[AlvinTheMaker]

They just turn it on you instead. Like with the forks, you'd say "I want to help you so I put the dishes away". they would say "if you cared, then you'd know where I wanted the forks to go".

Hey gman, you were married with my W??? Because I have lived through that fork scene.  LoL

It's amazing how universal some of these small things are.

[gman242]

oh yeah it happened to me.. over the years, many people here have told me it's happened to them too..  crazy isn't it?

[Anjae]

Why mighg we be cautious? Bc humans are complicated, bc we are not objective as LBS and bc we all have traits that operate on a scale...and move around in reaction to context and events.

I agree.

Maybe there is even a risk that we skew our own perception of what we see if we label too rigidly? Or stops us seeing people as people first?

Yes, there is a big risk of skewing our perception and of stop us seeing people as people.

I suspect the deeper need to have a label is about our own past perceptions and our future hopes or assumptions perhaps?

Most likely.

[sada]

strongFaith, Reply #1 on: September 29, 2019, 05:12:54 PM

From another blog..

Copied, pasted, & printed out.Thank you SF.

[Mortesbride]

Well I was lead to this site when I was researching Narcs actually.

I read a lot of websites, watched a lot of videos, and even bought and read some books.

He ticked nearly all the boxes...just like MLC.

I don't know what his label is. Depressive, Bipolar, Narc...or just an extra spicey MLCer....

It hardly matters now.

Whatever they are you have to deal with them basically the same. If they eventually get better they were in a MLC...if they don't... well it was something more permanent.

But this website is helpful not for dealing with them, but for dealing with you. No matter what is wrong with your spouse...or ex spouse...it is you who is left to pick up the pieces, and these people can help you do it. 

That being said it never hurts to read up on all the potential disorders. Not so much for getting back with them, but more in managing your interactions and expectations.

[Couragedearheart]

Morte,

I am deceased! 🤣😂☠️

or just an extra spicey MLCer...

🤣 send help, I need an inhaler.🤣
Jk

[Anjae]

There is a huge difference, especially if one has kids with the MLCer and or is standing to know the MLCer has something that does not go away, BPD, NPD, etc. and MLC that tends to go away, even if it may last many years.

Not much point in thinking/expecting BPD or NPD will go away. They don't.

Reading on all the PDs may cause even more confusion, including in how to deal with a MLCer. One does not deal with NPD the same way one deals with BPD. And a MLCer, unless he or she already has a pre-MLC PD has none.

At times it seems to be LBS like to complicate and add further layers that can leave the person even more confused.

The tendecy to diagnose MLCers also seems a bit worrisome to me. Even if we were a psychiatrisct we could not be diagnosing people through HS.

[Treasur]

Depressive, Bipolar, Narc...or just an extra spicey MLCer....

Made me chuckle too  ...that Ms Morte has an eye for a snappy phrase doesn't she? 

More and more, with time and distance on events, I think the reality of this experience for many of us is just inherently full of paradox. Like the quote from 'Alice in Wonderland' about being able to think of six impossible things before breakfast. And we learn and adapt as we go, often without much RL help bc we have fallen down a rabbit hole while they are going about their business in the normal world. I suppose our struggle is about how we individually climb out of the rabbit hole  ...and HS is a place where the rabbit hole stuff IS normal, although I guess there is a risk in normalising over a long period behaviour that really isn't RL normal too.

With hindsight I needed a 'something' label initially, some explanation to know that I was not insane or imagining just how weird it truly was. Then perhaps a label gave me hope that whatever it was could be fixed. Then a label helped me stumblingly navigate and work round and off the weird rollercoaster. Then maybe a label helped me to not hate my xh and not blame myself for things I didn't understand and couldn't control. Now, some years out, perhaps I need a label less? Bc I really do trust my own judgment now that something very weird happened to my then h, I have no role in fixing it and no longer have to work my way round it in my present life I suppose. It isn't my strange journey to explain is it? Let's face it I have had my own strange journey to explain to myself lol.

Increasingly I think instead of MLC or any of the other labels or explanations, I am calling it WIW....Whatever It Was that happened to my former h. 

[strongFaith34]

Yes getting caught up in labels may not be useful to some, but honestly if the signs point to covert narcissism, then hanging onto this MLC hope that one day the MLCer will recover and be an empathic loving person again after cheating and devaluing the LBS seems counterproductive to healing.

Especially when dealing with covert narcissist who see people as objects, easily disposable and replaceable. A covert narc cannot be alone so if things don’t work out with their affair partner, they do enjoy having the LBS as backup option. Personally, I value myself more than being the backup option to someone who cheated on me, with no remorse and gaslighted me into thinking it was my fault. I think part of an LBS growth and healing is to maybe reconcile the fact that the MLC personality might reveal core personality defects that are a part of the MLCer.

I do think some MLCers only feel slight remorse when the LBS moves on, or maybe it is just the loss of supply they thought would always be waiting for them.

[Treasur]

I get that, strongfaith.
That's why I think that each LBS goes through their own process over time of getting in touch with what they see as the patterns in their relationship pre-BD and their own assessment of WIW. Different people reach different conclusions. All of us probably have to work through some sense of shock, confusion and denial before we get to our own conclusions. And a lot of the behaviour we see DOES fit the descriptions of quite a lot of different labels.

Part of healing I think is how each person finds their own way towards their own sense of what was true and what is true now. Maybe that involves separating the person from the label for some. For others it may be a growing sense of ah-ha moments when we see some pattern that we didn't see before that predates BD. And some realisations maybe too about why we saw it the way we did then as opposed to how we do now. And that does seem to involve a bit of a wrestling match between excuse vs explanation vs expectation for most of us.

Not a simple process though....and we don't all end up in the same place. I think that what matters most though is reaching a point, label or not, that feels pretty close to the hard truths for us as a foundation to rebuild whatever it is we choose on. A bit of solid ground in the quicksand.