Midlife Crisis: Support for Left Behind Spouses
Archives => Archived Topics => Topic started by: strongFaith34 on October 27, 2019, 05:30:50 PM
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Sometimes reading about Narcissistic Personality Disorder and BPD, the symptoms seem to completely overlap with a Midlife Crisis. I found this very interesting post about what BPD feels like and to me it sounds just like an MLCer, what are your thoughts? and how can we distinguish between these labels?
“BPD is the result of complex trauma. A person suffering from BPD is suffering a ‘split brain’ condition. Their left hemisphere (ego/logical brain) has had to repress their right hemisphere (Id/emotional brain) with criticism, rejection and self hate because their natural desires, feelings and impulse to self expression was not safe to allow in their childhood environment.
Their left brain becomes a hypercritical abusive parent-self and their right becomes a rebellious pleasure seeking child-self because it’s trying to turn the volume down on unresolved trauma memories. Eventually the right brain gives up and goes into despair because the left will never allow it to be who it wants to be and won’t attend to the trauma memories.
People usually think it’s the right brain causing the problem because its the one doing all the emotional outbursts and self destructive behaviours, but it’s really the victim. The self hating left brain is the real cause of the condition, but it’s just trying to protect the person against the rejection or punishment of their parents/childhood. Both brains are stuck in the past.
The left is adapted to a past environment and keeps projecting it onto the present and future. That’s why BPD sufferers keep expecting to be rejected, abused and abandoned - they can’t distuinguish between the past their current relationships. Of course, their behaviours almost guarantee that this happens, because they are themselves being abusive and rejecting to their partners.
In order to heal from BPD (which is possible, and not all that difficult) the left and right hemispheres both have to grow up, create a cooperative relationship with each other, and resolve the trauma memories.”
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SF, I have often thought that my Mlcer was Undiagnosed BPD by the way she split her perception of me from all good to all bad and then discarded me without a backward glance in the weeks leading up to bomb drop.
I have also observed Narcissistic,Histrionic, Machiavellian as well as Psychopathic behaviours. its interesting how you explained the war between the hemispheres, her trauma could have developed from her feelings being stifled at an early age as she is the youngest of a family of four and was nicknamed the Runt of the litter. Both parents worked and were very strict with all the children She was prim and proper but turned into a serial cheater seemingly within weeks.
As she was 49 years old I thought the perimenopause was in part to blame sprinkled with depression and chasing unicorns (lost youth and plastic surgery). It will be 8 years for me on this November 14th that bomb drop occurred. According to mutual friends she is still acting like a 58 year old teenager and still with the OM. I remember vividly our communications at bomb drop and how her face was almost purple and the veins at her temples were sticking out like she was in an internal rage but did not unleash it at the time thankfully.
Could be her hemispheres we’re fighting for control and her Super ego was policing her Ego and Inner Demon (ID). Ultimately her ID won and she derailed and became a different person with polar opposite values. Your post is very though provoking SF, thank you.
Jack
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I have not read about BPD but i have read and watched many about narcissism .I find my h fits narcissism to a tee. This is all so crazy.
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I also have done a lot of reading on BPD, dementia, thyroid issues and even brain cancer in an effort to make sense of my wife's 180 degree personality change, and she certainly ticked a lot of boxes in all categories but I now understand that MLC can mimic a lot of mental disorders. What it doesn't explain is why she is being absolutely evil and her ongoing smear campaign which seems to evolve as she thinks of new lies and sets about weaving them into rewriting of history. Her last lawyer letter claims she has been suffering from memories suppresed until now and has been unquipped to deal with the divorce she wanted to rush through 3 days after bomb drop on March 1st. I do think it it is some and varied form of mental illness she is going through and she now claims I (after 27 years together) have caused her to develop 2 eating disorders concurrently. Every other day it's something new.
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Wild heart she is projecting blame in your direction as she could not possibly be responsible for the way she is behaving as that would make her a bad person so you caused this to happen. She is Teflon coating her new persona so nothing sticks and is deflected back in your direction to fix, were you the fixer in your marriage?
Jack
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In my opinion, a lot of MLC behaviour mimics some of these disorders but there is a big difference between someone who is say NPD and has strong narcisstic traits. A few LBS here may decide looking back over their relationship that their spouse did have a personality disorder, that there was a consistent pattern over many years pre-BD. A few have spouses who were diagnosed with things like Bipolar. But most, I think, were normal humans with normal personality ranges and hidden broken places who unravelled in crisis into more extreme behaviour.
Sites like out of the fog can help LBS adapt their behaviour to MLC behaviours. Much of this advice is similar to the advice given on HS about detachment etc. Imho it is more useful to keep the desire to diagnose to one side but simply focus on the kind of behaviour you see. After all, if you knew a diagnosis 'label', how would it actually help you as an LBS? Still didn't cause it, can't control it and can't cure it....
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Hi Jack, yes I was very much the fixer in our relationship and many times over the years my wife had fallen out with her mother and not spoken to her for months and always I would have to step in and reconcile them, it was the same in her work, she almost lost her job last year, due to internal arguments with her boss. I do think my wife has a personality disorder as she has now totally split me to black, from what I've read on out of the fog it's rare she would split me back to white.
Treasur, great words of wisdom as always you are so right the label is irrelevant in the here and now, I have spent way to much time searching the internet, that's luckily how I found my way here. I cannot begin to tell you just how much help being here and you have been to me. Thank you with all my heart. I'm getting there slowly and surely. I'm still fighting the urge to intiate contact but I know I will not until she contacts me if that day ever comes. It still a neewbie and only coming up to 8 months since BD and last week I got another very strange 3 page letter from her solicitor full of lies. Still spinning and hurting but due to the sage advice in here and help from friends I feel there is a future for me, albeit a little scary. I will journal on my thread later today as I'm waiting on a response from my solicitor. Heading over to the wreck of the flat this morning to try and make good some of the damage she had caused before leaving it.
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Wilder, will keep an eye on your thread, feel free to PM me as I'm a bit less active on HS right now. But you are doing so well in a maelstrom of WTFness. Sadly for some LBS here - and you're not alone - their spouses do seem to unravel in rather spectacular ways.
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Attaching now so I can have a read later on.
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Attaching!
Interesting discussion. I do think that MLCers mimic NPD. Now that I am more aware of NPD, I do think my H had some of the traits before BD, too. I don't know what that means if my H were to come out of his crisis, he will still be a narc. It's hard to know. I guess, I know that I have boundaries now, and have also changed ways in which I respond instead of reacting.
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Everyone has some of the traits. Narcissism isn't an on/off condition. Everyone lies somewhere on the continuum with some people being more narcissistic than others. People with NPD are very far along the continuum. MLCers seem to shift more towards the narcissistic end of the continuum during their crisis. The question to ask is how narcissistic were they before the crisis started?
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Looks like it might not be a bad thing... for the narcissist...
https://www.bbc.com/news/education-50184281
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BPD AND NPD are both cluster B disorders.Imo, both could be learned behaviors as well as trauma behaviors. If all you see is dysfunction, then dysfunction seems normal. While Ex MIL was never diagnosed with BPD, she has all the traits of it. She was my first experience with projection that I could specifically see was projection. I have always suspected xh of BPD since I learned of it.
The only advantage was how I dealt with him. I dealt with him like a person who suffered from BPD, and that usually kept monster at bay (not always). Whatever the label, it's not ok.
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I agree with Treasur's recommendation for Out of the Fog website. No matter what it is you are dealing with, this site offers language for what you are witnessing and strategies for interacting (or maintaining distance) in these situations.
However, one thing I strongly disagree with on this forum is the advice that it doesn't matter what your spouse has. If your spouse has a mental illness that can be diagnosed, and you share young children, I think it is imperative that you continue to seek out support until you find someone who will listen.
Clues that your spouse may be suffering from a mental illness or biophysical event include:
• Recent changes to medication.
• Family history of mental illness.
• Radical change to personality, spending habits, and behavior.
• Other physical symptoms, such as new migraines, flat/emotionless expression.
• Sudden loss of empathy.
• Loss of emotional attachment to pets, home, children etc.
Some of these are couched in different terms on this site, but they are not the only way to describe them, and using the correct terminology may make the difference in a doctor/lawyer/child therapist listening to you and helping you to protect your children and yourself.
Barring any of these, and an honest assessment of your spouse's behavior throughout the marriage, may reveal your spouse has always had a personality disorder. In this case, I think it is really important to rely on advice for dealing with disordered people to avoid further traumatizing yourself. I would also specifically seek out a therapist with training in personality disorders.
I feel worried that at times people will engage in arguments about diagnosing on this site as if we are all dealing with the same thing. It is very likely we aren't. All to say, use this site to get information, but I would caution anyone from taking any comment as the final word or best advice, even. Each circumstance is different.
If someone tells you on this site that your spouse does not have a mental illness or does not have a personality disorder, or not to seek help, they are being irresponsible in my opinion. Try to rely on what you know of family history, your memories of your spouse, and what you are directly observing. Trust your own perceptions first and foremost.
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Try to rely on what you know of family history, your memories of your spouse, and what you are directly observing. Trust your own perceptions first and foremost.
Great advice!
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Here is one article RCR had:
https://loveanyway.theherosspouse.com/2013/09/09/personality-disorder-or-midlife-crisis/
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Good article Thunder!
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Googling again and I came across frontal temple lobe dementia which can affect younger people, normally around the mid forties age, in some instances it's the persons personality that changes first and they lose empathy and social inhibitions, this can occur long before memory loss and classic symptoms of dementia. Still just me trying to make sense of the senseless of course. Decline from this form of the disease can be quite rapid so time will tell, but I sincerely hope it's not the case for anyone's MLCer here as it's not cureable and very nasty. I do question if my wife does have a personality disorder, there was a few odd moments over the decades but mostly they occurred when she was drinking heavily and judging by her social media posts she's certainly doing that every night it seems. She's pulled her page again, this happens every other week, but it looks like she's been downing a bottle of whiskey every night. Not sure how long she will be able to continue working at that rate, and it certainly goes some ways to explaining her alleged eating disorders, her solicitor now is attempting to blame on me. Most friends just think she is a horrible person and I'm better off away from her, she's still in monster mode and I expect things to get much worse before and if they ever get any better.
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Age regression and behaviours that can be perceived as teenage bring out undesirable facets of the personality that may be the polar opposite of pre MLC sufferers. The MLC person is revisiting long forgotten coping mechanisms they used in the years prior to adulthood. They are like children experimenting and learning how to fit in with their new MLC lifestyle and have tantrums when they don’t get their own way (monster) IMHO.
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Jack's explanation makes sense to me.
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I think that the “age regression” we see has more to do with the parts of the brain impacted rather than a type of semi-conscious deep dive into the psyche.
If this were ALL that we were seeing, it could make sense. But this is often accompanied by all sorts of other behavior that also indicate a physical event or imbalance in the brain.
There was a poster on this forum for a while whose husband had a diagnosis of bvFTD. She was criticized by some who throught she was saying everyone on this forum was dealing with bvFTD, but she qualified her remarks. My sister researched bvFTD and I have also read about it.
People often think that you go from acting out of character to declining beyond recognition in a matter of years, but if you dig deeper you’ll find that a high number of cases present atypically and it can take decades to progress. People will often use anecdotal evidence to tell people on this forum their sppuse does not have bvFTD, but if you have reason to believe your spouse has bvFTD — especially if there is family history — I hope you will not let this stop you from seeking support your spouse may benefit from.
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Velika - I know you've posted on this before, but re-reading the definition and manifestations, how does ANYONE know that their MLC er is not actually bvFTD? It sounds JUST LIKE MLC, so if there's no way to diagnose it (other than autopsy), I guess we just will never know, right? If they don't realize their behavior and actions are inappropriate and impacting others, where does that put us as LBSs?
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Velika - I know you've posted on this before, but re-reading the definition and manifestations, how does ANYONE know that their MLC er is not actually bvFTD? It sounds JUST LIKE MLC, so if there's no way to diagnose it (other than autopsy), I guess we just will never know, right? If they don't realize their behavior and actions are inappropriate and impacting others, where does that put us as LBSs?
I think if you can convince your spouse to see a doctor, a scan may help. From what I have read, it is often very obvious.
However, having read a book about bvFTD, I know that even people who care for family members with bvFTD and then are later diagnosed with the disease do not accept the diagnosis, because one of the first things to go is self-awareness. In this case, you could attempt to find sympathetic friends and your own family members to help. Again, using the right language may help.
If you have children, I would fight like a mama bear to get any type of diagnosis, based on my own experience. Unfortunately, if they are in the early stages and can appear rational, this may be difficult. If this has just started, I would find a lawyer who believes this is mental illness and will advocate for you from this perspective.
Due to lack of awareness, research, and taboos, even better understood mental illnesses are difficult to diagnose, even when the symptoms are obvious. I think I read it can take 10 years just to get a bipolar diagnosis.
Just look at most articles on why people cheat. Manic episode is almost never mentioned, but this is a common symptom of mania.
If you suspect your spouse has bvFTD, especially if you see a family pattern, trust your perceptions. Once you have done everything you can to financially protect yourself and your kids, and barring a willingness to see a doctor, you may just have to watch the situation unfold.
So sorry you are dealing with this.
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Velika - Thanks.
I don't know what's going on other than some type of crisis involving personality and ethical changes.
We are divorced so financial is not an issue - he is still spending money.
He does not like to talk to me, so suggesting a brain scan is not an option.
Perhaps next time I am with his mother, I can talk to her about it,
Or any friends that I may come across.
Thanks for answering my question.
Sea
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Seahorse this is the problem we face, these MLCer's think there is nothing wrong with them, so getting them to a doctor for anything is almost impossible. You can't force them to go, it will just bring out Monster even more.
It looks to them like you are in denial and not accepting they are just done with us. You're not believing them. You look desperate and manipulative to them. It is not going to help anything.
All we can do is protective ourselves, financially, and let them go.
We can't fix them. Until they do the inner work they need to do, it's out of your hands.
bvFTD is a very rare disease and I highly doubt many MLCer's on here have this disease.
Maybe if you went on a site specifically geared towards this disease you will get better information.
This site is for people who are dealing with a midlife crisis. Similar actions but two very different things.
People in a MLC eventually come out of it.
The person Velika is referring too did not believe in MLC. She thought they all had bvFTD.
Maybe her H did, I don't know.
Hugs
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The person Velika is referring too did not believe in MLC. She thought they all had bvFTD.
Maybe her H did, I don't know.
I'm flagging this post. She did not say this. If you have to lie to damage someone's credibility, why should anyone take anything you write seriously?
Velika - the very first words written by the poster to whom you refer.
As most of you have already mentioned, people in "midlife crisis" all tend to follow the same pattern and script. All of our stories are so similar because in many cases what we are actually witnessing and experiencing are SYMPTOMS of a common but under-recognized brain disorder called frontotemporal dementia that tends to strike people in their 40s to 60s. Please read up on the disease
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The poster you refer also started a thread stating that "Midlife Crisis is Brain Disease of the Frontal Lobe"
Thunder has not lied and neither has she damaged anyone's credibility. She has expressed her opinion.
I recommend that you amend or edit your post accordingly or it will be removed
Velika's post removed 5 November.
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Velika,
bvFTD did repeatedly state that MLC was linked to bvFTD. She was asked repeatedly to put it in perspective that, while it was a possibility, the actual disease itself was very very rare and it is invariably fatal which is NOT the case in MLC at all.
This request was repeatedly tossed aside and she continued to repeat that MLC was nothing more than BVFTD. There is NOTHING that Thunder wrote that was untrue or denigrating.
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I remember that awful, frightening time in the beginning when I knew something was very very wrong with my then h but didn't know what it was. And how it felt when friends, family, psychiatrists and therapists and the legal system behaved as if I either was making it up or that my views or fears were irrelevant. And how, even though my then h knew something was wrong with him and did get psychiatric help, somehow he saw me as his enemy. I have never felt more bewildered, frustrated or ignored in my life.
I am very sorry, V, that some of this sounds as if it might have been part of your experience too. My experience was that the 'language I used' didn't matter witn anyone unless they were interested in listening. And most people weren't. Accepting that, and my h's free will, was part of the slow frustrating process of letting go in lots of different ways. Please try to release yourself from the belief that there were a magic set of words but acknowledge that you did the best you could.
Bvftd looks a lot like dementia with go faster stripes imho after an initial period of behaviour change. Rather a different thing than a crisis or depression or mental health disorder or any other number of ways in which humans break. I have experienced both dementia and 'MLC' and they are quite different in RL. But they raise similar issues about what we can control and can't, how we love and support people and what we need to do to protect ourselves.
It would seem sad to me if lots of LBS read your post and start feeling guilty that they couldn't find the 'right words' or guilty that they couldn't get their spouse diagnosed or treated for something more concretely recognised in RL than MLC or Sudden Bonkers. And it would concern me if any LBS here sacrifices too much of their sanity or safety or security bc they believe that if they try harder, they will find an answer or way to help their spouse. There may be the odd situation here where people have been able to do that early on - and of course not all situations here are necessarily caused by the same things - but it seems to be uncommon.
The good news is that life has a way of making people deal with their own stuff...whether the dawning realisation of an MLCer or those with medical or mental health issues reaching a tipping point when others can step in.
All any of us can do is our best with as much grace as we can find. But we have to put our own oxygen mask on first before we can do anything at all to support anyone else. Jmo.
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Velika, you have brought this up over and over.
The poster you mentioned pushed the bvFTD diagnosis in every post she made.
This site is about MLC. It is where we learn and discuss MLC.
I agree with what treasure wrote:
It would seem sad to me if lots of LBS read your post and start feeling guilty that they couldn't find the 'right words' or guilty that they couldn't get their spouse diagnosed or treated for something more concretely recognised in RL than MLC or Sudden Bonkers. And it would concern me if any LBS here sacrifices too much of their sanity or safety or security bc they believe that if they try harder, they will find an answer or way to help their spouse. There may be the odd situation here where people have been able to do that early on - and of course not all situations here are necessarily caused by the same things - but it seems to be uncommon.
I also agree with Thunder's post.
It is very hard for the LBSer to accept that their loved one is having a MLC. We do search for all kinds of other possibilities. But there is actually very good information that aligns with the crisis our loved ones are going through. Information that can allow us to come to a place of acceptance.
MLC is NOT a progressive deteriorating disease. We would see a lot more reporting here if our loved ones eventually were diagnosed with some progressive deteriorating disease, especially in the many long time posters who would share that information here.
I have yet to see it.
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I remember the person Thunder is referring to. This person was constantly telling people that MLC was really bvFTD in spite of numerous people providing evidence that she was wrong and in spite of several people asking her to stop. I see nothing inappropriate in Thunder's post. Velika's post is the one that should be flagged.
Shortly after BD I went to my wife's family because I was concerned about my wife's sudden personality change. The sister she was closest to justified my wife's behavior, telling me that my wife had a right to be happy and if the om made her happy and I didn't then my wife should be with the om. The rest of her siblings were concerned but felt that our marital problems were none of their business. The only good that came out of it is that one of my wife's sisters and her husband were very supportive and continue to this day to be the only people in RL who will listen to me talk about this and will support me.
I also managed to convince my wife to talk with a family friend who was a counselor. Like most therapists, our friend was not properly trained and equipped to work with somebody dealing with an MLC. She couldn't identify anything wrong other than that my wife was unhappy which convinced my wife that she was doing the right thing by chasing after happiness.
All of this occurred within the first two weeks. After about 2 weeks the om convinced her to move in with him and from that point on she was totally under his influence. I had no influence at all.
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I see nothing inappropriate in Thunder's post. Velika's post is the one that should be flagged.
Unpopular opinion: neither post, nor any others that do not contain abusive behavior or threats, should be flagged.
Velika is expressing her thoughts. I vehemently disagree with them, but I also strongly support her right to express them.
We had a member banned for life here for, when it all boils down to it, repeatedly expressing unpopular opinions. Let's learn from that and stop the "tattletale culture." We're all human. We're not all going to agree. We're going to anger each other sometimes.
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If you have to lie to damage someone's credibility, why should anyone take anything you write seriously?
Sorry Nas, but disagreeing with Thunder is one thing. Velika would have been fine if she would have stated "I'm flagging this post. She did not say this." and stopped. Accusing Thunder of lying and questioning why anyone should take anything she writes seriously is abusive. Are you suggesting that we should put up with abusive posts?
I think we should be able to disagree without becoming abusive towards the person we're disagreeing with. I think we expect that of our children. Why wouldn't we expect it of each other?
BTW, I suggested that Velika's post is the one that should be flagged but I didn't do it. But if I do report an abusive post, does that make me a "tattletale"? Should we just let people get away with being abusive? Just accept that that's what happens when people disagree and look the other way? I think the answer is no so I've decided to go back and flag Velika's post and let the site administrators sort it out.
Feel free to call me a "tattletale". :D
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I really don't see why this poster's thoughts are an issue for anyone.
People here are presumably adults. They are faced with making up their own mind about standing, about financial considerations, about child custody issues, about housing issues, about rebuilding their lives, about their belief as to MLC, and the possibility of their spouse returning.
Surely, people can make up their own minds on the topic of bvftd as well.
Let's not forget that there are many many posts concerning other rarer medical conditions that MLCers are rarely diagnosed with, but those posters are commonly praised and exalted for providing information about. Should the board censor them as well?
This is nothing more than a continuation of the teenage mean girl immature behavior of some on this forum, in my opinion, in the blatantly obvious quest to cleanse the forum of anyone who's opinion doesn't comfortably match their own, followed by the childish need to pile on and gang up on a poster with an unpopular opinion to beat them into silence and submission.
Yet, some of these same posters complained bitterly when they believed the same was happening to Shocks Sis.
One would think anyone here should have bigger things to spend their time on, like rebuilding their lives.
Lp
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Clarification, a member was banned for life because she choose to ignore moderation and blatantly went around the administrator’s temporary restriction, not because of anything she wrote. The very difficult decision to ban her was explained by RCR herself, so let’s not conflate the issue.
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Clarification, a member was banned for life because she choose to ignore moderation and blatantly went around the administrator’s temporary restriction, not because of anything she wrote. The very difficult decision to ban her was explained by RCR herself, so let’s not conflate the issue.
The ultimate decision to ban her took into account the vast number of complaints received in the past.
I'm not conflating anything.
There were a number of posters who were newer to the forum who had a strong negative view of Anjae - posters who had not interacted with her long enough to form such a negative opinion but nevertheless had that negative opinion. It was being strongly perpetuated from somewhere.
I am not going to engage in any further discussion of this, but let's not pretend that what happened didn't happen.
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The poster we are mentioning had a husband who was diagnosed with bvFTD, but showed many of the symptoms that appear here. Initially she did make a stronger statement, but qualified her remarks. She personally felt that many of us were dealing with late-onset bipolar and possibly bvFTD.
She was very well researched, intelligent person. Maybe she could not have helped the people who commented above. But she may have helped someone else who needed it, and isn't that what we should want for everyone who arrives to this forum?
I had never heard of bvFTD, bipolar, schizoffective disorders, personality disorders, etc. when I arrived at this forum. I am pretty sure I got here when my mom said it sounded like my now ex was having a "midlife crisis," after I had exhausted looking up "exit affairs."
I wish, truly wish, that someone had been around to ask me a few differentiating questions and possibly even to tell me, based on YOUR story, I think he may have a medical condition. At the time we had a seven-year-old. Because I had no language or background to tell a doctor, therapist, or lawyer in medical terms what was going on, instead having to say things like affair or crisis, I think I was not taken seriously.
I deeply believe it is irresponsible, and I'm sorry, childish and unsophisticated, to approach MLC as a single condition. I know we all need to vent, but sometimes I have noticed it's okay to laugh at a MLCer's behavior or write they are all "bat$h!te crazy," but when someone suggests an ACTUAL mental illness or diagnosis, sometimes they are actually told to leave this forum and go elsewhere! Even by people who advocate agape love for someone who has basically betrayed, robbed, and abused them, looking for any and all meaning and hope in their erratic behavior. I don't get it.
ALL people who come here deserve to ask questions, share what they think, and help others in a way that has helped them. If you don't agree, then there are plenty of other threads. I don't think it is honest to mischaracterize the words of someone else just to make a point.
One of bvFTD's primary motives was to help prevent LBS suicide. She had seen this happen a lot. The woman thinks she is replaced and doesn't understand. If someone can see early on that no, this isn't an exit affair, and this is the possible way the brain might misfire to cause this, I think they are far ahead. Keeping people stuck on euphemistic milestones like "touch and go's" could just be another language for a cyclical mental illness. I was just discussing with a friend offline how we wish we knew at bomb drop what we knew now.
I don't care if anyone who posted before disagrees with me, I really don't. I'm writing this for people who want answers, who could lose things they really care about, who want to protect their children and also, paradoxically, their unwell spouses if possible.
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Thanks for posting the clarification 3Boys. That was my understanding as well. I read RCR's explanation for the banning. I believed her when she wrote that the member was banned for defying RCR's attempts to preserve forum decorum. I felt RCR was given no choice under the circumstances. I think her decision was appropriate and completely justified.
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Thank you for clarifying your thoughts, Velika, and the rationale behind them.
It is so difficult isn't it bc we simply don't know? Time sometimes shows us things but often all we can do is make the best informed guess we can. And often with very little RL support or validation. We (and others I suppose) don't know what we don't know...it has always seemed like a good thing to me when any LBS feels more able to trust their own deep instincts and judgment even if others don't.
Is there something in your situation which has brought these reflections to the forefront recently for you?
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Firstly this is not about Anjae.
The member concerned did inform us of a condition that probably all of us had not heard of before. It made for interesting reading and at no point was she told that this condition did not exist nor that it was inappropriate for us to learn about it.
Velika has picked up on Thunder's comment that this particular member seemed to have dismissed MLC in favour of BvFTD and for some time despite even RCR's requests to tone it down persisted in insisting that al newbies get their MLCers to the docs for testing. There is no denying that bvftd exists and that sadly it is a fatal illness. This is a copy of one of her posts explaining the symptoms of her H's BVFTD.
Yes, my husband has the empty eyes and expressionless face. The "shark eyes" you mention is called the FTD stare. The eyes are the window to the soul, and the soul resides in the frontal lobe.
J also has the frozen face and the off-kilter smirk. He walks with an upright wide-based gait. Others walk with shuffling steps listing to one side.
J hasn't complained of headaches but the very few blogs of people with FTD with self-awareness have reported intense migraines.
Yes, J exhibited severe restlessness before and after he left us. He is still on the go. He is disinhibited. The apathetic types hole up in a room, eat candy or potato chips and watch television, construct puzzles or play on the computer all day.
I told the neurologist about J's incessant rubbing of his knee, snapping of fingers, thigh slapping and autistic-like rocking in chairs and clapping each hand like a hand puppet. Others report whistling, pacing and humming. These are called stereotypies. J has also exhibited echolalia.
A symptom is hypersexuality. The disinhibited hire prostitutes or have affairs. The apathetic type may just download porn all day.
She was at perfect liberty to continue the thread. However for many LBSers on here - these symptoms and others did not match what they were seeing and so they continued to develop their knowledge of MLC and its own discrete symptoms.
Velika has always been a keen supporter of BvFTD's info and that is fine.
What is not fine is for her to call Thunder a liar and suggest that she has damaged the credibility of another member. This is bordering on breaching the code of conduct :
Be Respectful
We are here because of our shared marital trauma. We feel rejected, angry frustrated, confused, scared… Sometimes our emotional turmoil leads to conflict with each other. We understand this, but our situations are no excuse for poor behavior and mistreatment of others. When people do not feel safe in our community they leave and you lose your support group.
Respectful behavior is polite, tolerant and considerate of the feelings of your fellow posters and seeks to resolve conflict with peace and empathy.
Disrespect results in hurt feelings and distresses, disturbs, and/or offends others. Uncivil behavior is rude, impolite, discourteous behavior that displays a lack of regard for others.
Be Kind, Choose Your Words with Care
Please be kind and gracious to your fellow community members. Insults, bullying, harassment, threats… will not be tolerated. Inappropriate behaviors include, but are not limited to:
Violent threats or language directed against another person
Discriminatory jokes and language
Posting sexually explicit or violent material
Posting (or threatening to post) other people's personally identifying information
Personal insults
And as Law Professor states
Surely, people can make up their own minds on the topic of bvftd as well.
Thunder did and so did Velika. Just because they disagree does not make one or the other a liar.
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I agree with S&D. I learned something from bvFTD's posts. However, the number of people with this disease is statistically very small. I believe something like 1 in 4000 or even less. The chance that there was even one active poster on the forum at the time that had a spouse with the disease was very low. I read about the disease, and found that it was quite clear my H does NOT have the disease because he simply did not have the hallmark symptoms at all.
What bvFTD did that bothered me was that she was fear mongering, because bvFTD is ultimately a fatal disease and coming into a forum and telling everyone that there is a high probability that their spouse has a fatal disease was insensitive. I believe there was even a Daily Mail article about the disease that was less sensational and if you are familiar with the Daily Mail, that's saying something. That said, I don't know if she should have been censored.
As an aside, about Anjae. We got an explanation about her permanent banning, but there was some other censure applied to her immediately before that and we got zero explanation of what it was about from RCR. I got a PM from Anjae from that new account right before she was permanently banned and she was vague but it sounded like she was censured based on her tone alone. I cannot confirm if what Anjae said was true obviously, but as Acorn said on another thread, what if her choice to create a new account was a protest of a prior unjustified censure done knowing full well that it would get her in trouble? One only needs to look at the danger people put themselves in around the world to protest against unjust governments to understand a move like that. Because thumbing your nose at an unfair moderator is child's play compared to participating in protests in a dictatorship, so why not do it?
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Please -this is not the thread to bring up the situation with Anjae.
RCR has given an explanation and she would most definitely not have made the decision lightly. Please let it drop.
The situation is ultimately for RCR and Anjae to discuss.
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Just for the record
The prevalence world wide is uncertain with estimates of FTD amongst people ages 45 to 64 between 15 - 22 per 100,000 (Knopman, 2011) so 1 in 5000 worst case.
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bvFTD is poorly understood, and likely grossly underestimated. My own sister is a scientist who researched it professionally. I have also talked to a researcher at a local hospital who echoed the same thing.
And so what if it is rare? Does this mean that it is impossible that someone could arrive here with this concern? And if so what a godsend it might be to learn about this disease here?
There is no way we are all dealing with the same thing. I can't imagine, after the nightmarish situation many of us have been through, while we would want to close any and all avenues of inquiry to someone who arrives here with serious concerns.
Do we all need to adhere to groupthink? Straw man arguments?
Please, if you happen across this thread and think your spouse may have bvFTD, or some other illness, do not let other people's stop you from looking into this.
If you are interested, here is an article on the topic, from the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/health/a-rare-form-of-dementia-tests-a-vow-of-for-better-for-worse.html
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Thank you for posting this very clear and interesting article, V, which I think shows that within a relatively short period of time the symptoms are quite different from what most LBS here are dealing with. Still heartbreaking and tremendously difficult, but evolving in a different way. Of course it may be the case that some people come here looking for answers and find that this is sadly what is the case in their situation. We likely encompass a broad church here on HS, even if bvftd is relatively rare, but a spectrum that includes MLC type 'breakdowns', character disorders, mental health issues and 'normal' exit affair limerence. In the end, all any of us can do is reach our own best judgement based on our individual situation and respond the best we can.
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Thank you for posting this very clear and interesting article, V, which I think shows that within a relatively short period of time the symptoms are quite different from what most LBS here are dealing with. Still heartbreaking and tremendously difficult, but evolving in a different way.
This was the experience with my friend's dad. He died last spring in his late 50s. Lived just about 15 years after diagnosis. It was evident about 6 months after his odd behavior started that something was seriously wrong and he progressed very quickly to having to live in an assisted living facility. The cognitive decline is not just poor decision making or impulsiveness. It is an inability to care for oneself. Although I am certainly no expert, and I also think there's a distinction between FTD and bvFTD. I remember the thread well and I believe I commented at one point that I knew someone with the disease.
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Please, if you are interested in this illness, or any other one, I implore you not just to rely on the anecdotes of people on the forum. (Where the subtext often seems to be, I have seen this, and MLC is not the same.) This is taken from the article. It makes a strong case that it is not always so clearcut.
Also, just to note, is this a forum with hundreds of thousands of members? Isn't what we are dealing with kind of rare?
From the article:
Patients generally receive from one to four misdiagnoses, and it may take years to finally get the right answer. Mistaken diagnoses can include Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, midlife crisis or psychiatric illnesses like depression, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress or anxiety. Many relatives of patients say doctors dismiss their reports of personality change. But it is real.
“They totally break down in their ability to connect with other people and care about them,” Dr. Miller said.
There are eight subtypes of frontotemporal degeneration, sorted by the symptoms they cause. Some affect behavior. Others, grouped under the heading primary progressive aphasia, affect language. Still others affect movement, leading to disorders that resemble Parkinson’s or Lou Gehrig’s disease (also called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or A.L.S.).
But patients may match more than one category, and the subtype may change as the disease progresses.
“I see a lot who don’t present like the textbook,” said Dr. Edward Huey, an assistant professor of psychiatry and neurology at Columbia University Medical Center.
In most patients, MRI and other scans reveal shrinkage in the frontal and temporal lobes, sometimes to a shocking degree.
“If I showed you more extreme cases, you could read it from across the room,” Dr. Huey said.
He said researchers were using imaging to find out if specific symptoms could be mapped to atrophy in certain spots.
“The frontal lobes are sort of the last frontier in the brain,” Dr. Huey said, adding that the losses these patients suffer are helping researchers understand more about what the frontal lobes do. As the brain atrophy progresses, Dr. Huey said, patients “have pieces of psychiatric syndromes, but not the whole syndrome.”
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Thank you for posting this very clear and interesting article, V, which I think shows that within a relatively short period of time the symptoms are quite different from what most LBS here are dealing with. Still heartbreaking and tremendously difficult, but evolving in a different way.
This was the experience with my friend's dad. He died last spring in his late 50s. Lived just about 15 years after diagnosis. It was evident about 6 months after his odd behavior started that something was seriously wrong and he progressed very quickly to having to live in an assisted living facility. The cognitive decline is not just poor decision making or impulsiveness. It is an inability to care for oneself. Although I am certainly no expert, and I also think there's a distinction between FTD and bvFTD. I remember the thread well and I believe I commented at one point that I knew someone with the disease.
DON'T THINK I COULD BE CLEARER THAT I'M SHARING AN EXPERIENCE I KNOW OF.
Jeez. I posted in support of you and everyone else being able to share their thoughts without fear of scorn or punitive action.
Just because you are reading subtext into a post doesn't mean it's there.
You are pushing the idea of bvFTD as vehemently as you seem to feel people are dismissing the idea.
If it's okay for you to so strongly implore people to consider the possibility, it's also okay for people to share dissenting anecdotes. Can't support one without the other in a free exchange of ideas.
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Reminder - this thread is about NPD/BPD and MLC not FTD.
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Please, if you are interested in this illness, or any other one, I implore you not just to rely on the anecdotes of people on the forum. (Where the subtext often seems to be, I have seen this, and MLC is not the same.)
When I read comments like the one quoted above I have to shake my head. Aren't the people who come to this site capable of reading the posts, including anecdotes like the one Nas posted, and deciding for ourselves whether bvFTD or BPD or NPD or bipolar are worth considering as an explanation for our personal situation? We aren't sheep. Just finding this forum indicates we have a reasonable level of intelligence and persistence.
We seem to use up an awfully lot of bandwidth trying to protect people who probably don't need protection. Protect people from members who post abusive comments? Absolutely! Protect people from members who post opposing opinions? Probably not necessary. Why don't we try assuming we are all capable of weighing the various comments and reaching our own conclusions?
Speaking for myself, I'm willing to read everyone's opinions and anecdotes and determine whether or not they apply to my situation. I appreciate all of the information that is being provided. Please don't protect me from other's opinions and anecdotes and please don't try to tell me what I should believe.
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First I think there are many characteristics of MLC breakdown that overlap with BPD, NPD and other disorders. But there is a reason there are diagnostic criteria and we need professionals to decide: there is a lot of overlap in external behaviour in various mental health crises (and I believe MLC is a complex one). So it may look like any one of these disorders once it kicks in, but there are other diagnostic criteria (depending on what you want to look at) that REQUIRE events at an earlier time. So its easy to try to see these disorders in our loved ones.
And there may truly be NPD and BPD people who have MLC. But personality disorders are NOT subtle, they can be seen coming a mile away and rather quickly (at most in months). Most of us are pretty self aware and have spent years with our loved ones, we didn't simply paper over a personality disorder.
And btw there are also things like narcissistic traits or borderline traits and people may have them in differing degrees. This very well may be part of our MLCers make up, as they would be from bad coping mechanism from childhood/FOO issues, the same ones that ultimately leads to the breakdown we know. So it makes sense that we can look back and find these traits, specially when the idea is used to frame what we are looking for. Honestly some of these traits are in us all when we are under duress, so I am sure we can all find times we were showing some version of this. So someone could look back without context and say we have NPD?
I think we all need to feel in control of something that can not be controlled, it preceded us. So we look for explanations or diagnosis, because we need to know and feel there was rhyme or reason. It is much more unsettling to say "this happened before I met this person, and I didn't know, I had no control and this was going to happen no matter what."
Interesting question is what would any of us have chosen if we had known this at the start, what then? I have thought about this for my own reasons and decided I wouldn't have changed a thing.
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Great post Marvin! Thanks for writing it.
Good question too. I wouldn't have protected my wife as much as I did and I would have tried to have more meaningful conversations with her. But I don't think back then I was capable of doing either of those so I probably wouldn't change a thing.
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I am a bit "thinky" this evening as we debate the "cause" of MLC.
A long ago poster, Mermaid studied and posted a great deal about
Anhedonia: Loss of the capacity to experience pleasure. The inability to gain pleasure from normally pleasurable experiences. Anhedonia is a core clinical feature of depression, schizophrenia, and some other mental illnesses.
An anhedonic mother finds no joy from playing with her baby. An anhedonic football fan is not excited when his team wins. An anhedonic teenager feels no pleasure from passing the driving test.
My husband exhibits anhedonia as one of many "symptoms" that convince me that he is still in a crisis.
I wonder about drug use during his formative years. Recently, and it's not "new", the surgeon general has warned about marijuana use before the age of 25. A workshop I attended with an expert in substance abuse issues explained how drugs destroy the number of receptors that are necessary for neurotransmitters to cross from one side of a synapse to the other. We only have a limited number of these receptors, once they are used up, they are not capable of regenerating.Without the receptors, the neurotransmitters cannot travel between neurons.
And we have often stated the effect of stress.
Multifaceted reasons for the crisis to hit them.
The interesting thing is the stories of those who have come through the crisis...so perhaps it is more like the terrible two's or puberty that somehow, after a specific period of time, the body is able to get through that stage and move into a a state of homeostasis.
Of course, because there could be so many different causes, there is not really anyway to predict what the outcome will be...but in reality, that is true of all our lives. We don't know what the next minute holds do we ?
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Interesting post, xyz.
My MLCer definitely experienced anhedonia in the early stages of crisis; he used the word "numb." That is, of course, a symptom of depression, which MLC is said to be a form of.
He also had some drug experiences before 25, including but not limited to weed, and there was at least one quite severe bad experience. (To be fair, I also experienced marijuana before 25, but not often, because mostly it just puts me to sleep.)
Just for info's sake -- this was really just youthful experimentation, and he wasn't a user once he grew up (yes I use that term loosely at this point :P), and definitely not after we got together. Well, I wouldn't be at all surprised if his current re-teenage self has gone back to at least some pot now and then. ::)
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Sudden changes in personality are not normal. The causes are many and varied and can range from hormonal changes, infections, thyroid disease, adjustment disorders, personality disorders and substance abuse, to psychiatric disorders, brain injuries, brain tumours to neurodegenerative diseases (including dementias).
Some of our spouses may be experiencing an existential crisis.
Others may possibly be experiencing a health crisis due to a physical condition. The only way to know is to work your way through the long list of potentials, to rule out differential diagnoses. For that you legally require a willing patient.
I knew the language to use to describe my husband's sudden change in personality and out of character behaviours, and managed to get him to seek help at first with a GP, psychologist and psychiatrist. Because he clearly stated he did not agree with any of us and physically kept running out of the room, I couldn't force him to continue to seek help. Seeing a neurologist would have been important to rule out many of the above but I did not have the power to make that happen and was clearly told that even though they all knew something was very wrong with my then husband, they didn't have that power either. His permission was required, which he was definitely not granting.
Medical disorders are not set in stone, with so many overlaps and personal variables and in the case of psychiatric conditions/personality and adjustment disorders, one initial diagnosis may be changed many times over the years, to become something else all together. On average it takes people 10 years to reach a diagnosis of bipolar disorder for instance. None of it is cut and dried.
Humans are not vehicles that get plugged into a computer with the 'results' displayed neatly on a screen in order to be treated. Sometimes more straight forward diseases have clear treatment and diagnostic pathways, but in more complicated conditions, that simply does not occur.
Mid Life Crisis, is one of those conditions. A willing participant in the diagnostic process would certainly be an advantage to eliminating many of the above. Any diagnosis is a process of elimination and even then a definitive diagnosis may not be found.
Instead I am left forever wondering whether there was a physical condition that contributed to the implosion of my MLCer, or was it something like an attachment disorder that left him suddenly indifferent to me and our children, when we previously had been very bonded.
The fact that I will never have an answer to that question, is something that I reluctantly accepted long ago. It will continue to frustrate me though, I do know that.
Regarding bvFTD, I believe it is good to be aware that it might be a potential, just as there is a very long list of potentials.
Not all bvFTD progresses.
There is an anomaly called phenocopy FTD which "In conclusion, phFTD represents a clinical condition with the same behavioral features of typical bvFTD, but without neuroimaging abnormalities and no functional decline. Whether these cases belong to the FTD spectrum is still controversial"
https://alzres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13195-019-0483-2
"Related to the issue of clinical misdiagnoses based on the FTDC criteria and further complicating the picture, a condition mimicking bvFTD has been been described and labeled “bvFTD phenocopy syndrome,” implying that patients may display the typical behavioral symptoms of bvFTD but show no progression and no evidence of atrophy or hypometabolism"
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneur.2019.00594/full
As the brain really is the last frontier in medical science, ongoing research continues.
IF (please note, that IF is in bold) any of our MLCers have bvFTD without further degeneration from the personality/behaviour changes, it seems likely that they may have the phenocopy version. Of course, we likely will never know who may have this condition and who may not. None of them appear to be as curious about the potential as some LBS are. (note again, SOME).
Most of us will never know what caused this major personality change and crisis in our spouse and we are all left guessing and hoping it is something where normality is able to resume. For every person with that hope, is another that believes there are more potentials than one here. And that is everyone's own prerogative to decide.
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Hi kikki,
I very much agree with you.
"Most of us will never know what caused this major personality change and crisis in our spouse and we are all left guessing and hoping it is something where normality is able to resume."
SO VERY true. Most of us will never know what has caused their personality change.
All we can do is live our lives "as if" they are not coming back and make our lives the best we can. It's a colossal waste of our time and energy trying to spend hours and days AND years trying to figure out what is wrong with them.
Bottom line, we can't fix them. We can not help them.
But we can move forward with our lives and make it a happy one. Life is too short not to.
If or when they come out of this then we can deal with it, until then put your focus on yourself and your kids, if you have any. Protect yourself, financially, and leave them to it.
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Please, if you are interested in this illness, or any other one, I implore you not just to rely on the anecdotes of people on the forum. (Where the subtext often seems to be, I have seen this, and MLC is not the same.)
When I read comments like the one quoted above I have to shake my head. Aren't the people who come to this site capable of reading the posts, including anecdotes like the one Nas posted, and deciding for ourselves whether bvFTD or BPD or NPD or bipolar are worth considering as an explanation for our personal situation? We aren't sheep. Just finding this forum indicates we have a reasonable level of intelligence and persistence.
We seem to use up an awfully lot of bandwidth trying to protect people who probably don't need protection. Protect people from members who post abusive comments? Absolutely! Protect people from members who post opposing opinions? Probably not necessary. Why don't we try assuming we are all capable of weighing the various comments and reaching our own conclusions?
Speaking for myself, I'm willing to read everyone's opinions and anecdotes and determine whether or not they apply to my situation. I appreciate all of the information that is being provided. Please don't protect me from other's opinions and anecdotes and please don't try to tell me what I should believe.
I would like to think this, but unfortunately almost every thread on the topic seems to go the same way, with all the same people posting the same opinions. It turns into the same argument over and over.
People come to this site in a state of deep trauma, very very susceptible to other people input, and also very likely never having witnessed a mental health event. If they are misdirected early on they can lose valuable time.
It seems to more responsible to simply write, "Good point! Be sure to make sure to investigate any and all medical possibilities, especially if there is a family history or consistent symptoms."
Do we need to hear ad nauseum about so-and-so's friend's aunt's sister who had bvFTD, and it is nothing like what we see on this site?
I mean, come on! Maybe many of you are in your mid to late 50s, but I was in my early 40s when this hit with a small child. Other people come to this site in a similar predicament. For them, getting all the information in a timely manner is critical. Why make them wade through these same old arguments? Is this about helping people or about ego?
Why not just let someone write, "Make sure you consider other possible causes?"
Many of us are in a terrible position because of steroetypes about midlife crisis. People won't listen to us when we attempt to speak up. Seriously, what is the issue here to explore that this might be an actual specific illness? If you are going to say, let's let people make up their own minds, then why does any mention of mental illness then involve a pages-long disagreement?
Please, try to imagine that someone comes here with a very young child whose estranged spouse is having a manic episode that looks a lot like "high energy replayer." That person has no experience with mental illness and can only see that their spouse has radically changed, wants a divorce, and is having an affair.
Now imagine the consequence to that person and their child if they are told, this is a crisis, don't bother with a doctor? What if their spouse has just had a small aneurism or a stroke? What if someone gets hurt in real life because of this?
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Velika, I’ve always respected your posts and I’ve always supported your right as much as anyone’s to share your beliefs.
As far as I can remember, my post today was maybe the second time that I shared that anecdote about my friends father. We came to this forum at almost exactly the same time. I’ve watched you for almost 4 years now diagnosed your ex-husband with at least 12 different things. When does it get tiring? When do you stop beating yourself up about what you missed or what you could have done or how things might be different?
I am still in my early 40s. And I did get my husband to the doctor. And what did that get me? No answers. No resolution. I am homeless with cancer and flat broke. So what damn difference does it make that I was actually one of the ones he was able to get him to the doctor?
You state that “ Many of us are in terrible positions because of stereotypes about midlife crisis.“ I don’t think anyone would argue that I am one of those people who is in a “terrible position.“ And I actually had my H’s doctor who did not believe that my husband was simply in midlife crisis. He believed me when I said something was wrong. Missing from your repeated arguments that these LBS who come here broken and desperate need to take it upon themselves to force their spouse to the doctor is your suggestion of how in the hell they do that. You would never have been able to force your ex-husband to the doctor anymore than the rest of us. And even if you did, if your ex has been lied to the doctor or refused further treatment, your hands would’ve been tied.
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I mean, come on! Maybe many of you are in your mid to late 50s, but I was in my early 40s when this hit with a small child. Other people come to this site in a similar predicament. For them, getting all the information in a timely manner is critical.
The way I read this Velika, is that you think your situation is worse than someone who had this happen in their 50's. Or am I reading it wrong?
What we do say on this site is to build you life as though they are never coming back.
Focusing on the many possible mental health "diagnoses" that you have labeled your husband with takes away valuable time and energy from building your own life....and that is true whether you are in your 40's or 64 as I am.
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I mean, come on! Maybe many of you are in your mid to late 50s, but I was in my early 40s when this hit with a small child. Other people come to this site in a similar predicament. For them, getting all the information in a timely manner is critical.
The way I read this Velika, is that you think your situation is worse than someone who had this happen in their 50's. Or am I reading it wrong?
Actually, yes, in many ways it can be I think, especially if very young children are involved. My son was seven when this started — and I will say, it would have been much, MUCH worse if he had been a baby, or three, or even five. I think anyone who has gone through this with very small children would do anything they can to help other parents of other young kids find the right support.
What we do say on this site is to build you life as though they are never coming back.
Focusing on the many possible mental health "diagnoses" that you have labeled your husband with takes away valuable time and energy from building your own life....and that is true whether you are in your 40's or 64 as I am.
Trying to get help for your spouse if you truly feel they have a medical issue is not the same thing as rebuilding your life.
In some cases, there are clear indicators that the person may be having a drug reaction or psychosis, or other issue. Again, given this information in a timely way, and knowing the correct language may help communicate this to lawyers, psychiatrist, therapist, doctors, and friends and family who could help.
If this hasn't worked for you or you don't relate — that's fine, but it may be important for others, especially early on. Why dissuade them?
I mean, why in the world would you possibly put "diagnosis" in quotations when you are telling people not to seek real medical advice? This forum and this thread is not medical advice. It is not a diagnosis. That is why I am telling people that if they think that their spouse is unwell, to pursue any and all avenues of inquiry that may help them if they wish, and not rely on the anecdotal evidence on the forum.
Finally:
Of course, after any tragedy, a person will rebuild their life, and in many ways their life will simply rebuild itself, all on its own. Everyone here deserves kindness and gentleness in this regard.
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Missing from your repeated arguments that these LBS who come here broken and desperate need to take it upon themselves to force their spouse to the doctor is your suggestion of how in the hell they do that. You would never have been able to force your ex-husband to the doctor anymore than the rest of us. And even if you did, if your ex has been lied to the doctor or refused further treatment, your hands would’ve been tied.
And that is the heart of the issue for me. What purpose does it serve if I can do nothing about it?
My then h was one of the few who did seek professional help, was diagnosed with severe depression and under psychiatric care for at least 2 years that I know of. It made no difference to his behaviour towards me at all. He was deemed to have mental capacity so it made no legal difference which would have been the case with a range of other mental health diagnoses here in the UK too. Without his agreement, I had no voice as his spouse and there was nothing I could do to help someone who did not want my help.
If LBS are in a position where their spouse will accept their help or agree to seek medical advice, fine.
If not, then most LBS will be better served by seeking help for their own mental and physical wellbeing which is something they can control.
And when the 'damage' is done, I wonder what purpose it serves to continue to speculate on the multiple potential causes of something that we may never get a definitive answer about. Now that my former h is my xh, any diagnostic cause may be useful for him in finding his own solution if he decides he has a problem, true enough. But I have even less of a voice in it than I did before lol..so it is irrelevant to me. I can understand that those with young children whose x/spouse is present may see it differently in seeking to protect their kids wellbeing depending on the situation.
I understand the emotional need to find some way of squaring the WTF circle for LBS so that we can make some kind of peace with accepting what happened. And it takes a while for some of us. I find now that accepting that I don't actually know is quite freeing - I call it WIW (whatever it was that happened) bc I do know that something big happened - it liberates me from thinking that there was some magic stone I left unturned. I loved my h, I did my best and I would have walked beside him towards seeking treatment if he had allowed me to do so. But that wasn't how it was and here we are.
Fwiw as a sample of one, I asked ShockSis about it and her reply was
Hi Treasur
My ex h kept pushing me to get help and was relentless in this. He would tell people in his opinion I was having a mental breakdown. I reluctantly went to see our GP who prescribed anti depressants which I promptly flushed down the toilet as to me I didn’t need them. All I needed to do was get away from my ex h.
I only went to the GP to stop his constant nagging about mental breakdowns. It was as if everything my ex h said about me or our relationship just added fuel to the justification that I needed to get away from him as it was his fault I was so unhappy.
So, in my opinion it’s a case of trying to get someone to do something they are absolutely against doing.
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I mean, come on! Maybe many of you are in your mid to late 50s, but I was in my early 40s when this hit with a small child.
Seriously Velika?
I was just 50 when my H's MLC broke with a teenage son and crisis hit at the same year he was doing his GCSEs (first set of "proper" examinations in the UK). I had no parents, or parents in law or any older relatives (all dead) and one sister and brother in law who lived miles away. My son reacted so badly to my distress and H's replay antics with OW (stay at homer remember) that he struggled at school, started taking drugs and 7 yrs on is a confirmed addict.
He now has serious mental health issues, has seen therapists but refuses to follow through with his treatment and this description below is now my son:
Anhedonia: Loss of the capacity to experience pleasure. The inability to gain pleasure from normally pleasurable experiences. Anhedonia is a core clinical feature of depression, schizophrenia, and some other mental illnesses
Recently, and it's not "new", the surgeon general has warned about marijuana use before the age of 25. A workshop I attended with an expert in substance abuse issues explained how drugs destroy the number of receptors that are necessary for neurotransmitters to cross from one side of a synapse to the other. We only have a limited number of these receptors, once they are used up, they are not capable of regenerating.Without the receptors, the neurotransmitters cannot travel between neurons.
MLC hits all of us hard, our MLCers destroy the family unit and it matters little what age the children are. In fact I would argue that the younger the child, the more they have the chance to learn resilience and resourcefulness. My son at 15 couldn't cope - his idol, his dad who he adored, had shown himself to be selfish, narcissistic, arrogant and a liar. That destroyed my son and he now hates his dad with a passion. They have even come to physical blows in the height of the crisis. He resents any idea that H and I could reconcile and hates the fact that I still have enough love in me to reconnect with H.
It matters little what age you are when MLC breaks - what matters is the fall out on any family and the support and guidance received.
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I mean, come on! Maybe many of you are in your mid to late 50s, but I was in my early 40s when this hit with a small child.
Gosh, V, does that mean to you that your situation was worse or that others somehow mattered less bc they were on some kind of age scrap heap? Bc that is not your normal tone in previous posts at all so it seems unlikely that this is what you mean. It feels as if something is going on with you...this return to 'causes' and a feeling of anger or frustration coming through? Could be wrong...but are you ok?
52, no parents, no siblings, no kids, no ils, cancer, PTSD....pros were only had to look after me (and Louis the cat!); cons were that it was pretty difficult to find a reason for doing so when it was just me. All our situations have pros and cons it seems to me. Depends how you look at it, but neither pain nor healing are competitive sports imho.
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Depends how you look at it, but neither pain nor healing are competitive sports imho.
Spot on Treasur.
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If not, then most LBS will be better served by seeking help for their own mental and physical wellbeing which is something they can control.
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I too tried many many times to get my husband to the doctor. I went on my own and sobbed out the story in such a distraught state , I was the one with a diagnoses and medication. I have felt so unstable at times, I have done the "quizzes " for BPD etc. I kid you not.
My husband was diagnosed with stage 2 kidney cancer several months after he returned. He was therefore suffering from cancer while going the start of MLC. Did this have anything to do with his behaviour? He had also been diagnoses as a diabetic and placed on several medications. NEVER would I have gotten him to the doctor . EVER. He told me I " better accept that he is done with me and our marriage and to stop trying to look for excuses like he had a brain tumor ". If it had have been anything other than MLC , it would have developed into that specific condition. Either way ...I had ZERO control.
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I think all of us probably look at what we know of others' situations on here and compare whether they have it worse or better than us. I think that is human nature. It's probably best to keep those assessments to ourselves though as no one else is going to see it from the exact same perspective as we do.
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"I mean, come on! Maybe many of you are in your mid to late 50s, but I was in my early 40s when this hit with a small child. Other people come to this site in a similar predicament. For them, getting all the information in a timely manner is critical. Why make them wade through these same old arguments? Is this about helping people or about ego?"
It's good to know that at 50, with a 7 year old daughter at BD, this shouldn't have caused me so much pain and anguish. I wish someone had told me this sooner. ???
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This MLC thing should be pretty easy for an old man like me. I was 55 when my wife left me 2 weeks after BD. My daughters were 34 and 31 so they were all grown up and living on their own. My granddaughter lived with us until she was 10 but she was 13 at BD and living with her mother so I didn't have to be concerned about anyone but myself.
Except my youngest daughter took it really hard after her mother abandoned all of us and moved in with the guy who had been my youngest daughter's boss 6 years earlier and who had sexually harassed our daughter. So my youngest daughter was pretty hard on her mother. My oldest daughter had always been very close to her mother and wanted to stay that way so she and my youngest daughter started feuding which pretty much ripped the family apart. We still haven't recovered from that. But at least neither of them was a young child at BD.
My granddaughter and my wife had been really close because my wife was more like a mother than a grandmother. My granddaughter was 13 at BD so she wasn't a young child when her grandma abandoned her. She was old enough to start cutting herself. I think for me the fun went out of my wife's MLC the night I drove my granddaughter to the ER when she followed up an intense cutting session by ODing on ibuprofen and we spent the next week visiting her in the psychiatric hospital. Until then I had been really lonely living all by myself but at least I didn't have any young children to worry about. But that's when I started worrying about my older children and my grandchildren.
Missing from your repeated arguments that these LBS who come here broken and desperate need to take it upon themselves to force their spouse to the doctor is your suggestion of how in the hell they do that. You would never have been able to force your ex-husband to the doctor anymore than the rest of us. And even if you did, if your ex has been lied to the doctor or refused further treatment, your hands would’ve been tied.
And that is the heart of the issue for me. What purpose does it serve if I can do nothing about it?
I have an answer for this question. I think sometimes learning more our spouse's issues can help us to learn more about our own issues. Did you ever wonder how you wound up with such a broken person? I think broken attracts broken and that many LBSes have issues that aren't too unlike their MLCer's issues. It isn't uncommon on this forum to find LBSes who have experienced their own crises.
When I started talking with my wife's sisters and learning more about her childhood and her FOO issues, I realized how similar our childhoods had been. When I started looking at attachment and abandonment issues that might have affected my wife, I learned that I have similar attachment and abandonment issues. When I started discussing with my therapist the possibility that my wife might have a dissociative disorder, I found myself diagnosed with and being treated for the same dissociative disorder I suspect my wife has.
I apologize for this but I guess what I'm saying is that it might be good for an LBS to try to determine the cause of their spouse's MLC if they're willing to keep in mind that the MLCer may not be the only one who is or has the potential to become bat$hit crazy.
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It's good to know that at 50, with a 7 year old daughter at BD, this shouldn't have caused me so much pain and anguish. I wish someone had told me this sooner.
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I was 56 at BD. I had a 23 year old at home in university . I had 4 more daughters in their early 30's. And I get tell you I would give my soul to have them NEVER to have known that he had affair with a family member that they had contact with thru the entire thing . The humiliation and disgust I have experienced was/is immeasurable. To have young women see their mother deal with what they believed she would never tolerate ...and taught them to never accept disrespect from any man . And yet ...here I was. I had unrelenting need to " explain it to them" and dreamt they were judging me and had lost respect for me. I hesitate to offer marital advice to any of them... what do I know ? I felt like I lost my leadership amongst them and the pain? Poor things... I bawled an ocean on them. I "knew" some of them had been in touch with him and kept it to themselves ( or even lied to me) and the despair of feeling betrayed by them was intolerable. I have never admitted this before ...not out loud, but I remember 1 day , 3 of my girls wanted to take me for dinner. They wanted to "talk to me". I had such a massive panic reaction because for whatever reason ...I was terrified they were going to tell me that he molested them...and I missed that too. What else did I miss about him ??? . I am sick typing that ...but it is what happened in my brain. It bothered me soooo much , I asked them . They all denied that ...never did that ever happen. There is NO EASY AGE ...but from my perspective , in MY life … give me a small child. I could have hid it ..maybe forever . I am certain that my youngest daughter has some measure of PTSD. That is unforgivable and hurts me as a mother over and over .
Yeah … I wish I knew sooner that having " a young child" would be MUCH harder … huh? I AM NOT DISREGARDING ANYONES PAIN...I know with all my heart , it hurts. This is a peek at my experience with older daughters. Just sayin...
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Ha ha, Brain, fully paid up member of the 'went bats$it crazy' club here ;)
The core of that I suspect was losing my dad as opposed to mirror FOO stuff.
Certainly experiencing my own crazy gave me compassion and perhaps a bit of speculative insight on my former h's crazy.
I wasn't broken when I was drawn to my h all those years ago. Truthfully though he was younger and I did know he had some FOO stuff...hence waiting 6 years until getting married. But I was arrogant and had no comprehension of just how broken he was tbh. Maybe he didn't even know. I was simply exceptionally fond of him....
Darkness has big ripples I think....
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The destruction of the family affects everyone. No matter what age the LBSer is, no matter what age the children are. I will not share what has happened to my daughter because of her father's MLC but it breaks my heart to see what this has done to her.
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At the very least, anyone endeavoring to get an MLCer into therapy, medical examination, or psychiatric evaluation has not just a lot of love for that person but also a real control trip going on.
Yes it may help if you learn a new term or reason or cause of the behavior? But who does that really help.
It helps you. The MLCer is fine. They might be crazy but they’re ok being crazy. You think it’s crazy. The family may think it’s crazy. But the MLCer thinks it’s all fine.
These are grown adults. They can take care of themselves or find new people to help support whatever they are up to. We also are grown adults and can do same. But even within the covenant of marriage, it’s not our job or right to control another. Each of us is ultimately responsible only for itself. Kids, if you have children. But not the spouse. Marriage is a system of agreements. If your spouse is breaking agreements, they do get to do that. Then it’s up to us to decide compromise or consequence.
Dragging an adult into medical or psychiatric observations — as much as I understand why we would want to, or think that it might help somehow, it’s really a control issue. So as most often advised, once you’ve established boundaries and limits that ensure your and your kids’ physical, emotional, and financial safety as much as possible, the biggest thing you have to do is concern yourself only with yourself. With your own history, your own baggage, your own issues, and your own ineffective or bewildering or unsafe ways.
Because something about the MLC and any response to it has literally nothing to do with your spouse at ALL, and everything to do solely with YOU.
I was 38 with a 2-year-old when xh initiated divorce. He was later hospitalized twice and ultimately diagnosed with a condition that presents with psychotic features. So when there is troubling behavior, is it MLC? Or is it the diagnosed condition? Or is it the medication he takes or doesn’t take? Or is it his trauma history and basic temperament. Likewise with h. Is it MLC? A diagnosed or undiagnosed mental health or medical condition? Any medication he is taking or not taking? Or is it his own trauma history, and whatever pattern or basic temperament.
I don’t see much talk of sex/porn addiction in MLC discussions. It’s a blatant factor in the MLCs I’ve been subjected to. And finally the only partner recovery work that has been beneficial and focused as much on my own history, trauma, patterns, and health as on the MLCer’s. For whatever that’s worth.
At bottom it’s really just about broken agreements. Someone in the marriage changed its mind, and that’s not something I can alter. If h returns, we will see if mental or medical health needs discussion and whether agreements can be restored. I don’t really care about diagnoses unless it is something physical that could physically kill him. If he comes back and wants to rebuild with me, I am open to that and crazy enough myself that it’s ok if he’s a poster boy for some DSM label. Which, if the DSM updated every few years anyway, does the diagnostic label really mean anything? Everything evolves.
But I bet you dollars to donuts that every couple on earth goes through something like this at some point in a marriage, and those who stay together or reconcile heretofore just have not hung it on the line for everyone to see. We benefit somewhat through the technology of now, and the comfort of being able to show and share our stories to a vast collective full of respondents we might never see or meet. The generations before us had nothing like this, and instead I think they kept it all to prayer and tears and the confessional box. And then, as much as possible, put it behind them and never spoke of it again.
What good, to look for a diagnosis for your spouse? Does it really explain anything? Or does it keep us focused on the spouse and whether they are behaving right or not right, instead of on living our best lives?
I would say that seems like the “caring” spouse has utterly lost sight of itself and abandoned it’s own cares and needs. Turn that meticulous attention all back to you. We can’t make the spouse or anyone else conform to our expectations. They either will naturally, or won’t. If they don’t, how do we take care of ourselves and our own needs?
Not by micro-examining someone else. Even if we love them very much.
Agreements were and are broken. What do you really have control over? What happens if you do or not have control over your spouse? What happens if you lose control over your spouse?
The key is to remember that we never really had control over them in the first place, and that we never will.
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Awesome post terra!
I have found this to be true in the therapy that I have engaged in, about myself and my response to what happened.
Because something about the MLC and any response to it has literally nothing to do with your spouse at ALL, and everything to do solely with YOU.
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I agree with a lot of what you write Terra and it's a good post. However, I have to say the benefit of having a diagnosis (and I am not talking about a doctor's diagnosis but by reading about possible diagnoses and matching up what you read with what you observe) is understanding the underlying causes helps to take some of the mystery out of their behavior and does help one develop some empathy for what they are going through. It's not going to cure them but it can help us to handle it better.
About the porn thing, I know of at least two women on here whose Hs had porn issues during MLC. I can't recall if either one posted about it publicly though as it was some time ago and I also corresponded with them privately.
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I very much disagree Terra.
The brain is an organ. If this particular organ is not functioning as it should (due to a very long list of potentials, including something like an adverse drug reaction) and therefore their thinking is disordered (whether temporarily or permanently), then I would say we have a moral obligation to get that person assistance.
Should someone be having a heart attack, do you walk past, because it is none of our business, how their body/organs are functioning? Or if someone has had a stroke, for example, do we leave them to it to fend to themselves?
The point of having a diagnosis, would be that there may well be a diagnosis to be found, as there is the possibility of an underlying 'physical' disorder as the cause of the mental disturbance. In an ideal world, these could have been ruled out.
And if this subject is better understood, then I would hope it helps families in the future with increased medical people having increased understanding and being able to offer the family support or to steer them to support networks. As you say, medicine is constantly evolving.
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I was initially sucked into my then h's mental health vortex bc he was so obviously ill and i was frightened for him. With time and events of course I became frightened OF him. Which was even worse ::) I knew he was ill initially but I didn't know our marriage had died.
My relationship and marriage was always based on love freely given, on a deep appreciation. Or so it seemed to me. Much as I did not want to lose my h from my life, after a few WTF months, I honestly felt that I did not want a relationship which was not based on love and appreciation freely given. It felt less than somehow, even wrong...which was confusing bc my vows mattered to me very much even though they had obviously stopped mattering to my then h. After wrestling with it for quite a long time, I decided that I needed to look at my vows to this particular human through a different lens. One that was about respecting his choice even if I didn't like it or understand it and respecting my choice too to be in a relationship where I was appreciated...so the only way to honour my vows and who I thought we had been to each other was to let him go with as much grace as I could dig out. In the end I suppose, I found out that marriage to me was less of a contract and more a co-creation...which stopped when he wanted to end it. Obligation is about control isn't it? And assuming I am right about someone elses life path which is a pretty damn arrogant way of thinking isn't it?
It was difficult for me though bc it challenged almost everything I believed...about my faith, about love, about marriage, about family, about my h, about myself, about how my world worked. Everything.
Perhaps where my xh is right now is exactly where he needs to be to deal with his own unfinished business....it is his story and perhaps someday I will learn more about what the story was. Meanwhile I can only focus on my own story can't I? And other humans who DO want to play with me :)
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I don’t see much talk of sex/porn addiction in MLC discussions. It’s a blatant factor in the MLCs I’ve been subjected to. And finally the only partner recovery work that has been beneficial and focused as much on my own history, trauma, patterns, and health as on the MLCer’s. For whatever that’s worth.
My MLCW dropped this on me: "I have to watch porn just to have sex with you. I sit in the bathroom watching it on my IPAD." Prior to this, she had never mentioned it, or shown any interest in it, even when I mentioned it once or twice during the course of our marriage since lack of sex was a major issue. Just a few months before this wonderful little nugget, she had asked if I wanted to watch it together, for the first time ever. I declined and told her all I needed was her. Little did I know what was brewing in the background.
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Terra,
Thank you so much for a truly awesome post. :)
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I don’t think for me, my MLCer has a major mental illness. I think he’s depressed but he is living with an Ow. He’s the father of my three kids. So if he came to me for advice. Sure I wouldn’t turn him away. But frankly, I’ve told him at Bd he needed help. Other than that my hands are tied. It’s not my place any more and even if I said “Clington you need help” he wouldn’t listen. He would think it was my way of minimising his relationship with Ow.
Also, I don’t think any of us have it better or worse. We have it different. I turned 26, 2 months before BD. I had 3 kids by this point (6,3&1) and frankly it was firetrucking hard but I see silver linings. My kids won’t remember much of this. They may for a while but not for life. Also, me being younger meant it’s somewhat easier to rebuild my life. Colleges etc can get funding for me to take a course making them cheaper for me. I also think it’s probably an experience I can use later in life. There’s nothing easy about this but we’ve got to make the most of it. As best we can anyway.
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Also, me being younger meant it’s somewhat easier to rebuild my life.
I won't say that I think one is easier or harder but if I have to start over I would rather be younger. I'm 61 years old. Most of the people I know who are my age are pretty much set in their ways. There doesn't seem to be much room for compromise.
Financially, I would also rather be younger if I have to start over. Two years ago my wife received half of my retirement account in her divorce. If we would have stayed together we would have enough money in that account that we could retire today. Instead, I have about half the amount that I need to retire. Instead of retiring in a year when I'm 62 I'll be retiring in 9 years when I'm 70.
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I agree. That’s probably one positive I have. Also we were never married. So there was no divorce but it pushed me to make my own life. When we were together. He was the breadwinner and I depended on him financially. It’s not a mistake I’ll make if we reconcile or if I find someone else. There’s no harm being financially secure in yourself!
I think the negative side is, to be a single mum to 3 at 26 with a MLCer ex is HARD. Especially because aside from this forum. None of my friends understood.
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Being a single mom at any age, with or without an MLCer, is hard. My daughter has 3 children and was a single mom for several years after her husband chose to leave this world. It's a very difficult path to walk but your children are lucky to have you.
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From personal experience, having 2 kids who are now 10 and 3 (son was 6 when he left and my daughter wasn't born) to a person who was/is suffering from some kind of mental breakdown, the effect on my son has been huge. He has suffered mentally from the fallout. My daughter doesn't know any different and never will and is a truly happy little girl. I wish I could say the same for my son.
I really worry about him.
I realise I can't make my ex get help, but I really wish he would. I worry that my son will head in the same direction as my ex and I'd love to have an understanding of what I'm dealing with to help my son.
I'm not so bothered anymore about getting help for my ex to help him. I suppose I would have more empathy if I had something concrete to understand his antics, but the damage is done and I'm not getting involved anymore. Well, I can't since he married OW. If he came to me directly and asked for help, I'm sure I might try and help in some way.
I have this nagging memory that replays over in my head of my ex crying while we're on our last trip together before he walked out. My son had given up on trying to ice skate. He walked off in a huff saying he was rubbish. It was the first time he's ever skated. I was just impressed he stayed on his feet and managed to let go of the sides for a few minutes.
Anyway, my ex started crying as I encouraged our son back on to the ice. When I got back to my ex, I asked him why he was crying and he said 'he's going to end up like me. I hope he turns out like you'.
The point being, he can protest as much as he wants that he's fine, but he knows deep down there's something deeply troubled about him.
We both have similar FOO issues. I can't imagine that's why we stayed together, but I know I enabled his own behaviour and it's something I'm working on myself, so I don't end up trying to 'save' another man. In my defence, I was very young when we met and hadn't had any long term relationships before him, so I do cut myself a little slack.
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I'm so sorry New Day.
It's awful when you want to help them but they marry someone else, which gives you no legal options to help them.
Maybe down the road the new W will see he needs help, or he may one day come to you.
Until then just take care of you and your kids, and give your son any extra help he needs.
{{Big Hug}}
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I agree with what Kikki has written.
It is fine to describe challenges or at times impossibility of convincing someone with a mental health issue to seek help. I can personally relate.
However, I think this stops short at telling someone not to seek help. I think that this is unethical.
Approaching a doctor, therapist, or lawyer with the right language and information can help. In addition, knowing symptoms of mental illness may help you enlist the support of family and friends, especially early on when your spouse’s behavior is more extreme or if they have more moments of clarity.
As far as age range, yes of course, this is a nightmarish situation at any age and people have children well into their 60s even.
However, I think we can all appreciate how vulnerable small children are, and how they especially need and deserve protection. Any mother or father with concerns about their former partner’s mental health should be taken seriously.
Most people do not think of affairs as being driven by mental illness, but in fact affairs are very typical in manic episodes. Again, familiarizing yourself with the correct language to describe what you are seeing may help you find support.
Yes, we all have our own personal stories and our own threads. But if should be uncontroversial to advise people to seek medical advice, especially if they have a reason to believe their spouse could be suffering from an illness or event.