never figured out what happened with her".

The explanation is right there. He never figured it out, therefore he has no name for it.

The counselor: "I've never heard about this before..... can you tell me more?".

Until I experienced it, I hadn't heard about it.  Not even the joke about the red sports car. That was never on my radar. Maybe not the counselor's either.

The Therapist: "We don't call it that (MLC), but we know something happens inside the mind".

So what do "they" call it then? "Something that happens inside the mind that makes someone become a self entitled, self absorbed, self indulgent narcissistic individual who thinks their happiness means they need to stop being a decent human being to the person who promised to love and honor them until death do they part"? My goodness, that's a pretty long diagnosis title. I could go for Mid Life temporary Insanity, BTW.

DB Coach: "MLC is a lack of intimacy, you have to build that up". 

It's a theory. And if that is your only experience, it's all you have. The second part I don't quite get, because how do you build up something that was blown to bits and you can't even find the bits because the MLCer is hiding them from you, but perhaps there is a thought process there somewhere.

Pastor: "It's the devil"

Again, what other experience might this pastor have had?

So is this reluctance to call it MLC? In some cases, maybe yes because there is no diagnostic criteria for it. In other cases, no experience, so how can you call it anything if you have no idea.

For all the talk about not wanting to put people in "boxes", most people cannot handle it unless there is a nice, neat box to put some behavior in. Which goes to Alvin's theory of "fear".  If I can put this person in that box, and I don't fit in that box, then I will never have that problem. Whew!  Or What criteria would fit into the DSM-5, except if I do that these people now have a mental disorder, and is that valid if it is temporary? And why is it temporary for some people and not for others? And how can I find out if the person who comes in to talk to me is lying, or their perspective is skewed......where can you get objective input?

Plus, lets face it. *Sarcasm alert on*  People just fall out of love, you know. *Sarcasm alert off*.

But back to experience, every time my mother would go to her GP, he put her on blood pressure medication. Every time she ended up in the hospital for some reason, they took her off because they could not understand why she was on it, especially with the multiple side effects she got with taking it. (at 82 her BP without medication was 136/75-hardly high). For whatever reason, her GP thought 136/75 was cause for taking medication in an 82 year old woman where the medication also caused a need for two other medications while she took it. The doctors and nurses at the hospital didn't agree that three medications for 136/75 was a good choice. Differing experiences and opinions. (My mother just did whatever Dr. of the day said )

[Granite]

Seeing as I am just exiting a feverish couple of days I’ll admit I’m going to be snarky….so..

1. I have yet to meet a Psychologist of Psychiatrist, be it a friend or aquaintance, that is willing or able to “Think outside of the Box”.
2. The “Box” is the DSM.  If it is not official it does not exist.
3. They, just like us, have no ability to treat-fix-help-guide an MLC’r.  That being the case there is no business for them and if by chance they were    to accept a person has MLC and take them on they would be destined to fail. Furthering the belief it must be something else then.

  A very good friend, who is a Psychologist, know’s the Wife and always asks me what’s up. I try to tell him a little bit but he looks so confused.  Thankfully he has asked no question as of late.  Next time he does though I am going to point out that I have tried to explain things to him, yet he refuses to accept.  Therefore he needs to research MLC thoroughly before asking me again.

 My apologies to Thundar.  As I remember he is a trained professional who has had first hand experience.  I guess I just haven’t met a believer in person yet.

Given that Thundar is a trained professional I would be very interested on his take of this topic.

Thundar, what say you?

[Caroline]

I have only met three people who have heard of MLC outside of the typical buy a new car etc.. but the real aspects of MLC.. one is my dads best friend who is a retired christian psychologist... he told me that I have a choice to leave him or to ride it out as long as I could handle it but it could take years.. my current C knows about it... he does trauma since his background deals with military, ptsd act.. he knows it is real...
and then one lady I met whose first husband had MLC..

I know that for me finally getting a name for what I was experiencing in my home with H and getting support from you all has been invaluable..
His family and many friends just think he just unhappy and wants a divorce...
It is just easy to try to rationalize for people that can't see the whole picture

[Treasur]

I agree that I have only encountered two types of people who 'get' what we call MLC; those who have experienced it first hand or (like us) second hand and professionals who specialise in trauma.

Actually if you look at most of the books or research about it, they are also usually written by people (including Elliot Jacques, Conway and our own RCR) who had some personal experience of it.

I suspect it comes down to a combination of the DSM and that mental health professionals base their diagnosis on self-reported thoughts and behavioural symptoms. And a lot of what we call MLC is a cluster of symptoms that also fit in with other diagnoses. Quite a few folks here have had spouses who have been diagnosed with depression or as being bipolar, say, and others with cluster b personality disorders bc that is what the presenting behavioural patterns look like. As a spouse, no one seems to be much interested in your layman's cry that 'but they truly did not used to be like this' or 'isn't this a bit nuts'...... There is no baseline of who they were before.....and as LBS we maybe only see the contrast with that baseline which is why our head feels like it has been put in a blender.....but even then, most of us flail around trying to label it and doubting our own judgment about if there is even an 'it' to label. And tbh that seems to include quite a few LBS here who have professional expertise in psychology, counselling or healthcare.

It is probably not unlike the experience of those who suffer ME/CFS.....a collection of symptoms that don't fit a standard diagnostic box.....many people have suffered the life-altering affects while being pooh-poohed by medical folks. Yet in RL someone knows that something is going on, that something has changed in how their body works from how it did before. As do people around them. Not dissimilar to how many people are experiencing long-terms symptoms after Covid that don't fit the initial expectations perhaps.....yet bc we have a label called Covid, and there are quite a few of them, more people are open-minded that there may indeed be long-term post-viral effects that we don't quite know enough about yet. But tbh, even in that context, not all medical folks see it that way.

And most MLCers don't seem to think there is anything wrong with them....and if they do, they rarely seem to tell the truth when they are experiencing MLC so those that seek professional help are usually diagnosed based on their self-reporting of symptoms.....so often depression or anxiety, i suspect. Or a terrible marriage that has broken them lol.

[barbiedoll]

I have been fortunate to have had counsellors that do accept or believe in the term MLC. The very 1st counsellor I saw was a "younger" therapist and she herself identified my husband as having an " identity crisis"  and she shared that with me.  I had no idea (at the time) what was happening so I googled and found this term used to describe a midlife crisis . 

The counsellor that I am working with now does EMDR / Trauma work and when I asked her this very question , she stated that the term MLC is extremely "over-used". She states that "MLC" has some attached humor like buying toupees, fast cars, fast women and tattoos and is used by laymens to diagnose many behaviours ...most far from funny. An "existential crisis" is a more professional term for MLC and counsellors recognize and accept this diagnoses. She absolutely believes that when one partner experiences a "MLC" ( existential crisis) the betrayed partner very often experiences a profound crisis of their own. This has been the case for me as I know I am in crisis internally as a result of my husbands crisis. She also believes that the internal pain or unrest has its roots in traumatic childhood experiences .

[Treasur]

The term 'existential crisis' makes sense to me, Barbie. Our old vicar (who is also a psychologist and diocesan IC called it that from the beginning.) MLC is a kind of shorthand but I'm not sure it is always a very useful phrase in RL. Probably people would understand something like 'nervous breakdown' better.....although of course that isn't a technical term either. And I agree that for me the roots of a crisis usually seem to sit in early life experiences and the maladaptive coping skills and beliefs people build around them. Which work fine for a while....until they don't. And that their crisis behaviours almost inevitably, to a greater or lesser degree, create a crisis for the LBS too.

[Maleficent]

My retired therapist called it an "existential crisis" from the very beginning.  She told me that there was nothing I could do about it-that it came from something long before we met.  It took me at least two years though to fully understand that there was really nothing I could do about it now. Although I still wish I understood more what truly happened.   As Barbie noted about the laymen term MLC, that is how my MD defined it - " has some attached humor like buying toupees, fast cars, fast women and tattoos." He didn't get the total abrupt destruction.  My L calls it a breakdown.  My bereavement counselor called it a MLC because her h ran off after having one as well.  I am sure my h still believes his terrible, horrible marriage caused his current problems and exclaimed that to any of the therapists I believe he sought out.  And yes, his destruction caused my current existential crisis, although a more philosophical one than his destructive crisis. 

[Acorn]

I can echo a lot of what Barbie said.

All my 3 counsellors understood perfectly what I meant by ‘midlife crisis,’ though they preferred to call it an ‘identity crisis’ and ‘existential crisis.’  They described it as a painful individuation process that could leave destruction in its wake.   

Like Barbie’s counsellor, my first counsellor (soon after BD) gently broke to me that the term ‘midlife crisis’ can be misused or over-used to ‘explain’ marriage troubles and breakups.     

That was hard to hear (I did not go back to her...) because I had my mind set on the MLC ‘diagnosis’ but her words prompted me to consider if I was holding onto the MLC explanation as a drowning person grasps at straws.   A lot of self examination followed. 

[Curiosity]

This is a really great discussion. My MLC wife is a mental health professional, though of course I wouldn’t raise the subject of MLC with her regardless. But during our marriage counseling, between initial bomb drop and her withdrawal, we discussed OW and the fog that my wife was in. I (probably unwisely) mentioned that I thought she was in limerence. Turned out she had been reading about limerence too. She didn’t explicitly say she agreed with me but she didn’t deny it either.

It is helpful to know that the concept of existential crisis or identity crisis is at least somewhat more accepted in the field. The idea of individuation was also something that came up in marriage counseling, and Acorn, the description of a painful individuation process doesn’t sound completely off base to me. It does seem like an oversimplification, though. I mean, “painful” really understates it and doesn’t take into account how much MLCers seem to deliberately blow up everything in their existing life in order to try to find happiness. The history of earlier-life trauma and (often) a tendency toward conflict avoidance makes a lot of sense.

[marvin4242]

What great comments and observations, thank you all.

I just want to add to the “differentiation” peace (which I believe it very accurate), my wife at one point of clarity said “I had to do all that to get away from you” and “do you know how much it took to separate myself? It was I needed a rocket to get going.”

I think these were her internal way of registering the force and destruction that was apparent externally in her “need” in her mind to get away from me.

[OffRoad]

Isn't an existential crisis (meaning of life/why am I here) and identity crisis (who am I/what do I believe in) two different things,  that might or might not be intertwined?

It seems like a person could have one or the other or both. To me, it almost sounds like an MLT is more like an existential "crisis". Or is it perhaps the level of confusion/concern/upset that elevates something to crisis level?

I was thinking back on the year my father was stationed in Iceland, and my mom didn't want to go and take us kids. She had her friends, family, no money worries, but she had what was termed a "nervous breakdown". Years later when my father passed, we were worried it might happen again, but she didn't even miss a beat. (Upset, yes, but not hysterical). It made me identify "responsibility" as a great stresser for some people (by the time my father passed, my mom's biggest responsibility was paying monthly bills). It is also motivational for others. Which led me to if responsibility is a stresser that someone has just buried the stress for years and not dealt with it, then the dichotomy of being "responsible" because you are supposed to be and not actually wanting to be responsible because it stresses them could cause an identity rift. Just "thinking" out loud.

[Treasur]

Isn't an existential crisis (meaning of life/why am I here) and identity crisis (who am I/what do I believe in) two different things,  that might or might not be intertwined?

My first reaction was, based on my own loss of self in PTSD, was that my experience was that they were much the same. I don't think I could untangle them at the time.

Taking a moment though, perhaps I'm wrong and they are different. If intertwined.

When I was most lost, I simply did not know if there was still a Me. I knew there had been one and intellectually I knew there was one....but I couldn't feel a Me at all and I found it almost impossible to imagine that there would be a Me again. Looking back, I think it is a very deep kind of disassociation. It felt existential in the sense of existing, of living even, of being something.....or for a while being nothing. And bc I couldn't feel a Me, I therefore had no idea why I was here, if my existence even mattered or what I should do with my existence if that makes sense. With hindsight, I couldn't start to move forward on the 'existential' bit until I felt a sense of Me again. Sorry if that sounds garbled; it's a bit difficult to describe but it absolutely did feel like a sort of step 1 and step 2 process......

What was different maybe in my case than in our spouses is my individuation - bc I do think that is a common theme in these MLC type crises we talk about on HS - is that my loss of Me did not feel that it had been subsumed by someone or something I had to escape from. Well, other than PTSD lol. Our spouses seem to believe, rightly or wrongly, that their relationship with us has eaten their Me like an old-fashioned Pac-man. Hence the blame perhaps and the anger.....perhaps the more violently they seem to need to destroy us is more a measure of how co-dependent they feel? A bit like Marvin described, I think my xh might have said something similar if he had been able/willing to talk to me. Idk. Of course that is why it seems so puzzling that they often seem to move on to really quite controlling relationships with ow/om that seem way more subsuming than our experience of the old relationship, like putting all their casino chips on one risky red number......perhaps they simply don't have the capacity to create a new Me without someone else to do it with. Like a parasite and a host lol. Again, idk, but it kind of makes sense to me in the context of my xh. And perhaps that is why those folks who stick with ow/om seem to get stuck for a long time bc I guess they would have to go through a process of breaking free all over again but this time with nothing visible on the other side.

Whereas it was really obvious to me, even at my most no Me, that grafting myself onto someone else or trying to be rescued was going to produce a Me who was not Me, that it just wasn't the way to go. But my word, finding a Me when you are that not Me is frightening and very slow hard work. Nice when you feel your Me again though 

[Curiosity]

Really brilliant discussion! Agree that existential crisis and identity crisis are probably separate (though very often intertwined) concepts and that MLC probably includes both. Really excellent observation, Treasur, about individuation and how the MLCer seems to feel that the marriage has subsumed their Me. That addresses how the MLCer and LBS are on parallel but separate journeys - we are each seeking our Me, but the MLCer feels like they have to break free of their spouse to find their Me, while often we would be happy to find our Me alongside our beloved partner.

[readytofixmyselffirst]

Hello,

I also believe that MLC is a loosely applied term for an "identity" crisis where hidden issues from the past erupt from a current issue. HB stated that the MLCer had to resolve these past issues in order to "complete" themselves and move forward.

As far as professionals dealing with MLCers. It has been stated that many, if they do see a counselor, lie or state there is nothing wrong with them. Most of the discussion around MLC is from statements made by the LBSer in regards to the MLCer. Most professionals do not enjoy or support making a diagnosis of someone based upon the observation of another person.

Also as stated before, the idea of the sports car, pursuit of younger mate, new career are all stereotypes that actually prevent professionals from embracing the term.

Good discussion and I look forward to reading more,

(((((Ready))))))

[Father5]

HI everyone,

Great discussion! I would like to share what my therapist said about it. She didn't believe in MLC and when I went on and on in the beggining about her being broken and didn't know what she was doing. She stopped me dead in my tracks and said she's not phycotic she's not having an episode. "What she did was undenyably cruel and way out of character but if she were sitting in my chair right now what would I say to her". I said I didn't know , she said "if she were sitting in my chair right now would I tell her to stay in a marriage she wasn't happy in". She went on to say that my wife knew exactly what she was doing and how much it would hurt and she (my wife) didn't care. It was a very bitter pill to swallow for me. I might still be choking that one down.

  The next few months in her office it seemed like I just wanted her to believe me about what I was witnessing and going through, I wanted validation. The worst part about them not understanding or acknowleding MLC was the fear that I was the crazy person. That I was  wrong! I  was just taking things the wrong way and didn't handle the breakup well. In some ways it made things worse.  When I finally told her all the dirty little details about what happened all she could say was how cruel it was. My therapist beleives I am just not handling it well and this site inparticular is bad for me. You guys are the only people that understand and I can't thank you enough.

[xyzcf]

My therapist beleives I am just not handling it well and this site inparticular is bad for me.

I am not sure I like your therapist.

Support groups are vital for people facing many types of crises. Hero's Spouse is exactly that, a support group of people who have had a similar experience and can learn from one another and get support from one another.

Many people, myself included, have been diagnosed with PTSD from this life changing trauma so of course "we are not handling it well".

Treatment for PTSD has allowed me to gain some peace and happiness in my life. Understanding and accepting that something drastic happened to my spouse of 32 years has aided in my healing.

I accept though, that I still am deeply damaged by this...as I would be had I been physically attacked or developed some devastating disease.

I am sorry that she is not listening to your understanding of what has happened. You knew you wife better than anyone else, and if like me, you are aware that something changed dramatically and without warning. Listen to your own inner voice Father.

As well, I don't see how HS can be "bad for you" as there is no pressure for you to continue to love your wife or not, stay married or not..indeed there is a great deal of advice about protecting yourself financially and how to take care of children and yourself so that you can be as healthy as possible.

[Curiosity]

F5, I stopped seeing my IC precisely because she seemed to be going in this direction. I might have used the term midlife crisis but mainly we just talked about the fact that my wife is not sure what she wants, she needs to explore some things on her own, but she knows that a lot of our marriage has been good and she doesn’t want to close the door on that. I mean, I can understand where the therapist is coming from - her focus is on the well-being her patient and I think all of us would agree that (even IF the reconciled marriage is stronger than ever before), the MLC period itself is not good for the well-being of LBS.

Still, I made it very clear that I recognized that my wife’s behavior toward me and our marriage would not be acceptable in the long term, but I firmly believe that she is working through some issues and that on the other side of those issues, I believe that the person she will be is likely to still be the person with whom I want to share this journey. So I was willing to acknowledge the bad behavior in the short (ish) term in order to keep the door open for longer term happiness. Ultimately, it seemed we were at an impasse so I ended the counseling. I still think I learned some valuable lessons about my own value in the relationship. While my counselor didn’t explicitly say she didn’t believe in MLC, that was the sense I got. But we in this community know, there are far too many commonalities among our spouses for it to be coincidence. Ultimately, all we can do is stay strong, take care of ourselves, and live according to our values.

Also, well said, xyzcf!

[Treasur]

Father, I am very sorry that your IC was not able to meet you where you are/were as a skilled IC should be able to do. When we are wounded, validation without judgment is imho like an IV drip.....it gives us just enough to start our own healing process. And to feel judged as you did....yes, it is like a double dose of trauma. Almost a kind of gaslighting actually to be told you are not only 'wrong' about what you are experiencing but also 'wrong' in how you feel about it. I am so,so sorry. And I hope that this IC is an ex-IC.

I don't know if your w is in MLC; ha ha, I don't know for sure if my former h was so how can I know about anyone else's? 

But I do trust my judgement that something big happened to him, that he became unrecognisable and that a lot of crazy stuff happened that wasn't my crazy. And being able to, after honest reflection, trust my judgment again was so very important for my sanity and in turning my world right side up slowly. It did involve a kind of both/and bc some of what your IC said is probably true....that your w is responsible for her actions and that she does not care much about you or anyone else.....and you have experienced something inconceivably WTF that blew your life up. Both/and.

What you do with that both/and is for you to determine and for a decent IC to support you in imho.

[OffRoad]

Oddly enough, you don't have to believe in the term "MLC" to be able to see that what happens in some of these situations is just not normal "This marriage isn't working, let's go our separate ways". 

Making the bed every morning doesn't make me happy (it  might you, but not me). I don't leave a marriage because I feel I must make the bed in the morning. (or maybe because someone else DOESN'T make the bed in the morning)
Dealing with an ant invasion doesn't make me happy. I don't run away from the house because I have to deal with an ant invasion.
Needing new tires on my car doesn't make me happy. I don't abandon my car on the side of the road because I need new tires.
Taking my child to the doctor when they are sick does not make me happy. I don't leave my child at the doctor's office and never come back.

What is with the attitude from ICs about a spouse who leaves, if they aren't "happy" it makes sense for them to leave? Don't try to improve yourself, or see if there is something different you can do or ask if there is  way to  make the situation better. Just run away and go do something that might make you "happy". There is a very large difference between pretzeling yourself for someone else and not even trying to see if there is a solution.

When did honor, integrity, loyalty, morals all take a back seat to "happy"? When did gaslighting, lying about, lying to, cheating on, stealing from, verbally abusing and abandoning your spouse become "Cruel, but they aren't happy so they should just leave the relationship"?  That's just really weird in my book.

[Curiosity]

Oddly enough, you don't have to believe in the term "MLC" to be able to see that what happens in some of these situations is just not normal "This marriage isn't working, let's go our separate ways". 

Making the bed every morning doesn't make me happy (it  might you, but not me). I don't leave a marriage because I feel I must make the bed in the morning. (or maybe because someone else DOESN'T make the bed in the morning)
Dealing with an ant invasion doesn't make me happy. I don't run away from the house because I have to deal with an ant invasion.
Needing new tires on my car doesn't make me happy. I don't abandon my car on the side of the road because I need new tires.
Taking my child to the doctor when they are sick does not make me happy. I don't leave my child at the doctor's office and never come back.

What is with the attitude from ICs about a spouse who leaves, if they aren't "happy" it makes sense for them to leave? Don't try to improve yourself, or see if there is something different you can do or ask if there is  way to  make the situation better. Just run away and go do something that might make you "happy". There is a very large difference between pretzeling yourself for someone else and not even trying to see if there is a solution.

When did honor, integrity, loyalty, morals all take a back seat to "happy"? When did gaslighting, lying about, lying to, cheating on, stealing from, verbally abusing and abandoning your spouse become "Cruel, but they aren't happy so they should just leave the relationship"?  That's just really weird in my book.

Thank you, this is the issue I have with IC! I feel like it was the direction my therapist was taking our sessions when I quit going. And I wonder if my wife is getting something similar. In addition, our MC pretty quickly moved to suggesting a separation as soon as my wife was unable to fully commit to being ready to work on our marriage. And I get that marriage counseling only makes sense if both parties are actively working on improving the marriage (at least, that is true of most types of marriage counseling). But it’s one thing to say that you can’t counsel a couple when both people aren’t fully committed, but it’s another thing entirely to suggest a separation. I know that my wife likes her therapist and feels like she is supportive. But my experience is that more often than not, my wife seems more depressed after therapy than before.

I just feel like the questions should be bigger than “are you happy?” Marriage is a promise, a commitment, and it’s about a lifetime shared with someone. It’s not disposable in the same way our belongings are, it’s not meant to be temporary like a job or home or car can be. If someone isn’t happy in a marriage, the exploration should be about what is really at the root of the unhappiness so that it can be repaired. There will certainly be times when the repair cannot happen in the context of the marriage, but I feel like the fundamental importance of the commitment is minimized too often in therapy, and it’s a disservice to the patient, because all too often the problem wasn’t with the marriage at all.

[barbiedoll]

  The next few months in her office it seemed like I just wanted her to believe me about what I was witnessing and going through, I wanted validation. The worst part about them not understanding or acknowleding MLC was the fear that I was the crazy person. That I was  wrong! I  was just taking things the wrong way and didn't handle the breakup well. In some ways it made things worse.  When I finally told her all the dirty little details about what happened all she could say was how cruel it was. My therapist beleives I am just not handling it well and this site inparticular is bad for me.

.

I am sorry that this happened ..in fact way past sorry. It is a way to re-traumatize a person. Of course you wanted validation and it was her job ( especially initially) to provide you with that . It reminds me that perhaps the therapist was triggered to "stop you dead in your tracks" . Sounds like she lost her professional role in that moment . To discount what you are saying ..especially when you are so vulnerable, so hurt and so confused , just adds to the misery . I hope she is an ex-counsellor.

I am sorry that some counsellors only read from 1 script and some simply are not open to really "hearing" what is being said.  I think it is vital to trust yourself enough to walk away from counsellors that just do not "fit". However, when trust in ourselves has been shattered and we just have no clue what is happening ...its very difficult . I have changed counsellor several times either because I did not trust them, I "felt" they did not support or believe what I was saying or they were just firetrucking nuts ( in my opinion) .   I know I was excited to see a therapist that taught EFT (Emotionally Focused Therapy) . I just loved everything I read about it and believed in their ideals . So finally I find this brilliant EFT counsellor and I think she is going to " bring peace and healing to the universe " . Meanwhile, she joked with me regarding a lady that had discovered her husband has been having an affair for 10 years. Yes , 10 years !. She said " can you even imagine that a women could not see that after 10 years ?"  . HUH?  This is funny?  I just incinerated with shame because I can believe it . I missed it entirely , so it absolutely can happen . I was shocked at such disgusting humour.  It was this counsellor that my husband and I agreed to allow "tape" for use in training sessions etc. At some point ( during taping" she actually "rolled her eyes" at me in frustration.  Well, I lost my firetrucking mind , to say the least.  I was triggered to a hellish rage and I bet that is a tape that she destroyed very quickly. I did report her and never laid eyes on her again. You have to be able to say "NO, you are not the one that can help me heal ...you are not the chosen one". 

The marriage counsellor we have is Gottman trained and she is a sparky little thing . She takes no sh@t from me ... and I NEED that . She can confront me in a way that I can tolerate and does make me see all sides of the box.  However, when we 1st saw her , she was reluctant to buy into MLC . She did not say that out loud , but I knew.  I refused to talk about my marriage as the cause of my husbands affair. I would talk about his affair and how that has affected me . I will talk about my marriage . But I will not talk about them in the same session as a cause and effect scenario. I just could not.   I have to say that again... I COULD NOT DO IT.   I told her " if this marriage was the cause of his affair , then the price is too high, the punishment far too great , the anguish I feel is beyond what any human should endure and I will file for divorce before the sun sets tonight. I do not want to try again, I do not want to "fix it" with a man that never mentioned anything was wrong , I do not want marriage in my life.   I told her that I believed that his crisis and affair was not about my marriage ...he could have been ,married to anyone and still done the same .  So, she was just stunned really , likely by my unintentional aggressive - ness and I did apologize , but the boundary stands. She asked my husband ( who was sitting there ) what he believed . He told her that he believed he had a " physchological breakdown / a mental or emotional event" that was very likely well overdue and had nothing to do with Barbiedoll. ... he has come to realize.  She has honored my request but it is becoming less and less important to me . I just needed to be validated and it be understood that I will not accept blame in any way shape or form . Likely I have gone on a rant completely off topic, but the point being , it is perfectly OK to change counsellors, to set boundaries, to get rid of what does not "fit" and to find the exact right person. They are out there .

[Treasur]

I've been thinking more about your IC experience, Father. And posting here bc I bet you are not alone in it......

Fwiw I think - putting MLC to one side for the moment - being heard and acknowledged as a victim of someone else's abuse is so important. And tbh infidelity IS abuse. It is born of entitlement that my 'happy' is more important than anyone else's pain or damage to their life. It is based on removing the power from someone else to make informed choices about their own life and it takes advantage of their trust and affection. And it usually walks hand in hand with other kinds of emotional abuse at least like stonewalling, gaslighting and blameshifting. All that WTF stuff that is so exhausting and makes you feel like your head is in a blender  Imho any IC who blames the victim of abuse....either for not knowing or for how they respond and feel about it....is not much different from an MLC spouse blaming the LBS. How can you be blamed for someone else's cruelty? Why is their happy more valid than yours? No....it's a nonsense, just victim-blaming BS.

Now, it is true that a decent IC will challenge your lens and will try to encourage you away from denying the reality of your situation, particularly if avoiding some kind of acceptance is harming you more or leading you to make unwise choices for yourself. And to move away from abuse when you see it for what it is. As your IC, they can't diagnose your spouse and they are only working with what your truth is at the time. But how can you help someone heal if your starting place is to blame them for their own trauma? Or deny that they feel how they feel or that how they feel is 'wrong' bc we can only move forward from where we are can't we?

Back to MLC....
Imho there are two chunks to this. Validating that what happened to us felt WTF and that MLC as a label helps us explain the WTFness of the experience. And then each of us go through a process of figuring out slowly the nature of our spouse, what happened with them and therefore what happened to us. That takes a little time and we don't all reach the same conclusions. But the bit that saves your sanity and spirit is to trust your own sense that it felt WTF....and that it wasn't a WTF created by you or that you could control or fix. And that probably nothing you did warranted what was done to you by someone who decided that your feelings and life didn't matter enough to them as long as they got what they wanted, whatever that was.

The second bit is working out what each of us believes about MLC I think. And therefore about our spouse, marriage and best course of action. You will see here on HS that not everyone believes the same about MLC or reaches the same conclusions about what it means for them as an LBS. You and me may both agree that our spouses had some kind of personal crisis and behaved in ways that looked pretty MLC WTFish. But we may disagree on our beliefs about things like who they were before BD when we take our rose-coloured glasses off or how fully responsible they are for their actions in crisis or whether we believe they will/can return to someone closer to who they were before or whether we should try to keep a door open or not. That is imho at the heart of how we use the MLC label in plotting our own path forward, once we feel we can accept the reality that whatever we call it, the WTF stuff DID happen and can't be magically in-happened. That is where a good IC helps you to think out loud for yourself and build your own story and reality that helps you to heal. And a wise IC recognises your trauma and understands that working through trauma has seasons, that you may not reach the same conclusion in future that you do now.

One of the strengths of HS I believe is that, while we share a WTF experience, we are a diverse group of folks who reach different conclusions. We get to see other people's paths second-hand while navigating our own. We may not always agree with each other's conclusions or choices, but we get to see different POV and consider if these can help us on our own path don't we? And we can feel deeply heard at times when we feel adrift and unheard in RL. Like virtual group therapy lol. But each of us also get the right to decide if HS is helping us to heal or move forward or if it is keeping us stuck in a mindset that is not constructive for us individually. Imho the same principle is true for IC, MC or anything else we choose to do in order to 'find our own medicine' as we try to heal and rebuild our lives.

[barbiedoll]

A great post Treasur ! All of it is true without question.  I remember when I was admitted to the Trauma Program and was assigned my room. There was a picture on the wall that said simply "Healing Begins The Moment We Feel Heard " . That has always stayed with me and there is such truth in those simple words.

[marvin4242]

Brilliant post Treasur, as always, thank you.

My only addendum is if someone’s MLC is from an internal crises they lose the capacity to fully gauge how much damage they are doing, or how twisted their emotional and mental logic is. But of course it doesn’t matter in a lot of ways, I keep using the phrase “when the car hits you you are just as dead regardless of the drivers intent or whether it’s on purpose” with me therapist.

I strongly urge anyone who is dealing with MLC trauma to work with therapists who understand trauma or the underlying MLC pattern regardless of diagnosis. Or at least your therapists supports your view fully.

[xyzcf]

Treasur, your post this morning is completely real...I still wake up each morning and think WTF?

For my own sake, I have to highlight some of what you said. It validates how MLC affects us.....and if a therapist doesn't "get" that, then I don't believe they can be much help to us.

being heard and acknowledged as a victim of someone else's abuse is so important. And tbh infidelity IS abuse. It is born of entitlement that my 'happy' is more important than anyone else's pain or damage to their life. And it usually walks hand in hand with other kinds of emotional abuse at least like stonewalling, gaslighting and blameshifting.

All that WTF stuff that is so exhausting and makes you feel like your head is in a blender  Imho any IC who blames the victim of abuse....either for not knowing or for how they respond and feel about it....is not much different from an MLC spouse blaming the LBS. How can you be blamed for someone else's cruelty? Why is their happy more valid than yours? No....it's a nonsense, just victim-blaming BS.

Now, it is true that a decent IC will challenge your lens and will try to encourage you away from denying the reality of your situation, particularly if avoiding some kind of acceptance is harming you more or leading you to make unwise choices for yourself.

And to move away from abuse when you see it for what it is.

As your IC, they can't diagnose your spouse

and they are only working with what your truth is at the time. But how can you help someone heal if your starting place is to blame them for their own trauma? Or deny that they feel how they feel or that how they feel is 'wrong' bc we can only move forward from where we are can't we?

Th

Validating that what happened to us felt WTF and that MLC as a label helps us explain the WTFness of the experience. And then each of us go through a process of figuring out slowly the nature of our spouse, what happened with them and therefore what happened to us.

But the bit that saves your sanity and spirit is to trust your own sense that it felt WTF....and that it wasn't a WTF created by you or that you could control or fix. And that probably nothing you did warranted what was done to you by someone who decided that your feelings and life didn't matter enough to them as long as they got what they wanted, whatever that was.

 

once we feel we can accept the reality that whatever we call it, the WTF stuff DID happen and can't be magically in-happened.

That is where a good IC helps you to think out loud for yourself and build your own story and reality that helps you to heal. And a wise IC recognises your trauma and understands that working through trauma has seasons, that you may not reach the same conclusion in future that you do now.

One of the strengths of HS I believe is that, while we share a WTF experience, we are a diverse group of folks who reach different conclusions.

we get to see different POV and consider if these can help us on our own path don't we? And we can feel deeply heard at times when we feel adrift and unheard in RL. Like virtual group therapy lol. But each of us also get the right to decide if HS is helping us to heal or move forward or if it is keeping us stuck in a mindset that is not constructive for us individually.

And barbie:
"Healing Begins The Moment We Feel Heard "

I am not the same person now. I will never be the same person I once was.....I am "shattered"...still to this day...the third therapist I worked really never commented on anything I said concerning my husband, and I said a lot about him and what happened..she listened and directed everything back to me, how I felt, how I could change that feeling to something that felt "better"...how I could reclaim my life.

Because it really doesn't matter what we "call" the condition that happened to our spouses, except that I know it wasn't me, it wasn't our life and I could not have prevented it...the relationship I entered into with my therapist was very deep, and her role was always to lead me up along a rocky road to a gate that I alone could open and walk through when I was ready..and I know that I wouldn't have got to other side of the gate without her help.

[Songanddance]

"Healing Begins The Moment We Feel Heard "

Love this !

My T was wonderful - she accepted that I believed that MLC existed and never once tried to dissuade me from thinking about it.   
She worked on and with me - she helped me begin to heal myself. She HEARD me!

I was honest, open and unafraid to speak my truth in her room and she was wonderful at letting me do that. She never tried to impose or suggest alternatives; instead after EMDR she continued to use NLP (neuro linguistic programming) to help me see myself and reframe me so that I was still that sassy, confident S&D from before but this time with a lot more self belief and self worth.

Trying to convince someone who doesn't understand MLC is like trying to peel an orange with astronaut gloves on.  I didn't need to; maybe I was lucky or maybe I just knew that I had nothing to lose and so was prepared to bare my heart, my head and my soul so that I could heal, grow and become the best I needed to be.

[Curiosity]

Wonderful posts and discussion on this...Treasur, thank you for getting to the heart of what brings us together here. And Marvin, your point that MLCer doesn’t understand the effect their actions and words have on those around them is an excellent reminder. Their lack of insight doesn’t lessen the trauma they cause, but it makes a difference in how we choose to move forward. I guess that the important thing is that IC should focus on the healing and minimizing further damage, and leave the marriage and spouse completely out of it. When they get too focused on our decisions to stand, the therapy quickly loses its effectiveness because they so often feel that standing is equivalent to choosing to stay in the trauma. Thankfully, there are wise people here who have learned how to navigate the crisis and set boundaries that allow for both healing and the possibility of reconciliation on the other side of the crisis, if that remains the right decision for them.

Such essential points about the importance of being heard. Much to think about this morning.

[OffRoad]

So what I'm reading leads me to think it is less about professionals calling the bizarre breakup an MLC, but more that they don't seem to acknowledge 1)That it wasn't just cruel, it wasn't a normal "the marriage isn't working, let's go our,separate ways". 2) That our perception is that their entire personality changed(and possibly the perceptions of every person that used to know them) 3) That there was something unusual going on, it has happened to multitudes of people over the years, and has never been researched to the point there could be a diagnosis for it.

In fact, in keeping with a lot of things, there could be several conditions or co-morbid conditions that end up presenting themselves in this "MLC" type manner. 

Does a professional NEED to call it MLC  if they are willing to identify that it was just not normal?  Is validating the behavior as being something a person with a good moral compass and sound mental judgment just does not do good enough?

[PJ Ames]

This is a good discussion. I do think the cartoon version of an MLC (50 y/o man with toupee and red sports car chasing skirts half his age), gets in the way of talking about MLC with professionals. Existential crisis might be a better term to use with counselors who don't "believe" in MLC.

I also think Ready is on to something in that the counselor who deals with an MLCer doesn't know that they didn't use to be this way. Their experience is limited to the alien replicant version of our spouses; we - otoh - know what they were like pre-BD.

I've seen three counselors. Two weren't really interested in diagnosing my XW but were interested in how I was dealing with my experience (in retrospect, this was fine). When I explained my XWs behaviors (spending, cheating, partying, drinking, hostility to rules, etc...) to the third one, he told me that "if your wife was male people would say she was having a midlife crisis."

I think sometimes it's more a matter of semantics than anything.

[Healing]

I've been reading this forum for several months now and haven't shared my story.  My experience with my therapist is jaw-dropping so I want to share.

I started seeing my therapist in May of 2019 which was 3 months after I discovered my husband's affair.  Of course, all I wanted to do was talk about my husband and how he had lost his mind...he bought a Porsche and was now leaving me for his younger secretary.  I wanted her to recognize that my husband was going through a MLC.  This is the stuff you see on movies.  How could this be my life?  I thought my husband loved me.  We had 19 years together with almost no fighting.  We had the kind of marriage that most people dreamed of.  Our friends, family, and community are still in complete shock that my husband would do this. 

Anyway, my therapist is a very dynamic individual and I knew at our first session that we were a perfect fit as we shared a lot of the same life experiences/struggles.  However, I could not get her on board that my husband was having a MLC.  She believed he was always a narcissist and that I am such a people-pleaser that I didn't see it.  Which a MLC will make you question your whole marriage...was it real, did he ever love me, etc..  I know you have all experienced this too but I know my marriage was good for many, many years and that this was without a doubt a MLC.  As most therapist, she kept the focus off my husband and tried to make our sessions more about me and how I could heal from what has happened. 

Okay before I share the next part of my story. I want to bring up the crazy eyes that some people talk about during MLC. My husband had those crazy eyes off and on for 3 years prior to me discovering his affair.  I asked him several times during those 3 years not to look at me that way.  It made me nervous to say the least. 

Fast forward to August 2019, I was waiting to see my therapist while she was with another client.  My therapist’s husband walks in the office and starts talking to me.  He told me his wife (my therapist) had a “honey to do list” for him of things that needed fixed at the office.  We talked for about 10 minutes and I noticed that same crazy look in his eyes that I had seen in my husband’s eyes over the past few years.  He told me several times how it was a pleasure to meet me and that he was so glad that we had a chance to meet.  It started to creep me out.  I kept thinking that this man must be having a MLC.  Sure enough….two weeks later I see my therapist and she is not well.  She shared with me that her 45 year old husband was having an affair with the 25 year old neighbor lady.  I wasn’t even shocked, I could tell by his eyes that he was in crisis!  My therapist is now a believer in MLC to say the least.  We have walked through this journey together and I thank God everyday for putting her in my path.  Until you experience it for yourself, it's hard to wrap your mind around MLC.  We all know it's real because we lived through it but my friends/family they think I have lost my mind if I talk about MLC.

I want to thank all you for sharing your story because it does help all the LBS. Not everyone is comfortable sharing their experience but I am so thankful for everyone that does.  I needed to hear that I was not alone and that others are going through the same thing.  Like many of you, my story has so much to it and I do want to share more in good time.  Love and light to all!!

[terra]

I’ve simplified my presenting issues to something along the lines of “struggling to survive sudden relationship loss, and intimacy abuse”.

One reason therapists or professionals may shy away from saying MLC or anything else, is that they are tasked with treating *you*, the LBS. They are there to support *you*, coach *you*, and help *you* stay on even keel.

I talk about h a lot, in therapy or other health environments? But the therapist or clinician doesn’t care about him. They have no idea who that person is. And he really doesn’t matter.

What matters, who matters, is *you*.

I’ve also noticed that when/if we say MLC or midlife crisis to a health professional, they take us a bit less seriously. Maybe because the focus is wrong, or stigmatized, or judgmental.

And many therapists will refrain from “diagnosing” even if MLC is not a diagnosis. These labels we use are kind of an invitation to comment, judge, join in some type of pain. Professionals may not have the experience or language for whatever this midlife business is. Difficult to comprehend MLC in a nutshell; better to describe behaviors. Trauma, betrayal trauma, shock, anxiety, grief.

Except the focus still should be squarely on *you*. On *your* symptoms, struggles, well-being. If it isn’t, that’s part of the problem. Then maybe we hear terms like “codependent”, “enmeshed”, or even “blame-shifting”. Our focus in any given professional medical or mental health assessment has got to be on the body or brain in the room — our own. The healthcare professional doesn’t have anything else to work with, just you. It’s one of the reasons, I think, that marital counseling is advised against while either spouse is having an affair: you can’t treat or diagnose or foster communication with the person who isn’t there.

I wasted a lot of money talking to professionals about h. In retrospect, it wasn’t a good use of the time.

If we knock it down to its simplest language, instead of MLC, we have a spouse who is now breaking promises. We are betrayed. It kind of doesn’t matter what the spouse is doing or saying or who with: we are married to someone who hurts us, and it doesn’t matter *why* they are. We just need it to stop, and need support while we figure out what to do.

Let the focus be on *you*. I think that’s one of the ways we get through all this intact.

Once it’s over, I won’t ever want to hear about midlife or MLC ever again. I expect it will be years before I see the other side of Now, and sadly, or maybe just fine, I don’t think there will ever be a diagnostic or professional term for the chaos and fragmentation of this time of life.

[Lady Grey]

I found this thread really helpful reading along at the time, and have dug it out a few times since then and thought about posting...

Unfortunately I am another LBS who has had a string of damaging IC experiences and am finally posting here now because I booked an appointment with a new IC a while back, which is now only a couple of days away and I am dreading it. I feel defeated and powerless, on the edge of physically sick and am contemplating cancelling, even though I know I need the support and at this point would probably have to pay for the appointment anyway.

Looking at how I've been feeling these last few days as the appointment gets closer, I think I'm realising that my past IC experiences have actually added to my trauma, as others have noted here on this thread.

It seems that many people here on HS have found that those in RL that 'get' mlc are either trauma therapists or have some personal experience. The new IC does specialise in trauma - I chose her for that reason, hoping this time might be different...

I'm not even sure how to approach this appointment. I have never used the term mlc with an IC  - I say breakdown, "brain explosion" crisis, or just "whatever it was that happened to h"

I do think it does come down to this

Does a professional NEED to call it MLC  if they are willing to identify that it was just not normal?  Is validating the behavior as being something a person with a good moral compass and sound mental judgment just does not do good enough?

I think for me right now, that would be enough. It doesn't matter to me if they call it mlc

It does matter though, when they see it as a marriage problem. In my experience with IC, it seems that if a single person does all the things we see our spouses do - blow up their life, change personality overnight and behave in a generally WTF way, that can be seen as something big happening to or in that person. They "had a breakdown", an existential crisis, an identity crisis etc. But if that same person was married at the time of this breakdown, then it's a whole different story. Being married seems to change everything in how the situation is seen and understood by others.

And that an IC, who has spent 1 hour talking to me about my situation should be so sure that they understand what's going on so much better than I ever could? It's like if someone tells you something that in your experience seems too crazy to be true, you have a few options. You can think that there are probably crazy things that are outside of your experience, and that the fact that you've never experienced this doesn't mean it can't happen. Or you can decide that the problem is with the person telling you about the crazy thing. That they misunderstood, got it wrong, made it up, are exaggerating, or even that they must be the crazy one.

This second approach has been my experience with IC.

That I am in denial and rather than facing the "very normal breakdown of my marriage" I am desperately grasping at crazy non existent things to explain what happened. Or they think that the marriage breakdown happened first, and that h is "not handling it very well".  Or that my marriage was always bad and that I'm just not able to face that reality yet. That sometime down the track I will be strong enough to face this and will see that the IC was right all along. Or that my h was always like this but because of my own issues I just couldn't see it.

I'll come back with a bit more about my previous IC experiences, or maybe specific questions about how to approach this new appointment.
Ugh...The whole thing is just so exhausting...I just wish it wasn't so hard to find support that helps rather than adding to the hurt...

[Lady Grey]

Sorry...just realised that as a discussion thread, this probably isn't the place for my questions.
I've been reading along hardly posting for a couple of years now...maybe time to finally start my own thread 

[MarianTheLibrarian]

Great discussion.

I, too, have found that people just don't believe in MLC as a phenomenon.  Yes, it may be a whole bunch of other issues that happen to express themselves all at once as a package deal, but the similarities are uncanny.

Take, for example, the British actor Rowan Atkinson, known for playing Mr. Bean.  In midlife he began a relationship with a woman young enough to be his daughter, and got her pregnant.  His wife divorced him for "erratic behavior" or some such.  His grown daughter changed her last name, apparently because she was ashamed of her father's strange behavior and new life.  He's still off with his "girlfriend" raising his new family.  In TV and movie land, we consider this normal behavior for celebrities, so my guess is that it hasn't gotten much attention.   But I read about it and thought, huh, Mr. Bean had a MLC!

What people don't grasp about this situation is that it is its own special kind of pain to lose a partner to a mental health issue.  It is almost like a death.  You kind of know deep down how this person would behave if they were in their right mind, and they aren't acting that way, and all/most of society seems to be validating their search for happiness (whatever that is these days).  Meanwhile we're stuck watching them burn down all the things they've worked for, but there is nothing and no one there to stop it, because that person's real self or former self is out to lunch for the duration.  People accept the simplest explanation that that is what this person wants, but we're stuck being the only ones who know that that just doesn't add up.  The question of, "What if you were back to normal, would you still do this?" ends up nagging us.  And the explanation that sometimes things just don't work out doesn't cut it for such a sudden change of personality and priorities.

As I've mentioned before, I look at this selfish behavior, lack of altruism, hedonism, and short-sightedness, and I think that if we call that happiness, we are the sick ones.

[Nas]

I think it’s important, when we see an IC, that we find someone who listens to us, whether they actually believe in MLC or not.

I didn’t even know what MLC was when I first went back to therapy after BD. It was my old therapist who totally threw me for a loop when she made the comment to me that my H “needs serious psychological help.” But also, importantly, “he’s not my patient, you are.”

It made a difference to me that she saw and pointed out that there was in fact something very off in the situation. Would it have made any difference if she was a full on knowledgeable believer of MLC? I don’t think so because I was there to deal with my feelings, my emotions and my plan to move forward.

I think it would be nice if therapists had a better idea of what all this is, and they definitely should not be outright dismissing their patients. I do think it’s important to find one who listens and acknowledges and helps us deal with the gaslighting and crazy making and madness. If you have a therapist who is telling you “just move on“ and ignoring your obvious trauma, that’s a problem.
But beyond that, I don’t know that it’s imperative to find therapist who are versed in MLC, given that even we can’t really clearly define what it is. I think finding a therapist who acknowledges that it is not “normal” can also be enormously helpful.
But ultimately, after sorting through the initial wtf and what/why/how, the therapy sessions with a good therapist  are going to be centered around us and our journey forward, not whatever is happening with our spouses.

ETA: Just cautioning that wanting to find a therapist with knowledge of MLC could potentially be presupposing that they will be able to help us navigate a sort of roadmap of stages and milestones. And again, this is definitely not a linear, time limited process with a predetermined outcome.

[Songanddance]

My T accepted that I believed in MLC and made sure that she just focussed on me and my personal healing. 

She tried a little of CBT in the second session in that I had to hold a conversation with H and that she was me and I was H; it didn't help but that was because I couldn't cope with it- everything was too raw and all I wanted was my marriage back.

She believed in me and that was all I needed then and now.  I have just caught up with her again after a good long break and now she is coaching me as I develop my mentoring, coaching skills and business.   Her belief in me still exists.

I therefore hold that any good therapist would not care what name we gave this situation; their job is to help the person in front of them, help them heal, help them grow and help them make the decisions that are best for them. 

[Curiosity]

Great points here... whether or not they believe in MLC, they should accept that you do and they should work with you to find your path to healing. If you are standing, they should accept that you want to do that and help you to make sure you’re doing it for healthy reasons and then move on from the subject and just help you.

Several people here have had success with therapists familiar with trauma. I was thinking about that and about how MLC often leads to some level of psychological fracture in the MLCer, so that whether or not they had actual trauma before, MLC is a form of psychological trauma for them... but for us, it is equally traumatic. Sometimes we respond by having our own crises, sometimes we make our way through it to heal in a healthier way. I think this morning was the first time it really resonated with me how much my mind has been traumatized by my MLCer - and that’s someone who has been a clinger and who hasn’t really monstered. I had acknowledged the betrayal and abandonment, but I hadn’t really owned the trauma and it’s important to the healing process to really understand the depth of what this process does to us.

[Treasur]

I suspect MLC is a non-technical term, a bit like 'nervous breakdown' that we get in RL when we see it (or experience it  ) but that doesn't fit the DSM that many IC use.

I have always framed it in my head that MLC is depression+insecure identity issues....and exists on a spectrum of course...but I also suspect that many MLCers could probably be diagnosed as essentially having c-PTSD from unaddressed early life FOO trauma. Not all perhaps, but a goodly number.

[marvin4242]

My only addition to the great points above is that if a therapist dismissed the idea out of hand they may have the wrong context for our experience. Case and point: if I tell a therapist that my wife says “I love you” on Sunday, and Tuesday morning says “I never loved you” this can be because:

1) I have an incorrect/partial recollection of events,

2) My wife has been lying to me and I didn’t know it, or

3) Something dramatically altered in my wife in 2 days.

Generally speaking, barring brain trauma or something major, 3) is not likely. So even in trying to help me they may go down blind alleys and not be able to provide help with the shock/trauma of the experience. Because we are off balance, and what we are saying matters in giving a context. If 3) is true then our demeanor is perfectly normal, we are turned around, in a daze and crushed. Otherwise something else is going on.

I have known therapists that ranged from being dismissive of the concept, to ones that start completing your sentences because they have had experience with it. There is no DSM entry, because this event LEADS to a group of disorders and behaviors that are understood and labeled, but the cause is not. So you can say disassociated, PTSD, emotionally detached, pain induced narcissistic traits, etc etc.

[xyzcf]

I knew that I was stuck, for many years. I functioned but I didn't know who I was..I didn't recognize who I was.

After BD, my doctor immediately wanted to write me a prescription for an anti depressant. A drug to decrease the emotions I was experiencing from a situational depression. I declined. I went to therapy. It was "nice" but there was no relief from the pain.

People get divorced..what was causing me to continue to have such deep pain?

The symptoms after BD that so many here have experienced, extreme weight loss, inability to sleep, hands shaking, crying for hours, inability to focus, being on high alert, inability to experience joy..those symptoms were real and very serious.

But you paste a smile on your face and nod and say you are fine.

I was stuck and by sheer chance, I ended up in a therapist's office who treats trauma. Had I been raped, I could have accepted PTSD being the reason I was in such pain...and yet, in some ways this is similar to rape....someone you trusted and loved and built your life with for 35 years in my case, against your will, took everything that you knew as your life away in a very quick and unexpected way. Betrayal, abandonment, rejection = trauma.

The things that happened in my therapist's office were unconventional, not at all expected and so intense...entering into another world, one that I was not consciously aware of...a world made up of many things...my genetic code, my values, my childhood, previous betrayal, who I was as a woman..who the child within me was and everything in between.

This therapy focused on me at a cellular level, a biochemical, physical  and spiritual level taking me places that I would never have got to any other way.

She was my guide, the work I had to do was my work, she guided me and helped me to face it all and in the end, I found myself again.

I am still broken... I doubt that I can ever remove this wound that is so deep.

I felt that I was a "failure" at divorce....as I listen to other women gleefully talk about their ex's, seemingly totally accepting of their first, second, third divorce..their remarriages, their dating.....all I could yearn for was a man who had discarded me...what was my problem?

Trauma, feeling it, spitting it out, stamping on it..being aware of where I was feeling this in my body, my mind, my soul.

Slowly, there is no rushing through this...slowly calm, peace, acceptance and letting go...slowly I got up from the ground, shaky, fearful .....slowly standing upon the ground, connected and stronger than I ever was before.

The tears remind me..I am allowed the tears, they are mine...they belong to me and they remind me that what happened was traumatic....

If you need this, to find who you are again...a trauma therapist is perhaps a better choice than other types of therapy..it certainly was for me.

[LBS_Les]

My therapist won't use the term MLC, but she does believe that we all inevitably hit a point in our lives where we question things.

She has a name for it (which totally escapes me in this moment), but she won't call it full on MLC.   She basically acknowledges that we have a morbid complex at a certain period in our lives, and its not uncommon.

But she won't nod in agreement that my STBXW is in MLC - she does acknowledge however, that my STBXW is going through some kind of "transition"

[Lady Grey]

I love that this thread is up and running again! Such a great discussion.

I need to update my thread, as the recent appointment I had with a trauma therapist was SO different to my previous bad experiences with IC. I think I have now joined those of you who would suggest that a fellow LBS looking for an IC consider seeing someone who specialises in trauma. Thinking about my experiences I've found the way that marvin sets it out to be very helpful:

My only addition to the great points above is that if a therapist dismissed the idea out of hand they may have the wrong context for our experience. Case and point: if I tell a therapist that my wife says “I love you” on Sunday, and Tuesday morning says “I never loved you” this can be because:

1) I have an incorrect/partial recollection of events,

2) My wife has been lying to me and I didn’t know it, or

3) Something dramatically altered in my wife in 2 days.

Generally speaking, barring brain trauma or something major, 3) is not likely. So even in trying to help me they may go down blind alleys and not be able to provide help with the shock/trauma of the experience. Because we are off balance, and what we are saying matters in giving a context. If 3) is true then our demeanor is perfectly normal, we are turned around, in a daze and crushed. Otherwise something else is going on.

With the last three bad/unhelpful ICs I saw before finding the trauma specialist, 3) was completely off the table as far as they were concerned. Which meant that when I described my experience and what was happening with my h (which presented pretty clearly as a 3) situation), that wasn't an option for them so they viewed it as some combination of 1) and 2).

With an added emphasis perhaps on me being in denial and looking to see "something wrong with h" as a way to explain what was happening, and to avoid facing my bad marriage and the ways that I had contributed 

I didn't feel so much that they were invalidating or dismissing how I felt, but my perception of reality. And as many of us here know only too well, right after BD when you've just had the "waking up to see zombies on the lawn" experience and are frantically trying to work out WTF is going on. And with blame-shifting and gaslighting from the mlcer, and most people in RL unable to even see the WTF, our ability to trust our own perception of reality may not be high.

The difference with a trauma therapist perhaps is that in the framework they have to understand what's going on, 3) is most definitely an option. So when an LBS comes to them and describes a situation that sounds like 3), they have less reason to assume, straight out of the gate, that the LBS is crazy/delusional/lying/in denial. And THAT means that they can actually hear the LBS experience. Which is something I've been looking for in an IC and haven't experienced until my appointment with the trauma therapist.

It seems to me that this may be part of the benefit of seeing a therapist who understands trauma, and the other part I guess is that they can actually see that what we as LBSs have experienced is trauma, and specialising in treating trauma, they also have the tools to help us heal.

[Marchingforward]

Thought I would add my two cents since I am a therapist. In a nutshell, it's not in the DSM so it's not considered a disorder. It would be most closely linked to a "Problems of adjustment to life-cycle transitions." Which is sort of a secondary diagnosis that isn't actually used very often. That's not to say that it won't be added at some point in the future. Many of our current diagnoses were once not considered a diagnosis. So...we, as therapists, are not trained to see it as anything. We aren't trained to look for it. We don't have a list of symptoms as black and white as say, anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD, etc.  Also, I personally think because society (at least in the US) makes fun of a MLC, we don't actually take it seriously. I know I didn't until it happened in my life and I started seeing the similarities in MLCers. 

I wholeheartedly agree that a trauma professional may be more willing to believe that something is "off" in our MLCers and will work to help LBS heal from the trauma. Because it is incredibly traumatic. As all of us have experienced, our spouses do a complete 180 in what seems to be overnight. My own therapist really poo-pooed my idea that it was an MLC when I first mentioned it. This was before I knew much about MLC, but my H had done some of the things you see in media (losing weight, dressing younger, working out incessantly, and randomly buying a motorcycle when I was at work). She said something the effect of "Maybe it seems a little MLCish if you want to label it, but the bottom line is the relationship has ended because he is clearly not a fully integrated individual. Because he's not fully integrated, he's always been that way."  So the trauma I experienced of this sudden switch of my H was dismissed. I was suppose to just move on because he was being an selfish jerk. He wasn't always like that. And she really didn't understand that, no matter how hard I tried to explain it. I was told I was simply blinded to those parts of him because of my love for him. No...not it at all. He literally changed overnight.

I've come to view it as a serious mental illness. One in which rationality is fleeting. In the case of my H, there are several months of rational behaviors and thoughts, then something (mostly his fear about his kids, interestingly always around the holidays) triggers a ton of fear and away he runs. I also see him as being depressed. There are so many examples of things he loved to do which, when the depression takes over, he does not do. He also has significant trauma from childhood that has not been worked on. I believe this trauma is the basis for his fear about losing his connection with his kids. We were in marriage counseling for a time and the therapist asked him about memories from childhood. His first memory is that of his father's funeral (my H was 7 at the time).  He was very upset about the questions and asked me on our way home why the therapist would want to know that, and why the therapist looked at him funny when he could not remember anything before 7. I said "because it's not normal to not remember things before you were 7. Maybe that's something you want to explore with the therapist." (Side note: the next session was our final session as H said he just wanted out).

I'm hopeful that the mental health field will really put more research into this. I'm hopeful the stigma around MLC will reduce and these individuals will be able to get the help they actually need. The help to deal with the covert depression, anxiety, and trauma so they can become healthy whole individuals. I think it will take time and a lot of work to make this happen though. Getting a new diagnosis into the DSM is hard and can take years.

[xyzcf]

Surviving, thank you for your post and also thanks to everyone else discussing this.

I can never get enough information to allow me to understand and accept what happened to him. When I read posts like yours and others, I still (11 1/2 years) later nod my head....and somehow it soothes me.

I care so much about this man that to see him like this still breaks me.

There are so many examples of things he loved to do which, when the depression takes over, he does not do.

He has created a completely different life and has totally rejected everything from our past and from what I can see even from his life before he met me. The thing that were important to both of us, that we were both on board with he rejects now. That hurts me still..because those things still matter to me.

The beauty  of HS is that we are able to explore this "condition" which is not understood by many except those who have themselves experienced it.

Thanks to everyone who continues to share and help others to find the healing that can come to us.

[marvin4242]

Thank you @Surviving2019 for the clarity.

I care so much about this man that to see him like this still breaks me.

I believe that being connected to the reality as is, rather than as we want it to be, is an important component of mental well being. Part of the MLC phenomena from what I have seen is how not being connected to the reality of past trauma, the causes of pain, and the general state unhappiness leads our MLCers to distort more and more what is happening internally and finally externally.

Our challenge as an LBS has similar components. I loved my wife, the person she used to be. I cared for her deeply, the person she used to be. But now I have to fully accept and integrate that that person no longer exists. It has taken me a few years to get there, because they are so important to us and we have so internalized a version of them for so long. I even started referring to my ex as "old-name" instead of her current name. It was and is a reminder of what reality is for me.

I care for this new person like I would for any other person in pain. I will help this person when and if I can in a healthy way like I would help any other person I could. But she is NOT the person I loved. She is NOT the person I cared for. And if I still saw her the way she was I would be creating my own version of discordant reality. This, from experience, can only lead to pain and unhappiness.

Maybe one day a version of my wife will reassemble. Maybe this new version will be something like the old one, or be someone with whom I can have some kind of relationship with (let's start as basic normal human daily friendship). But that day is not today, and I am pretty sure its not tomorrow. That day may never come.

[xyzcf]

Well said Marvin. It took me a very long time to understand this and it is so important.

He is not my husband. He is nothing like the man I loved for so long.

[Pendragon]

I have a psychiatrist friend I made years ago when I was going through poor mental health -- specifically panic and generalized anxiety and depression. He went from an email buddy to an in-person coffee buddy to a dinner buddy and has been there for me over the years.

He is, no joke, one of the top clinical AND research psychiatrists in the world. He's been on many news programs and in print being interviewed when these sort of topics come up. 

I asked him this question, and I'll paste his reply below:

“Midlife crisis” describes a real phenomenon that some people experience. It is not an official diagnosis but, rather, a description of an event in a person’s life. We would use the term in a way that is similar to how we use “suicide.” It is an event in a person’s life that is most often related to underlying depression. I have a patient who has a “mid-life crisis” every time he gets depressed – he wants to leave his wife, go into another field of work, move away, etc. When the depression subsides, the crisis goes away. BTW, he is 67 years old and I have seen this happen with him several times now. I am able to “talk him out of it” by reminding him of the prior experiences. This kind of event often affects a person globally – that is, affecting multiple areas of life. So, in your wife’s instance, it is not just leaving you, it is moving to Denver, getting a new job, etc. That global unhappiness (rather than unhappiness about one thing in particular) is usually a product of depression in my experience --R"

[FaithWalker]

It makes a lot of sense P.  Early on I read an article about male depression and how it manifests.  It was my MLCer to a t.

[Nas]

It was not very long after BD that I had to resign myself to the fact that my husband had depression that would require extensive therapeutic work to overcome, rather than the definition of MLC I had been reading on many websites that is often talked about as in essence a self-resolving event.
I bought the book I Don’t Want to Talk About It and another book about men and depression by the author Terrence Real. My husband borrowed them from me a few months after BD, along with a few other books. I know he skimmed a few based on comments he made early on but don’t know if he ever read them. I know he never returned them to me. And I know that his behavior only got worse. Years have passed now and he’s done worse than ever imaginable and I do 100% believe that for him, if he does not seek professional help, this will be who he is until the end of his days.

[MadLuv]

NAS-
I could have written that in my XH. Severe depression and MLC. He has tried therapy twice, but only because I was pushing for it. He doesn’t want to go through the pain. It’s crazy because the alternative is living in pain anyways?? It’s very sad.

[xyzcf]

 

He has tried therapy twice, but only because I was pushing for it.

People really heal when they decide that the life they are living doesn't help them.

I was a smoker. 2 packs a day. No one could push me to stop smoking. It had to be my choice. The same is true of someone who is overweight, an addict, physically unfit, eating too much junk food.

Mental health issues are really complicated. The MLCer does not see any problem with what they are doing. No one can tell them they are "wrong".

I mentioned a poster from years ago, Mermaid who did a lot of research on anhedonia The MLCer doesn't feel things the way that we feel things. Just like someone who is an empath feels things more deeply than others.

"Anhedonia is the inability to feel pleasure. It's a common symptom of depression as well as other mental health disorders.

Most people understand what pleasure feels like. They expect certain things in life to make them happy. Maybe you enjoy riding your bike, listening to the sounds of the ocean, or holding someone's hand. But some people lose the ability to feel joy. The things that once made them content are no longer fun or enjoyable. That's anhedonia."

The psychiatrist that Pendragon quoted:

 "This kind of event often affects a person globally – that is, affecting multiple areas of life. So, in your wife’s instance, it is not just leaving you, it is moving to Denver, getting a new job, etc. That global unhappiness (rather than unhappiness about one thing in particular) is usually a product of depression in my experience --R"

talks about this as well. Trying one thing after another maybe just to be able to "feel" something. This type of behavior is a common theme in MLC

So many things could be causing this. I remember hormonal swings that I experienced before menopause, one day I would be fine, then for a few days a month, everything was wrong and then I would be fine again. The changes in hormonal levels definitely affected my state of "happiness".

So it is complex and whatever changes in the MLCer to allow them to either seek help, or in most cases I have observed, they seemingly "wake up" and truly without "therapy" they seem to be able to resolve their crisis.

This psychiatrist observed this in his client, several times it seemed:

"When the depression subsides, the crisis goes away. "

Something must change internally which is why we are always saying there is nothing that we can do to "fix" them. Indeed, the more people tried to push me to stop smoking, the more stubborn I became.

[HeavenlyFocus]

Thanks Pendragon for posting this description of MLC being  a produce of depression.   This really has helped me to detach and see my W's MLC as a severe depressive episode.  This have helped me to detach and heal.

HF

[Pendragon]

I wonder if, almost by rule, all the MLCers spoken of on this forum do are not having their depression treated.

That is to say, this forum self-selects for victims of untreated mental health issues that have manifested in mid life and come to a head.

[Nas]

If I’m understanding your question correctly, I think this is essentially what I mean when I say that I don’t believe they just have an epiphany one day and wake up, but that they actually do need some version of counseling/therapy/psychotherapy. People suffering from true depression and anxiety disorders do not just stop having depression and anxiety after an epiphany. They don’t just wake up out of a fog, they may go through cycles where they are more or less depressed and anxious, they may have stretches of time where they are not depressed,, but depression is not really a self-resolving singular event. Jmho

[Pendragon]

If I’m understanding your question correctly, I think this is essentially what I mean when I say that I don’t believe they just have an epiphany one day and wake up, but that they actually do need some version of counseling/therapy/psychotherapy. People suffering from true depression and anxiety disorders do not just stop having depression and anxiety after an epiphany. They don’t just wake up out of a fog, they may go through cycles where they are more or less depressed and anxious, they may have stretches of time where they are not depressed,, but depression is not really a self-resolving singular event. Jmho

MLC is very likely-- obviously in most cases-- their misguided attempt at self-medication.

Without therapeutic coping tools at their disposal my opinion is that they misevaluate their feelings, the cause-and-effect of their situation and apply a misguided solution. Rife with cognitive distortions-- they lack the tools to dispassionately cope with their thoughts and especially their feelings.

To them, logically, their main problem is the person closest to them-- their partner. Then they likely ruminate, over-think, and ultimately misevaluate the relationship in this state. Issues that are normal problems every couple faces, that would not affect a non-depressed person to this degree, are almost intolerable to them. That's likely where a lot of these ridiculous and petty complaints come from.

These new and novel situations they put themselves in when they go full MLC, do temporarily "lift" them, or more appropriately cover their issues enough so that they perceive positive reinforcement that their path is working. But without the core issues resolved they will always crash and crash hard.

In my situation, it seems like either one of two things are likely to happen. My ex wife will, at some point, reach a level of clarity about what she has done to us, and how heinous it is. It could even make her suicidal.

The other direction she could and may very well go, is to continue to move forward in this morally compromised state, whereby she fashions a whole new moral landscape that is separate from objective reality, rife with all the typical lame justifications and rationalizations. "Hatchet job morals" if you will.

They still want to think of themselves as a "good person" but the knowledge of what they've done, and on some level knowing how vile it is, causes cognitive dissonance and will, I think put them somewhere on a scale of sociopathy.

[Ready2Transform]

I absolutely agree with you, Pendragon.

The other direction she could and may very well go, is to continue to move forward in this morally compromised state, whereby she fashions a whole new moral landscape that is separate from objective reality, rife with all the typical lame justifications and rationalizations. "Hatchet job morals" if you will.

They still want to think of themselves as a "good person" but the knowledge of what they've done, and on some level knowing how vile it is, causes cognitive dissonance and will, I think put them somewhere on a scale of sociopathy.

This is absolutely my xH, ten years to the day of when he packed up and moved out (expecting me to make him breakfast that morning!). Even the most covert "wrongness" of his life, he is somehow able to re-frame.

[Thunder]

Why do professionals shy away from the term MLC?

It could be as simple as there has been no research done on it.
They do quite a bit research and studies on different mental problems/afflictions, with actual subjects they can test and monitor.

Who are they going to study?  Most MLCer's think there is nothing wrong with them.
I don't think they can talk to the spouse, they are not going through it.  So they can not describe how a midlife crisis feels like.  Only what they hear from their spouse and what they witness.

So I feel for it to be recognized in medical journals, or for training, as a mental problem/affliction they need data to back it up.  Subjects to study.

If that could be done they could possibly do research on how to cure it, or at least, give the patient some medication or tools to work with.

I also believe there are therapist who have to secretly believe in it, but for them to diagnose it it would probably be unethical. 

Maybe an Identity Crisis would be about as close as they could get.

[marvin4242]

One thing I’ll add is its not so much about “belief” rather a diagnosis. There is no diagnosis of “MLC.” But all good therapist can see the components that are underneath the behaviour and understand what is going on. Whether it can simply be “treated” until and unless the patient actually thinks something is wrong is another issue.

[xyzcf]

Erik Ericson is well known for his Stages of Psychosocial Development. These were something that I studied quite intensely in my nursing training for they are related to various stages of life (7) and the developmental tasks that are necessary to accomplish in each stage...the implication was that sickness during a specific stage might affect the successful transition to the next stage.

There are certain things that resolve without "therapy". What I have seen in the stories I read here and real life situations, is that MLC ends without psychological intervention.

Other examples of this would be the terrible two's, adolescence and even menopause perhaps. There doesn't need to be any kind of therapy/medication or treatment to resolve these stages of life....so what if MLC is also another "stage" that is more intense for some than others (as are the examples I gave above) that resolve internally when the time is right for that stage to pass?

I actually believe this to be true for many who have a MLT or MLC. Not saying that they return home or to their previous lives, but they do figure things out and lose some of the "characteristics" that were present throughout their crisis.

[Thunder]

Idk Marvin, I kept telling my therapist all the bizarre things my H was doing and saying and she kept saying, more than once, was...'Welllll people change."

I seriously looked at her like she had two heads!  You know how a dog cocks his head when he is trying to understand what you are saying?

Exasperated I said.."Yes I understand people change, but overnight and into a completely different person you knew for the last 30 years??  No."

Needless to say I never went back. 

[marvin4242]

Idk Marvin, I kept telling my therapist all the bizarre things my H was doing and saying and she kept saying, more than once, was...'Welllll people change."

I seriously looked at her like she had two heads!  You know how a dog cocks his head when he is trying to understand what you are saying?

Exasperated I said.."Yes I understand people change, but overnight and into a completely different person you knew for the last 30 years??  No."

Needless to say I never went back.

I absolutely believe you, it seems there is a whole group of therapist who have dismissed this out of hand and don’t realize how drastic a change it is. And they can be so damaging to an LBS because they try to see where we are “distorting” what happens. I had one therapist like that, but she was a good one and after a little while started to realize what I was describing was accurate and not normal. She started to understand it was disassociation, a fracture, and other behavioural traits.

My current one only listened to around 3 minutes and then started guessing at my W’s behaviour, triggers, etc. I just smiled, stopped and nodded. She completely understood what was happening because she was aware of it. She also observed that therapy would not help my W, not where she was (which I also agreed with).

So your point is a great one Thunder, if an LBS starts with a therapist to work on the damage from their MLCer be sure they “understand’ or it may be at best unhelpful.

Good for you for walking out!

[Nas]

She also observed that therapy would not help my W, not where she was (which I also agreed with).

I agree that therapy would not help until they are at a place to be receptive, which can be a long time and sometimes never. My ex went at my behest early on and it made things worse. I'm saying that they do eventually need to seek help if they're going to deal with their underlying issues. (That's got nothing to do with them returning to the LBS either. They need to face their issues whether they return or not.)
Again, just my opinion. People can disagree.

ETA: if they all just wake up with no intervention, then the title of this thread would be a moot point, no? Would it need to be recognized as a diagnosable condition if it just goes away on its own with no treatment?  The diagnosis would be for the person going through it, not the LBS - LBS could explain to their IC what's happening and, recognition of MLC or not, the therapy should be the same: you can't fix them, let's work on you. No therapist should discount the LBS experience of seeing a sudden change in their spouse, whether that therapist believes in "MLC" or not.

[MadLuv]

I start therapy soon. First thing I asked was if she recognized  MLC. She said not as the actual term, but She does believe that people can go through crisis due to under lying issues or traumatic events. She doesn't use MLC terminology, but She does recognize the crisis that is referred to by many as MLC. So, I hopeful for some helpful therapy

[Songanddance]

I start therapy soon. First thing I asked was if she recognized  MLC. She said not as the actual term, but She does believe that people can go through crisis due to under lying issues or traumatic events. She doesn't use MLC terminology, but She does recognize the crisis that is referred to by many as MLC. So, I hopeful for some helpful therapy

Torn up - what I would urge you to remember (having had a lot of really helpful therapy in the last 8+yrs) is that the therapist is there to help you and your fears/anxieties/concerns and worries.  She will not know your H and any good therapist will not try to solve your H or give you strategies/words to try and control your H.
Good therapists take the whole of what you tell them and effectively work on helping you to help yourself.
For example my therapist wasn't interested in what my H was saying when he monstered but she was interested in helping me deal with my reactions to what H was saying. She gave me a really simple technique of saying "uhuh" every time H monstered so that I could begin to mentally step back and see what he was saying as projection. 
It took time but it worked.  So she helped me learn to detach rather than try to come up with clever words on how to deal with H.

We never discussed MLC in detail because she was more interested in helping me recover from my own trauma of what H had done, but she did believe that people's actions are driven by their thoughts and feelings and that thoughts and feelings for some people in mid life will change and often become the antithesis of what they used to be and that is often very unhealthy.

I was lucky to have found her and now we talk sporadically throughout the year on a need to basis. 

[Treasur]

I would agree with Song ; any decent therapist will only treat the person in the room!

Having said that, I had a couple of IC who weren’t much use....partly bc of where my head was at, partly bc they tried to steer me towards solutions that didn’t fit the WTF stuff that I was actually dealing with at the time early on. And, rightly or wrongly, that made me feel judged at a time when I really needed to feel validated that what I was experiencing was really happening and that I was not nuts.

That didn’t happen until I saw a trauma specialist who could see, at a glance, that I was deeply traumatised by something that was a million miles from normal for me. Just feeling seen and heard was like a weight off my shoulders. But we spent very little time trying to figure out what was going on with my then h, just enough probably to let me feel that my reality was being accepted.

[MadLuv]

Songanddance-

  is that the therapist is there to help you and your fears/anxieties/concerns and worries

yes, that is what I am hoping for. Help with my dealing with moving on, my recovery, detachment and pain. It is all about ME!!! I needed someone to understand the crisis to be able to possibly understand my struggles

[MarianTheLibrarian]

I would agree with Song ; any decent therapist will only treat the person in the room!

This is more true than you realize when you're in this kind of situation.  I had a therapist who would say she couldn't diagnose other people in my life, and then diagnose them anyway (non-MLC issues) and sometimes the diagnosis would change based on how she felt that day.  The problem with this is that no one goes into therapy and discusses all the wonderful things about their families.  We go in and talk about all the garbage happening, so it's easy for a therapist to see dysfunction and disease when really it might be subclinical, or perhaps even quirks or foibles.  Someone's worst day becomes their everyday to your therapist.  Diagnosing someone not present is really not a good thing, trust me.  Be thankful if your therapist doesn't engage with this.

That said, a big part of my personal battle (which many of you have read) is that the world at large doesn't accept MLC as an explanation for this kind of behavior.  Namely, in our culture we have a strong belief that everyone knows exactly how to make themselves happy, and that our actions are all basically sequentially leading up to self-actualization and "happiness."  The idea that we sometimes do things that make us miserable -- knowingly or not -- or that we engage in acts of self-sabotage, self-medicating, etc. is lost in the discussion.

The notion that H was self-medicating his depression **absolutely** rings true for me.  He had very definite peaks and troughs in his satisfaction with life, and always needed a big "next thing" to pull him out of that trough.  I think he landed himself into a pretty big trough and OW was the only thing that made him feel anything in that moment, and that felt like love.  If you've ever battled depression (and I have) you might be able to relate to that feeling of anhedonia, and then the random thing that gets through it feeling like total magic.   I'd like to say that H had a choice in doing what he did, because we always have a choice.  But brain chemistry is very powerful, and I think it would have taken a supreme act of will braced with strong family support to make any other choice than what he did.  Neither of those things were available.

Personally, I wouldn't stick around with a therapist who didn't acknowledge multiple possible causes for someone creating a path of destruction through life.  I don't buy into this idea that we all intrinsically know what makes us happy and are able to pinpoint it and pursue it.  Humans are a lot messier than that.

ETA:  The individuation issue rings true as well.  Some people go through the first part of life completely unquestioning, aligning their actions with other people's expectations.  They never stop to really consider whether they want to get married, have kids, etc. -- they do it because that's just what you do.  In H's case, I think his parents disapproved somewhat of OW when he dated her as a teenager.  Meeting her again later in life was an opportunity for him to commit the ultimate act of rebellion against his upbringing and do something entirely self-serving.  Most people do that as teenagers and complete that phase of their personal development, but for others, they find themselves years later living a life they've never actually **thought** about because they just followed the crowd.

[FrenchHusband]

Hello all,

I would like to add one recent contribution to the very interesting topic  Why do professionals shy away from the term MLC?, but it is not possible for me as it is archived.

I think your question already contains the answer    People shy away because of... fear.

The name of MLC has been widely killed off in scientific publications.  If a person of science admits MLC is real.... you basically lose your creditability in eyes of peers.  And for person of science.... creditability is everything.

Of course this creates the chicken vs. egg dilemna.  Things cannot change unless somebody does some new research on topic that popularizes an alternative perspective.

Now there is at least one recent study that shows that there is something. Looks to me (not an expert) that the study is a serious one (datas of 500 000 people) even if it has been done by Economics researchers. There is no person from Medical department, and it is a bit strange to me as the authors are speaking about mental health and depression.

There is nothing in this study about marriage breaking and affair (not surprising)

Nevertheless, it is better than nothing from my POV

There is the link where you can download the study for free.

People in their midlife are disproportionately more likely to suffer from clinical depression, take their own lives, become dependent on alcohol, have trouble sleeping, and exhibit other extreme-stress ailments.

In the CAGE working paper, ‘The Mid-life Crisis’, Osea Giuntella, Sally McManus, Redzo Mujcic, Andrew J. Oswald, Nattavudh Powdthavee and Ahmed Tohamy use a wide array of population-level health data across all ages to prove that midlife crises are real and affect a high number of people in developed countries.

Strikingly, the data shows that those in midlife are twice as likely to be depressed than those under the age of 25 or over the age of 65. Suicide rates, the ultimate measure of exceptional distress within a society, were also shown to be the highest among individuals in their early 50’s.

maybe this recent study (February 2023) has been already discussed ? Anyway I see it as a small ray of hope that one day the MLC (or existential crisis, identity crisis) will be recognized and acknowledged as it is the case already for "teenage crisis".

[Baxter1]

FH-

If nothing else this confirms that MLC is a depression. High energy or low it’s all depression as RCR says. Thanks for the link

[marvin4242]

I guess I am a bit confused by the "confusion" around this topic. There is definitely believed to be another "developmental stage" psychologically for most people that occurs in the time frame we call middle age. This is parallel to various stages (teen, 20's, etc) that we go through. It is a general guideline and idea, not an absolute. And this is the time most of us go from viewing ourselves as eternal and young to more accepting that we are at a certain point and that we are not "young," whatever that means to most, anymore.

But what happens in this stage is not a singularity. Some people mature even more or decide to give back and focus on others. Some go through depression. And I believe this is where deep issues and fractures tend to stop being able to be papered over. It makes perfect sense, if I am always thinking that in the future I will do xyz, then suddenly I start to see future is not forever the issues underlying suddenly become acute.

What we tend to call MLC is a mixture of multiple psychological issues and disorders, and although the patterns are the same the exact details are as varied as the individuals. Which is what is said here in many different forms.

I don't think we need to "study" MLC, rather we need to create societies that value self awareness, empathy and growth over "accomplishment," rigid role models, and material wealth. Because if we raise children who are self aware, caring, flexible, inclusive and kind they can handle what life brings and continue to cope and thrive. I know my wife for one definitely did not develop the skills in her childhood to do that.


MLC is sadly predictable.

[WHY]

I think it's fcking outrageous that MLC isnt widely publicized and studied, even if there is no way to deal with it. 

Something is clearly wrong with my W.  She became a different human being in the space of a few months.  This is not fiction.  This isnt a grey area.  No, her personality completely altered.  This thing is very real.   

And there are soooooooooooo many stories out there of this thing happening over and over.  I think MLC is way more widespread than people at HS think.  50% of marriages end in D right?  I bet you a much, much, much larger % for the reason this is, is due to some form of depression/MLC.  Now that my blinders have been taken off, when I hear stories about other marriages that didnt work out, you can smell it a mile away.

Perhaps in 100 years people will look back and say it was crazy that this thing wasnt fully recognized.

[KayDee]

Something we forget - it isn't just married people that have these crises. A friend of mine, his brother recently BD his close family with a story from the past that he claims traumatised him. He's blaming his mother and by extension the rest of the family. It came completely out of nowhere, never mentioned before and none of them recall anything of the sort happening (they are a large family of siblings, with parents still alive). He has completely upended his FOO, and this is the interesting part, he has a new GF who (from what I hear) sounds like a classic alienator. He has completely isolated himself with her, cut off old friends too. He had the triggers preceding and is acting completely out of character. Not sure what this all adds to the mix, I guess that something can tip at middle age - we often refer to a perfect storm him, and Marvin articulates this well in his post. Even if not 'diagnosable' maybe a better recognition and understanding of this kind of depression would be a start. Not many people understand the complex and myriad ways in which depression manifests.

[Nas]

I think it's fcking outrageous that MLC isnt widely publicized and studied, even if there is no way to deal with it. 

This isnt a grey area. 

WHY - MLC is a catchall term for a variety of different issues arising in midlife. It's ill-defined and there is no one existing linear set of "rules." It's the exact definition of a gray area.

While I can see the initial inclination to wish there was actually one clear cut diagnosable "disorder" called MLC, I believe the desire to see something defined, studied and publicized is part and parcel of wanting to "fix it." Even with a defined label, the afflicted would need to be the one who wants to get well, so it's out of anyone else's control.

[WHY]

I think it's fcking outrageous that MLC isnt widely publicized and studied, even if there is no way to deal with it. 

This isnt a grey area. 

WHY - MLC is a catchall term for a variety of different issues arising in midlife. It's ill-defined and there is no one existing linear set of "rules." It's the exact definition of a gray area.

While I can see the initial inclination to wish there was actually one clear cut diagnosable "disorder" called MLC, I believe the desire to see something defined, studied and publicized is part and parcel of wanting to "fix it." Even with a defined label, the afflicted would need to be the one who wants to get well, so it's out of anyone else's control.

I hope RCR publishes her life's work and pursues a PHD/thesis on this stuff, carrying on the memory of Heart's Blessing.  The world needs to know this thing is real.  At least be accepted in academic circles etc.  To give it some credibility.  So LBS isnt seen as being crazy.  It will make a difference to the world. 

[HeavenlyFocus]

Thank you FH for sharing this article.

I really liked their conclusion below and agree with Marvin's comments about focusing on self-awareness, growth, and empathy.   If anything, this crises has changed me for the better in that I am definitely more in tune with relationships although I now spend much less time involved in relationships.  Everything was more superficial and I know focus on having a deeper relationship with others.   

HF

Excerpt from Article

Finally, we believe it is not currently clear whether:

(i) there is a timeless and innate form of human middle-aged crisis, or
(ii) the midlife pattern documented here is some kind of perplexing, and perhaps
temporary, byproduct of today’s affluent world.

Whichever of these turns out to be true, the hill-shaped pattern of extreme distress over the
human life-course in rich countries appears to constitute a foundational puzzle for economists,
behavioral scientists, and perhaps other kinds of scientific researchers.

[WHY]

I think it's fcking outrageous that MLC isnt widely publicized and studied, even if there is no way to deal with it. 

Something is clearly wrong with my W.  She became a different human being in the space of a few months.  This is not fiction.  This isnt a grey area.  No, her personality completely altered.  This thing is very real.   

And there are soooooooooooo many stories out there of this thing happening over and over.  I think MLC is way more widespread than people at HS think.  50% of marriages end in D right?  I bet you a much, much, much larger % for the reason this is, is due to some form of depression/MLC.  Now that my blinders have been taken off, when I hear stories about other marriages that didnt work out, you can smell it a mile away.

Perhaps in 100 years people will look back and say it was crazy that this thing wasnt fully recognized.

This is what I’m talking about.  Is this some kind of joke?

https://youtu.be/6gWgAIrBDD8?feature=shared

[HeavenlyFocus]

Hi Why,

I share in your frustration with how the world currently views MLC.

Here is a Cleveland Clinic article with recommendations for women experiencing a MLC..  I put the recommendations list and provided my own commentary with my XW MLC behavior)

Sorry if I am a little cynical 3 years in but the truth is society doesn’t like to acknowledge or look closely at mental health.

HF

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-midlife-crises-are-different-for-women/amp/

Recommendations
1. Acknowledge it ( Lol!  MLCers don’t acknowledge anything)
2. Do a self-assessment ( Instead let’s blame the person who dedicated their life to you for all your problems)
3.  Lose the guilt ( What guilt?  MLCers living in fantasy land)
4. Keep a gratitude journal ( Can’t remember last time I heard gratitude from my XW.  She was so different before this)
5. Make your health a priority ( Prioritize drinking, not getting sleep, and making poor life decisions)
6.  Tap into the sisterhood ( Lie to your best girlfriends and only hang out with your divorced friend to wallow in self pity in your fantasy land)

[UrsaMajor]

I'd change #6 from

6.  Tap into the sisterhood ( Lie to your best girlfriends and only hang out with your divorced friend to wallow in self pity in your fantasy land)

to
6.  Tap into the sisterhood (hang out with the group of enablers that tell you what you want to hear to reinforce your fantasy/revised history and slag off the ones that tell you the truth)

[HeavenlyFocus]

I like your revised #6 better UM.  Reading the articles in this thread allowed me to vent internally and I still look back at the past 3 years in disbelief sometimes of everything that has happened.
HF