[nah]

In the very early days post BD, I just scrolled the forum looking for reconciliation threads. I don’t think I would have even opened this one up.

Then, for a time, I made up my own rules and ignored anyone’s advise that didn’t line up with my beliefs. So, again, I would have ignored this thread.

After I settled down, I spent some serious time on learning how to focus on my healing.  I dropped the rope, picked it up a few times, and dropped it again. True “Mirror-work” was hard. I wanted to stamp my feet and put closure on his shoulders. He was the bad guy, not me.

I understand how some newbies might feel a bit uncomfortable with this discussion. I know I would have been, not bc the discussion is blaming the LBS but only due to the fact after being gaslit for so long I blamed myself for everything. 

Again, I’m scratching my head, not everyone here is months from bomb-drop. If you’re not ready for mirror work, that’s fine. Focus on Airmid’s list for newbies. When you’re ready, find this thread and continue with learning how to get to the next level.

I would hope that healing is your goal whether or not you reconcile your marriage.

[Father5]

   I agree with a lot of what is being said on thsi thread. I am right at the point you are talking about barely 1 yr post BD. NYM on another thread said she didnt think my wife had an MLC. I didn't like it, I didn't/don't agree with her but it did cause me to take a good long hard look at my marriage and our issues. LP had another one a few weeks back that triggered me a little. Both times I went into a little spin but it's also those times when I have made the most personal growth.

  I do realize we all heal at different times and rates and I can see where someone would get triggered. But I do think most if not all of the people here especially old timers are here with love and compassion for all of us LBSers.

[Velika]

We don't all have to agree! We weren't all married to the same person, and didn't all have the same marriage.

All relationships are filled with challenges, even good ones. This is what we are on earth for, to learn and grow!

I think this is different from MLC. No matter where you are in the process, and if and when you are ready, this can be a wonderful opportunity to expand your idea of what a relationship can be.

No one deserves the extreme emotional abuse of a MLCer, for someone to repeatedly and viciously harm them until the point of destabilizing. This has nothing to do with the LBS, period. The MLCer owns this energetically, 100 percent.

Please, find trauma support. Once you are okay, feeling safe and good and solid in yourself, then this is the time to look beyond this traumatic event you have survived. Then you can think of what a good relationship might look and feel like for you.

[Disillusioned]

I'm concerned that this thread is reinforcing MLCers blame game in the potentially damaged psyche of the early stage LBS.

I like many other LBSs suffered more than one BD and after BD1 I accepted a lot of responsibility for my W's MLC and her first PA.  I tried to accept the blame on the logic that if my formerly loving wife had acted so against her previous nature and beliefs that I must have somehow broken her and I had done this unknowingly and without my W telling me.

 I worked to be a better husband and father, using CBT to address my own issues.

My W like many other MLCers had a 'return' only to have a second PA and BD again, with me again being blamed as the cause, with our M being the trigger for her behaviours.  My work on myself and changes I made were seen as too little too late, 'You had already messed me up'. 

Nothing I could do would fix in her what I had not broken.

My MLC W felt like she was broken by our M...  That her MLC was not to do with her life choices, lack of personal confidence, FOO issues, unresolved grief over bereavements we had suffered, etc.

I believe childhood echoes forever and the seeds of MLC are sown in childhood.  My W was not the one person on planet earth who was without emotional issues from FOO, etc when we met and feel in love.  To me MLC seems far too big to have been formed in secret in a M that was not abusive or cold and indeed had many beautiful times, not least being blessed with four amazing children. 

The potential for an MLC is in us all and doesnt belong to others... MLC is an internal battle and I believe almost nothing to do with the partner who is blamed...  this blame game is selfish, lazy and too simple an explanation, but it is so much easier for the MLCer than facing the pain.

How many of our LBS brothers and sisters have sat, stunned like me thinking 'Was I really that bad to live with?', 'Am I now reaping what I unknowingly sowed'? 'Do I deserve this?'

This I know is a very dark place to inhabit.  And with time and sincerity and a lot of work I have separated out our M issues from her MLC and now feel confident that the issues within our M are tiny compared to the hugeness of an MLC.  This took much hard work to accomplish and I too am concerned that those who are closer to BD than me will read some of this thread as a validation of MLC blaming. 

MLC is amongst the most major of depressive episodes, with the extreme behaviours exhibited by the MLCer more akin to a serious psychological breakdown than to the degradation of a stagnant marriage.  The difference between a relationship breakdown and the extremes of MLC are huge and the two situations incomparable IMHO.

I did not break her and nor did our M, indeed I believe that the M prevented her from an earlier MLC as I tried to hold us together, tried to help her to fix herself by being strong for two. 

This cannot work as the MLC battle is within my W and within each MLCer.  LBS are not to blame, M is not the trigger.

 I believe MLC starts very early, in my case long before there is even any replay behaviours, it starts slow and creeps up on the MLCer, until eventually they see themselves as being justified in outrageous behaviours as they are married to a monster.

 None of this is fair or true and I for one dont accept this twisted version of reality, I accept my faults and will continue to work on them, but I refuse to accept the blame for the hell of MLC visited upon me. 

We are all the lens through which we see the world and the MLCer's lens is very distorted and dark, it is dangerous to accept their vision of the world as reality.

LW

LW - Thank you for this.

[terra]

For what it’s worth, to anyone, while my post count is in the low triple digits, I’ve been registered here since 2016 and was grappling with h’s MLC (without identifying it as MLC) for at least a year or two before then. So despite my low post count here and the appearance of being new both to MLC and this board, I’m so not either.

After the first major jaw-dropping BD, it took me a few months to find this community. I posted maybe a handful of times and then got sucked back into the maw of offline coping. I also jumped boards because at the time, in 2016, I saw some interpersonal dynamics here that seemed very caustic, inappropriate, and not at all helpful or even pertinent.

I see those in this current time too. Like, those of you who single each other out and call names or nitpick, really as a decades-long veteran of online communities and general etiquette, I don’t understand why you don’t take that to PMs. The public jostling is a turnoff. I’m not here to school anyone, only to read and to offer my own experience or knowledge if I have an answer that might help anyone at any stage of coping or recovery or whatever emotional state. Not exactly here to gain followers or win points or approval, for good or bad or smart or anything else, if that makes sense. So I don’t want to watch anyone here lord it over anyone else, for any reason. You know?

I post only if I’m stuck or stunned by my own situation, or if I read something in yours that either speaks to my heart or clearly calls to it for an answer, any answer, and I feel I might have an answer that can help you. I treasure some of you here, more than I can say, and even so, sometimes I am so tired and spun that I don’t have any words at all and so, I don’t actually say it to you. I think and hope that certain of you know who you are. And I’m grateful when anyone here responds to what I’ve said in any thread. There’s no one here I detest or routinely disagree with, and there’s no one here that I’ve ever blocked. And I block people all the time, on other platforms, for any reason at all. But please be nice, to each other, no matter how long you’ve been here. Otherwise it gets uncomfortable and triggering ESPECIALLY for newbies or those who have endured anything similar — witnessed or directly — in and from the MLC spouses they are mourning and still hurt by.

What I really want to say here is that I appreciate the thread and discourse. The infighting or backbiting bugs me and is confusing but I generally skip over it, understanding that you and you, or you and you, or you and you and you, have more history disagreeing with each other than I know about. And also, it’s interesting to me at this point to reflect on how any of this “old timer” discourse or debate would feel to me if I was brand new to any of this — the board, the community, or even just the new and unwanted awareness of MLC as the issue in my m or life.

For what it’s worth, now several years into awareness and coping and even sometimes now managing to feel a new and still wobbly “normal” again? I find I absolutely cannot remember what it was like when it all first started for me. I have mountains of paper journals and email archives troubling over it and all the pain, from those first days and weeks and months and years. But I haven’t read any of them since I wrote them. I’m not sure when I ever will, or what to do with them in the event that I never do. I stopped rereading old journals when all of this became blisteringly clear for what it was and is.

What I can tell you, as old-timer to any newbie, is that it’s important to keep moving forward, little by little, and do all you can to never get too stuck in this. The concept of MLC has to exit your thinking at some point and be replaced by thoughts and personal loving disciplines that you develop on your own because they *fulfill you* and *make you happy*. Whatever this all is and whyever it happened to you, someone else’s rotten choices and sh!te behaviors are just not at all your fault. Own only what is your own, to own. Don’t buy the MLCer’s oft-told lie that it’s because of you that they stopped being a kind, reasonable, responsible, and loving person and spouse. If you’ve lost yourself amidst all the mistreatment and factual abuse, you have got to find yourself again. You’ve got to pry yourself out of their clouded carnival mirror and know who You Are.

Everything gets much clearer, cleaner, and safer after we do that. Not to say it isn’t painful, as we come to know “Myself” again, or that it isn’t painful even after we’ve established that we know our own “I Am”. It still hurts and is still lonely. But ultimately also much safer, calmer, more steady and resolute.

There will always be questions, I think. And there will always be answers — probably many. You’ll know both through trial and error and by instant recognition which answer or answers work for you. Trust. Trust in the process — and in YOUR process. Trust in YOU.

One last food for thought. Everything written here by anyone is just that: food for thought. We don’t always arrive at instant conclusions, no matter how clearly an answer or anecdote or opinion is written. That’s why it’s said in these support communities to read and keep reading, read and reread, write, and then go back and read and reread some more. The same exact post or thread may strike a bell for you even years after first time you read it, even if you wrote it yourself. And even if it perplexed or vexed or didn’t apply at all, the first time you said or saw it.

That thing about when you are ready, the teacher will appear?

Sometimes the teacher is us, ourselves. You, yourself, I mean.

If you are new and reading this? Keep going. Keep reading. Keep processing. Live your life the best you can, whether lonely or painful or so confused. Just keep going.

IT WILL GET BETTER. In some time, down the road, you won’t remember what Now feels like anymore. It’s like how women forget the outlandish waves of agony of childbirthing. At some point down the road, You will not be in this much pain anymore. You’ll have survived all the crests and sickening pits of anguish and fear. And You will have learned how to make your boundaries known and clear, so that the sickening pits don’t happen very often anymore, if at all, in any part of your life.

You’ll be stronger. And wiser, and more matured, and different. And You also will still be very much You.

Keep going. It will all get better.

That other person’s choices and behavior and mistreatment aren’t “caused” by You. Period.

[megogirl]

Terra - WORD!!!

Love, love, love the comparison of BD to childbirth.  A personal hell that we’d never choose to re-live - but somehow, we manage to survive it (?!)

[terra]

To clarify — because I just went back to reread my recent posts here, and saw that in this thread! I’d said it’s jarring to look back on old journals! — the one referenced in that post earlier up thread is an old journal that turned up during a housecleaning some years ago. I was stupefied to find it outside of the MLC journals; it was from our first years together, and the h described was so different from the h of the past several years. I read it and photographed the one entry.

I saw that photograph again recently, since coming back to this site six or so months ago. It’s STILL shocking, how good and reasonable and really values-driven he was. Kind of painful, but still important to see. That one entry turns up periodically, outside its original paper and ink context, as if to remind me that no: he wasn’t always in MLC, wasn’t always weird. H was actually devoted to you for a long time. That photo turns up and I am ...chastened by it. Because I wrote it, and what I wrote then was true. And it’s still true of him then, even if it is not true of him now.

But I know the old MLC journals are also true. And those were very painful to write, and I don’t want to go back there. Not even a few weeks back.

Anyway. Thank you for witnessing my realization and self-correction or clarification. “Old journals” is vague: there are pre-MLC old journals, and MLC old journals. Both are now painful to read, so I generally won’t. If a pre-MLC journal literally falls into my lap, which despite my best organizational efforts does actually happen occasionally, I have considered that a push from God to pay attention and reflect honestly. I will read one of those if I have to. But I will pour a glass of wine first and sit down somewhere comfortable because I know I will cry buckets.

The old MLC journals, even the one I finished writing ten days ago, I will avoid every one of those like the plague.

It’s a blessing wherever you’ve written down the truth, your truth. I know it’s not time for me to read most of the MLC journaling; not the handwritten stuff. Not yet. I’m glad I’ve written here, and somehow I am ok rereading here. The books, though, not yet.

Thanks again for witnessing.

[gman242]

My IC once said, as we were exploring my W's infidelity, "You cheated too.  You used the Playstation as a mistress." 

I disagree with your therapist. You no doubt tried to fix the issue, but after years of neglect you simply found a way to bring yourself comfort and distraction. That may sound like the definition of cheating, but I still disagree. You were with who you wanted to be with. She didn't want to be with you so you found something else to do that didn't involve replacing her.

I went through the same thing. I had my own issues but they were oppressed and dominated by xw's issues. Because of it, I had an MLT. I had a life that didn't include her to distract me from the pain of abandonment.

I tried, you tried. We didn't cheat or abandon them when so many have and it would have been so easy to justify. How are you supposed to "work with" someone who doesn't want to be worked with? So you got a hobby you over indulged in.

All my actions were in reaction to xws abandonment. I played video games too and I refuse to bear any blame for it. She sat in bed cheating on me in her ipad and phone. I was shooting a 10 year old kid in Russia or something in call of duty.

Tell your therapist to call me, I'll set him straight.

[Disillusioned]

My IC once said, as we were exploring my W's infidelity, "You cheated too.  You used the Playstation as a mistress." 

I disagree with your therapist. You no doubt tried to fix the issue, but after years of neglect you simply found a way to bring yourself comfort and distraction. That may sound like the definition of cheating, but I still disagree. You were with who you wanted to be with. She didn't want to be with you so you found something else to do that didn't involve replacing her.

I went through the same thing. I had my own issues but they were oppressed and dominated by xw's issues. Because of it, I had an MLT. I had a life that didn't include her to distract me from the pain of abandonment.

I tried, you tried. We didn't cheat or abandon them when so many have and it would have been so easy to justify. How are you supposed to "work with" someone who doesn't want to be worked with? So you got a hobby you over indulged in.

All my actions were in reaction to xws abandonment. I played video games too and I refuse to bear any blame for it. She sat in bed cheating on me in her ipad and phone. I was shooting a 10 year old kid in Russia or something in call of duty.

Tell your therapist to call me, I'll set him straight.

Gman, I certainly appreciate that perspective. I've definitely vacillated back and forth about that statement, and I've had numerous conversations with friends about it. You're right. I tried. I made my needs extremely clear when it came to intimacy. After years of being shot down, gas lighted, and watching this beautiful creature that I loved above all else  walk around nude in front of me and lay in bed nude but not let me touch her, I eventually retreated into a world online. And the funny thing is, I only did it at night after she went to bed. I never did it while she was awake.

I also think I had an MLT, or at least some type of depression. My mlcw constantly says I came home one day a completely different person. And I don't disagree with her. But something brought about that change, which is why I have a difficult time not thinking that sometimes certain circumstances in the marriage might lead to mlc. I think that her withholding caused me a great deal of pain and I withdrew and became depressed, angry, and different. I didn't cheat, I didn't spend money, I didn't get a sport car, I didn't go out drinking.  I stayed home and continued to try and be the best husband I could be given the circumstances. But I definitely withdrew emotionally, and left her feeling abandoned and betrayed. I can certainly validate her feelings on that subject, because I felt the same way.

I appreciate your offer to call my therapist. She's a woman, not a man, so I always try to give her perspective special consideration. However, we've had several knock-down, drag-out fights about men and women. I feel like she's learned some things from me that she didn't understand about men.

[Velika]

Terra I really agree with you.

These type of discussions are like asking what you were wearing when someone assaulted you.

No one here caused MLC. If anything the one thing we all share in common is taking too much responsibility for the behavior of another person and not being able to separate ourselves from their actions.

People often end up fixating and focusing on people or events with mixed messages. I’m afraid this forum often does this to people it should be trying to protect, keeping them hooked just on the topic itself by stating at the same time that the MLCer is wrong but a little right, that it isn’t about the marriage but maybe a little bit, that the LBS isn’t to blame but be sure to do mirror work and get a life, that you should live as if they aren’t coming back but here are things that might make them want to come back.

I actually do not think you could cause a heathy person to have a MLC even if you tried.