[Songanddance]

I mean, come on! Maybe many of you are in your mid to late 50s, but I was in my early 40s when this hit with a small child.

Seriously Velika?
 I was just 50 when my H's MLC broke with a teenage son and crisis hit at the same year he was doing his GCSEs (first set of "proper" examinations in the UK). I had no parents, or parents in law or any older relatives (all dead) and one sister and brother in law who lived miles away.  My son reacted so badly to my distress and H's replay antics with OW (stay at homer remember) that he struggled at school, started taking drugs and 7 yrs on is a confirmed addict. 

He now has serious mental health issues, has seen therapists but refuses to follow through with his treatment and this description below is now my son:

Anhedonia: Loss of the capacity to experience pleasure. The inability to gain pleasure from normally pleasurable experiences. Anhedonia is a core clinical feature of depression, schizophrenia, and some other mental illnesses

Recently, and it's not "new", the surgeon general has warned about marijuana use before the age of 25. A workshop I attended with an expert in substance abuse issues explained how drugs destroy the number of receptors that are necessary for neurotransmitters to cross from one side of a synapse to the other. We only have a limited number of these receptors, once they are used up, they are not capable of regenerating.Without the receptors, the neurotransmitters cannot travel between neurons.

 

MLC hits all of us hard, our MLCers destroy the family unit and it matters little what age the children are. In fact I would argue that the younger the child, the more they have the chance to learn resilience and resourcefulness. My son at 15 couldn't cope - his idol, his dad who he adored, had shown himself to be selfish, narcissistic, arrogant and a liar.  That destroyed my son and he now hates his dad with a passion. They have even come to physical blows in the height of the crisis.  He resents any idea that H and I could reconcile and hates the fact that I still have enough love in me to reconnect with H.

It matters little what age you are when MLC breaks - what matters is the fall out on any family and the support and guidance received.

[Treasur]

I mean, come on! Maybe many of you are in your mid to late 50s, but I was in my early 40s when this hit with a small child.

Gosh, V, does that mean to you that your situation was worse or that others somehow mattered less bc they were on some kind of age scrap heap? Bc that is not your normal tone in previous posts at all so it seems unlikely that this is what you mean. It feels as if something is going on with you...this return to 'causes' and a feeling of anger or frustration coming through? Could be wrong...but are you ok?


52, no parents, no siblings, no kids, no ils, cancer, PTSD....pros were only had to look after me (and Louis the cat!); cons were that it was pretty difficult to find a reason for doing so when it was just me. All our situations have pros and cons it seems to me. Depends how you look at it, but neither pain nor healing are competitive sports imho.

[Songanddance]

Depends how you look at it, but neither pain nor healing are competitive sports imho.

Spot on Treasur. 

[barbiedoll]

If not, then most LBS will be better served by seeking help for their own mental and physical wellbeing which is something they can control.

. 

I too tried many many times to get my husband to the doctor. I went on my own and sobbed out the story in such a distraught state , I was the one with a diagnoses and medication. I have felt so unstable at times, I have done the "quizzes " for BPD etc. I kid you not.

My husband was diagnosed with stage 2 kidney cancer several months after he returned. He was therefore suffering from cancer while going the start of MLC. Did this have anything to do with his behaviour? He had also been diagnoses as a diabetic and placed on several medications. NEVER would I have gotten him to the doctor . EVER. He told me I " better accept that he is done with me and our marriage and to stop trying to look for excuses like he had a brain tumor ". If it had have been anything other than MLC , it would have developed into that specific condition. Either way ...I had ZERO control.

[Not Applicable]

I think all of us probably look at what we know of others' situations on here and compare whether they have it worse or better than us. I think that is human nature. It's probably best to keep those assessments to ourselves though as no one else is going to see it from the exact same perspective as we do.

[Disillusioned]

"I mean, come on! Maybe many of you are in your mid to late 50s, but I was in my early 40s when this hit with a small child. Other people come to this site in a similar predicament. For them, getting all the information in a timely manner is critical. Why make them wade through these same old arguments? Is this about helping people or about ego?"


It's good to know that at 50, with a 7 year old daughter at BD, this shouldn't have caused me so much pain and anguish.  I wish someone had told me this sooner.   

[MyBrainIsBroken]

This MLC thing should be pretty easy for an old man like me. I was 55 when my wife left me 2 weeks after BD. My daughters were 34 and 31 so they were all grown up and living on their own. My granddaughter lived with us until she was 10 but she was 13 at BD and living with her mother so I didn't have to be concerned about anyone but myself.

Except my youngest daughter took it really hard after her mother abandoned all of us and moved in with the guy who had been my youngest daughter's boss 6 years earlier and who had sexually harassed our daughter. So my youngest daughter was pretty hard on her mother. My oldest daughter had always been very close to her mother and wanted to stay that way so she and my youngest daughter started feuding which pretty much ripped the family apart. We still haven't recovered from that. But at least neither of them was a young child at BD.

My granddaughter and my wife had been really close because my wife was more like a mother than a grandmother. My granddaughter was 13 at BD so she wasn't a young child when her grandma abandoned her. She was old enough to start cutting herself. I think for me the fun went out of my wife's MLC the night I drove my granddaughter to the ER when she followed up an intense cutting session by ODing on ibuprofen and we spent the next week visiting her in the psychiatric hospital. Until then I had been really lonely living all by myself but at least I didn't have any young children to worry about. But that's when I started worrying about my older children and my grandchildren.

Missing from your repeated arguments that these LBS who come here broken and desperate need to take it upon themselves to force their spouse to the doctor is your suggestion of how in the hell they do that. You would never have been able to force your ex-husband to the doctor anymore than the rest of us. And even if you did, if your ex has been lied to the doctor or refused further treatment, your hands would’ve been tied.

And that is the heart of the issue for me. What purpose does it serve if I can do nothing about it?

I have an answer for this question. I think sometimes learning more our spouse's issues can help us to learn more about our own issues. Did you ever wonder how you wound up with such a broken person? I think broken attracts broken and that many LBSes have issues that aren't too unlike their MLCer's issues. It isn't uncommon on this forum to find LBSes who have experienced their own crises.

When I started talking with my wife's sisters and learning more about her childhood and her FOO issues, I realized how similar our childhoods had been. When I started looking at attachment and abandonment issues that might have affected my wife, I learned that I have similar attachment and abandonment issues. When I started discussing with my therapist the possibility that my wife might have a dissociative disorder, I found myself diagnosed with and being treated for the same dissociative disorder I suspect my wife has.

I apologize for this but I guess what I'm saying is that it might be good for an LBS to try to determine the cause of their spouse's MLC if they're willing to keep in mind that the MLCer may not be the only one who is or has the potential to become bat$hit crazy.

[barbiedoll]

It's good to know that at 50, with a 7 year old daughter at BD, this shouldn't have caused me so much pain and anguish.  I wish someone had told me this sooner.   

.

I was 56 at BD. I had a 23 year old at home in university . I had 4 more daughters in their early 30's. And I get tell you I would give my soul to have them NEVER to have known that he had affair with a family member that they had contact with thru the entire thing .  The humiliation and disgust I have experienced was/is immeasurable. To have young women see their mother deal with what they believed she would never tolerate ...and taught them to never accept disrespect from any man . And yet ...here I was. I had unrelenting need to " explain it to them" and dreamt they were judging me and had lost respect for me. I hesitate to offer marital advice to any of them... what do I know ?  I felt like I lost my leadership amongst them and the pain?  Poor things... I bawled an ocean on them. I "knew" some of them had been in touch with him and kept it to themselves ( or even lied to me) and the despair of feeling betrayed by them was intolerable. I have never admitted this before ...not out loud, but I remember 1 day , 3 of my girls wanted to take me for dinner. They wanted to "talk to me". I had such a massive panic reaction because for whatever reason ...I was terrified they were going to tell me that he molested them...and I missed that too. What else did I miss about him . I am sick typing that ...but it is what happened in my brain. It bothered me soooo much , I asked them . They all denied that ...never did that ever happen. There is NO EASY AGE ...but from my perspective , in MY life … give me a small child. I could have hid it ..maybe forever . I am certain that my youngest daughter has some measure of PTSD. That is unforgivable and hurts me as a mother over and over .

Yeah … I wish I knew sooner that having " a young child" would be MUCH harder … huh? I AM NOT DISREGARDING ANYONES PAIN...I know with all my heart , it hurts. This is a peek at my experience with older daughters. Just sayin...

[Treasur]

Ha ha, Brain, fully paid up member of the 'went bats$it crazy' club here 
The core of that I suspect was losing my dad as opposed to mirror FOO stuff.
Certainly experiencing my own crazy gave me compassion and perhaps a bit of speculative insight on my former h's crazy.

I wasn't broken when I was drawn to my h all those years ago. Truthfully though he was younger and I did know he had some FOO stuff...hence waiting 6 years until getting married. But I was arrogant and had no comprehension of just how broken he was tbh. Maybe he didn't even know. I was simply exceptionally fond of him....

Darkness has big ripples I think....

[xyzcf]

The destruction of the family affects everyone. No matter what age the LBSer is, no matter what age the children are. I will not share what has happened to my daughter because of her father's MLC but it breaks my heart to see what this has done to her.