[beyondblessed]

I'm not back here very often, but came across this thread while updating my own.  To even have to wonder whether those in crisis know what they are doing is totally incomprehensible to me.  Think about the words Bomb Drop.... something completely out of the blue, unknown and unexpected at the time of delivery.... at least to the recipient.  Now, think of the Bomber and just how long this event was planned and thought about beforehand.  Irrational thinking doesn't render a person incapacitated.  It just gives them more leeway towards making stupid choices.

I really believe, like Stayed, it all started innocently enough, with each tryst becoming more exciting and enticing, until finally they get caught too deep in the quicksand to escape.  That's when the real panic of being found out ramps up series after series of rash choices that ultimately build to the bomb drop of epic proportions.

After they choose to leave (and almost always run to the AP who's been there all along) that is when it should all become about the LBS taking back their power.  You cannot both play the victim and expect any of the dynamic to change.  Someone has to be the voice of reason and move out of that toxic space, and it sure ain't gonna be the MLC'er because they lack the strength and clarity.  And, if the LBS doesn't learn to drop that rope, they run the dire risk of staying in a state of cycling and monkey braining that prevents them, too, from ascertaining any sort of bearings or clarity.  That's is a huge reason why we are all told to "put on our own oxygen mask" first.  As difficult as it is in the aftermath of BD, the best chance the LBS has is to take the emotion out of all dealings and use a business approach, especially if a D is filed very early on.  It hurts, it sucks, it isn't fair, but it is life.  It doesn't have to make sense to us because it isn't OUR decision, it is our response to their choice.  What is chaos to the fly, is perfectly normal to the spider.

So, it really does no good to assess blame either way.  It is what it is, and nothing will change it.  The best we can do is live our remaining days learning, growing, and continuing to be our best possible selves.  Life after this will only be as good as the LBS chooses to make it.  The MLC'er may have dealt the cards, but that doesn't mean that the LBS can't play those cards and drop all aces.

[Nas]

After your spouse pulls the trigger and you are divorced - its over.

Often even if they don't pull the trigger, as in my case - it's over. 
There's no one holding a gun to his head.
There's no complicated legal hurdles impeding his way.
He CHOSE to erase his past rather than legally leaving it behind, but he's no different than the ones who divorce.  Except even more cowardly.

[Airmid]

I agree with you Nas - I agree with you 100%

[Velika]

There are two questions I see coming up over and over on these threads, and while some people say it doesn't matter, I really think it does especially if you have young children.

1. Will they return?

I think it is absolutely unlikely that they will return and most people are far better off filing for divorce right away. If they are sorry and want to return, you will have protected yourself. I feel the #1 message of any forum addressing this should be to take specific self-protective legal and financial measures and outline them specifically for a traumatized person in deep state of shock. 

2. Are they sick?*

I think this question does matter a lot for people with small children, because it affects how they might proceed. I think this can ranged from nuanced to actually quite obvious, and for this reason I don't think it is correct for people to make this call for others.

Some of the cases here really are probably bipolar or another neurological event. Also, to the point that therapists will tell you they see this all the time, that is correct. This is what drives people to therapists' offices all the time.

However, I will note that I talked to many many therapists when this started, and also many medical professionals. There was a clear and categorical split. Every single doctor told me this was a mental illness or neurological. It took a long time before my own therapist started to see that this wasn't a normal situation. This wasn't because of what I was telling him. It had to do with the limits of his training.

In fact, when I sought advice on another support forum, I heard from many, many people who were well educated on bipolar, who told me that many therapists are not trained to spot mental illness. Even psychiatrists do not scan the brain.

While this may leave an LBS in a difficult position of finding many mental illness that could fit the bill, the truth is even a top hospital would have to do a lot of differential diagnosis as well. If you suspect your spouse is mentally ill — especially if there is a family history of mental illness — please, please do not be dissuaded from trying to seek help and protect your children, even if you are hearing things on this forum like:

• MLC sounds like every illness in the book.
• MLCers know what they are doing, but just don't care.
• It doesn't matter if they are sick or not.
• Even if they are sick, contacting a doctor won't help.

It matters a lot of someone is sick and is responsible for parenting a young child. Don't think that just because you arrived at a MLC forum that this rules out other avenues of inquiry. Trust your parental instincts! Look at the family history.

*Sometimes phrased as: Do they know what they are doing?

[Nas]

So much helpful discussion here.  It can be hard to know what to say - people can only hear what they are ready to hear when in pain and need to be met ‘where they are’ yet  platitudes which comfort can also be unhelpful in some ways.

 I was struck a while ago by a thread where Anon commented that her therapist, whom I believe she trusts, had said that spouses generally don’t return unless their new life doesn’t measure up to their fantasy.  UM contributed that his mother, a clinical Psychologist, concurred.  There isn’t some wonderful awakening - just an acknowledgment - often shame based and sullen - that the old Life is what they are going to settle for.

Their posts were followed by a brief flurry of posts disagreeing and asserting that most would return eventually , but it would be after a long time and maybe too late. 

I felt the same wish  for a long time, but reading this thread, I felt sad that in our pain, we are in our own cognitive dissonance, disagreeing with experienced professionals who witness this regularly and know the likely outcome.  .  I often read comments to the effect that we understand mlc, whereas people in real life don’t.

I don’t think that is true. I think we are often more ready than people ‘irl’ to find compassion and look for reasons and are more prepared to wait.  If that is necessary to sustain us through the shocking experience then it is all to the good.  But it isn’t morally superior to wait, or somehow more ‘knowing’ which is sometimes the impression I get.  Sometimes it just wastes time and love that could be used on those who would appreciate it and reciprocate - our families and friends - is wasted on someone who doesn’t. I heard a psychologist say that 90% of our energy in these cases is used on our most dysfunctional Relationship and 10% on our other, better relationships.

As LP mentioned, focusing on mlc is almost certainly to the detriment of children.  A therapist specialising in adolescents told me that the drawn out nature of waiting increases the pain for young people who need to separate their concept of their parents in their psyche.  He said that even into adulthood, they will entertain unconscious fantasies of their parents reuniting and so he encourages civility but also clear separation to help the child complete their mourning as well as possible.
 .
The veracity of this was  illustrated for me twice that very week, when a training film I saw showed an engineer of 31 telling a trauma specialist that he still sometimes hoped his parents, divorced since he was ten, would reunite..   and in the same week, a fellow student in his thirties spoke of his parents, divorced for 17 years. His older sister was convinced they were seeing each other again after the death of one of his two sisters.   He had blurted out to his father “You know you’re never getting back together with Mum don’t you?”   It seemed such a cry of hurt.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, except to say that I believe there is such a world of serious hurt caused by the mlc unconscious behaviour, and so little care and concern for those damaged, ( how many go into  serious therapy to truly understand what happened and face up to and  repair what they have done to their children?) especially children, that unfair  as it is, We have to get the best, most realistic advice we can for our own health and that of our families, and, when we are strong enough, act upon it, instead of existing in our own fantasy lives longer than is necessary.

Nerissa, I always appreciate your posts so much.  You say things I think only can't often express.

As far as the 90% of our energy wasted on our most dysfunctional relationships,
If I could tell you lovely people one thing I have learned since my cancer diagnosis, it's take that 90% of your time and focus it on yourself.  Don't waste time because none of us really have any idea how much of it we really have. 

[Acorn]

Velika, I appreciate what you are saying.
Do you think it might be worthwhile for you to start a new discussion thread on the particular topic you have just outlined?

Maybe even 2 threads! 
 
- Will they return?
- Are they sick?

[Velika]

Velika, I appreciate what you are saying.
Do you think it might be worthwhile for you to start a new discussion thread on the particular topic you have just outlined?

No, it's fine! I have said this many times. I'm trying to look out for other newly arrived parents. Thank you!

[Thunder]

I can not tell you how much of what Airmid has said I agree with. Like all of it.

[Anjae]

Depending of where you live, knowing who is responsible for the break/end of the marriage is legally and financially important.

My country no longer has fault divorce, but for a court divorce it is still necessary to prove who is responsible. Adultery has been deemed damaging by our Supreme Court and an adulterous spouse will have to pay the other spouse, if said spouse so wants, regardless of divorce or no divorce.

Therefore, at least in some places, legally, there are difference between being, or not being responsible.

Well, Nas, I get it. However, unless before MLC the relationship was already dysfunctional, people waste energy with it because it is the most important relationship of their lives. Some move from their personal situation and want to know and learn more about MLC. If no one wanted to know or learn more about MLC HS would not exist.

I agree we must focus on ourselves, but I can also see why people want to know more. For some of us MLC lead us to study several subjects, from mental illness to neurobiology/neuroscience, moving much further than MLC.

[lawprofessor]

I think it was Terrified in Tennessee who a few times discussed that he felt he was (I'm not remembering the English word or colloquialism) something along the lines of fooled or deceived but couched a bit more politely when he came here.  He thought the forum needed to be more direct and honest in its presentation as to probability of return and the time frame and the process.  He was answered with choruses of No's, we can't do that, it would scare away the newbies.

Now we are having this conversation.  Time changes many things and the pendulum swings the other direction. 

To put it on the line:

I was a mod here and stepped down fir several reasons including because i don't agree with several of the tenets of the site as implemented.

I don't agree with the advice to let the MLCer own the divorce.  It's a recipe for disaster in nearly every case.

I am much closer to TNT that I think it's easy to play on the emotions of very desperate and sick and scared people feeding them hope and promises of return instead of focusing on rebuilding the LBS. That's not healthy. 

There's too much focus on the pain rather than how to move forward.  LBS's have too much to do to waste time sitting on here all day wasting the limited time we are given.  If I could go back in time I wouldn't spend more than a few months getting it together and walk away from this forum.  That's another reason I rarely post.  It's too easy to spend hour after hour here not focusing on what really matters which is creating a new life, taking care to love one's self, focusing on one's children and achieving goals  and embracing the new reality.

I agree as well with the poster who said he felt standing actions hold back healing.  In most cases I think that's correct. 

Finally, I am dismayed by the effects standing seems to have on the children.

Yes, my husband would like to return.  However, I don't believe that has much explanatory value.  He's one.  And a bigger train wreck one couldn't find.  The reality is he wants to return because he failed spectacularly in the real world.  He now has nothing, not even the little girl who dumped him when she didn't need him anymore and is pregnant and to be married in the fall to the father of her baby.  He doesn't want to return because he loves me.  I'm the second best safety option life preserver. 

And that's not good enough by far for me.  And it never was.  Technically, yes I got to make the choice in the end.  In reality it was no choice.  (And that's not what newbies are told when they get here. ) He was gone at bomb drop officially but gone in reality before that.  I couldn't save the marriage by myself.  The only choice I had to make was to sit and wallow or embrace building a new life.  That's the only choice that matters in the end.  Not whether or not these people come back.  Not who is at fault or how to apportion fault.  Yes Hearts Blessing used to say when there is love there is hope.  But even she admits love won't always be enough and counsels looking at reality.

Lp