[Anon]

Has there been a comprehensive thread like this on how people dealt with the infidelity? Both during and after?

Standing,,,there may be.   From the opening page of the Forum, go to the top and click on the 'discussion' bubble (immediately under 'Filter Topics Based on Prefix') and all the discussion threads will be shown.    It's worth a browse through - many good discussions in there.

[Anjae]

Not sure I am getting you correctly, Anon. You don't know if there is a higher purpose in abuse? As in MLCers that physically hurt or even try to kill the LBS? Like Mr J, Mr LP, Mr In It and several others did?

What higher purpose is there? None that I know of, because, at least in Mr J's case, he does not remember it. He was having psychotic episoded when being physically abusive. And even if he did, it certainly did not prevent him from being abusive in other ways.

They know what they are doing. If they didn't, they wouldn't feel guitly nor would be angry at the LBS. As for if they think they should be doing. At least in Mr J's case early on with OW1, when he was still living home, he was uncertain he should carry on with the affair. He knew it was wrong, he knew he had to broke all his values to do it.

She wrote in back she also had broke all her values to be with him and that it was worthy fighting for their amazing, unique love. Was he now going to leave her? He didn't. Instead, be become more and more horrible towards me, then left. Then become one the nastiest MLCers I have ever heard of. Come mid October it will be 13 years since Mr J left. He lost nothing with his MLC. He also learned nothing. Or better, he learned that crimes pays. Big time.

Of course something went off the rails for them. It does not mean they do not know what they are doing. Or that abuse must be excused. Or that there are two sides when it comes to abuse. There aren't. There also aren't two sides when it comes to cheating. It is all on the cheater.

In Mr J's case he knew he was depressed before he got involved with OW1. He refused help. He has been depressed since. However, it does not prevent him from holding down a steady MLC job, djing, having a record show with some mates, working for a record label and now even having his own record label with a couple of mates. He is sane enough to make deals with bands/artist, to promote them, etc. He is also sane enough to move house on his own. It is not like he is on psychiactic hospital or people see anything wrong with him. They see nothing wrong with him. Granted, most do not know what he did. Still, a man his age that still goes clubbing, djing, gets drunk, barely sleeps and looks dreadful, but everyone tells him he looks amazing, so, so handsome? Right. 

Forgiveness is not associated with someone knowing, or not knowing, what they are doing. Forgiveness is just that, forvigeness. I also don't think it is associated with compassion.

Compassion is wasted on Mr J. The man has a good life. Why should I feel compassion for him? I keep it to myself and those close to me who deserve it.

Could it be your therapist is treating the matter as a normal affair? MLC is nothing like a normal affair. And even a normal affair falls only upon the shoulders of the cheater.

[Anon]

No higher purpose to abuse and I wasn't anywhere near thinking along those lines either.   They do know what they are doing, doesn't mean they have that under their control and doesn't mean they should be excused.   Even I can relate to that,,, as a former smoker who attempted to quit many many times before finally doing so over 20 years ago now.    Every time I lit up I knew what I was doing, wish I wasn't doing it, but did it none the less because it served a purpose (to end the nicotine withdrawal).  I knew I was abusing my body, damaging my lungs, increasing the odds I'd get cancer but I still continued the abuse so I could temporarily end the withdrawal by lighting up again.  If I got cancer it would be no one's fault by my own.   And I maybe I would deserve to as well,, but I hope that doesn't mean I'm not deserving of some compassion if I do get cancer. 

From what I can tell, my h and your Mr. J are 2 totally different types of MLCers.   You often back up what you are saying a lot of the time by referring to what Mr. J did and I often can't relate because my h is different than Mr. J.  He rarely monstered even in the beginning and if anything has been a bit weepy about what's happened.   He's never been physical, before or since BD.   He knows he was horrible in the early days in other ways (usually by his flagrant new life 'activities' with ow and other women before he and ow committed to each other, breaking values etc).   He also cycles - not as rapidly as in the beginning but he is still clearly a boomerang.   Clingy one in the beginning but now just a regular boomerang.   So he is clearly not just a normal affair guy and this is not just a normal marriage failure.    Every past relationship that ever ended in my life ended cleanly for the most part.   Any relationship that was still in death throes months later,  and certainly years later,  just did not exist in my life until BD from my h.   And,,,, the ONLY reason the marriage r hasn't ended cleanly is because of him,,, not me.   His cycling, his uncertainty, his confusion, his reluctance to call it a day and say good-bye.  Unlike the end of ANY previous r I've ever been in.   Even my therapist knows the difference.   He hasn't asked me to consider compassion because or situation is clearly not a normal split or a marriage that just died a natural and expected death.... he knows too that something is pretty sadly wrong with the man that once was my h. 

For you and Mr J. maybe compassion is wasted on him because of his good life,,, but again our situations differ.   My h clearly does not have a good life, he is clearly not happy, not likely ever will be happy because whatever grass he is standing on, it's always greener somewhere else.

I'm not sure either if compassion and forgiveness are related.  It's something to contemplate though but will take some time.   I do know this,,, if my h was living a happy life like Mr.J. I wouldn't have compassion either.  There would be no point.   I would only have compassion for someone who is suffering and unable to end their suffering whether that be at their own hand or anyone else's.   Just like I would have compassion for a chain smoker who is in pain and dying from lung cancer.   But if they are living a life only most can dream about,,, heck, there is no place for compassion in that case.   

Forgiveness may have no connection with compassion but if I feel compassion I think I might have a better chance of forgiving someone that if I didn't have compassion.    I'm curious if you have you forgiven Mr J or not, and why?    What led you to forgive or withhold forgiveness?

 

[barbiedoll]

Having an affair is intentionally hurting, mistreating and disrespecting a spouse. If the MLCer is being selfish the MLCer has no consideration for the LBS. Don't forget many MLCer are physically, verbally and financially abusive. Also legally abusive. Do you think they don't know what they are doing, Anon? Or that the abuse serves some higher purpose?

The affair having no purpose, the MLCer making the choice of getting involved with OW/OM and OW/OM being controlling are different issues. By the very nature of the relationship OW/OM are, or become, controlling.

.

I do not believe or accept that my husband sat down to plan a way to intentionally ( deliberately and on purpose ) to hurt me . Nor did he plan to intentionally wound his daughters...or his brothers, my parents, his grandmother ( I could go on) . Did he mismanage his own mental and emotional health? Indeed he did . Did he fail to seek help like a therapist etc ...he sure did. You speak out of 2 sides of your mouth .  His internal personal crash and burn has NOTHING to do with the spouse . Zero. But now you believe it was an intentional plan to hurt them. Writing it as if it was fact...does not make it true.

The affair having no purpose, the MLCer making the choice of getting involved with OW/OM and OW/OM being controlling are different issues. By the very nature of the relationship OW/OM are, or become, controlling.

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As per my previous loooong post, I not need to repeat. The affair ( as catastrophic as it is ) had a purpose, a reason. I believe I am the very last person on this forum that would EVER come to that conclusion and say it out loud...but if I am to be honest , there was a purpose for it happening. It was about invisible forces that be , FOO trauma and ways to heal etc etc ... again, nothing to do with the LBS. Its hard to accept this concept... we want to be shallow and "factual" and see only the superficial actions  of a very flawed man who has come un-done. You have to look deeper if you want to access truth, understanding and hopefully some compassion and healing.

[barbiedoll]

From what I can tell, my h and your Mr. J are 2 totally different types of MLCers.   You often back up what you are saying a lot of the time by referring to what Mr. J did and I often can't relate because my h is different than Mr. J.

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Thank you Anon..this is true. You cannot use 1 MLC man ( or a handful that you personally know ) and dictate that they are "all the same ". Utterly ridiculous. .

[barbiedoll]

Because you are 100% right.  You have been reduced (unwittingly) to a character in his screenplay.  You are the "wicked wife", as she remains the "damsel in distress."     

Rest assured that as his screenplay (read: OW) crashes and burns, you remain the queen of whole castle.
.

Just need to ask how you do this Mego. It is really a very unique way of coping perhaps? How is it that your real life and the painfull situation you are in become something you continually turn into a "screenplay " or movie?  How is this helpful to you , I truly want to understand . We know that we MUST deal with real life...the good , bad and ugly. Why are you insistent in living behind a screenplay ? .
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[Not Applicable]

Anon, so your therapist tells you that you need compassion and you don't actually feel any so now you feel compelled to concoct a theory about the ow that allows you to feel compassion? This is a great example of how therapists create problems to solve to justify their job. Compassion is a good thing but if you don't feel it then that's okay.

[Anjae]

Anon, yes, your husband and Mr J are very different MLCers. My cousin who had MLC was nothing like Mr J, he was a wallower and I was a mild, mostly fun MLCer who did not broke the marriage or had an affair. Mr J is on a league only a few MLCers belong to. However, there is no shortage of MLCers that are between yours and mine. Savy's husband is another extreme MLCer who has been abusive. There are more, but I don't remember them all.

However, the basic is the same. Early on, Mr J would change between his old self, MLC self with more or less violent monster, and totally depressed man in tears. I saw Mr J cycle in hours, from normal to monster to tears, to all over again. Next day he couldn't remember a thing. It is not like he was only nasty monster at first. Mr J was the king of clingers early on. He would still be clinging if I allowed him to. He wanted me and OW, except when he wanted me dead and then did not remember his words and actions.

The months after he left, while I was still in our flat were insane. Since I come back home, he cannot touch me or come close to me. He come up with several ways of being a bully, court cases (Mr Savy and even Mr Milly do this as well), endless chatting on messenger (the good old one), e-mails, even phone calls. He was a load and remained so until I cut him off for my peace of mind and sake.

Compassion is wasted on him not just because of his good life, but because the man has not changed, not even into his pre-leaving self (bad, but better than his post-leaving self) after 13 years. He is not happy. Having a good life and being happy are two different things. Happy people do not monster nor need to get drunk or become a workaholic.

Mr J is not the only MLCer who has a good life, Mr Xyzcf (another workaholic) also has a good life.

Mr J had all the signs and behaviours MLCers have, but, like a handful of others, he went a few steps too far. Fortunatelly, most MLCers do not go as far.

I have forgived Mr J many years ago. Forviness is for us. I cannot live with bitterness and the burden of resentment. It does not mean I do not held him responsible his actions. I do.

Nothing in the way Mr J ended the marriage or in his behaviour was normal. I only have had one relationship that I consider serious before Mr J. I was 17, and we all know that 17 serious is not adult serious. It ended well, so did the one with the boyfriend I had a few years after Mr J left. I still speak to both ex-boyfriends. The only one I do not speak to, unless for legal reasons, is Mr J. No one has ever treated me the way Mr J did.

MLC is much more than an affair and often it is very, very ugly.


Barbie, he may not have intentionally sat down and planned an affair, but he had one and didn't stop it. Like RCR says, affairs require planning. A lot of it. Going behind a spouse's back involves a lot of scheming, planning, etc. I don't know if Mr J did sat and say "I am going to have an affair", but he did call OW1 and carry on with the affair even when he had serious doubts about it. Their meetings in hotel bedrooms, etc. took planning. A lot of it.

My wallower cousin dreamed with getting a new woman, that can be seen as planning. Since he was a wallower, he had no energy for it. It is possible your husband and Mr J did the same, but we do not know it. Since they weren't wallowers they acted on it.

Regardless, do you believe your husband was not aware an affair is hurtful and disrepectul?

The affair has nothing to do with the LBS. MLC has nothing to do with LBS or marriage. However, there is nothing in the affair. Zero.

If there was, by now, Mr J and several other MLCers, like Trustandlove's husband who is on OW6 would have learned something and solved their issues, whatever those may be. And they would be the most healed and wise men on earth. No such luck.

Invisible forces? I call it depression, lack of respect for spouse, lust, fall-in-love and use it as an excuse to behave bad. There is nothing to understand. Or there may be in a man like your husband who had an horrendous childhood. Mr J had a good middle-upper class childhood. He was just a fool that felt for the oldest trick on earth and allowed his depression to reach terrible levels.

I am fine with you seeing a purpose in your husband's affair if that helps you. For me there is none.

Anon, so your therapist tells you that you need compassion and you don't actually feel any so now you feel compelled to concoct a theory about the ow that allows you to feel compassion? This is a great example of how therapists create problems to solve to justify their job. Compassion is a good thing but if you don't feel it then that's okay.

I am going to have to agree. My love (sarcasm) of therapist was never big. The more I read on HS how therapists operated the more I deslike them. The exception being therapists that do practical therapy. Therapist need to make money. Nothing like coming up with tons of theories and saying people have a million issues to allow them to keep making lots of money.


OW gone does not mean the LBS will be the queen of the castle. The MLCer may remain on their own, want nothing with the LBS, or is just killing time until a new OW comes along. A thing those of us with a MLCer who has more than one OW know.

[Anon]

Quote from: GonerinGhana on Today at 07:35:11 PM
Anon, so your therapist tells you that you need compassion and you don't actually feel any so now you feel compelled to concoct a theory about the ow that allows you to feel compassion? This is a great example of how therapists create problems to solve to justify their job. Compassion is a good thing but if you don't feel it then that's okay.

I am going to have to agree. My love (sarcasm) of therapist was never big. The more I read on HS how therapists operated the more I deslike them. The exception being therapists that do practical therapy. Therapist need to make money. Nothing like coming up with tons of theories and saying people have a million issues to allow them to keep making lots of money.


OW gone does not mean the LBS will be the queen of the castle. The MLCer may remain on their own, want nothing with the LBS, or is just killing time until a new OW comes along. A thing those of us with a MLCer who has more than one OW know.

Oh good Lord, GIG, if this is all you got from my posts on this thread then I will quit now.   Concoct a theory about ow??  Seriously?   I started off saying 97% of MLCer have affairs, wondered why, curious why, and is it relevant to MLC issues, and now I’m concocting ow theories?  Many great theories already abound and I don’t need to concoct new ones, not do I desire to.  Many esteemed writers on MLC including RCR, HB, DB, etc have already written about the MLC and why there is an AP.  I’m only wondering if they are on to something.   I’ve said in many different ways why I would like to consider this angle but it seems to be completely disregarded in favour of minimizing all that I’ve said into some silly naive “let’s concoct a nice pretty theory that fits to make me feel better.”   My interest is so far from that it’s ridiculous.   It feels to me like you haven’t even attempted to understand where I’m coming from and why I might be interested in following this line of thought.   

As far as therapists go, I’m not afraid to walk away from one who lacks understanding in MLC.  The one I see now is the 3rd one in 2 years.  The first 2 didn’t last long and there were huge gaps between each one.  The last therapist I want is one who wants to tell me how to feel or what to do.   I’m too far along to not recognize if this is all they are doing.    This therapist fits for me and if I wasn’t getting some benefit believe me I would quit going.   The suggestion to find compassion is a good one for me.    I’m not going into why but trust me that if it made no sense I would reject it completely.   I’m also anything but stupid and I’m fully aware the marketplace is full of people, including therapists, wanting to take advantage of vulnerable people in order to make a living.  I could write a book on how to avoid these pitfalls in our culture.  I’m far more aware than most as my close friends could tell you but of course you can’t know that from my posts on an online forum and I don’t expect you to either.   It would be nice though, to be given the benefit of the doubt instead of going straight to a reply that suggests I’m a idiot that can’t find my way out of a Walmart store.     

Anjae, I don’t care if ow is gone tomorrow or stuck like glue to h for the rest of his days.   Makes no difference to my situation either way - I’m done and don’t care what he does now or 10 years from now.  I’m the queen of the castle in my own house whatever he does or how many ow he finds down the road.   Why did you even bring this up?  Seems pretty unrelated to what I’ve posted.   All I’m trying to do is wrap up those remaining thoughts about MLC that I would refer to as loose threads so I can peacefully call it a day and enjoy the rest of my life.   

[Treasur]

I have to say I recognise what Anon says here about tidying up ones own loose threads. Which is quite different from 'concocting a theory' and very different from imposing ones own theories on someone else.
This experience leaves loose threads.
Which are perhaps different for different people.
And sometimes take us into the deep water of stuff like choice and responsibility and compassion and forgiveness et al.

The two most useful therapists I had understood that the core of this for me was about trauma.
And that trauma is necessarily about dealing with a level of cognitive dissonance. When x and y don't add up but you need to find a way to live with both anyway and to find your own peace with that. I suspect we all have different ways of doing that and reach different operating assumptions that help. It really is an internal bit of chewing that over time I think becomes less about the other person and more about how we make sense of what happened enough to be able to live comfortably with the fact that it did.

It is very difficult to make sense of someone else's head and crisis and behaviour. It would be nice to not have to do it at all of course, but for many of us the effect on our lives of what happened was life-altering and belief-challenging. And most likely OUR reality is not the same as THEIR reality, not even close. Most of us tussle with the dichotomy of a crisis that wasn't about us but where so much of the behaviour seems to be directed at us I guess.

The affair probably triggers a whole bunch of other emotions for any LBS, but if I look at it as just one thing in a set of things my then h did....part of the landscape of his choices....then I suppose at a simple level I assume that when he did these things he did them to either avoid pain or try to feel better. And that the common thread is that only HIS pain or HIS pleasure mattered and he was prepared for anyone else to pay any price at all if his pain was less or if he felt just a bit better. Idk if ow was about avoiding the pain of things he didn't want to deal with or if the affair gave him things that made him feel better. Or even a bit of both. Or what ow represents to him and what he has learned from the relationship. Tbh I don't even know what I represented to him or what he learned from being with me and I was there! I can see that whatever it was about, my pain was so irrelevant that he didn't do it primarily to hurt me. He did it to feel or get whatever it was he wanted. I simply didn't exist in his landscape at all. Same when he stole from me, or took cocaine, or sold his car, or changed jobs, or got a sleeve tattoo, or filed for divorce and then stopped talking,  or saw his psychiatrist and lied or ignored messages from his friends or stroked the stolen watch like Gollum or sent me a weepy thinky email or kept some posessesions and discarded others.. I have no idea what he got from doing any of these things but he must have got something from it or he wouldn't have done it. I guess either he knows why and feels comfortable or he has yet to figure out why if he isn't comfortable. And I honestly have NO idea how he feels about any of it or if to him it served a good purpose for which he feels grateful and at peace. I only know how it felt/feels to me. Oh, and I suppose that he didn't behave like someone who seemed happy, peaceful and comfortable even with the last birthday text thing - by my standards of what that normally looks like in others.

Does compassion only matter if I/we decide that our spouses were/are not healthy?
Does compassion only work if we understand why they did these things?
Does compassion only work if we know that it hadn't produced a good outcome for them?
And - if they are no longer in our lives or future lives in any substantial way - what purpose does our compassion serve?