No one asks to have a MLC. But MLCers choose to have an affair. The affair is a choice. So is to divorce, etc.
A huge majority of MLCers have affairs with some estimates as high as 95%.....Why is that number so incredibly high?
Is it because the MLCer believes his own bs that the marriage was over in his mind before he cheated?
And now firmly believes he will never go back?
Or is the affair a necessary step of resolving the crisis (the Jungian shadow/animus theory)
Yes to all of the above I suspect.
Plus looking for an external fix that will make them feel better. Plus many MLCers feel the lure of affirmation and don't much like being on their own. And you get some support for whatever justification story you have about why you are doing what you're doing.
Grafting yourself onto someone else's life is a pretty easy way to remake your own too, isn't it? Like a teenager in a way, trying out different versions of you and different hobbies/interests. As most of us LBSers know, building a new life from scratch on your own is damn hard work!
Someone said here that it is remarkable that no one in MLC seems to leave their spouse and do a Masters, or found an orphanage, or learn a new language or write a bestseller or explore the world or some other more positive way of changing their lives....
My h could have talked to me about making some fundamental changes in our/his life. Moving house, changing careers, going to university, learning new skills or having some adventures from his own bucket list. A round the world trip would have been much cheaper than divorce and way more fun ffs.
And he could have done those things with or without me. Instead, he ran from all his obligations, spent 2 years in psychiatric care, stole, lied, got some tattoos and huge cc debt, acquired a new place to live and a dog and new friends in a small town courtesy of ow, experimented with drugs, got engaged while still married to me and subsequently married his next wife. Still under psychiatric care though last I heard....difficult to see how that is a great way to redo your life, particularly as he could have ended our marriage in a sane decent adult way and still made a new life with ow, just with a lot less drama and damage!
If ones morality remained intact during a MLC,, wouldn’t you see a lower percentage of MLCers resisting the pull to jump into an affair?
Well, yes, but if a chicken was a pig etc...
I suspect is a a combo of that powerful sense of me, me, me plus how they justify it.
And maybe that some of their old values were less deeply rooted than we (or they) thought.
And as Conway says, the pull of the opposite innthose four areas - I think it was God, body, work, family - and a strange self-destructive compulsion almost that we hear in those odd moments when they say 'this isn't good' but keep doing it anyway.
It isn't just affairs where their moral compass goes awry either is it? They lie, steal, embrace other addictions, abandon kids and family members....often going against the very values they spent years saying were central to their sense of who they were. Which of course creates more mess and damage and shame to address if they ever come through their crisis.
Not condoning what they do, it isn’t it just a little more understandable given the nature of MLC and what it does to their mind?
There is a difference between an explanation and an excuse. But it is a hard one to work with isn't it?
No different than dealing with an addict or alcoholic, I guess. Where does free will start and accountability in crisis end? In some ways, not so different for some of us as LBS who maybe do things under pressure or trauma that we later regret. But the key is that to move past that, we need to own it, accept it kindly and take action to stop and try to do better from now on. It seems to take a very long time for MLCers to reach that point, if they ever do.
And explaining something does not always convert it into being acceptable to have in our lives as an LBS does it? We can accept the reality of some behaviour, even feel compassion for it or with time find a kind of forgiveness, but still say 'no this is not acceptable for me to have in my life.' That is maybe part of our growth towards excusing others actions less and valuing ourselves and what we need more.
It's a painful step - I remember an old friend talking about her drug-addicted son and the point she reached when she just said 'no' when he stole money from her 6 year old's piggy bank, actually far from the worse thing he had done but a turning point for her. She loved him, she accepted the reality of his addiction but she also knew that it would never change until or unless he chose of his own free will to change it. She described it to me as believing he was 100%
accountable for his actions if not always 100% entirely
responsible for them. But either way, she and her family could no longer live with it as it was so she had to let her son go and hope that some day he would change. (He did actually but it took over 5 years and a lot of damage along the way).
I suspect I may always love the h and friend I knew and feel sorrow and compassion for both of us. But I also know that I can't change what has happened and that I didn't choose - and would never want - the kind of life that comes with a deceitful, destructive, unfaithful partner. It was a sad moment for me when I realised that, when I knew that no matter what happened or how much grace I showed my xh, I simply could never have back the core of what I most valued in him and in our relationship bc he had destroyed it and himself. But it is such an individual choice and others choose differently or believe that the real person is still in there and will be seen again. I stopped believing that. I could be quite wrong of course, but it was how I felt and what seemed most practical for me in order to move forward in my own situation.
Handling the crisis: Have I blown it?