[Treasur]

Father, I am very sorry that your IC was not able to meet you where you are/were as a skilled IC should be able to do. When we are wounded, validation without judgment is imho like an IV drip.....it gives us just enough to start our own healing process. And to feel judged as you did....yes, it is like a double dose of trauma. Almost a kind of gaslighting actually to be told you are not only 'wrong' about what you are experiencing but also 'wrong' in how you feel about it. I am so,so sorry. And I hope that this IC is an ex-IC.

I don't know if your w is in MLC; ha ha, I don't know for sure if my former h was so how can I know about anyone else's? 

But I do trust my judgement that something big happened to him, that he became unrecognisable and that a lot of crazy stuff happened that wasn't my crazy. And being able to, after honest reflection, trust my judgment again was so very important for my sanity and in turning my world right side up slowly. It did involve a kind of both/and bc some of what your IC said is probably true....that your w is responsible for her actions and that she does not care much about you or anyone else.....and you have experienced something inconceivably WTF that blew your life up. Both/and.

What you do with that both/and is for you to determine and for a decent IC to support you in imho.

[OffRoad]

Oddly enough, you don't have to believe in the term "MLC" to be able to see that what happens in some of these situations is just not normal "This marriage isn't working, let's go our separate ways". 

Making the bed every morning doesn't make me happy (it  might you, but not me). I don't leave a marriage because I feel I must make the bed in the morning. (or maybe because someone else DOESN'T make the bed in the morning)
Dealing with an ant invasion doesn't make me happy. I don't run away from the house because I have to deal with an ant invasion.
Needing new tires on my car doesn't make me happy. I don't abandon my car on the side of the road because I need new tires.
Taking my child to the doctor when they are sick does not make me happy. I don't leave my child at the doctor's office and never come back.

What is with the attitude from ICs about a spouse who leaves, if they aren't "happy" it makes sense for them to leave? Don't try to improve yourself, or see if there is something different you can do or ask if there is  way to  make the situation better. Just run away and go do something that might make you "happy". There is a very large difference between pretzeling yourself for someone else and not even trying to see if there is a solution.

When did honor, integrity, loyalty, morals all take a back seat to "happy"? When did gaslighting, lying about, lying to, cheating on, stealing from, verbally abusing and abandoning your spouse become "Cruel, but they aren't happy so they should just leave the relationship"?  That's just really weird in my book.

[Curiosity]

Oddly enough, you don't have to believe in the term "MLC" to be able to see that what happens in some of these situations is just not normal "This marriage isn't working, let's go our separate ways". 

Making the bed every morning doesn't make me happy (it  might you, but not me). I don't leave a marriage because I feel I must make the bed in the morning. (or maybe because someone else DOESN'T make the bed in the morning)
Dealing with an ant invasion doesn't make me happy. I don't run away from the house because I have to deal with an ant invasion.
Needing new tires on my car doesn't make me happy. I don't abandon my car on the side of the road because I need new tires.
Taking my child to the doctor when they are sick does not make me happy. I don't leave my child at the doctor's office and never come back.

What is with the attitude from ICs about a spouse who leaves, if they aren't "happy" it makes sense for them to leave? Don't try to improve yourself, or see if there is something different you can do or ask if there is  way to  make the situation better. Just run away and go do something that might make you "happy". There is a very large difference between pretzeling yourself for someone else and not even trying to see if there is a solution.

When did honor, integrity, loyalty, morals all take a back seat to "happy"? When did gaslighting, lying about, lying to, cheating on, stealing from, verbally abusing and abandoning your spouse become "Cruel, but they aren't happy so they should just leave the relationship"?  That's just really weird in my book.

Thank you, this is the issue I have with IC! I feel like it was the direction my therapist was taking our sessions when I quit going. And I wonder if my wife is getting something similar. In addition, our MC pretty quickly moved to suggesting a separation as soon as my wife was unable to fully commit to being ready to work on our marriage. And I get that marriage counseling only makes sense if both parties are actively working on improving the marriage (at least, that is true of most types of marriage counseling). But it’s one thing to say that you can’t counsel a couple when both people aren’t fully committed, but it’s another thing entirely to suggest a separation. I know that my wife likes her therapist and feels like she is supportive. But my experience is that more often than not, my wife seems more depressed after therapy than before.

I just feel like the questions should be bigger than “are you happy?” Marriage is a promise, a commitment, and it’s about a lifetime shared with someone. It’s not disposable in the same way our belongings are, it’s not meant to be temporary like a job or home or car can be. If someone isn’t happy in a marriage, the exploration should be about what is really at the root of the unhappiness so that it can be repaired. There will certainly be times when the repair cannot happen in the context of the marriage, but I feel like the fundamental importance of the commitment is minimized too often in therapy, and it’s a disservice to the patient, because all too often the problem wasn’t with the marriage at all.

[barbiedoll]

  The next few months in her office it seemed like I just wanted her to believe me about what I was witnessing and going through, I wanted validation. The worst part about them not understanding or acknowleding MLC was the fear that I was the crazy person. That I was  wrong! I  was just taking things the wrong way and didn't handle the breakup well. In some ways it made things worse.  When I finally told her all the dirty little details about what happened all she could say was how cruel it was. My therapist beleives I am just not handling it well and this site inparticular is bad for me.

.

I am sorry that this happened ..in fact way past sorry. It is a way to re-traumatize a person. Of course you wanted validation and it was her job ( especially initially) to provide you with that . It reminds me that perhaps the therapist was triggered to "stop you dead in your tracks" . Sounds like she lost her professional role in that moment . To discount what you are saying ..especially when you are so vulnerable, so hurt and so confused , just adds to the misery . I hope she is an ex-counsellor.

I am sorry that some counsellors only read from 1 script and some simply are not open to really "hearing" what is being said.  I think it is vital to trust yourself enough to walk away from counsellors that just do not "fit". However, when trust in ourselves has been shattered and we just have no clue what is happening ...its very difficult . I have changed counsellor several times either because I did not trust them, I "felt" they did not support or believe what I was saying or they were just firetrucking nuts ( in my opinion) .   I know I was excited to see a therapist that taught EFT (Emotionally Focused Therapy) . I just loved everything I read about it and believed in their ideals . So finally I find this brilliant EFT counsellor and I think she is going to " bring peace and healing to the universe " . Meanwhile, she joked with me regarding a lady that had discovered her husband has been having an affair for 10 years. Yes , 10 years !. She said " can you even imagine that a women could not see that after 10 years ?"  . HUH?  This is funny?  I just incinerated with shame because I can believe it . I missed it entirely , so it absolutely can happen . I was shocked at such disgusting humour.  It was this counsellor that my husband and I agreed to allow "tape" for use in training sessions etc. At some point ( during taping" she actually "rolled her eyes" at me in frustration.  Well, I lost my firetrucking mind , to say the least.  I was triggered to a hellish rage and I bet that is a tape that she destroyed very quickly. I did report her and never laid eyes on her again. You have to be able to say "NO, you are not the one that can help me heal ...you are not the chosen one". 

The marriage counsellor we have is Gottman trained and she is a sparky little thing . She takes no sh@t from me ... and I NEED that . She can confront me in a way that I can tolerate and does make me see all sides of the box.  However, when we 1st saw her , she was reluctant to buy into MLC . She did not say that out loud , but I knew.  I refused to talk about my marriage as the cause of my husbands affair. I would talk about his affair and how that has affected me . I will talk about my marriage . But I will not talk about them in the same session as a cause and effect scenario. I just could not.   I have to say that again... I COULD NOT DO IT.   I told her " if this marriage was the cause of his affair , then the price is too high, the punishment far too great , the anguish I feel is beyond what any human should endure and I will file for divorce before the sun sets tonight. I do not want to try again, I do not want to "fix it" with a man that never mentioned anything was wrong , I do not want marriage in my life.   I told her that I believed that his crisis and affair was not about my marriage ...he could have been ,married to anyone and still done the same .  So, she was just stunned really , likely by my unintentional aggressive - ness and I did apologize , but the boundary stands. She asked my husband ( who was sitting there ) what he believed . He told her that he believed he had a " physchological breakdown / a mental or emotional event" that was very likely well overdue and had nothing to do with Barbiedoll. ... he has come to realize.  She has honored my request but it is becoming less and less important to me . I just needed to be validated and it be understood that I will not accept blame in any way shape or form . Likely I have gone on a rant completely off topic, but the point being , it is perfectly OK to change counsellors, to set boundaries, to get rid of what does not "fit" and to find the exact right person. They are out there .

[Treasur]

I've been thinking more about your IC experience, Father. And posting here bc I bet you are not alone in it......

Fwiw I think - putting MLC to one side for the moment - being heard and acknowledged as a victim of someone else's abuse is so important. And tbh infidelity IS abuse. It is born of entitlement that my 'happy' is more important than anyone else's pain or damage to their life. It is based on removing the power from someone else to make informed choices about their own life and it takes advantage of their trust and affection. And it usually walks hand in hand with other kinds of emotional abuse at least like stonewalling, gaslighting and blameshifting. All that WTF stuff that is so exhausting and makes you feel like your head is in a blender  Imho any IC who blames the victim of abuse....either for not knowing or for how they respond and feel about it....is not much different from an MLC spouse blaming the LBS. How can you be blamed for someone else's cruelty? Why is their happy more valid than yours? No....it's a nonsense, just victim-blaming BS.

Now, it is true that a decent IC will challenge your lens and will try to encourage you away from denying the reality of your situation, particularly if avoiding some kind of acceptance is harming you more or leading you to make unwise choices for yourself. And to move away from abuse when you see it for what it is. As your IC, they can't diagnose your spouse and they are only working with what your truth is at the time. But how can you help someone heal if your starting place is to blame them for their own trauma? Or deny that they feel how they feel or that how they feel is 'wrong' bc we can only move forward from where we are can't we?

Back to MLC....
Imho there are two chunks to this. Validating that what happened to us felt WTF and that MLC as a label helps us explain the WTFness of the experience. And then each of us go through a process of figuring out slowly the nature of our spouse, what happened with them and therefore what happened to us. That takes a little time and we don't all reach the same conclusions. But the bit that saves your sanity and spirit is to trust your own sense that it felt WTF....and that it wasn't a WTF created by you or that you could control or fix. And that probably nothing you did warranted what was done to you by someone who decided that your feelings and life didn't matter enough to them as long as they got what they wanted, whatever that was.

The second bit is working out what each of us believes about MLC I think. And therefore about our spouse, marriage and best course of action. You will see here on HS that not everyone believes the same about MLC or reaches the same conclusions about what it means for them as an LBS. You and me may both agree that our spouses had some kind of personal crisis and behaved in ways that looked pretty MLC WTFish. But we may disagree on our beliefs about things like who they were before BD when we take our rose-coloured glasses off or how fully responsible they are for their actions in crisis or whether we believe they will/can return to someone closer to who they were before or whether we should try to keep a door open or not. That is imho at the heart of how we use the MLC label in plotting our own path forward, once we feel we can accept the reality that whatever we call it, the WTF stuff DID happen and can't be magically in-happened. That is where a good IC helps you to think out loud for yourself and build your own story and reality that helps you to heal. And a wise IC recognises your trauma and understands that working through trauma has seasons, that you may not reach the same conclusion in future that you do now.

One of the strengths of HS I believe is that, while we share a WTF experience, we are a diverse group of folks who reach different conclusions. We get to see other people's paths second-hand while navigating our own. We may not always agree with each other's conclusions or choices, but we get to see different POV and consider if these can help us on our own path don't we? And we can feel deeply heard at times when we feel adrift and unheard in RL. Like virtual group therapy lol. But each of us also get the right to decide if HS is helping us to heal or move forward or if it is keeping us stuck in a mindset that is not constructive for us individually. Imho the same principle is true for IC, MC or anything else we choose to do in order to 'find our own medicine' as we try to heal and rebuild our lives.

[barbiedoll]

A great post Treasur ! All of it is true without question.  I remember when I was admitted to the Trauma Program and was assigned my room. There was a picture on the wall that said simply "Healing Begins The Moment We Feel Heard " . That has always stayed with me and there is such truth in those simple words.

[marvin4242]

Brilliant post Treasur, as always, thank you.

My only addendum is if someone’s MLC is from an internal crises they lose the capacity to fully gauge how much damage they are doing, or how twisted their emotional and mental logic is. But of course it doesn’t matter in a lot of ways, I keep using the phrase “when the car hits you you are just as dead regardless of the drivers intent or whether it’s on purpose” with me therapist.

I strongly urge anyone who is dealing with MLC trauma to work with therapists who understand trauma or the underlying MLC pattern regardless of diagnosis. Or at least your therapists supports your view fully.

[xyzcf]

Treasur, your post this morning is completely real...I still wake up each morning and think WTF?

For my own sake, I have to highlight some of what you said. It validates how MLC affects us.....and if a therapist doesn't "get" that, then I don't believe they can be much help to us.

being heard and acknowledged as a victim of someone else's abuse is so important. And tbh infidelity IS abuse. It is born of entitlement that my 'happy' is more important than anyone else's pain or damage to their life. And it usually walks hand in hand with other kinds of emotional abuse at least like stonewalling, gaslighting and blameshifting.

All that WTF stuff that is so exhausting and makes you feel like your head is in a blender  Imho any IC who blames the victim of abuse....either for not knowing or for how they respond and feel about it....is not much different from an MLC spouse blaming the LBS. How can you be blamed for someone else's cruelty? Why is their happy more valid than yours? No....it's a nonsense, just victim-blaming BS.

Now, it is true that a decent IC will challenge your lens and will try to encourage you away from denying the reality of your situation, particularly if avoiding some kind of acceptance is harming you more or leading you to make unwise choices for yourself.

And to move away from abuse when you see it for what it is.

As your IC, they can't diagnose your spouse

and they are only working with what your truth is at the time. But how can you help someone heal if your starting place is to blame them for their own trauma? Or deny that they feel how they feel or that how they feel is 'wrong' bc we can only move forward from where we are can't we?

Th

Validating that what happened to us felt WTF and that MLC as a label helps us explain the WTFness of the experience. And then each of us go through a process of figuring out slowly the nature of our spouse, what happened with them and therefore what happened to us.

But the bit that saves your sanity and spirit is to trust your own sense that it felt WTF....and that it wasn't a WTF created by you or that you could control or fix. And that probably nothing you did warranted what was done to you by someone who decided that your feelings and life didn't matter enough to them as long as they got what they wanted, whatever that was.

 

once we feel we can accept the reality that whatever we call it, the WTF stuff DID happen and can't be magically in-happened.

That is where a good IC helps you to think out loud for yourself and build your own story and reality that helps you to heal. And a wise IC recognises your trauma and understands that working through trauma has seasons, that you may not reach the same conclusion in future that you do now.

One of the strengths of HS I believe is that, while we share a WTF experience, we are a diverse group of folks who reach different conclusions.

we get to see different POV and consider if these can help us on our own path don't we? And we can feel deeply heard at times when we feel adrift and unheard in RL. Like virtual group therapy lol. But each of us also get the right to decide if HS is helping us to heal or move forward or if it is keeping us stuck in a mindset that is not constructive for us individually.

And barbie:
"Healing Begins The Moment We Feel Heard "

I am not the same person now. I will never be the same person I once was.....I am "shattered"...still to this day...the third therapist I worked really never commented on anything I said concerning my husband, and I said a lot about him and what happened..she listened and directed everything back to me, how I felt, how I could change that feeling to something that felt "better"...how I could reclaim my life.

Because it really doesn't matter what we "call" the condition that happened to our spouses, except that I know it wasn't me, it wasn't our life and I could not have prevented it...the relationship I entered into with my therapist was very deep, and her role was always to lead me up along a rocky road to a gate that I alone could open and walk through when I was ready..and I know that I wouldn't have got to other side of the gate without her help.

[Songanddance]

"Healing Begins The Moment We Feel Heard "

Love this !

My T was wonderful - she accepted that I believed that MLC existed and never once tried to dissuade me from thinking about it.   
She worked on and with me - she helped me begin to heal myself. She HEARD me!

I was honest, open and unafraid to speak my truth in her room and she was wonderful at letting me do that. She never tried to impose or suggest alternatives; instead after EMDR she continued to use NLP (neuro linguistic programming) to help me see myself and reframe me so that I was still that sassy, confident S&D from before but this time with a lot more self belief and self worth.

Trying to convince someone who doesn't understand MLC is like trying to peel an orange with astronaut gloves on.  I didn't need to; maybe I was lucky or maybe I just knew that I had nothing to lose and so was prepared to bare my heart, my head and my soul so that I could heal, grow and become the best I needed to be.

[Curiosity]

Wonderful posts and discussion on this...Treasur, thank you for getting to the heart of what brings us together here. And Marvin, your point that MLCer doesn’t understand the effect their actions and words have on those around them is an excellent reminder. Their lack of insight doesn’t lessen the trauma they cause, but it makes a difference in how we choose to move forward. I guess that the important thing is that IC should focus on the healing and minimizing further damage, and leave the marriage and spouse completely out of it. When they get too focused on our decisions to stand, the therapy quickly loses its effectiveness because they so often feel that standing is equivalent to choosing to stay in the trauma. Thankfully, there are wise people here who have learned how to navigate the crisis and set boundaries that allow for both healing and the possibility of reconciliation on the other side of the crisis, if that remains the right decision for them.

Such essential points about the importance of being heard. Much to think about this morning.