[nah]

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!! 

I’m not sure if this is an answer but it’s how I have delt with the same exact feelings.

I guess I have a bit of an unique “vanisher”. I could text or call him this very minute, and he would answer. Not only would he answer, he would be friendly (wasn’t like that at all in the early days, but it is now). I could even ask the hard questions (do you have regrets, do you ever think of “us”, are you happy?, etc). That’s where it would get sticky though, good or bad, his words wouldn’t matter. What could he possibly say that would change the past, present or future?

So why do we need to know what value our 10, 20, 30 or more years meant to them?  Why? Some of us will use the word “closure” but the burden of “closure” is not up to them, it’s up to us. Maybe that’s not why we are wondering what we meant to them for “closure”, maybe we just want to know if it was all “real”.

What does “real” mean?  At 3 pm on August 2nd in 1986 we were married in a church (I have pictures, copies of the documents, witnesses, etc) so that’s a fact. We bought property, had children, went to events, shared the same bed.... again, I have evidence. Oh? That’s not what you meant as real?  Oh you mean, what it meant to them? 

Why does it matter?  I know what it meant to me. His thoughts can’t steal my memories. 

[Treasur]

I'd like to get to that spot, Nah, and sometimes I do.
But I don't stay there, so it's a work in progress.

Occurs to me too that this 'to be decided' bit is also why I can't do forgiveness yet. Not sure what I'm forgiving perhaps or sure that I have enough positive feelings towards ALL of who he is that I even want to.

It's hard to describe.
It isn't about doubting MY memories or reality or even MY experience of him. I did, but I don't now.
What I am not sure about at all is what the point of it all was as part of my life story, what the value was of it for me given what happened or how I use it in my next chapter. I'm not even sure that my not knowing is about HIS valuing it, or more likely not. It is more the fact that a lot of what I believed turned out to be quite wrong and the story turned out to be rather different...so it really is about how or if I value any part of those years now if that makes sense. Or what I gained from them held up against the cost which has recently been so high. It really isn't about his opinion at all. I think it is more about me putting a price ticket on it all.

Maybe it's just particular to me...who I am, or my age, or my other losses, or the kind of vanisher I had..or the kind of married life we had. Idk. Might be just a group of one here 

You're quite right that he can't take my memories and facts are facts.
But this experience has left me not so sure if those memories are of a good, bad or even a pointless thing bc I suppose his behaviour changed the context and the ending and maybe polluted some bits that I remember.
I'll work it out bc I need to. I understand that others might not feel the same kind of itch or think I am being too ruminate-ish about it. But it is how I feel.  My assumption, perhaps wrongly, is that if I had children or a house or something else concrete to look at that came from those years, I might feel differently. Or if I were younger and thought that I could use my lessons in another marriage.  But in my situation, it just was the reality that events removed or my h destroyed almost everything and everyone bar me and handsome Louis the cat 

I really was already so vulnerable and adrift when my xh kicked me in the metaphorical teeth and burned the house down figuratively speaking. I suspect that is why I couldn't save much and why sometimes it all seems rather pointless. There is a huge disconnect between how my life was...Big Weird Gap....how life is. My need to figure it out does feel like it is part of moving forward though to what life will be, so that's a good thing.

But I am not the kind of person who can live with a sense of nothing really mattering...of it all just being pointless random s$it some nice and some not...or not yet lol...when I did feel that way, it made me feel there was no point to anything including me and that's not a spot I want to revisit 

[sparklestar]

These are all such good points. I have to say I have struggled with the ‘what did it all mean / what was the point / was it real’ too. I mean I am pretty sure that my 12 years with XH was ‘real’ I am also pretty certain that whatever ‘happened’ (MLC) changed him as a person and that’s validated by friends and family - he changed so much yet I still struggle to look back on the 12 years with any fondness at all. I don’t treasure memories it’s like they were all ruined, trashed and mean nothing now. It’s like when I think back I KNOW we had good times, we were happy, that I was happy so in principle they are happy memories but they mean nothing now - those memories have been trashed. I can’t ever reminisce about that past life because it means nothing. I think the only thing that might ever change that is to learn he regrets it all one day, that he made a mistake, not as in returning to me to reconcile that ships long sailed but I mean just to admit it to me one day.

And I know it’s orobBky not healthy to rhinkbtjis way but I can’t help it and I’ve struggled to see it any other way.... 

[nah]

I do understand what you are saying bc I did have those same feelings for a long time. I guess some of those feelings do still poke at me from time to time, tbh.

I guess, for me, I just try to do the best I can to focus on the good things (easier for me bc I’m more than six years in). Yes, sometimes it still doesn’t make sense, I can remarry, travel, excel at my career, write a book, etc but is losing my daughter worth all that?

So what was the purpose?

I’m not very religious but many will say their God has a reason. Maybe that’s true,.. idk.

Maybe we will understand in time. I guess for me, writing my book (and this forum)  has led me to helping others. Maybe that’s a factor to why I was drawn to my current husband. He is a sober alcoholic and puts much of his time into service to others. Maybe that’s the purpose of what we went through, T, helping others.

[Milly]

Treausur, I feel like you, and I have kids. I still can't find the worth in the 25 years married to my H. Like Sparkle, I can't look back over my marriage and feel anything positive about it all, because BD makes me doubt there was ever any true good bit to it.

I have the children but I could have had them with someone who would still be loving/wanting me now, who wouldn't have annihilated me, who would still be a family for my kids. Instead all the years of love and sacrifice, because no matter how good it is, marriage is sacrifice too, I have absolutely nothing left for it. I'm working harder than I've ever worked in my life, have no energy to GAL, plus as you mention, our age is a factor. To have been BD'd at 40 would have been equally painful, but there would be more time to have a new life beyond H. At least this is how I see it.

Just like you, I'm really struggling to see the point of my marriage. It's been a complete waste of the main part of my life. It feels like a rip off to be honest. And now I'm having to force myself to find purpose in life beyond being a mother figure who provides for her kids. And once they are independent? It's all such a crap shot. I envy the LBSs who have moved on. I can't seem to do it even if I really want to. You see you're not alone in your thinking.

And to go back to another question you asked about the vanisher. I think the vanisher vanishes so he doesn't have to think about what he did to us. It is out of sight of out mind, even though many of them decide to vanish down the road. It's like us, when we go NC, which is really hard to do, we do feel a teeny bit better. I bet the MLCer also feels better when he vanishes and can pretend we don't exist, and what they did didn't happen. Just like we imagine they are living it up with unicorns and things, they tell themselves that we have moved on and are perfectly happy, too. They can't face us since we make them feel absolutely awful just by still existing.

[CallingHeart]

As a fellow clannisher, I don’t have the answers but I do ponder the  “why” of it all.   

Although my marriage is shorter than most on here, it’s no less valuable, sacred, and will remain a part of my life I consider a gift. Even his di-force can’t take that away.  The way he betrayed and abandoned me still haunts me and probably always will.

I do try to empathize with him.  I figure it’s one of these categories (from his POV):
1) marrying me was a big mistake
2) abandoning and di-forcing me was a big mistake
3) I never cross his mind since he successfully cut me out
4) I haunt his thoughts too

The odd numbers above are indicative of my esteem.
The even numbers above are too.
So I work at carefully picking up the pieces of my opinion of myself and try my best to love me when I feel unloved or unlikeable. When I’m alone and it’s quiet (no kids) I try to embrace the mundane and pull myself into the now and not the past, and not the future.  It’s a tough exercise!

The choice to frame this journey in a negative or positive light is mine to make.
I cycle through both and I recognize how deep the scars are still and nevertheless when it’s all said and done, I do believe there’s a reason for this journey even though I don’t know what that is.  I get the privilege (and I mean that with a capital P) to be the person with integrity, grace, and love (although I struggle with loving him still), I can and do ask God to help me with that...

[Treasur]

You guys are diamonds 
I can't tell you how encouraging it is to know that I am not the only one with these thoughts.

Sparkle - if it helps bc you are a little bit behind me, I felt like you did exactly until maybe a few months ago. And then strangely I pushed myself to clear out old photos. And the photos brought the moments back. I could feel them and I knew they were real at the time for me AND my h. It wasn't seeing the photos exactly, it was the memory they triggered. They sort of took me back bc PTSD had shut down a lot of my memory. And tbh I could also SEE the difference in his face and eyes, what he was vs what he became. Now I accept that most probably he no longer has those memories, but I do and they were real at the time to him too. If he ever is that man again with those memories, he will be as heartbroken and horrified as I have been....but I don't know if I believe that bit of the MLC story...or maybe just not about my xh. Time has a funny way of showing us the truth it seems. And now I find I get little flashes of memory out of the blue, quite small things, and they are a comfort now not a trigger. So my question 'was it real' has gone....my question of what the value of it was as a whole? As I said that is my new work in progress. So, give it time, my friend.

Nah - thank you for being so honest that even now you have the odd 'itch' bc you are such a fantastic example of sassy GAL, much more than I was, so it is easy to assume that you don't have those feelings. And yes, maybe there is a way to use this stuff for good, a different kind of purpose even if I can't see it yet. Maybe even this discussion is part of that for us and fir as yet unknown clanishers with vanishers in years to come?

Milly - I have had that ripped off feeling too. And the path not taken...would I have had a child with someone else? More money? Of course, we can't know can we? And we can't undo the past only make peace with it. What I will say though is that your kids were a co-creation....you might have had different kids with someond else but the uniqueness thbi each of your children only exists bc they were created from both of you. Which has to be worth something. Your h may no longer deserve that blessing or see it, but I am sure you do and your kids do and hopefully some day your grandchildren will. I suspect you are quite right though in what you say bout vanishing for them vs NC for us...maybe the vanishers who look are trying to reassure themselves that we are just fine? Or some still feel a tiny bit of connection or possessiveness? Idk.

CalLing - completely agree with your point that your evaluation of it is influenced by how you feel about you. And that there comes a point where it is easier to own that and choose what you think even if you can't know what he thought, thinks, or might come to think. Grief and PTSD really made a sad shell of a woman, far from the confident woman I had been before when - maybe arrogantly - I had simply never felt less than. Not in my life and not in my marriage. So bc I felt - and truthfully was - a rather broken feeble creature, I didn't feel like much of a fun prize lol. Bc I wasn't; I was a sad battered thing. But as the PTSD went and I felt like Me again, it became much easier to see myself as I had seen myself before and actually as my then h had always seen me. As a rare kind of woman he had always felt he was blessed to have. He may have changed his mind or dropped his stdards lol...but now that I am Me again, it is easier to try to evaluate what it all means for/to me without the cloudy lens if that makes sense. I suspect it is another combo of Time and Wound Healing


Bless you all though for 'getting' the point that I was trying to make and not sure that I did. That it is a slightly different question from whether it was 'real' before. That working out what the whole means to me for me is important and nothing at all to do with his opinion now. I don't know why it helps so much sometimes to know I am not the only one trying to pin down and resolve these things...but it really, really does. Thank you fellow clanishers 

[Nas]

Now I accept that most probably he no longer has those memories, but I do and they were real at the time to him too.

Just chiming in here about the above quote (bold emphasis mine).
I have this thought all the time too, but I do recall that my IC way back in the beginning once told me that it's not possible to lose memories (except in cases of Alzheimer's or injury that causes decreased blood flow to a certain part of the brain, etc).
But supposing our former spouses are in MLC, they may successfully suppress old memories a majority of the time, but at least according to my IC, they don't have complete control over when memories creep back in (while awake or in dreams).  So my opinion is that they have all the memories and for a time (sometimes a very long time) they have an extraordinary ability to suppress them or avoid them.

[Milly]

Nas, I agree with you. I believe that willingly or unwillingly, the MLCer has the ability to suppress those memories. I kind of suppress them too because they hurt or seem based on lies.

I wish there were some LBS commune where the ones who are alone could go live together. Wouldn't that be cosy? We'd have lots of company, allotments, and we wouldn't have to explain ourselves or GAL but would not be alone. I wish....

[Nas]

Nas, I agree with you. I believe that willingly or unwillingly, the MLCer has the ability to suppress those memories. I kind of suppress them too because they hurt or seem based on lies.

I wish there were some LBS commune where the ones who are alone could go live together. Wouldn't that be cosy? We'd have lots of company, allotments, and we wouldn't have to explain ourselves or GAL but would not be alone. I wish....

That sounds perfect to me! LOL

I turned blocked H from showing up in my Fakebook memories and recently purged every contact I possibly could from my phone that would result in any of his friends or colleagues from showing up in my friend/follow suggestions on all social media.

I don't look at photos.  I try my best to avoid places we used to go often.  I ignore meaningful dates.
Still, I've had H pop up in my dreams or had memories pop into my head out of nowhere, even at times when I'm doing something completely unrelated and surrounded by other people.
I've had random memories of people other than H that just randomly come into my head out of nowhere.


Memories don't answer to anyone or anything.  They show up whenever they please.
No matter where our vanishers are or what they're doing or how supposedly happy or miserable they are, one thing I'm certain of is that, just like with anyone, some certain song or time of year or scent or place has the potential to cause them to think about us at any random time.