1t pops up and always has something of depth and value to offer. And grace, lots of grace.
So much of what you said is rationally self-evident. Lots and lots of evidence in our own situations and in those we read here.
That most ow are disordered to some extent and nothing to compare oneself with at all.
That many stalk and badmouth the LBS - even when the LBS does not engage with it - bc it is a necessary part of the story for both. To be a better 'twu luv' worth this kind of damage requires a third bit of the triangle to be a shared worse 'not twu luv' to blame in order for ow and the MLCer to be on the same team. The LBS doesn't have to do anything at all, and is best to stay away from it for their own sanity, but the triangle exists in their heads anyway. In a way, the more they do this, the more obvious it is that they are not enough in their own right....only if they 'win' somehow against the LBS.
That the lure of drama and attention is a high for the MLCer, plus being able to avoid all the tough bits of life and looking honestly at the damage they cause to people who have loved and respected them for years.
Idk but I suspect that is why the bloom comes off the rose, not bc of limerence, but bc once the LBS disengages the rationale for the relationship changes. It has to stand or fall on its own merits. And drama highs are exhausting and messy. And if the MLCer does begin to see their own issues more clearly, their needs change. Having said that as 1t also says many probably stay stuck bc there feel they either have to make it work (or what was the point of all the damage) or they can see no way back or forwards (or have the courage or energy to try)
That it is rare that MLCers behave like people in a legitimate, healthy, happy relationship. They deny ow's existence often to the point of absurdity when the cat is well out of the bag and it would cost them nothing. I know my h did this and never once mentioned ow by name even lying on legal paperwork. They often behave quite badly towards ow, or vice versa, or say awful things about them. I still remember my silent shock when my h called ow a 'f**king c**t' a few months before he married her, language I'd never heard him use about any woman in 20 years. Or do the opposite and in the face of hard facts claim that ow is a close cousin of Mother Teresa. Like my h accepting ow's story that she stole from him as an act of love, a demonstration of how strongly she felt about him.
What this post also made me feel though is why it is so easy to see this in others situations and so hard in ones own.
1t and myself are part of the small sub-group of folks whose MLC spouses got quickly married.
1t has the benefit - although I am sure it has often been a double-edged sword - of seeing and hearing more directly from her h than I did with a mostly silent vanisher.
I think some of what makes it hard to get is that a bit of our brain is still running it all through the filter of the person we knew. And indeed the relationship we had with them.
Tbh I think for those of us with vanishers we see so little of the 'new' them that this is a particular challenge bc we don't get enough new evidence to overwrite the old.
So a bit of our brain - which knows what they were like when our relationship started, when they loved us, when we lived with them - assumes unconsciously that they will feel and act the same way just with a different person traded into our spot. Often actually those are the mind movies that hurt the most aren't they? The idea of your spouse doing familiar things but with someone else, cooking the same meals or enjoying the same kind of movies or chatting about the same kinds of things as they used to do with you.
But rationally...idk but I'm not sure that makes sense really. Partly bc ow is not us and will demand different things from them. Partly bc MLCers seem to change so many bits of their lives, not just us. Mostly bc actually this is rarely what it looks like and you can't replace years of love, respect and friendship by just switching faces as 1t says. And most of all bc right after BD ALL our senses and experiences scream that we are NOT dealing with the person we knew, that they are an unrecognisable alien...so how could they be that AND be the person we knew just with someone else. Makes no sense at all.
I guess I wanted to build on 1t's wise words though and cut us all a bit of slack, particularly those who have little contact or facts about their spouse's 'new' life.
We see things in other stories bc we don't have the mental overlay of a spouse we knew intimately. Years of a shared life leave a long list of things we used to know about one human being, deep and broad, everything from their likely choice from a food menu to the books and music they like to the things they worry about or feel but rarely say to others.
So it makes sense to our brain to transpose that person into this situation.
And there may be bits of them...my xh is unlikely to jump out of a plane bc he is deeply terrified of heights...but his favourite food may no longer be lamb and he may no longer consider big visible tattoos as common or like talking about physics or reading bc he lives with a nose-pierced tattooed vegan who left school at 16 and thinks 'Twilight' is a work of great fiction.
Is the MLC version of my h happier? Maybe he is.
But like 1t, if any substantial part of my h exists at all or ever does again, it is unlikely that he will feel content or that a relationship with someone like ow will make him truly happy. He may stay in it, of course; I am assuming that having married her, his bridges are burned and he will. I guess he won't be able to compare both marriages for another 20 years lol.
When I have been at my best in dealing with the sheer incomprehensible insanity of it all, it has always been when I am calm enough to combine my gut with logic. It's a gift when we trip over those moments isn't it? When I am in that place, I know who my h was with all his imperfections and all his best qualities. I know what he saw as good and bad, as things of joy and things of shame. My h would have been as shocked and horrified as I was by what he unleashed. If my h still was in charge of his demons, he would be here as 1t said. And logic? If I accept that something broke in my h and he became an unrecognisable opposite version (or 90% so) not just to me but everyone who knew him best, then of course his new relationship is not going to be the same or meet the same needs or joys. Thinking otherwise a brain habit, but an irrational one.
As 1t also says, makes no practical difference to my actions and choices really in my situation. No Miss Havisham here either. None of us can know if or how much of the person we loved and respected will eventually come out after all of this. They probably don't even know. And ow doesn't know the original so has a vested interest in feeding the MLC version. It is often said that while ow is around they are still in Replay. Easy to assume that it bc of the lure of ow, but tbh I suspect it is more bc what worked for someone broken and running no longer works so well if they start to recover. So, for those of us whose spouses remarried, it is just one more sad bit of the messy trap that will probably keep them running and broken for much longer.
And why after all of this, wondering what leads to any break up is a bit of a waste of time.
The simplest answer is that ow stops getting her needs met...which are probably about winning, attention, drama or lifestyle needs.
Or the MLCer starts to change so their needs become different and what were positives become burdens.
But nothing we do will influence that at all....so best to shrug and stay as far away as possible from the sandpit of the mutually disordered lol.
What usually leads to the eventual breakup of the affair?
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