[OffRoad]

I do believe that getting hung up on the words people use to define the mlc experience is counterproductive. I work with glass. When glass shatters, the best way to put it back together is to put it in a kiln (oven) and bake it until it fuses back together. As an analogy, baking is fairly accurate, because until any dissociated parts "fuse"  or get integrated a persona is fractured.

My point being that saying that the word "bake" or any other word is over simplifying things is simply not true. Not everyone wants to delve into the mysteries of the psyche, or even CAN  depending on where they are in their LBS journey. Some of us (that would be me) use humor to get us through. Implying that because someone uses a word you (the generic you) would not use means they are over simplifying is rather over simplifying, imo. 

To the topic at hand, what is MLC? Since I didn't have one, it LOOKS like someone reached a point where enough things had happened in their life where they can no longer sort out what they used to believe and experience  from what they currently believe and  experience. And quite honestly, I think it could be caused my multiple factors, from a severe chemical imbalance to FOO issues to childhood issues (not necessarily FOO), to a true identity crisis where everything they were told was the correct thing to do no longer jibes with where they are in life. And they all manifest in a similar way either due to the individal (who may  or may not have lived with some sort of chemical imbalance, or personality disorder or neurological disorder all their life, but we're able to hide it) or due the fact that each one is a crisis in its own right.

Like all the virus' that LOOK like a common cold, but aren't. Like ailments that LOOK like they are caused by one thing, but are really caused by another.

One person's perspective, which allows for other people to have their own perspective.

[Seahorse]

Even if the medical field classified mlc as a disease or medical condition, the mlcer doesnt think there is anything wrong with them. So  how would you go about helping someone in this case.? Its like an alcoholic. The only one that can truly dx this disease is the alcoholic  himself. Sure everyone else knows there is a problem but alcoholic is in denial. Same with mlc. Until  they  decide that they have had enough, when the pain is bad enough, when they want to change their life , thats when they will seek help.

Well said Keep Believing!

[Not Applicable]

Who is to say if more was understood about mlc that a treatment would not be developed or that the mlcer would not seek treatment? What I see here is complacency with the state of our knowledge.

[Seahorse]

NYM - I think what we were agreeing to, is that the MLCer doesn't believe that there is a problem with them -- like an alcoholic.
We know that there is a diagnosis and treatment for alcoholism, HOWEVER, the alcoholic needs to admit that they have an alcohol addiction, then they need to get treatment, then they need to change their lifestyle.  That happens less often than not.  Even less for drug addiction...

Maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying?

[Treasur]

I like the glass example of baking, OR. Makes sense.
I think one of the struggles with simplifying vs not is that we are dealing with a complex thing in someone else's head while trying to navigate the effects and keep our own sanity. The first leads us to accept complexity; the second draws us to wanting a simpler frame perhaps. Like the glass example perhaps...those who know more could see and talk about it on a complex chemical level, those who know less simply know that glass is shattered but there is a possible process for repairing it.

Ok, I am stretching that metaphor a bit lol.
I think I see MLC rather more like an impressionist painting.....very difficult to see the picture close up as an LBS....easier to see the form of it as you step further back perhaps.

On what NYM says....while not disagreeing with some of it...I am not sure what you are suggesting should be done. Or by whom. Tbh the best folks to push for more research would actually be recovered MLCers I suspect as often happens when people who experience an illness challenge a given medical orthodoxy. Things like Lyme disease or ME spring to mind. Or when people write books about an experience that gain popular attention and create a public awareness. It seems to me though that the fields of psychology, psychiatry, pharmacology and neuroscience are still in flux about a lot of issues, even quite basic things like how anti-depressants work. Bessel van der Kolk, an expert in trauma for over 30 years although not universally liked, believes strongly that the CPTSD of early life FOO trauma is a huge contributing factor to the social cost of things like mental health and addiction and that we need radically different approaches to treatment...but many people disagree with him and I have no idea what an HS member could do about any of that. And that our own LBS filter has real limits and biases as well as information. Jmo.

[Penelope2018]

I'm honestly not completely sure what it is. I know from my own experience as a LBS that there is an extreme amount of stress involved, trying to live up to society's or parents' expectations, possible childhood abuse and just from my own reading, it seems many are never satisfied and may have never been. House, car, clothes, vacations, people, nothing is ever good enough. They are always looking for the greener grass but this all could still stem from the expectations thing, I don't know. I do think that even if some preventative treatment were to come about, this wouldn't help our mlcers currently. They don't want help. Most don't think anything is wrong with them. Even alcoholics and drug-addicts generally will admit that at some point. MLCers give that up that line of thinking not long after BD. They are more delusional.

[Nerissa]

There seems to be a focus on the idea that this is an issue with the brain. That would make it a concrete, identifiable and this curable disease.  I doubt it is in most cases. It is likely more holistic.  The brain and the mind cannot be conflated. 

That doesn’t mean there aren’t changes in the brain, but the way we are treated, think and act effect changes in the brain anyway as well as the other way around.

[xyzcf]

Some of us also believe that MLC is a spiritual battle which adds to the complexity.

After BD, a women whose husband had also had a MLC (and who had returned) looked me straight in the eye and said "this is Satan, trying to destroy good Christian marriages"....I thought she was nuts.

Sister Lucia dos Santos, one of the three children who witnessed the Marian apparitions at Fatima, died in 2005. But before her death, she predicted that the final battle between Christ and Satan would be over marriage and the family. In  a response to Cardinal Caffarra who Saint John Paul II had commissioned  to plan and establish the Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family she wrote ‘The final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan will be about Marriage and the Family.’ Don't be afraid, she added, because whoever works for the sanctity of Marriage and the Family will always be fought against and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue. Then she concluded: ‘nevertheless, Our Lady has already crushed his head’.”

Jim Conway who wrote Men In Mid Life Crisis published in 1978, also referred to a spiritual battle as part of what he observed to be a mid life crisis.

Thus, MLC is most likely a combination of mind/body and spirit which makes it very complex.

[Treasur]

My/our old priest - who is also a psychotherapist - has always seen this kind of crisis as a spiritual/existential one as well as a psychological one. My xh interestingly, who apparently lost his faith in this process as often seems to happen, referred more than once to 'fighting his own demons'. I am not knowledgeable enough about anyone's faith beliefs, including my own ha ha, to have an opinion but I can see that any kind of existential crisis of any depth probably includes some spuritual element as well as a mental/physical one. As you say xyz, this just adds to the complexity of it probably both from the inside and the outside.

[Seahorse]

Great point xyzcf -
My H also lost his connection with God and the church when the MLC started.
I kept trying to get him back to church, but he was never happy with any one that I chose after we moved to the new state.
On the other hand, my church and God has given me a great sense connection and hope for an amazing future -- whatever that entails.

So, I pose the question - Is Satan's presence the impetus for ruining the marriage, or vice-versa?  Which came first, the chicken or the egg?