[Treasur]

Thought I would bump the clanishers of the vanishers thread 

Occurs to me that our perspective on vanishers is maybe influenced by if we have kids or other remaining loose links. If we do, as some have shared here, with time it does seem to become evident that a) their new happy is pretty awful and they are still a hot mess and b) they do seem to snoop a bit on the LBS even if we assume they give us not a moments thought.

For those of us without those links, it is is obviously harder to believe that is the same in our situation.

I have found that being NC worked bc I thought of my former h as dead and behaved accordingly. I do not snoop and have blocked all social media links to him and ow. I do not know where he lives or anything about his life. I check once a year on LinkedIn to see if he is alive. I broke NC after 9 months to send him a HB text for a special birthday in March and received a ' nastygram' from owife in reply lol. I had and have no intention of contacting him again. I have no idea how I would respond if he contacted me and I don't expect it to happen bc he has been a 99% vanisher for a long time now and he has remarried a bit of a textbook ow.

But I wonder if the hardcore vanishers think of us as dead as well tbh. Maybe that is how they live with vanishing just as I live with no contact and not knowing and no closure. Most - even my hardcore vanisher - do seem to pop up with the odd weird text or message so I guess they occasionally have a brain hiccup. But I honestly wonder if they think of us as dead. Just a thought.

[nah]

Hmmm... well, if they think of us as dead, that would still mean they are thinking of us.

I sure hated our contact style in the early days. It was like ripping off a band-aide, in the same bed for 30 years to just gone. Mine didn’t cling or move in and out, he just left. He didn’t want to talk to me, he didn’t want to look at me, he didn’t want to think about me. I was evil for existing.

How does one put into words how much it hurt??

Now I see it as a gift.

Looking back, if he wanted to continue his abusive behavior towards me, I would have let him.
Let him?  I would have begged him for any scraps I would be “ lucky” to have shoved down my throat. 

Instead, I was released. Free to heal, whether I wanted to, or not.

Then once in a while, not often, just enough to know he’s alive, I get a message, a phone call, a bump in with a mutual friend, etc Just enough to know I should drop to my knees and thank the heavens that he vanished the way he did.

You guys are probably sick of hearing of the old stuff, I’ll still repeat it to newbies bc some of his word vomit was just so telling of how firetrucked up he is.... here’s some recent stuff...
 
Last message from a few months ago...
Didn’t mention the book directly (even though he tried calling me a day after it was on Amazon, coincidence??), but said he was “proud” of all my “accomplishments” 
Asked when I was moving from Chicago to Durham (I could understand knowing about Chicago but I hadn’t said anything about Durham in social media).

He does this every time we interact. Knows where I’ve been, who I have seen, details about where I work (details you could only get from researching), it’s just weird. Funny how one time when he owed me money I asked about a house he sold and HE accused ME of stalking. This was after pages and pages of messages of the improvements I did on MY house after he left (pictures were on Zillow, he even mentioned that I should remove one with a cat in the background). I responded “What?!?” You just sent over a dozen messages about my house, how did you know all the details of what I did after you left, not all of it was in Zillow!  In true avoider fashion, he didn’t respond.

Whatever. Let him look. It makes living big all that more fun when you have a vanished ex eating his heart out. 

[One day at a time]

Nah, I have to agree with a lot of what you said. When my H moved abroad and I barely heard from him I thought I was going to go insane. Now I actually see it as a gift because it has allowed me to let go and start healing.. I see a big difference in me between the time he was around to now that he isn't.

Treasur, I was actually thinking about that the other day. A very common thing we hear here is that the MLCer keeps tabs on the LBS. I don't see my H doing that at all because realistically he has no way of hearing anything. He lives in a different country, I don't interact with his family, even if SIL tells her H what I'm up to (even though she says she doesn't) I don't tell her certain things and my H doesn't really talk to his brother much. All of "our" common friends were really my friends so they don't talk to H. I don't put anything in social media.. As you, I don't have links like kids. I still have some practicalities to discuss but I never share anything about me when we exchange mails. So he really has no way of knowing what I'm doing and I don't think he's particularly concerned about that!

[nah]

Yes, I guess the only way mine could have truly “vanished” is if he left the country. He’s too much of a coward for that, he just moved a few towns over.

30 years is a long time to erase.
We have two kids (even though my daughter doesn’t talk to me, my ghost is always there)
To visit my son, he has to go to the house I own, with all our former furniture and paintings I made on the wall.
I have literally over a hundred relatives still in the state.
Add hockey families, dance families, band people, motorcycle people, former coworkers (his and mine, we both worked for large companies) geez, we even share the same hairdresser 

I’m in a different state and sometimes I get people sending me direct messages, I’m sure he gets bombarded with people dying to gossip about what I’m doing.

Again, I just sit back and laugh.
He has nobody to blame but himself.

[Nas]

I honestly don’t think mine is watching. At all.

But I went through my phone this week and deleted every contact that would cause any mutual people to show up as friend suggestions on Facebook and Instagram, etcetera.

I’m certainly not watching him.

[nah]

I honestly don’t think mine is watching. At all.

But I went through my phone this week and deleted every contact that would cause any mutual people to show up as friend suggestions on Facebook and Instagram, etcetera.

I’m certainly not watching him.

Nas, you did have some contact with yours this year, didn’t you?

[Tyks]

Hello all.
I find this thread more interesting than my own and I couldn't resist posting this. If the mods think it should be moved, pls feel free to do so.

This is my xh's horoscope for this full moon time. 

The focus is on your health and your mental health. You might have found yourself in the midst of a crisis lately, or perhaps you’re simply reflecting on life and your direction. Take a moment to heal and put the focus on your wellness. Sometimes, we need to take a break from life and live at a slower pace—and that’s fine.

It may be three years too late or right on time for that 3, 4 year mark. This month was busy three years ago. Our anniversary would've been August 17. A few days before he bought me a beautiful 20 year ring (there is a sweet back story but the rest of the events made that null). A few days after we went on a family vacation. August 26 2016 I got the speech ilybinilwy. He left. Lied about an ow. August 28th (his bday) he came home. That is when I went through his phone to figure out wtf was going on for a few weeks. Found comms between xh and ow. Promptly kicked him out.

I hate August... Maybe. I will learn to love it. Still too soon to tell even though I have accepted.

Keep posting clanishers!!

[Nas]

I honestly don’t think mine is watching. At all.

But I went through my phone this week and deleted every contact that would cause any mutual people to show up as friend suggestions on Facebook and Instagram, etcetera.

I’m certainly not watching him.

Nas, you did have some contact with yours this year, didn’t you?

I did. I mentioned the latest July weirdness I think on a discussion thread in passing but I didn’t share it on my thread. But since this is a thread for the clanishers, I will post an update here, maybe tomorrow when I can better organize my thoughts.
Feeling super beat down the last few days. Maybe it’s the full moon 🌕 

Love hearing from you, fellow clanishers.

[Treasur]

I wonder if there is a vanisher spectrum?
Or just situations where there are no links so no 'windows' to the vanishers life as it is?
Certainly I think boomerangs can become vanishers...do vanishers ever become boomerangs? Idk.

I have no evidence that my xh looks at all. If I had to guess, I'd think he almost can't afford to if his new happy is built on MLC sand and held together with the glue of avoidance lol. I suspect ow has probably tried given her track record. I shut down social media for a long time and blocked everything I could. Now I no longer want to let that influence me so much bc it came from fear so I am thinking carefully about how I use it again in both my personal and professional life.

I do think there are blessings with vanishers that we don't always see initially when the silence and pain of being ignored is so bewildering. Less rollercoaster, less explicit monster, less information about some of the horrors they get up to, less triggers to worry about their health or wellbeing even. Tbh once the practical links are unpicked, they often might as well be dead really. Often we have no idea if they are alive or dead, ill or well, or where or how they live. Which is a pretty odd experience after a long close marriage and hard to explain in RL.

But also less evidence of not normal, less confusion or doubt in their running, less things to watch to figure out what is going on maybe, less reassurance perhaps that it isn't us or that they are still a mess. It's normal for the brain to connect the dots when we don't know what's happening isn't it? And when we are traumatised and being treated with contempt by being ignored, our brain seems to fill the space with not such helpful or healthy stories about them, us and the reality of our past relationship.

It is very twisted but I think for quite a while I felt as if my then h did not value me enough to even do monster let alone explain or say goodbye ....that's an attachment wound of course, that negative attention is better than none....I do think even if we know it is irrational and even if it doesn't hit old FOO issues for us, it is hard not to feel less than....of course when irrational mad monster turned up for a while with the divorce process, it was exhausting and certainly didn't make me feel any better at all lol.

Time does do its work of course. I remember how awful it was in Dec 16 to go into hospital with no evidence that my then h gave a damn. With my next appointment it feels more 'normal' that this is so, that I am on my own and to plan accordingly and to feel no confusion about whether to inform him or not. Which is a blessing bc it was awful to feel the hole where my h used to be when I was ill. If I died, not that I'm planning to do so  , I'm not sure he would even find out and even less sure that it would matter to him at all. Although ow might throw a small party 

I have no idea why some vanish more than others.
I do know that logically it is about them not us...but I have no idea what bit of their character or MLC persona causes it. Fear? Guilt? Anger? New happiness? Ow/om pressure? No idea.

But I think the wound of being discarded and in a way silenced about ones own life and reality is a very particular type of wound that takes quite a long time to heal.

And that, and I speak only for myself, it creates a sort of inherent tension; a need to believe in your own experience of what you thought was real and who that person was before, to in a sense speak for yourself...but that can also make detaching tricky maybe. Easier to detach from the MLC version and easier to step off the rollercoaster bc it happens out of sight. But maybe harder to detach from the person you knew before.  With hindsight, I think that makes the LBS task with a vanisher much more about chewing on your sense of what was until it feels right, or right enough for you to be at peace with,  and then pulling your sleeves up for some serious grief work. But maybe much less useful to stand or hope that the person you knew still exists behind any 'fog'. Maybe vanishers create a much sharper schism between the old them/life and the new one....and that makes reconnection seem less likely? And easier for us to see them as two quite separate personas? Idk. But I imagine if the gap between the two personas ever cracks for them, it would psychologically be quite difficult...which is maybe why vanishers seem to turn into Vanishers with time. And maybe why some pop up out of the blue occasionally and then disappear again very quickly.

I think I have found my biggest challenge - as someone with a vanisher from a marriage with no kids - is working out what the point and value of those almost 20 years was and is to me now given that the other half of that shared life decided to behave as if it and me were without any value at all. No idea what he feels, but as that is how he behaved, it makes sense to me to assume that it what he believes now. And I'm not always sure I know now what I think the purpose or value was for me given that...a tricky work in progress lol. Easy to see now what it isn't in the light of postBD events...not to clear to see what it is though. Anyone else found an answer to that? 

Actually that makes me wonder too...and idk...if vanishers are more likely to remarry or more likely to move far away or more likely to not contact their kids or more likely to make other big changes in their jobs or how they live? A kind of 'in for a penny, in for a pound' with a side order of 'out of sight, out of mind'?

[stillbaffled]

I think I have found my biggest challenge - as someone with a vanisher from a marriage with no kids - is working out what the point and value of those almost 20 years was and is to me now given that the other half of that shared life decided to behave as if it and me were without any value at all. No idea what he feels, but as that is how he behaved, it makes sense to me to assume that it what he believes now. And I'm not always sure I know now what I think the purpose or value was for me given that...a tricky work in progress lol. Easy to see now what it isn't in the light of postBD events...not to clear to see what it is though. Anyone else found an answer to that? 

Treasur - I don't have an answer but would sure love to have one if anybody else does!! 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.  I feel as though many of your musings have crossed my mind on more than once occasion. 

I've not heard from or had contact with my MLCer since November of last year.   He lives 7 minutes from me!  I'm quite sure it's best for me that way.