[Treasur]

Thank you, Treasur. I can see that point of view. I often wonder if the marriage kept the mlc at bay for longer than if they had not been married.  That maybe the reason the BD was so abrupt was because we really are good people, and the marriage helped keep them sane, until nothing could help any longer and they just imploded. In that case, the marriage could be the catalyst for the abrupt descent to Hell as opposed to a slow slide.

Funnily enough, OR, quite early on a friend who knew my xh and his FOO history well said that it perhaps was a testament to the good of our relationship that he did not implode before, that she'd always been amazed at how well he had survived his early life but now thought perhaps he was always an unexploded bomb on a timer. And an IC said in her opinion that my h had seen me as a kind of psychological scaffolding subconsciously and part of his rage was that he felt let down that the scaffolding had failed to keep his demons at bay ad infinitum. Like other LBS, it probably wasn't a coincidence that the year running up to BD I was a bit busy watching my father slowly die so my h was not my first priority....

[barbiedoll]

Why is it, does anyone think, that when asked if our marriage could be a catalyst for MLC, A)some people think someone is trying to blame the LBS for the marriage issues ("nothing I could have done" ) or B) That it was a "cause" rather than just being something that increases the reaction (ie, the mlcer feels "stuck" or trapped, 100%on the mlcer )

Is it a wording thing? Is it maybe a personality thing?

ETA: I ask because having chewed on this for a time previously, there was zero trigger, but I see it was very triggering for others. A catalyst is not a cause. It's a contributing factor, and can contribute in ways that are both helpful and/or harmful. I'd like to understand why the question seems to be bothersome .

.

Hmmmm… This is good. This challenges me (yet again) to think. It was very triggering for me. I reacted as if there was an implied "blame" . As I have stated , it has been a repeated, horrible and difficult topic in our attempts to re-connect. Number 1 problem is me hearing ANY kind of blame. As Treasure says ." I don't feel like owning responsibility for things I never knew and things he never said".  Neither do I , in fact, I refuse . So I believe that perhaps we both heard "blame'.  I know that I have been told ( MANY times ...by 2 therapists ..) that I am hearing blame when in fact, they heard no blame. I started to feel like the therapist was gaslighting me. So, it is possible , that it is "just me" ( as hard as that is to accept) . They call it "hearing thru a wound" . Maybe I just did that again. Did I ?

an event or person that causes great change:
The high suicide rate acted as a catalyst for change in the prison system /  something that causes an important event to happen

Maybe it taps into a bank of injustice anger . Because I have some of that ...true, I do. Perhaps I have a poor understanding of the word "catalyst". I see the word "caused" in the definition , and to me that implies blame. Maybe I am wrong and this is another example of hearing something different than was said. (?) .

[trusting]

Perhaps I have a poor understanding of the word "catalyst". I see the word "caused" in the definition , and to me that implies blame. Maybe I am wrong and this is another example of hearing something different than was said. (?) .

Yeah, me too.  That's what I hear when I see the question.  A catalyst is something that precipitates something else, which would imply that marriage problems would cause an MLC, which to me as an LBS makes me feel like I would share the "blame" for the MLC. 

[lawprofessor]

Interesting thread.

From my perspective, the question is not about blame as in who broke the vase.  That's old ground, unfertile and unproductive.  The vase is broken.  The value is in answering how to not continue breaking vases.

No one is saying the lbs or the marriage is the direct cause of the mlc. 

But could the marriage have been a catalyst in the bigger picture?

It depends on how one defines catalyst.  I look at it as a forest fire.  Some irresponsible immature camper started a blaze roasting Marshmallows.  The fire smoldered for a time, then crept to my shed and the can of gasoline for my mower exploded and added fuel to the fire.  The same camper was not needed to add to the fire over and over as time passed.  It grew on its own. (That's why one can't tie the actions of a MLCer years later as evidence or not of a causal at fault connection. ) (Lack of one catalyst after the fire begins doesn't magically put the fire back into the put or put the MLC genie back into the bottle)

That doesn't mean my poorly stored gasoline played no part.  It doesn't mean I am to blame for the original fire.  But I do hold some responsibility for degree of my shed burning down just as I took pride and responsibility for managing and fixing during my marriage.  An adult owns the good and the bad.

As related to mlc,

The fire was already burning inside the MLCer.  But as his partner, I was also flammable and stored unsafely because of my own issues.  So I played a part after all I was not a passive participant in my marriage like the couch or ottoman.

I see the question of catalyst as one that encourages healing and growth through the examination of the dynamics of the marriage.  Not blame.  Blame is looking backward while trying to walk forward and being surprised when you run into a wall.

To me it doesn't make sense to suggest that the dynamics of the marriage had nothing to do with the end result.  Dynamics are made by the two parties.  If one or both are broken, have latent foo issues, are codependent, are conflict avoidant, have a tendency toward depression, have a tendency toward control or fixing issues, have not grown up, have not individuated, those things all impact the dynamics of a relationship, before, during and after the mlc.  Could the Marshmallow fire have grown without my mower gas?  Yes, but my shed didn't have to explode but for my poorly stored mower gasoline. 

Another example:

Many therapists state it's impossible to have a healthy relationship with someone who is conflict avoidant, and more so when both parties are conflict avoidant.

When we don't learn from history, we tend to repeat it.  So how many of you want to repeat this experience?

I was not collateral damage from his crisis, an unknown victim of a person who just went crazy, that I had no contact with at the time, and the world just swallowed me whole, like a mass shooter at a mall or church.

I was his wife.  And I own my actions and words and behaviors.

So focusing on myself, not on the MLCER:

1.  I attracted a man with serious and masked foo issues. The question is why did I attract a man who as Barbies H said, had simmering issues that were there all along?

2.  I married a man who was broken all along and I didn't realize it, or didn't realize the extent.  Again as Barbies H said.  The issues didn't pop up over night. 
So why didn't I see it and how do I prevent it happening again?

3.  I used my skill as a fixer to paper over his rough spots. Why did I do that?  Why not have enough respect for him to let him fight his own battles?  Why did I need to fix him?  To control the environment? 

4.  I chose to overlook some things because I chose to behave like a young girl and wear rose colored glasses.  Why did I overlook certain immature behavior traits that I did find annoying and immature?

5.  My own foo issues matched up with his foo issues so that we clicked like puzzle pieces uniting our wounds. 

6.  That click of pieces was the sound of a codependent relationship which I was an active participant in as the wife.

7.  I also realized he was conflict avoidant although I wasn't familiar with the term at the time. How did that play in and why did I accept that?  Why did I accept the childish distancing when he felt wronged but didn't get to behave similarly when I felt wronged?  Why did I put up with the passive aggressive childish silent treatment at times?  With him refusing to make decisions so he could never hold responsibility if something went wrong? 

I accept those are truths in my marriage and likely in a bunch of marriages with mlc based on my years here.

All those things are on me.  And I don't wish to participate in broken attracting broken or repeating history over and over.  That's not rewriting history. That's getting honest and taking off the rose colored glasses.  It's maturing and individuating. 

And the answer to all those questions was within me and within my power to address and heal.  When I embraced that I moved forward without running into walls.

All these years later, I can clearly see how this happened in my life.  But I can also say, I no longer attract closet broken men.  I no longer want to play build-a-man.  I no longer attract men with addictions or mommy troubles.  I don't have to practice biting my tongue or the rule of 3.  I don't have to put up with distancing or waiting on someone to grow up.

My fella brings as much to the table as I do.  We are partners in life with neither feeling the need to control, to fix, to avoid conflict, to be a single entity.  We are simply partners.  And that wouldn't happen but for having gotten my head right and my foo healed.

The above is my opinion.

Lp

[OffRoad]

I don't know that there is any "wrong" here. I work with a lot of things with chemical catalysts. Bondo uses a catalyst to speed up hardening. It does not cause the Bondo to harden (Bondo will harden completely on its own in the air in a year or two), but the catalysts speeds up that process to less than an hour. So since my definition is "a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change.", it's not a cause, but a multiplier or could make something happen faster.

So it could be the wording, the individuals experience, or the individual's "filter", or listening through a wound or all of the previous plus or minus something else. Thank you for those perspectives.

And it's funny, my D was graduating from High School and needing help (prom dress to make, colleges to apply to, acceptance letters to sort, pictures to take) and my mother was also in and out of the hospital in the year leading up to BD, so XH was not my only priority.....interesting.  That brings me back to my previous mirror work where I had to look at why my actually having needs of my own seemed to be unacceptable to him, instead of his joining in and picking up the slack. Never again will that be acceptable to me, but I know why I accepted it then. I did the introspection because I do not want that in my life ever again.

[Nerissa]

To me it doesn't make sense to suggest that the dynamics of the marriage had nothing to do with the end result.  Dynamics are made by the two parties.  If one or both are broken, have latent foo issues, are codependent, are conflict avoidant, have a tendency toward depression, have a tendency toward control or fixing issues, have not grown up, have not individuated, those things all impact the dynamics of a relationship, before, during and after the mlc.  Could the Marshmallow fire have grown without my mower gas?  Yes, but my shed didn't have to explode but for my poorly stored mower gasoline. 


I agree with the whole of this post.  I think the particular dynamics of a couple is usually key.  That doesn’t mean the mlc spouse wouldn’t have had a crisis with a different partner but it may have had a different path I suppose and it wouldn’t have been me!  Actually despite all the blame I took, I think H, because of vulnerability to issues   would unconsciously only ever have married someone like me, willing to mother certain immaturities and also willing to give away my power to him. OW had all my weaknesses in spades and multiplied by ten.

But the way I was in the marriage and the more I gave away
My own identity, the worse the issues became.  I didn’t see things or when I did I didn’t understand their significance .  Later I was just in denial.

In any case, it wasn’t a bad marriage to be  ‘blamed’ but the way we worked together.  When it worked well it was great.  When either of us moved into the unhealthy ways our personalities worked when under pressure, it was slowly and Imperceptively destructive.  although my actions  were all made in good faith, they were often not healthy ones.

So to me mirror work is not necessarily about throwing the baby out with the bath water and saying I wasn’t a good wife because I was ok.   but about looking at where my particular strategies and personality fitted into the good and bad of his.

[Treasur]

I agree with it too. And Nerissa's thoughts on the inevitable symbiotic dance of two folks in a long term relationship in which both own bits.
There is something very sensible about the marshmallow fire metaphor that rings true.
Have more thoughts so will post later as busy now.

But proof that itbis a good question imho bc it is encouraging so many of us to keep thinking.
Have learned that sometimes the questions that make me bristle most are often signposts to important lessons lol.

[barbiedoll]

questions that make me bristle most are often signposts to important lessons lol.

.

I also have found this to be true. It hits some unhealed parts of us. It shows us where we still have "work" to do.

[osb]

I'm also on the other side of MLC and looking back. My H has at times insisted that our marriage was fine, and also that it wasn't fine; that the problem was in him, and that the problem was in our relationship. He is in the end, an imperfect and unreliable narrator of his own journey (perhaps because he was checked out for much of it?), and I think I'd better not base my reaction on his recollection of it.

In one sense I do think there was a trigger within our relationship. None of my choosing, but: I can't have children. We found this out late, were shocked, in denial, did all the usual medical hijinks, and finally we gave up. And partway through, my H emotionally checked out. In retrospect, he was in mourning. So was I; but the biological problem was in me, so I was out on a limb. We tend to envision our futures in very tangible ways; I thought I'd be a mother, H thought he'd be a father. Without that future, that identity, he lost his moorings. H has admitted to this, recently. His depression (yes anger and anhedonia and OCD can all be symptoms of clinical depression, especially in men) started as a consequence, then spiraled out of all fathoming.

Was that him placing fault on me? Or on him? Was it an inherently broken thing in H, some hidden disorder of personality, that would have erupted without the trigger? Or one that a stronger man could have learned to cope with, but a man already in MLC could not? Or was depression the direct consequence of a loss, crushingly felt and unable to be rationalized?

And as much as I feel it ridiculously unfair to me to consider this a reason for my H to lose his ever loving mind (I am creative of many things in this world dammit, just not with my ovaries!    And I also mourned but I didn't rip anyone else apart in my pain), I do need to consider it - not to excuse but to understand the origins of a very bad bunch of years. I don't forgive it either; but I have perhaps learned to look past it toward a future that looks, well, rather different.

My own mirror work required that I first forgive myself and my recalcitrant plumbing, and then realize I'm perfectly ok without that lovely future that I had wanted, and finally that life looks pretty good (whether I share it with partner, or child, or not). If I hadn't gotten there (by myself, regardless of H's MLC), I might've fallen into in the abyss as well. So bless that bloody mirror.

[Acorn]

Many interesting posts!  Thank you for generously sharing your experiences and perspectives.

Not quite sure if the following belongs here or on my personal thread.  O well, I guess it does not matter.

As I have stated in post #1, I agree that MLC is not about the marriage or LBS.  Deep seated issues are of the MLCer alone.  Internal pressure had been building for decades and a trigger, or triggers, would blow the lid off at some point - ‘Hello, MLC, meet H!’  Well, that’s how it was with my H, anyhow.

It is my understanding that triggers (this term is better suited to our discussion than ‘catalyst’?) are the agents that got the MLC ball rolling and have nothing to do with the issues MLCer is carrying deep within.   

I suggest that a serious fracture in marriage can be a trigger like any other - empty nest syndrome, health scare, death of loved one(s), failing business, redundancy, etc. - that set MLC in motion. 

It was a necessary and vital step in my LBS journey to ask myself the question ‘Is our fractured marriage a fallout of MLC or a trigger for it?’ to ascertain if I was clinging to MLC explanation to justify my H’s emotional divorce from me.  Why would I assume that my H was in MLC without some serious reflection?  If I see that my marriage was indeed in dire straits, then my mindset and the course of action would be shaped accordingly. I would follow my own maxim that if MLC is not about M or LBS, the resolution of MLC is not about M or LBS, either.  A broken marriage stays broken when MLCer exits the tunnel.  All that goes on during the crisis would add further damages and our R may be irrevocably injured and the chances of reconciliation would be slim to none.  That’s my brand of common sense, and you may disagree. 

I believe one needs to go beyond the superficial, such as ‘shark’ eyes, sudden interest in exercise, a whole new wardrobe, etc.  That is too facile a check list for such a serious soul-shaking life event called, ‘midlife crisis’.  These superficial ‘symptoms’ could have explanations other than MLC and I did not wish to make a frivolous and one-dimensional argument to myself that these symptoms qualified my H as MLCer.  That’s just too....simplistic, immature, and, frankly, an insult to the seriousness of MLC.  Hence, a series of questions and soul searching was on my menu.  After all, my MLCer was not the only person who had propensity to rewrite history; I could be just as talented in that department because I was in a crisis of my own, LBSCrisis. 

There were broadly 3 possibilities (with a wide spectrum in each one) which presented themselves to me:

1. Our marriage was wonderful.  He is in MLC.
2. Our rotten marriage was a trigger for his MLC.
3. It’s not MLC.  He is leaving a seriously fractured marriage.

The answer was 1.  Without asking myself some painful questions and investing emotional energy in serious reflection, I could not have come to this conclusion and convinced by it. 

This processing was not a clearly defined item on my agenda as such, but a quiet and simmering presence at the back of my mind from BD till the dissipation of high replay. 

Just my personal view.