[Standing Strong]

I was talking with my mom the other day and something came out that I had no idea (back then).

When I was a teenager I had a few best friend thru Junior High and High School (nothing weird about that).... anyway..... I was wondering about one of them and asked if she still talked with his mom (angel of a woman).
Mom told me she did, just not that often.... that her life is quite difficult. I inquired "what do you mean?".
A little background..... good family, seemingly normal, but the dad was "odd" and sometimes a controlling jerk. The kids didn't especially like him, but he worked hard.... and they feared him. Fast forward to my mom revealing that the dad had an affair, they almost divorced, and now he's back at home with medical issues but "isn't himself" and that's been going on for several years (just this medical stage, everything else was several years by themselves before that). Oh boy....... ding ding ding... we have a winner!!! Poor lady, she was so kind. Obvious she held it all together. He would have been in his 40's when all this started, now in his early 60's and totally dependent on her. One of those awful cases where they blow themselves up then want the LBS to nurse them until croaking off.

So then I'm thinking about it some more..... and down the street from me was another best friend (at one time). We hung out every day. Well, I was there when they moved into the neighborhood and they were a nice family. Good kids, happy mom and dad. A few years later things changed at their house. She was irritable to an extreme, super moody but always wanted to hang out with us...... play Nintendo. I can see now that my friend was always at my house because home was ugly.
She was totally checked out, yelled at the kids, fought with the dad over dumb things (in front of us all) house was a mess (more like a disaster)....... I never understood how anyone could live in just dirty conditions, just filthy.... it wasn't like that before. Being young I figured she was just unhappy for whatever reason and we all avoided her. The dad was an incredibly good and kind man. She eventually ran off to drink, party and cheat.... breaking his heart and destroying the family (three kids). She would have been in her late 30's, maybe early 40's. The dad passed away several years later, he never dated again. The mom genuinely reconnected with her kids a little more than a decade after running away. In the last photo I had seen on Facebook from a few years ago, she looked old, distant, hallow and sad (you know, that ex-MLC stare). The kids still get very sad when asked anything about their father and they reflect on how he was treated by her. The daughter still lives in the house, in part because it's the only way to still be close to him (like I said, a really, really good man).

Interesting to see things in the rearview that you just couldn't connect the dots before.

MLC'ers sure have a knack for choosing the exceptionally good people in this world.

Have any light bulb moments as you travel down memory lane?

-SS

[FaithWalker]

I haven't thought too much about it as there is a lot on my plate in the current world, but I am sure that quite a few ended up in D due to MLC.

I did babysit for a couple when I was a teenager and I was devastated when they divorced.  I know there was something not quite right with the D and definitely an affair involved.

Makes me wonder now.

[in it]

I probably have quite a few stories. But one that comes to mind was a dear friend of mines mother and her father. Seem the guy traveled for work now this had to be somewhere in the 1950''s.

My friend had 2 sisters so three girls made up the rest of the family.

One day out of the blue the mom gets a phone call from the dad who's in some part of the state. Says he met a woman at a bar she's sick and he's not coming home .
My friend mother was a well mannered, somewhat quiet, well spoken women. My friend must have been old enough to be somewhat on her own by then. After she got the phone call from her mother she said she rushed right over to see how she was doing and her mothers reply was

" Well, there must be better men then him out there"

The woman her father left his family for did pass away and her father came back. But her mother refused to have anything to do with him.

She eventually remarried to a very nice man and they spent the rest of their days together.

[Father5]

I didn't get to see one but my Grandparents on my Dads side of the family split for over a year. I have never heard this story unitl it happened to me.

[tadsa29]

I definitely have one of these stories.  My own father.  He must have been 40 when it started.  Had a PA with another woman and was definitely a clinging boomerang - he came and went 13 times, even moved in with her for a time.  He then came home but my parent's relationship was done by this point although they did stay together until he died aged 60.  They never worked through their issues and my father never apologised until he was on his deathbed and said simply "I was an idiot wasn't I?"  The whole thing lasted 3 years

[Songanddance]

A few years ago I was listening to a really good programme on the radio called "Women's Hour" . The topic being discussed was about andropause and  menopause with several anecdotes from women about their husband's behaviour

I remember more specifically the one story.
A woman when young and whose father suddenly left and kept yo yoing back and forth over a few years asked her mother what was going on?  Her mother (product of 1930s) said " He has to do this.  Most men have this sense of needing to break away. I'm leaving him to it because he has to do it. He'll be back"
Sure enough the father did return full time but the woman telling the story did say that he never returned to being the father she knew and when her own H abandoned her - she remembered her mother's words and waited but some years later they divorced but are good friends.

What I found fascinating is the stoic response "Most men have this sense of needing to break away..."   

[HeavenlyFocus]

Thx Standing for posting this reflective post.  During my middle school years, my Dad went through a MLC and exhibited the same exact behaviors that my W is displaying right now although he never worked through his MLC until later after I was adult.  He is at peace now but definitely hurt his relationship with me and my siblings.

It’s been traumatic for me to watch my W’s MLC and brought back some bad memories.  I am focused on being the best me and working to protect my kids like my Mom did.  I will be ok regardless of the path that my W chooses.

[terra]

 

I feel like I have seen ALL of them. In work environments and networks now, I have watched them unfold right in front of my face. These past four or five years, I have really known to steer clear and just remove myself.

Same timeframe, I have also learned to sketch the timeline of any person I remember from my past. I think I have identified no fewer than 25 people who were of a certain age when I was however many years old, and it’s always midlife that explains why the dynamics were what they were and why that person was irascible, inappropriate, and impossible to get along with or like or even just appease.

I had a long-term relationship in my 20s with a guy whose uncles both were adamant about spending time with their nephew and doing all manner of things that were 20-something. It was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen and kind of impossible to move that relationship along properly when these two uncles were always striving to stay young in the middle of us. I saw it a certain way, then, and took it really personally and really badly. Now I just wonder, sometimes, who they might have been on either side of MLC.

I broke up with that boyfriend after many years of it, and I don’t regret that. But in this context I do see that one of the uncles, the one I did like, could have been a really lovely guy now. He died some years ago but I think he did live a loving life.

The biggest wow happened after h moved faraway with ow2, to the state where my parents live.

He was right at the same age my parents were, when they moved there.

That was how I saw that my own mother had had her own MLC. The thing about my mother is that she’s in her mid-70s or something, now, and has never come out of it. She’s restored or corrected relationship with my brother and his family, but my sister and I both are ok keeping distant or staying NC altogether. Something more than MLC going on there, I think, but the MLC decisions and destruction in that particular case caused damage that won’t be corrected.

We laugh sometimes that once you see it and know it for MLC, you see it everywhere. Even in television shows or celebrity lives; even in people at church, or others in our own families. So while all of this is very disorienting and painful, it is also deeply informative.

Just remember, a broken heart is an open heart. We’re better people, and better to other people, all people, as we learn our ways through all of this.

I feel like I could write books and books about the many MLCs I’ve seen, you know? It’s funny how much we don’t know when we are young.

All the pain we all go through, whether LBS or MLC, is a means of leveling up.

[BobA]

Looking back my dad went through 2 of them about 7 years apart.  Between his my mom had one of her own.
I feel that my brother went through one right before COVID hit the US right after my dad died.  I'm not 100% sure if hes just in a long depression cycle.
I'm not 100% sure that I'm in a MLC or if I'm in a rut right now.

I started working in food service when I was 16 with the lots of people that I have worked with that were on drugs I never know who was on drugs and who was MLC.

[Curiosity]

Not sure if my dad had an early MLC or not (quarter life crisis)? But he had a couple of affairs, then my parents divorced and dad married, divorced, remarried, divorced, remarried, and re-divorced the OW. Okay...when I look at it like that, it seems clear. Anyway...he is now single and says he is happy to be on his own with casual relationships but nothing committed. During some of the difficult times with OW, he occasionally expressed a little regret about losing the shared family he had with my mom. But realistically, he just isn’t someone that I see emotionally committing to anyone else. And that seems okay for him. During one of our discussions about this process (initiated by my W, not me), I did express concern that my W will end up like my dad. It was a truth dart I wasn’t really planning but it is indeed something that worried me, so I’m not sorry to have said it.