[Milly]

Nothing to add, but just wanted to say that I'm following and enjoying this thread.

[Limboland2018]

Hey NYM

Yes I’m worried about the effect my ex is having on our daughter. 2 weeks ago she said “I miss my daddy more than he loves me”. She’s 4. She’s perceptive and smart. He makes no real effort to connect with her. Hell he even moved countries to be with his woman and didn’t contact her for 2 months. He speaks to her maybe once every two weeks now and will spend the night with her when he’s traveling back to our country of residence. He mentioned ages ago he wants to see her after Xmas but hasn’t mentioned it again. (I assume he’s back with his ho bag and is with her around this time)

Unfortunately I am dealing with the awful reality that what my daughter said is true. I’ve been told to be honest. I tell my daughter daddy loves her but he’s sick. I’ve had psychological advice and I take her to art therapy and we do it together. I can’t help what my ex has done but I can make sure she has a strong relationship with me and try to ease the pain of his actions.

In the future I worry that she will be attracted to a man like her father.  If she thinks this is love then she will be attracted to any man that ignores her and treats her badly. I’m an older mum so I’m not sure I will be around if she goes through something like this. My parents have helped me a lot.

[Velika]

The best thing that could be done for our spouses and those like them in the future is for doctors to take a clinical approach. Your rubbing your patients' back is a poor substitute for a doctor saving their life.

And the first step towards that is a clinical definition of mlc. I would rather my husband (and me) had never had to go through this at all than to worry about how to reconcile.

No progress will be made for future lbses who come to this forum until medical science recognizes s clearly defined cluster of symptoms in a cohort of the population not a sample of one.

This would be a great thread to do it if one could put aside one's own relationship for a moment and focus on the mlcer. Not to get them back but to define the illness

I completely agree with this. I think most of our suffering comes from this not being recognized as an illness. I would say actually the stereotype of "midlife crisis" is the number one impediment to many of us getting help.

Many of us can see quite clearly and right away that something is wrong with our spouse that is beyond simply feeling restless or unhappy. I would never have even thought to call this a "midlife crisis" until other people used this term with me. Up close, it looks like psychosis.

I deeply believe, too, that stereotypes about divorces and affairs come from MLC-type behavior. In most articles about affairs, there is no mention of mental illness, even though hypersexuality is actually quite common in mania.

I think it is unfortunate, as I believe someone could make real breakthroughs about the brain by studying MLC. While I don't think that MLCers would line up to be studied, I do think that if you took a cohort of, say, recently divorced, tattoed men who purchased motorcycles in their late forties and early fifties — and paid them – you could probably have a sizable group to study.

[xyzcf]

I do think that if you took a cohort of, say, recently divorced, tattoed men who purchased motorcycles in their late forties and early fifties — and paid them – you could probably have a sizable group to study.

Paying subjects to be a part of a study will skew the results so your data would not be valid.

Many MLCers do not divorce, MLCers are also single people, my husband doesn't have any tattoos, many men (what about women as well) have tattoos but are not in a MLC, same with purchasing a motorcycle.

These are such cliches. Is this what you think MLC is?

There are actually clinical studies that have been done and are ongoing concerning mid life crisis. I just goggled "midlife crisis research studies" and there are pages listed.

On HS we also have a thread about articles that people have read that pertain to MLC. The latest titled "Links/Blogs/Articles for us all to share 8 " is number 8 in the threads that have been devoted to sharing what is known about MLC.

https://mlcforum.theherosspouse.com/index.php?topic=11123.msg742776#msg742776

I personally have had several people in "real life" tell me that my husband is in a mid life crisis as soon as I started to explain what had happened. Even our financial advisor recognized what was happening and had seen it several times before.

As for NYM's comment about putting your children first, sometimes it is not up to the LBSer but the court who decides upon the visitation rights. 3boys4me is presently facing that nightmare and there is nothing she can do to stop the damaging effects of having to force her boys to spent time with their dad..because it has been court ordered.

Just my thoughts as I see it.

[Penelope2018]

The only thing I have to contribute is tons of studies pay people for their participation. Medical studies are always posted on campuses and local stores for pay, or at least they used to be. There's a whole platform (Amazon Mechanical Turk) that hosts research groups from Duke, Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Oxford and tons of others who posts studies all day, every day for payments ranging from a nickel to over $100. And many have screeners for certain attributes they are looking for (history of mental illness, age, sex, family size, job status, marital, etc, etc). I do mturk as a side gig. They pay students who are on campus much more for the same things.

[Not Applicable]

Paying subjects to be a part of a study will skew the results so your data would not be valid.

But it is done every day in medicine. I don't know what planet that you were living on as a nurse to not know that is a very common, standard practice.

Please show us all those ongoing "clincial" studies on "midlife crisis" too.

[Thunder]

Very interesting, xyzcf.  I just googled "midlife crisis research studies."

I never knew these studies were going on.
Thanks for sharing.

[Treasur]

I'm sure NYM there were more courteous ways to ask the same questions.

As xyz said and Thunder did and NYM probably could, a quick google search threw up quite a lot. Here in the UK interestingly the latest research seems to come from two starting places; looking at it as a socio-economic issue or looking at in terms of a 'happiness dip' U-curve from a psychological one. Haven't hunted but didn't see much looking at from a medical or neuroscience POV. Perhaps there is a difference between research on cause and research on effect. And of course neither predicates that prevention is possible does it?

My sense here in the UK is that it is becoming seen as a 'real' thing in mental health academia. As is the QLC actually. But there are different perspectives and it is still early days in research terms and in that translating into the kind of workable frameworks that everyday therapists, psychiatrists, policy makers or health care providers would use.

Another HS poster mentioned the work of a psychoanalyst John Steiner on 'psychic retreats' which is also imho rather interesting reading.

Which is all very interesting for some perhaps. Curious minds here could I'm sure reach out to some of these academic researchers directly if they wanted to learn more. Or indeed some might choose to do PhD research on this very topic depending on their current profession....

But how that serves you as an individual on HS effected by it imho is a separate question.
Just as research on the causes of say alcoholism does not necessarily help me much with a drunken spouse screaming abuse on my doorstep when the shared anecdotal experience of Al-Anon might.
Jmo.

[Not Applicable]

When I talked about there being no studies, those were not the kind of studies I was talking about. The U-curve study is an old and known one, but really has nothing specifically to do with MLC and is a psychological study. Socio-economic studies get even further away from the point I am trying to make. The fact is if you search PubMed, which is considered the standard source for medical research studies, NOT Google, you will not really find anything.

[Treasur]

Which is what I said.
And supports the thread title premise.

And so, NYM? I am genuinely struggling to understand the purpose behind your point. Let's agree say that you can't find the kind of medical research study that you think needs to be done. Other than just standing on a metaphorical street corner shouting at us about it, your point is....?