[Evermore]

That's a great post Jess. Sounds like you're well on your way to start your healing. I'm also in Aus (there are a few of us here). Having members from all over the world means that there is generally always someone around to respond.

We have a very interconnected friendship group so it's been very challenging for our friends as well. All our friends refuse to meet her and that is met with anger and abuse from him towards them. There have been many friendships lost between him and others. He just wants everyone to 'get over it' and 'move on' however just like his family, our friends are all hurt and stuck in a place of questioning who he is and how everyone can't believe he is capable of anything he has done. This is where I have tried to explain the process of MLC to others, however at this stage he hasn't bought the 'shiny red car' which everyone seems to think a MLC has to have lol!

Have other people found this with your friendships? And how have you found ways to best manage this?

I hear ya' on how hard it is to explain to others what you are experiencing. In my case my xh has managed to seem just sane enough that people think: 'he was unhappy and fell out of love with you and fell in love with her'. So family and friends think it's unfortunate, and wish he hadn't done what he did... but it's easier for them to believe that, than the crazy-wtf-ness that is a MLC. It seems unbelievable to me still (nearly 5 years in) so it's not surprising that no one else can believe it either. My xh also expected me, our daughters, his family, my family, and our friends to all just 'get over it' and 'move on'. I think he has been quite surprised that that hasn't happened. He had totally convinced himself that he would just slip seamlessly into his new life and everything would continue on as normal (he said this often in the first year post BD: "we need to get back to normal ASAP for the girls" Huh?!  ).

I used to discuss my 'MLC theory' of what happened to him with family etc at first. But I have learned not to bother, it doesn't really matter what they believe. It won't change the situation. (It has been interesting though as the years have gone by that several family members (his, I'm still very much a part of his family) that believed the 'he just fell out of love and he's happy now with someone else' line, are now shaking their heads a bit and saying he really did lose the plot didn't he.) I aim to continue to live 'as if' he is not going to ever return. It's the only sensible option for me (even if unbelievably heartbreaking still). So my advice would be to limit discussing MLC process and 'what you think happened to him' to only those you trust not to poopoo your thoughts. Ask all the questions you like here, and vent rant away whenever you need. But don't expect people IRL to understand. If they haven't been through it, they just can't know.

Hoping it's not as miserable, cold and rainy where you are as it is here. Keep on posting. We're always listening.

[Treasur]

I swear, all MLCers must have ‘get over it’ and ‘move on’ as tattoos on each buttock! (Easier to see when they are talking out of their a$$  )

If you haven’t read (or listened) to the book by Bessel van der Kolk ‘The Body Keeps the Score’, I’d recommend it. Xyzcf also has shared a great link before about the polyvagal nerve….maybe she’d be kind enough to share it again? There is also a terrific TED talk by a neuroscientist whose name I can’t recall right now who had a stroke about her observations of brain function and the real possibilities of neuroplasticity in recovery.

I found it very helpful to understand some of the mechanics of how trauma works when I was eventually diagnosed with PTSD a few years post BD. Partly bc it explained things I was experiencing, partly bc it helped me get creative about what worked for my own recovery. Mostly though tbh bc it helped me separate Me as a person from PTSD as a challenge to work my way through. Which helped me stop beating myself up so much about my ‘failure’ to ‘get over it’ and see it more as an input/output tyoe of  thing. And observe when the voice in my head was my amygdala talking and when it was not. In fact, I gave her a name….Lucy the Lizard  ….which helped when I had Lucy moments.

I’d had no experience at all in my previous life like it until Lucy moved in and set up shop  ….I was like a toddler learning to walk lol. Now, a few years on? I still have a bit of PTSD residue….the odd Lucy moment of that itchy hypervigiliance feeling, the odd task here and there that I have to sidle towards rather than do unthinkingly, a few sometimes surprising triggers. But Lucy visits occasionally now; she doesn’t live here. And when she does, I have a tool bag of mostly very simple things that I can pull out that I know work for me. I can, as the Buddhists say, sit her down in a corner, make her a cup of tea and go about my day. I have come a long way from the days when the sound of a mobile phone made me literally vomit or when I couldn’t read more than a paragraph or remember my own address or sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time  I tried a bunch of different things. I got support from different kinds of folks at different times. In my case, EMDR was the real game-changer in my own recovery but for quite a while, I honestly did not believe I would ever feel normal or like a recognisable version of Me again tbh.

But I was wrong bc I did and do.

And you will get there too, Jess, in your own way with what works for you x

[KayDee]

Hello Jess! You are among friends here, and as you have probably read, we are a reflective and thinky lot About RL friends - with the mutual ones, I decided, early on, to declare 'no H talk' - said in a kind of nice way, of course, but I realized that the issue with H was also infecting these friendships. For instance, I got paranoid that they knew things I didn't. They would say something, and I thought it might relate to something H had said to them. It made me feel less relaxed around them. It was such a huge relief to me when I could hang out with those friends and just be myself AND have a H Crisis Holiday. Having fun with friends is really important. It reminds us of who we are. I have a couple of close friends I talk in depth too, and even then, I try to ensure that I devote the same amount of time to things in their lives. No one wants to be The Drain  Of course, people will ask about what happened/is happening. My IC gave me advice on that, she said - keep it factual and brief. Hmmm, but as we on this forum all know - the factual, without the context of depression/crisis etc, is much worse. Now, 11 months in, I am also making new friends. That's good too, you get to be the newer improved model.

[xyzcf]

Good morning Jess from the USA.

You will find people from all over the world on HS. This forum, and the people on it will help you as you continue along your road to healing...healing which takes a long time, healing which I never believed could take so long.

I am glad that your therapist is one who identifies trauma and can give you many techniques that can "turn down the volume" of the  "fight/flight" response.

My therapist introduced me to this chart, an understanding of the polyvagal theory and it has been incredibly useful to me to see the body's responses , meant to be protective but over long periods of time very detrimental to our health. It made sense that the physiological things I had experienced, brain fog, difficulty sleeping, loss of appetite, shaking, inability to focus, being on high alert and fear and especially how I felt when I had contact with him.

https://lissarankin.com/polyvagal-theory-interoception-a-neuroscience-understanding-of-attachment-trauma/polyvagal-chart/

It is possible, to identify when you are in the red and blue zones and to bring your body back to the green area.

Some people will require medication. I have used an anti anxiety med at times when I could not stop the "anxiety".

I would add walking every day( especially somewhere in nature) , yoga or another meditation practice as helpful to your healing. Connection to others and developing a new hobby or skill, journalling, drawing, watching comedy...many things will help.

I started golfing after BD and when I would address the ball, for that brief few seconds, was a time when my mind would go blank and not think about him and what had happened. Those few seconds were so vital to me..because I could not turn off the thoughts most of the time, even when I was sleeping.. I play mahjong now and spend a lot of time gardening, and that helps a great deal as well.

We moved many times for his career and our acquaintances were mostly couples who worked for the same company. They turned away from me when I was sent back to the US...I didn't have family here, we had only been in this location 2 years and our "friends" were his work people, I didn't have a job or a dog......I don't know how I survived, honestly I was in very bad shape .

My suggestion is to find new friends. By joining activities, meetup groups, faith based groups, volunteer, join a gym....I tried to make sure that I got out with people every day, even when I did not want to.

I find I still catch myself constantly getting caught in what if... how? why? self-blame and I get stuck again. It seems like I struggle with accepting what he is going through and making sense of life. Unpacking what I thought would be our future and now making sense of my new life. Accepting and understanding that what we were, meant absolutely nothing to him yet even through all this hurt and destruction I still miss him and our family.

Acceptance is key but you can tell yourself all that you want and it comes in stages. This is not about you nor the marriage. Of that I am convinced however that did not stop me from wondering what "she" had that I didn't or why he would choose a life that was so totally foreign to the one we had worked hard for all our life.

I found reading other's stories as well as meeting LBSers on person very helpful to understand my own turmoil.

Glad you found this site. You will find many different opinions about MLC and each person's story, situation and family is different so take what fits for you and disregard what doesn't. There really is not a right or wrong way to go through this and I am not sure there is a way to rush through our own trauma.....but when you look back, you will see that you are processing, healing and growing in baby steps.

[Treasur]

Thanks for sharing that polyvagal info again, Xyzcf - I remember even years on finding it very helpful and I have a copy tucked in my own recovery journal in fact!