I agree with Alvin a victim mentality would not be of any help to you.

However abuse at this level can ruin your confidence and self esteem .

If you haven't talked to a counselor you might want to.

Gosh I'm sending you down a rabbit hole with all this info!  I've spent HUNDREDS of hours combing through all of it.

Hearts Blessing, another LBS, who had a MLT herself, wrote what us LBS consider the bible on MLC.  I had to strip out her religious views and focus on the underlying, but it's extremely valuable info for those searching for answers.  I wonder if this info is helpful to you or your family at this point?

https://thestagesandlessonsofmidlife.org/sitemap/

https://thestagesandlessonsofmidlife.org/the-six-stages-of-a-mid-life-crisis/

I listed out all of my wife's hurtful comments and therapy notes to ChatGPT and it rates her emotional abuse on a scale of 1-10 as a 10. For whatever that's worth, LOL.

From cheap seats it sounds you are looking for emotional validation for your experiences. It might be good idea to sit down with a therapist and ponder the why validitation matters as well as how to avoid taking the victim role.

Alvin

P.s. you arw likely due for new topic.

marvin4242
As they say there are as many stories of MLC as there are people. While there are many overlapping things with most or even all MLC, indeed the story of each MLCer is their own. How we navigate it will look different.

AlvinTheMaker
Many LBS must undergo moments where common happy past (say 10-20 years of loving marriage) is blasted to oblivion (we never had loving or joyful moments) regardless of physical proof (photos, letters, families etc). What's your personal take on this "memory loss"? Between the detachment and the jumbled mess now in our heads, this will affect how we view our past. Aside from denial, which many MLCers use, we view our past, our memories, differently than we did before hitting that wall. I had the memories, the pictures were in my mind, but I somehow didn’t relate that to a life that I had actually lived. I couldn’t remember how those things felt, I couldn’t FEEL those memories. Like they were the memories of someone else. This puts a lot of distance between yourself and those memories, including the people in them. I think because I didn’t go into denial, I was able to admit, to know, that I was pretty happy in my life before I hit the MLC but I couldn’t attach to that, I couldn’t FEEL it. I tried. I just couldn’t understand why I had been happy in that life. For a couple of years or so, I just couldn’t understand happiness. That was part of that jumbled mess in my head.

At the end of the day, you are either dealing with that "jumbled mess" in their head or their denial, neither of which you can win.

Did you deny your past, and if so did people around you try to share positive memories and experiences from the past that highlighted your former emotions, traits or behaviors. I don’t remember anything specific being pointed out to me by anyone. I just remember being told that I was different, they didn’t know me anymore, and general things like that. Now, just because I don’t remember anything specific being pointed out to me, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Perhaps there was some things and I shifted it in my mind as something more general.

WHY
But the way you spoke about your own kids.  And how you would be prepared to move on without them in your life.  For that level of detachment between a mother and her kids....  MLC must be such a massive psychological event to create this detachment.  Us LBS dont stand a chance. Ya! They were my LIFE! My reason for breathing! My greatest joy, even when they were being a pain in the back end. I could never imagine my life without them. I told them for many years that they can never move out or that I would buy the houses on either side of mine and I would allow them to move there. I can’t wrap my head around the idea of how detached I was, especially with them.

I think you're right, the LBS don’t stand a chance. You were together how long? A decade? Two decades? More? Then YOU certainly were their life too. You were the one they CHOSE to go through life with, the one they TRUSTED with all aspects of their life. The one they WANTED. You were that important to them. But that detachment…changes everything. It’s like going from full to overflow to completely empty.

That’s why the LBS need to do their own healing and find a way to live their life in a way that is comfortable to them and brings them joy. You can’t change them, you can’t change what happened, but you can heal yourself and your life. I believe that's where the focus should be and does the most good in this world.

I think the vast majority of MLCers flat out deny it and 100% think there is absolutely nothing wrong with them. I didn’t think there was anything “wrong” with me, I knew I changed but I would say, “I’m not crazy”, “I didn’t loose it” Nope, there was nothing wrong with me. When I watch my vids now, I sometimes wonder how could I say that or how could I have believed that?

There are many MLCers that don’t deny something happened or that something inside changed. If they deny to others, then they are in denial inside too. Who wants to admit the person they knew themselves to be their whole life is suddenly gone, without a trace? Denial is a defense mechanism many use perhaps because it is almost impossible to reconcile what happened.

And for those of us that do not go into denial, we know we changed but we really don’t know to what degree as we have little to no attachment to the person we were before. Our memory of that person is skewed. “I put up with a lot of sh*t from others before my MLC that I won’t now in my MLC”. But did I really put up with a lot of sh*t from others before my MLC? Looking back now, I can say no I didn’t. Those memories were very skewed.

It didnt sound from your vids that anyone or anything or any act of god would have changed your chosen path.  You were going to do what you were going to do. This is a bit amusing to me because how my idea of God changed. There were several big things that came up the month I was getting ready to leave. Prior to MLC, I would have seen that as God telling me to NOT leave and I would have stayed, I would have trusted in God and somehow made it work. But in my MLC, I saw those wrenches in my plans as God asking me, “are you sure?”. This was a massive change for me. This was one of the things my family pointed out to me.

Given how self aware you were, do you think other MLCers could benefit from talking to you while in their crisis? Maybe to the degree that there are others out there who understand what just happened to them and can validate their experience. It may also help them to put their finger on what happened to them and be able to put their experience in words. Perhaps the stigma of a MLC or something happening to them at this point in life will lighten up too. But I’m sure that if I tried to get them to see the hurt they are causing, they would count me as an enemy. The focus would have to stay on them considering the detachment going on inside.

But do you think MLCers could be taught to understand that the LBS is not satan and that there is a way for them to go on their path without inflicting maximum torture and pain?  I really do not understand the need to twist the knife when the LBS is already decimated. The first thing I want to say here is that in my MLC, I couldn’t understand other people’s pain, including my family and even my kids, although I did before and since coming out of it, I just couldn’t while I was in it. So the hurt I inflicted, didn’t mean much to me at that time in my life. I didn’t think what I was doing or saying was hurtful, I couldn’t understand it. I don’t think that someone who is so detached can be taught empathy, an understanding of feelings is needed for empathy and since we are so flat or numb, we can’t understand those feelings.

There is a lot of irritation and even anger in a MLC. I didn’t know at the time that I had directed any anger at my family. I knew they irritated me at times and I reacted to that with them. Coming out of my MLC and looking back, the things they said or did wasn’t something that would bother me prior, nor would I have reacted in irritation the way I did in my MLC.

Certainly, I had been irritated at times through the years but the way I handled it was vastly different in my MLC. I couldn’t understand why they would get so hurt but I do now. OMG!! I would never have believed in my life that I could be so distant and cold. But there it was. I knew I was different but I am amazed at just how different I was.

At about 1.44 minutes into this vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u05OG2ipI88 , I mention…for the first time at about 2 years in…the guilt associated with MLC because the things that were once very important to us change. I said that the only things that were important to me at the time I hit my MLC was my kids and surviving. Make no mistake, between the two, surviving took precedence for me. But somehow, my dad wasn’t important to me. WTF? That was MY DAD! Why wasn’t he important anymore? Why weren’t my sisters important to me anymore? And the list goes on.

The MLCer, who probably would NEVER admit it, has a lot of guilt. One defense mechanism for this unwanted feeling is projection. To relieve them from that feeling of guilt, they will throw blame. If they are feeling guilty for hurting YOU, then YOU are the one that gets that blame, you are the target. I think the only thing that could change that is introspection and acceptance of ones wrong. I don’t think that is possible in a MLC.

Perhaps if this phenomenon was more well known and accepted as a real thing that happens to some people, the MLCer might handle it differently. For many things, education is key. I think that’s the case for MLC but there is still so little known about it.

FrenchHusband
And in the world where we live, a lot of people are benefitting from MLC : lawyers, real estate agencies, salesmen, seduction coaches, fortunetellers, healers...  There are even salesmen who are trained to recognize people under MLC and take advantage from it. That last one disgusts me! It’s like being trained to help someone destroy the lives of their spouse and children just to turn a buck. WTF!

On the other side, we have the rising cost of healthcare due to so many people needing therapy not to mention how it affects the physical health of the spouses and kids. And let’s not forget the bankruptcies caused by the reckless spending in a MLC.

Policy makers look at the overall economic impact and like you said, a boatload of money gets circulated from MLC, so where is the incentive to change it? SMH.

Regarding chemical imbalance, I am not sure that I would like a world where we prevent or fix human behaviour with drugs (not what you write). There are already a lot of "happiness pills". When I think about teenage crisis (my best analogy), thanks God for the main cases it is not "fixed" by medicinal products : teenagers have to "go through". And yes, professional acknowledgement would help a lot ! Even without fixing it with medication (which I know I would have flat out refused in my MLC), if you were told that your spouse suddenly had a chemical flip in their brain, it would be much easier to see that it wasn’t anything you said or did and that you can’t fix or help them. The whole experience might still be as painful, but you won’t have that self-blame that I know so many LBS have. Plus, it might be sooner for you to get on a healing path, knowing that you can’t do anything about a chemical imbalance.

For those of us in it, we could at least know “why a MLC happened to me”. That was a question of mine, why me? Also, maybe how we handle it might be different, maybe not. But there is always that chance.


I have to forever believe that something somehow could change, that there might be a way for people to get through a MLC without causing so much destruction in their wake.

Well, if they couldn’t accept me, or at least try to get to know the “new” me that I was thrusted into, then walk. IDC. That was my stance on it. I didn’t need them to agree with my sh*t necessarily, but I had exactly 0 tolerance for them coming at me about it. I had enough garbage on my plate, I didn’t need that in my life too.

I watched your "relationships change" video and it scary how these same ideas are common across so many MLCers.  And this is no judgement on you at all.  Believe me, the folks here understand exactly what you went through.  But the way you spoke about your own kids.  And how you would be prepared to move on without them in your life.  For that level of detachment between a mother and her kids....  MLC must be such a massive psychological event to create this detachment.  Us LBS dont stand a chance.

As for your "symptoms of a midlife crisis video".  Amazing how spot on you were to describe it that way across the 3 vids.  You were truly living it I can see the pain in your eyes.  It should really teach us LBS empathy for what our MLCers are going through, even if we're suffering daily mental torture.....  It's not easy on both sides.

One thing I do want to point out.  Its amazing to me the level of self awareness you had when going through this.  I think the vast majority of MLCers flat out deny it and 100% think there is absolutely nothing wrong with them.  I wonder why you were so different.  If it wasnt for the multi year timeline you endured, I would say this feels more like a midlife transition than crisis, even though it was a crisis.

Given how self aware you were, do you think other MLCers could benefit from talking to you while in their crisis?  It didnt sound from your vids that anyone or anything or any act of god would have changed your chosen path.  You were going to do what you were going to do. 

But do you think MLCers could be taught to understand that the LBS is not satan and that there is a way for them to go on their path without inflicting maximum torture and pain?  I really do not understand the need to twist the knife when the LBS is already decimated.