Midlife Crisis: Support for Left Behind Spouses
Midlife Crisis => Our Community => Topic started by: Yo on March 31, 2026, 11:19:27 AM
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Hola!
After long time ago I am here again looking for help!
starting MLC in 2017 and BD around January 2018.
From the first year, each time he had a touch and go, I believed he was reconnecting, now I know that was my desperation to have him back or have what we had back.
He never left, I did! but he was always present, phone calls, meals, our daughter activities and stuff. But he was always with OWs, three OW during this time. The first and last, intense and complicated, the one of the middle with big consequences!
with OW number 2 he has a baby, now 3 years old son that he hid to everybody until December 2024, because I found out.
Last year was hard, D13 knowing she has a little brother, me disappointed, and him, realizing all the damage he had done but still with OW number 3.
We talked a lot and support each other in some things during this time. I knew about OW but she didn't know he was with us must of the time, I felt like the OW some times. :-[
Now they are done, he started therapy last year, and told me that would like to start slowly to be sure he is healing so as not to repeat the same mistakes. I would like to have my family back but during this almost 9 years, I have been naive about a lot of things and I don't want to fall again in the same illusion.
And this is what I would like to discuss...
How do you know it was really MLC?
If it was really MLC, how do you know he is out of the tunnel?
How do you trust again?
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Hi Yo,
I am approaching 4 years and have not reconciled. I have not spoken with my wife for a while but we co-parent with an App.
My sense of MLC is that sudden change, urge to run and vilification of the LBS. They seem to be key features and make you think it is not normal. For me, that is how I am certain what happened to us was mid life crisis.
As to determining how it has ended, I cannot really answer but I suspect there would be the return to normalcy and your partner appearing more themself. My wife appears to be becoming more normal now but that could be wishful thinking. She still has a boyfriend but it seems to be winding down. Our contact is more rational and less strange.
Your husband going into therapy is a good sign.
But the trust bit is hard isn’t it. Even after all the damage I would still take my wife back. But I would be scared. And I challenge myself if this is for the kids or for me but I know it is both. I do feel blessed that I don’t think I will ever have to decide as my wife is so proud and stubborn she would never come back after what she had done. And I guess that is part of it too, the risk is on both sides.
But love keeps no record of wrongs. And I reckon a risk is worth taking if you know you can survive it not working out.
I wish you luck. But go slow.
Help
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Hi Yo,
How do you know it was really MLC?
If it was really MLC, how do you know he is out of the tunnel?
How do you trust again?
You might want to consider ...does it matter if it was a MLC or not? I think that there are several signs that they are having a crisis but no definitive test. The change in who they once were, their actions that are opposite who they once were...many things that have been discussed here and the similarities in the stories do lead me to believe in MLC.
Maybe we never really trust them or anyone else again, or perhaps it takes a very long time of them showing consistently that they can be trusted.
My husband came home after 16 years...like yours, he was always sort of in our life but he also lead a very different life and kept very secret about his lifestyle.
He came home when he was diagnosed with cancer and died 6 months after his diagnosis. It was a very intense time and he was very very sick. We thought we had more time. :'(
But it was also very sweet and he expressed that he always loved me and asked if I would consider working on us again...as he became more sick, soon before he died, he asked if I would marry him again.....and many things that he did allows me to believe that he meant it...
I have always wanted our love to return, our family to be together and it was amazing how much he trusted me during those last terrible days and nights.
We did not get the chance to see if we could have come back together...both of us had changed and I told him that it would have to be something very new.
We were together as a family as he left this life..what I had always known to be true in my heart...even though civilly divorced, the Catholic Church does not acknowledge civil divorce...we never had our marriage annulled and neither of us had remarried, so according to several priests, we had always been married and still were. I had always been firm in my belief about the permanency of marriage so I was not surprised by this.
Life is always a risk..tomorrow we could be gone...and even though we were not together for 16 years, my grief is very deep...this is really hard for me and our daughter.
What I did see in those 6 months was how very easy it was for us to be on the same page, the closeness we once had was still there and how much I still loved him.
Only you can decide if you are willing to take a risk to be with him again...but MLCers do get through their crisis and I think many would like to return but do not think they can. You can keep the door open as you always have done, if that is what you want.
I look forward to reading more as time goes by.
Heartsblessing used to say, as long as there is love, there is hope. I never stopped loving him.
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How do you know it was really MLC?
I want to echo a different aspect of the this question: WHY does it matter if it was MLC? Is the abandonment and loss of trust any less hurtful or damaging depending on the answer?
If it was really MLC, how do you know he is out of the tunnel?
I personally do not believe in the "tunnel" analogy of MLC. MLC is like a collapse of a building, you do not "come out" of a collapse. It is perhaps possible, with a great deal of introspection and work, to rebuild a version of the building. If you look at it this way the answer becomes much easier.
How do you trust again?
And the real question. Before HOW did you want to ask WHETHER you can trust again? I am not hinting at an answer, simply saying first there has to be a possibility to trust again BEFORE you begin the very long, hard and time consuming path to trust again. That part will require consistent and repeated actions from the other party. Even if they are "perfect" (which is unreasonable and not very likely) trust has two axis, and the part that lead to you is damaged. So two parties have to a great deal of work and time to get somewhere.
I want to add another question: if you felt completely devalued and discarded by someone what would let you feel SAFE that this kind of sudden rupture would not happen again? If someone is capable of certain states of being why would that ability simply "vanish?"