Midlife Crisis: Support for Left Behind Spouses
Archives => Archived Topics => Topic started by: With Gods Help! on November 04, 2011, 09:19:27 PM
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This isn’t about you or the marriage this is all about him and the internal panic and confusion that he is suffering from. He is searching for some indefinable something and until his search is over you will be banging your head against a brick wall. This is one of the reasons why marriage counseling doesn’t really help in these situations.
The choice is, have him at home doing stuff in his search which for you as a spectator will rip you and the marriage to pieces OR have him living elsewhere where he can continue his illusory search for the non-existent ‘greener grass’.
Meanwhile you and the marriage are protected from his crazy antics and his lies about said crazy antics. This helps you to step off his roller coaster ride and get on with your life in a stable way in which ever way you decide.
Move on, wait or wait then move on, whatever the choice is yours. Remember, you won’t get any sense out of him while he is still searching.
You need to look after you because it will help him feel less guilty and will de-escalate the vicious circle that usually builds up of: crazy antics, lies, exposure, hurt, etc, etc, till you can’t take anymore.
Thing is I think to deal with MLC you have to take a counter-intuitive approach because all the usual things that you think you should do just don’t work. I did all the wrong things. Believed her when she said it was me, became ill and debilitated because of the guilt I felt because I drank her Kool-Aid, wouldn’t agree to a separation, tried marriage counseling, got individual counselor for myself but all it did was make things worse.
The name of the game is damage limitation. You have to protect the marriage by insulating yourself from him during his ‘crazy time’. That way you protect yourself and the marriage till he sorts himself out. It’s like ‘outa sight outa mind’, ‘what the eye don’t see the heart don’t grieve over’ and ‘ignorance is bliss’.
I know it seems like giving him a blank check to whatever the hell he wants to but really he is going to do whatever he wants anyway whether he’s living with you or you are separated. The choice is: Have him living at home where as the spectator you will catch him out in his lies and will get ripped to pieces OR having him living elsewhere where you don’t know what he’s up to and therefore he isn’t hurting you. It’s unconditional love, really.
But the thing is, separation gives him the space to see if the grass really is greener and you and the marriage don’t get ripped to bits with his crazy antics. Also, if he stays at home and because of that he ends up hurting you he will feel so guilty and bad that he will eventually start to blame you and resent you for his bad feelings.
Remember, truth and justice doesn’t really exist in his world for now. He has his own versions of the truth and they will suit him regardless of its right or wrong in reality.
I wish I had let my wife move out for a period of separation but I took the view that if we separated then that would be the end of the marriage. Boy I got it wrong. The harder I clung onto her the harder she pulled away. Ironically she had a friend who was going through MLC.
Her friend moved out with the kids but she and the kids saw the husband every weekend. After 2 years of her seeing if the grass was greener and him not being exposed to her antics they have now reconciled and gotten back together. I’m pleased for them but especially their 2 kids.
Remember, this is not about YOU it’s all about his messed up head. He is confused and his mind will change back and forth constantly.
Separation is tough, but it’s a lot easier than living with him while he is in MLC and it gives you both the benefit of YOU having some sort of normal life while he works himself out and you wait or you decide at some point to move on. At least you will have some measure of control over how much his crisis negatively affects you.
No matter what happens though you will cope. Believe me, it’s one of life’s truisms that none of us know just how amazingly strong and resilient we can be when we have to be.
I hope you find something useful in my comments and that you go on to save your marriage and find the Peace that you need.
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THANK YOU SO MUCH! This was really helpful and so validating to me. My H was at home for nearly two years and it practically killed me. It was awful. I too felt that if he moved out, we would be over for good. Not true. It is so much calmer and peaceful with him away. I just think that everything you wrote makes SO MUCH SENSE. It was as if I was reading my own story.
It isn't about me or any other LBS, but it sure FEELS that way. It is hard to have the head match the heart. That is my struggle. But, I read so many stories here, and I find strength again.
Thank you, With God's Help for your wisdom and for sharing this. It helps more than I can express.
Subooru
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What an amazing post. So true for me but sadly on the bad end of things. I wish I saw this post almost 2 years ago because it's too late for me now. He's divorcing me. It's over. Sad.
But I ask, what happens if they go out to see if the grass is greener and they find that it IS (OW/OM)? (Or they think it is/will be). THEN what.
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Thanks WGH.
It is good to have a reminder, now and then, that it is not about us.
I found it much easier when I moved back to our home town and husband stayed in the big city hundreds of kms from me. I know what he is up to because he has a public life, but I'm spared monster, direct emotional contact, any sort of real contact in fact.
I've found peace. No idea if I've save the marriage. Think first we need to see where husband second fault divorce process leads and if, in case there is a divorce, what comes of if. Also nto sure what happens if husband fault divorce goes nowhere like the first one. After first one we remained legally married but totally separated. NC, not seen each other, nothing.
I have a husband only in paper, really. And that is very, very, strange. Well, I don't have a husband at all, because, right now, he is not a husband, there is this man I'm still legally married with would be more accurated.
What is your suggestion for someone with a long term vanisher, WGH? Anything to add to your former comments?
Must say in a way a vanisher is better but you also start wondering what are you doing on your own, without a trace of your spouse...
Gutted, divorcen does not have to be the end.
Good question, what if they find the grass is greaner?... Something tells me that the grass is not greaner if they spend 20 or 30 years with OW/OM...
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What an amazing post. So true for me but sadly on the bad end of things. I wish I saw this post almost 2 years ago because it's too late for me now. He's divorcing me. It's over. Sad.
Divorce doesn't have to be the end of the relationship; it just means more work has to be done to fix things.
I don't have any statistics in front of me, but I can speak from my own personal experience that getting remarried is possible; from the time that I proposed to my wife to our wedding, my parents got divorced and remarried. (There was an OW, and of course once he was living with her that grass turned out not to be so green after all...)
But I ask, what happens if they go out to see if the grass is greener and they find that it IS (OW/OM)? (Or they think it is/will be). THEN what.
It is certainly possible for someone to marry the person they ran away to be with; but that doesn't mean their relationship will be successful, any more than your divorce has to mean that you are through.
The statistics show that the likelihood of divorce goes up with each successive marriage; and marriages that begin with infidelity rarely work out in the long run.
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Divorce doesn't have to be the end of the relationship; it just means more work has to be done to fix things.
That's where I'm at right now- divorced and now we're living together almost exactly a year later. :o And boy did you hit that on the head with more work having to be done to fix things. ::)
As much as I try to have some empathy for him; this is a LOT to try to work past. And some days ( like today) I really think I can't.
I think most of the damage has been done to me and now the work has to be done by me and it makes me madder than he**!!! >:( >:(
I HATE playing a victim but I didn't want any of this to happen and had no choice. Now it just feels sometimes like a humungous "Do Over" and I simply can't wipe the slate clean.
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Thank you WGH.
Sil x
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Divorce doesn't have to be the end of the relationship; it just means more work has to be done to fix things.
That's where I'm at right now- divorced and now we're living together almost exactly a year later. :o And boy did you hit that on the head with more work having to be done to fix things. ::)
As much as I try to have some empathy for him; this is a LOT to try to work past. And some days ( like today) I really think I can't.
I think most of the damage has been done to me and now the work has to be done by me and it makes me madder than he**!!! >:( >:(
I HATE playing a victim but I didn't want any of this to happen and had no choice. Now it just feels sometimes like a humungous "Do Over" and I simply can't wipe the slate clean.
May I ask why are you living again with your husband if the two of you are divorced?...Given that you are already divorced and you're finding it so hard, would it not be better if each of you would live separated and meet now and then?...Just wondering if space would not be better for you right now...
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This isn’t about you or the marriage this is all about him and the internal panic and confusion that he is suffering from
I need to keep reminding myself over and over again.
I agree that it is easier for me that he doesn't live here and as I have experienced, I am better not having much contact..that's for me because any contcat reminds me of the rejection. That part is about me...the intense emotions that accompany the rejection.
Each day, the hardest part continues to be when I wake up, remembering the routines we used to share...today, we'd have coffee, go to church, come home and make bacon and eggs, do some house work, watch some football..I can FEEL it so clearly yet we haven't done that for 27 months.
But once up, I have my own routine for Sundays...and it is a peasant one and gradually, I start to feel ok.
We also must know that we have choices too....in my heart, I realize that he has changed and that the person he is today would not be someone I would have chosen in the past BUT the problem is I still remember him as he was...the hope is that one day, a new him will emerge and of course there is also a new me......and that's almost as scary...so, I really try to get him out of my mind and proceed forward.
Thanks for the post WGH's....we all need reminders.
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I totally agree. If my h hadn't moved out I know our marriage would have disintegrated. I packed all his things and told him to leave. He had already rented an apartmebt but woyldnt leave the house. I caught him in a lie and just lost it. Told him I wanted a divorce and told him to get out. Of course after I srytled down and he settled down we both agreed that we didn't want a divorce. He moved out in July 2011 and lives about five minutes away. Our relationship is pretty good considering. If i had to deal with him at home that wouldn't be the case. I don't want to know what he does. If i did I think it would be harder to reconcile if that day comes. I had thought about hiring a PI but decided against it. That knowledge won't do anything but hurt me and i dont need that. I have two small children that need me to be mommy everyday. With him gone I can do that.
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An amazingly sightful post...I am staying with a friend at the moment and it is very peaceful - we are sitting in the garden with the stars above and having just read your Post WGH I feel calm and at peace....
Thank you.
Foxy xxxx
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Very VERY good reminder!
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This has been a great thread for me to read. Thanks for posting and all the comments too.
My H dropped his first bomb in Nov 09 and moved out for less than 2 weeks. In Feb 11 he said he wanted out again but did not leave. Things from my perspective had been getting better and better fairly recently. H was under a great deal of stress at work and financially, feeling a failute etc when he dropped the ILYBINILWY bomb 3 weeks ago. He said he was leaving so I asked him to leave. I have wondered if it was the right thing to do for our relationship. I still don't know at the moment as we have had very little contact and I have not seen him. My girls and I are missing him like crazy but only missing the good bits of him. We know he was unhappy for whatever reason and our house in more calm. No walking on eggshells here anymore. No feelings of rejection that I got every now and again etc. Only time will tell if H will come back but if he does I hope it's a new improved version.
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Thank you for this post regarding the husband bashing on this board. This is a support site, not a spouse bashing site.
I greatly appreciate you for having the courage to stand up for our sick spouses, they cannot help their actions, but that doesn't make life any easier on us.
Yes, we are all hurt and shocked, never dreamed anything like this could ever happen to us, but they are so confused and so are we until we come here to this wonderful site and grasp the dynamics of MLC.
RCR has been a God send to all of us, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate her for sharing this knowledge with all of us. Sometimes it makes me sad we don't express to her how much we appreciate all the hard work she does to help other women and men who find themselves in this sad situation.
Thank you WGH, and RCR too!
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bumping this up for the newbies
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Thanks for the bump. I had never seen this. The MLC process starts out as seeming like it is all about the LBS. How can you take it any other way? Then after your head clears up, you stop feeling less desperate and confused and you see it more clearly. My H definitely thought it was all about me at first and I believed it all. And there's truth in there too. No denying it. But now that he's gone, trying to "figure himself out", he gets all--"this is not about you--why do you have to make this all about our relationship all the time?" Because from his perspective, I'm being selfish by trying to pull him back in before he has sorted out the other stuff. And he's right in a way. That's what I'm trying to work on now.
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This is worth reading. Rider posted it on NoRegrets thread. An exerpt:
Romantic Infidelity
Surely the craziest and most destructive form of infidelity is the temporary insanity of falling in love. You do this, not when you meet somebody wonderful (wonderful people don't screw around with married people) but when you are going through a crisis in your own life, can't continue living your life, and aren't quite ready for suicide yet. An affair with someone grossly inappropriate—someone decades younger or older, someone dependent or dominating, someone with problems even bigger than your own—is so crazily stimulating that it's like a drug that can lift you out of your depression and enable you to feel things again. Of course, between moments of ecstasy, you are more depressed, increasingly alone and alienated in your life, and increasingly hooked on the affair partner. Ideal romance partners are damsels or "dumsels" in distress, people without a life but with a lot of problems, people with bad reality testing and little concern with understanding reality better.
Romantic affairs lead to a great many divorces, suicides, homicides, heart attacks, and strokes, but not to very many successful remarriages. No matter how many sacrifices you make to keep the love alive, no matter how many sacrifices your family and children make for this crazy relationship, it will gradually burn itself out when there is nothing more to sacrifice to it. Then you must face not only the wreckage of several lives, but the original depression from which the affair was an insane flight into escape.
People are most likely to get into these romantic affairs at the turning points of life: when their parents die or their children grow up; when they suffer health crises or are under pressure to give up an addiction; when they achieve an unexpected level of job success or job failure; or when their first child is born—any situation in which they must face a lot of reality and grow up. The better the marriage, the saner and more sensible the spouse, the more alienated the romantic is likely to feel. Romantic affairs happen in good marriages even more often than in bad ones.
Both genders seem equally capable of falling into the temporary insanity of romantic affairs, though women are more likely to reframe anything they do as having been done for love. Women in love are far more aware of what they are doing and what the dangers might be. Men in love can be extraordinarily incautious and willing to give up everything. Men in love lose their heads—at least for a while.
From: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200910/beyond-betrayal-life-after-infidelity
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EXCELLENT articale!!!! Sure seems to be the truth of it all.
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Brilliant article thanks for posting. Pretty much sums it up for me....and many more I am sure!
I am going to really "crank" up my own life right now, he can have her and all she entails. In the meantime am growing into a person I really like and soon I hope to be past all this.
I saw my doctor this morning, he was wonderful he did say all the blame they lay at our feet is because they are actually mentally not well, I am really starting to think long and hard about what he said. Of course my doc was more interested in my own mental health after all this, I have trouble "letting go" he told me to think of it as a cancer (in my exes mind), he told me I tried hard to keep our marriage together (I did - my ex even laughed at my efforts at the time). My doc told me it is time to make my own life without hope for him to come to his senses, he said he has made up his mind! Whoa that hurt but it is a fact, I have faced some trying times this past few years my ex could not care less. Its time I gave up I think, he did this once he can certainly do it again. But one thing I know for sure, I know my old ex and people DO NOT change that much (you are who you are), my ex goes quiet when he is "unsure" and strange when he was unsure of anything (in the 35 years we have been together - I know that for a fact). But it will take her time to figure that one out - as it did me. So instead of me thinking all is wonderful in paradise maybe it is not. Or maybe it is, all I know is I have to make my very own paradise and not waste any more time wanting my old ex back - because that is not working for me.
I have come so far on this journey, and I am sure at some point I will see the reason this happened at this time in my life. Already people are validating me in a way I have never had before, come to think of it I cannot remember the last time he said he was proud of me for anything, so maybe this is for the best. Someone who truly loves you surely gives you support when you achieve something and supports your efforts. Thats what I want for my future, and that is what I want to give to someone else at some point.
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Actually there are two types that fit MLC in that article.
Romantic Infidelity
Emotionally Retarded Men In-Love
That manifests as another type of Romantic Infidelity.
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Hi RCR,
I really feel like giving up the fight to keep my family together. I still have a family he is just not in the picture. Do I go with my gut or believe in MLC or a confused man. He seems so happy with her but he was happy with me too so WTH?
I will not play second fiddle to another woman, and that is what he is doing. I have been thinking of asking him for a divorce, not to force him into anything but because I think it may give me total closure on this. I am giving myself until just after Christmas to decide, problem is I cannot afford one ..he can
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cj
Thanks for reposting this. I had not seen it first time around
It's a brilliant description of the "falling in love" aspect of the MLC affair.
I saw my H last week for the first time in 7 months. I'll be posting about it on the SB where my thread is. He is 3.5 years into his MLC affair, 22 months since BD and moving in with OW.
It's a shipwreck. An absolute shipwreck. EVERYTHING this article says describes his sitch. He's a broken man and told me he's "hit bottom" and "been to really scary places" emotionally. I suspect he was referring to suicidal thoughts.
It's sad but also amazing how much of a "script" this experience of the MLC is.
TMHP