[BurnedBridge]

Oh my goodness, I'm so, so sorry to hear about the passing of your child, MadLuv. I can't imagine going through something like that and MLC. You must be incredibly strong. How are things going for you currently? Do you feel you're in a good spot healing-wise?

That curled in a ball in a dark corner thing...that's been me the past few days. I'm struggling to function. I'm staying with family but I keep isolating myself because it feels safer on my own. I'm struggling so much. I've been no contact, we will be paying for mediation in a few weeks and get the ball rolling there. I don't intend to be with him. He hurt me in ways I never thought him capable, and so callously as well.

The why is really getting to me lately. I don't understand why he did this. I thought I was a good wife. I was encouraging, loving, we always had fun and excitement together, we were affectionate. I encouraged and supported his career, going back to school. He was having bad health symptoms for over a decade, many doctors dismissed him but I researched and pushed a Celiac's test on him. Turned out it was Celiac's and then I made out house fully gluten-free from that point and his symptoms stopped. I encouraged him to strengthen relationships with his family members, I always was the one to find and order gifts for their holidays and birthdays. I rarely ever nagged. We rarely fought. We had been focusing just on the goal to get our house purchased so we were saving and not going out a ton to save, so not a ton of excitement with regards to going out.

I ate healthy to try and stay lean for health purposes and to look nice for both myself and for him. I was almost always in a positive, upbeat mood as that's just my general nature. Always dressed nice. I would surprise him with things, made delicious gluten-free meals for him. I was very close with his family, they all loved me and mine loved him. We both wanted the same things out of life. We have both been told by people that he's "punching above his weight" with me/I'm out of his league. I never saw it like that of course. We seemed so happy. We just got our house. I just can't comprehend it.

I don't know what I was missing to cause this. I don't even know if it is a midlife crisis, and if it is I keep reading that they feel trapped or unhappy with their life choices, so even if it is it an MLC and not just an exit affair, it comes back to me being a horrible choice he made. That stings so much. I don't understand it. I wasn't the perfect partner but I tried. I don't intend to date anytime soon but whenever that time comes, a year or two down the line, I'm worried I will never be enough for someone. I'm struggling so much with the "why"s today.

Does an MLC happen in really happy marriages? It seems it, based on a stories I've read on here, but why do we become the issue suddenly? How are there many couples that live through this period in their life without a midlife crisis or without their relationship dissolving from an MLC?

I am an absolute wreck today. 

[Tailspin]

BB,
Sorry you are where you are right now.   I'm approaching the 1 year mark as we speak.  I will say honestly that from most of what I have seen it tends to happen after traumatic events and with with others it happens when they achieved everything they thought  they wanted in life. 
 You sound like you were overly great to your husband.   I don't think anyone could have really asked for more.  It's one thing that I have struggled with for the past few months.  I've come to learn there is nothing that we did to cause it and it's their journey.   Hard pill I had to swallow.   I lived for my wife and family and it feels like a gut punch.  Prayer and Hearts blessings site has really helped me.
God bless you on your journey.   We all feel your pain. 

[Treasur]

Well, yes, plenty of us here genuinely believed - and experienced - what we thought were better than average marriages, sometimes for decades. And were just as confounded as you. (You can judge for yourself based on our posts if you think we are horrible people or delusional fantasists lol)

Nas posted a link on the Links thread you may find helpful, about the utility of acting the opposite to how we feel at a given moment. It sounds as if you are hiding a bit? Do you know why? Or what you are scared about? I’d encourage you to not hide quite so much….even small normal interactions with other nice humans can be rather healing.

And when you have a spare bit of headspace, you might want to look at this and reverse it. How much or how little or how similar or how different did your h (pre BD) treat you from how you treated him? Any conclusions are for you, no need to share them here unless it’s helpful, but sometimes part of un-confounding ourselves is to look through a slightly different lens, to pick through the bits that feel real and perhaps the bits that we paid less attention to. To get a sense of the refrain of our marriage underneath the melody perhaps.

What do you think his para would have been about how he was a ‘good husband’?

I thought I was a good wife. I was encouraging, loving, we always had fun and excitement together, we were affectionate. I encouraged and supported his career, going back to school. He was having bad health symptoms for over a decade, many doctors dismissed him but I researched and pushed a Celiac's test on him. Turned out it was Celiac's and then I made out house fully gluten-free from that point and his symptoms stopped. I encouraged him to strengthen relationships with his family members, I always was the one to find and order gifts for their holidays and birthdays. I rarely ever nagged. We rarely fought. We had been focusing just on the goal to get our house purchased so we were saving and not going out a ton to save, so not a ton of excitement with regards to going out.

I ate healthy to try and stay lean for health purposes and to look nice for both myself and for him. I was almost always in a positive, upbeat mood as that's just my general nature. Always dressed nice. I would surprise him with things, made delicious gluten-free meals for him. I was very close with his family, they all loved me and mine loved him. We both wanted the same things out of life. We have both been told by people that he's "punching above his weight" with me/I'm out of his league. I never saw it like that of course. We seemed so happy. We just got our house. I just can't comprehend it.

[UrsaMajor]

First and foremost, trying to "understand" why an MLC'er does what they do to the people they supposedly love is....

Like trying to taste green ....with your elbow....

Simply not possible...... and, in the grand scheme of things, a waste of time. We don't know why they do what they do. I am not sure that they themselves really know most of the time. They feel "driven" to do "something" to make themselves feel better (meaning to acquire affirmation and recognition from other external sources) rather than acknowledging their own right to be happy simply by virtue of their existence. They are so used to getting their "warm and fuzzies" from outside themselves because, inside, they are a hollow empty shell ....

Second, I think that a lot of us would have described our marriages as solid. Even if there were troubles, most of us had worked through them with our spouse before they went off into Schmoopie-land. Many of us are or were "fixers" in that we would read the needs of our spouse form their mannerisms, their reactions, their attitudes and take action on those queues before our spouse would even have to express their desires or problems.... That is why this often comes as such a shock to most of us.

UM

[KayDee]

My name is KayDee and I am a recovering Fixer. 

I could have written much of what you wrote about the things I did for my H. All in my stride, not thinking too hard about it. The thing is, IMO, people who hit this type of crisis missed a big ol chunk of maturation. And because many of us got together with our spouses at a pretty young age, we didn't notice, not like we would now, if we met a new person with this type of deficit. Many of us met our spouses not long after leaving our childhood homes and kind of segued into certain roles. I am not the mothering type, but I (used) to be the Go To Girl. I look back on my marriage and see that I made pretty much all the decisions. I was the coper of the outfit. Now I know that wasn't so healthy. It takes two to create that dynamic, of course. In my case, I think it led to some resentment from my H. He was reliant on me. Then things from FOO caught up with him and he couldn't cope. I wasn't able to cope with it either - his needs outstripped my capacity. In his mind I was abandoning him. Not true of course, and not the whole picture, but in one way or another he went looking for other external validations and 'love'. The hole that the crisis person has inside cannot be filled by anyone. They need to learn this to heal.

For me, although I don't think his crisis was my fault, I do need to own my over-fixingness. In hindsight, I did not help him grow up. This is something I am working on.  NO. MORE. FIXING.

And yes, we had a great marriage and friendship too. Until the pressure became too much and the fault lines caused the collapse. Absolutely all our mutual friends and (my) side of the family were completely floored by what happened. A couple of friends even cried. So I believe you 100% (as will probably everyone on this Forum) that you had a good marriage. And you will likely come to peace with that too. It was not your fault, he was likely always going to implode at some point because he didn't acquire the resilience needed for hard times. He probably got this far in life, with happiness and contentment, because he had you as a partner. He will learn, sooner of later, what he has lost. You will learn your high value and independence. It takes time though...

[MadLuv]

For me I think it comes down to a person that never had a self identity and for most are avoidant. I also felt I went above and beyond as a wife, but I was a nagger because he was very hard to communicate with. We had reached most goals people dream of, but he was always needing the next thing.  Something to be excited about. So, I just dont think no matter what the reason, family origin, past relationships, blah blah blah…. It just is going to happen.

On your isolating at times. I did that for sure. I know it’s not advisable, but I just couldn’t clear my head at times and unlike the MLCer I could not put on a mask when in deep distress and I did not want to be judged.  When you can then push yourself to get out and socialize. What I found that helped me was to create new connections and experiences so I had something to talk about. If you dont you get stuck in the past. People are talking about their lives and you have nothing to contribute except what has happened and EVERYONE gets sick of hearing it.

4 years from BD2 I still question why, but not why did he do this to me, but how does someone not recognize they need help and get it. Why does a person choose to blow up their lives rather than deal with things. When I asked my XH to see a therapist after BD1  he said, I can’t talk about it. I said, well then you have to move out and if you leave then we will have to divorce. He said, then we have to divorce. HE DOESNT WANT TO LOOK AT HIMSELF.  This past may his attorney told him they could go to court and lower alimony and he said, No, I dont want to deal with it. Nothing has changed.

So, just know that it doesn’t matter why, when or how. It’s not about you. Yiur just paying the price for a man that wont deal with himself.

[Nas]

More and more I’m starting to realize that the questions I asked after BD were not exclusive to this extraordinary situation. The truth is that we never know why anyone does anything and most of the time the reasons we think people are doing things (little things and huge things) are stories we’ve told ourselves. I don’t think that most people feeling this level of inner turmoil think “I need to get help.” Rather than thinking they need help, they absolutely believe that something needs to happen to make them feel better. So instead of them not wanting to look at themselves, they don’t know they need to. It’s a foreign concept to them, the thought wouldn’t even enter their mind. They’ve gone through life the way almost everyone does, collecting stories that have explained all the things that have happened in their lives and then using those stories as the basis for the bigger story of why they are the victim, why they need to run, why they deserve to be selfish blah blah blah. Not a lot of people stop and question their stories, and that’s not just people in crisis. But I think that does explain why it takes them so long to ever stop looking for an external fix.

[Treasur]

I was the coper of the outfit. Now I know that wasn't so healthy. It takes two to create that dynamic, of course. In my case, I think it led to some resentment from my H. He was reliant on me. Then things from FOO caught up with him and he couldn't cope. I wasn't able to cope with it either - his needs outstripped my capacity. In his mind I was abandoning him.

Dang, could have pretty much written that word for word lol.
I wasn’t a maternal type of fixer, saw those bear traps lol and have too much respect for other peoples agency plus a set of principles from my professional life, but I was a great coper and creator of good things and facilitator of nice stuff. My family were the same and I think my xh found that a kind of life scaffolding which made him feel good….until it didn’t. He was not a bad person but he was not a strong one or a reliable coper. Everyone who loved him then knew that, we just loved him as he was regardless bc, hey, no one is perfect, are they? 😜

He emotionally and practically delegated things he preferred to avoid, I think. Not openly but passively. I would guess he has transferred that to his second wife/family unless he has got a bit tougher and a bit more honest with himself about why he is/was who he is and if he likes that man. Maybe that was even a smart choice for him bc tbh all the post BD stuff changed me so much that I could not have gone back to being the same kind of scaffolding 😝

It was my instinct too at the time that some of his rage and contempt for me, consciously or not, was bc some bit of him resented some of that and felt angry in a way that I had ultimately failed as life scaffolding. Not fair, not reasonable and not my job, of course, but that was my instinct bc the rage and contempt was about something and came from somewhere. And that was the closest I could get to guessing at it.

I read somewhere else - and it made sense to me - that these folks are like china tea cups with an invisible hairline crack. You can drink tea out of them for years and then one day, your pour the tea in and the cup just cracks apart……

I agree with Nas too that some of how our lens changes applies to lots of situations in life not just our ex/spouse. I have a friend who - for reasons I partly understand - is very passive in our friendship. Hardly ever initiates, invites me to do anything or reaches out to make contact first. We last saw each other in April and I said to her then that it wasn’t working so well for me, that my door was open but I would leave it up to her to decide if/when she wanted to see me. Since then? Nothing. Much easier for the post BD me to accept that her actions are a simple message and that, for whatever reason, she evidently doesn’t see our friendship as important enough to invest in like that right now. And that’s ok. I have no bad feelings about it and I am not taking it personally. And not my ‘problem’ (if it even is one) to mind read or solve or fix bc my friend is an adult who can use her words or text fingers if she wishes. 😝

I choose to use my coper bits for other things and other folks who meet me a bit closer to the middle….