[stayed]

The problem is we can also go too far in compassion and understanding and forget to learn about detachment so that our compassion and understanding comes from a place of detachment where we can continue with our own lives in an emotionally healthy way regardless of the MLCer does. 
 My take

I so agree with this statement.  There is a happy medium for sure, enough compassion to prevent yourself from becoming hateful and bitter.  Enough understanding that you recognize and accept, "not your monkey"!  Detached enough that you are still able to enjoy your life without becoming cold and disinterested in everything and everybody. 


Nas, I am "shocked" that anybody would block you.  I've never seen you say a single thing that was cruel or unkind.... wow!  I'm thinking anybody who blocks you, has got some issues of their own that they seriously need to take care of.  Intense therapy might help.

Hugs Stayed

[Airmid]

Interesting topics on this thread.

I truly believe the MLCer knows what they are doing and does it anyway.
My xh went to marriage counseling 3 times.  Each time he said in front of the therapist -
"I am purposely cruel and cold so Airmid does't hold any hope for our marriage."

Well ladies and gentlemen - it certainly doesn't get any clearer than that.
But lets fast forward a bit from that time and the Ostrich denies that he ever said that - despite the fact there was an objective witness.

Is it the fog?  Wow - that must be some weather pattern.
No, I think it is simply easier to feign amnesia.

On my part - I was blinded by my love for my then H and was firmly in denial.

I was scared out of my wits how I was going to survive as a single woman on one salary in one of the most expensive cities in the US.
Like many wives, I had depended on my H to take care of things like mechanical issues related to the car, the houses etc.
I could not see any life or possibility of happiness outside my then 20 year relationship.
And I certainly didn't want to face the fact that the man I loved so deeply was no longer in love with me.

So it was easier for me to cling to the hope that this abandonment was temporary - and he would come to his senses.
I didn't have to wonder why my H "suddenly" no longer loved me - it was the invasion of the body snatchers - aka - MLC.
I didn't have to fathom how I would build a life on my own - because surely my H was going to come home once he realized his mistake.

All of that was my denial of the truth. 
And the longer I could remain in denial - the longer I could hide from the reality of needing to rebuild my life.

In hindsight - the BD that seemed so sudden and out of the blue - had been brewing for a long time. But my xH kept it well hidden from me and all friends and family.
My H had fallen out of love with me and fallen in love with the alienator.
I suspect that the OW gave xH an ultimatum - something like - "dump your wife or we are over."
He did and said the horrible things so he could be freed of our relationship and be with the parasite.

Then - even after I accepted that he was gone - and not going to return - I had yet another fantasy...
He must be miserable and suffering in his new life.

There is no evidence that my xH is miserable and/or suffering.
And if the only way I can be happy is to monkey brain some misery in his yard - then my happiness is rather precarious.

Dropping the rope means just that - let go entirely.
This person has chosen someone else - and made it clear he didn't want me as his wife.
I dropped the rope - walked away from the rope - and built a new life.
I don't need to waste anymore time on wondering ---

"was his love real or not""
"does he have remorse?"
"when did his MLC (or affair) start?"

After your spouse pulls the trigger and you are divorced - its over.
If you have kids - then you will have to deal with the spouse who abandoned you for some time in the future.
But if you are like me - with no kids - you can close the door - lock the door and walk away.
It was hard work - it was at times painful - but frankly I don't see any other alternative.

[Velika]

A note that I think anyone who faces this should look at family history.

To LP's point, it may be that the MLCer can recognize down the road that they were manic. Many of us also recognize within a few weeks or months that they are manic!

If you have children, and know of a strong family history, and your spouse is demonstrating clear signs of mania, I really encourage you to keep attempting to get a doctor, psychiatrist, coparenting counselor, lawyer, or some other advocate to help you protect your kids. Please, if no one is believing you, keep trying.

One thing I think this takes away is our ability to trust ourselves. Many MLCers treat us with such shocking cruelty and disregard (and rewriting history) that it's hard to trust ourselves or to assert ourselves in a way that makes the best use of our true power.

I feel that many well meaning people on this forum dissuade some LBS from doing what the LBS feels on a deep intuitive level they should do, based on their own experience. I feel this can be very damaging in the long run. Many people on this forum are just as vulnerable to your advice and authority as they are to the crazy words of their own spouse!

Really consider what you are saying if you are telling a stranger online with very different life circumstance not to seek help or support. You may privately disagree or feel dubious, but I think in some cases this is vitally important to strike while the iron is hot. My ex husband was extremely manic, openly dating a sex worker, while our son was a first grader. He would randomly show up and abusively take our son from me, sometimes not even telling me their whereabouts and ordering me around.

Had I been insistent in the beginning and hired a P.I., I would have done more to protect our son, myself, and possibly been able to enlist the help of some family members and almost certainly a coparenting counselor instead of facing this all on my own as a "divorce."

If your spouse has a family history of this, that is your answer. That is your trajectory. Have relatives recovered? Do they decline over a period of a decade? Do they develop other symptoms? That is the likely outcome.

Many people post-mania tip into a more spaced out type of "lobotomized" state, where they are functional but just not the same person. I think this is the phase where they may have foggy notions they messed up, but not the type of bipolar crash that would lead to more accountability.

[Anjae]

I suspect that one of the biggest hurdles we need to get over is to understand that with the exception of people with legitimate personality disorders - not a huge percentage of the population btw - people who do "wrong" things know they are wrong while they are doing them. 

People with mood disorders like schizophrenia or bipolar also do not know what they are doing when on a high and/or having psychotic episodes or during the very dark low period. People with Alzeimer's and other dementias do not know what they are doing is wrong, same for people with certain other brain issues or even hormonal issues. However, people with a medical diagnosed illness have a medical diagnosed illness that allows them to not be accountable for certain things/during certain periods.

I think MLC is an illness, in essence it is depression + anxiety + stress, solve those, no MLC, but MLCers do not have a medical diagnose for MLC, so they cannot use it for any legal or medical purpose. Nor to escape responsability.

In my country addiction is an illness, but addicts do not get away with everything. It is recognised drugs affect brain thinking and the person may do things they would not do otherwise.

It's hard for some of you to understand because (I suspect) you are not that way.

It would had been hard for our pre-MLC spouses to understand. They were not that way. Some of us had a MLC, we were that way while in MLC. Or not, depending of what type of MLC we had. Mine was not like Mr J's or many other MLCers.

But let me tell you my sympathy only goes so far because for us LBS' there is a LOT of pain and destruction.

Yep. I have far more empathy and sympathy for the LBS than for the MLCers. MLCers tend to be fine in every way after their crisis is over, the LBS often not so much. Yet, often, LBS have far more compassion and care for MLCers than for themselves of fellow LBS. It wasn't the LBS that destroyed everything, it was the MLCer. 

"I am purposely cruel and cold so Airmid does't hold any hope for our marriage."

MLC script to a T. In the articles both RCR and HB mention some MLCers are cruel/mean on purpose to make the LBS go away.
Not all MLCers are like that, but some are.

I didn’t think that there was anything wrong but my ex h kept insisting I was going mad and he had no problem telling people that. He also insisted I go to the doctor which I did wearing my sunglasses!
I lied to the doctor and he thought I was just grieving my Father. He prescribed AD’s which I didn’t take as I didn’t think there was anything wrong with me.

Straight from the horse's mouth. How many more former MLCers need to say they know what they are doing? That they lie to doctors, therapist, lawyers, etc? Granted, there may be some MLCer who don't have a clue about what they are doing, but...

Even if I had one, I wouldn't wish a MLC upon my worst enemy. It is an horrible thing to have. It does not mean the MLCer is not responsible and is in the wrong.

[Thunder]

I believe this is pretty much what Shocks sister said.

"In the articles both RCR and HB mention "SOME" MLCer's are cruel/mean on purpose to make the LBS go away."  (That means not all).  Mine never was.

The LBS doesn't fit into their fantasy.

[Nerissa]

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.

[Nas]

I think blocking only works in one direction and the person you block does not even know that you have blocked them.

Not to derail this thread, but if you are signed up to be notified of a new post on a thread and someone who has blocked you posts on that thread, you will not be notified. Therefore, you can find out you’ve been blocked when you get notified  that someone who hasn’t blocked you has posted and when you go back back to the thread, you see you’ve missed a posts (or posts) that you were not notified about from the people who blocked you.
 I know this for absolute fact because I do know one person who made it clear to me that they blocked me and that is what happens when they post on any thread that I am also signed up for notifications on.

Anyway, back to this very interesting and helpful discussion…

[Airmid]

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. 

I was in therapy very shortly after BD.  I had two therapists -
a woman and a man.

I asked both of them if they thought that there was any possibility that my H would return and we could reconcile. 
I got the same answer from both of them - very unlikely.
They also answered that the spouses usually don't even attempt a return.

Both of them asked me - independent of each other -
"Do you really want to be the "fall back position? IS it acceptable to you that your spouse would only want you if he could not succeed with this other woman?"
I told them each of the Hero Spouse forum. 
I said the people who post there seem to have different conclusions.
Hero Spouse forum members seem to feel a return in inevitable.

They both firmly believed that this was not a realistic expectation.
So I had to ask myself -
Do I trust the experience of trained professionals - who have seen thousands of clients?
Or do I trust the people on a forum who have been abandoned in the same way I have?

I wanted to believe that a reconciliation was possible.
So I disregarded what was told to me by my therapists -
and desperately hoped for my marriage to survive.

But in then end - my conclusion is - the therapists were correct in the assertion that very few spouses return. 
There are a few who reconcile-
just as there are a few people who beat pancreatic cancer. 
There are a few people who hit the lottery jackpot. 
But the general trend does not seem to support that a reconciliation, or even an attempted return should be the expected norm.

[Anjae]

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.

Does life ever measures up to a fantasy?

In a way, it could be said Mr J's MLC measured up to the fantasy, yet, he has complained about it big time to me, to my lawyer, to his lawyer. At times he even complains in public - he has a public life. And, in his very strage way, he has more than often tried to come close.

The problem is I have no interest in interacting or going out (yes, he would be up to it) with a man in Replay who is only interested in his MLC lifestyle. OW1 and OW2 are gone for the same reason, his MLC life is more imporatant than any woman, even the woman the shouts to the world is the person he loves the most on earth = OW2.

As for therapist, aside from those with certain specific types of practical therapy, my faith in them is very, very low. I would took anything they say, even a clinical psychologist, with a grain of salt. No, I am not saying our MCLers are going to return, just that therapist are not someone whose word I would take for measure.

Funny, with me it was a person from real life, a former MLCer, who told me Mr J was having a bumpy, would come out of it and would return. Mr J himself said the same early on, by now he has probably long forgot it.

I happen to think most MLCers come out of MLC and want back, but that there will be very few reconciliations because MLC causes too much damage and most LBS have long moved on.

So far, HS and real life support my thinking.


Interesting, Air. Why? Because even LP's MLCer has been wanting back. He was nastier than nasty, their divorce was ugly, he wouldn't mind being back.

There are few that reconcile, but it has to do with the LBS. Would you reconcile with your ex if he come knocking on the door tomorrow?

[Nas]

 The only difference is that we don't have a bunch of cheerleaders around us shouting Yaaassss queen!! 

a) this made me legitimately laugh for the first time in a long time.  So thank you.

b) I agree with your entire post.