[marvin4242]

If a MLCer does not finish their MLC and gets yanked out the first time.  And 10 years later they go in for round 2.  Does anyone know how long round 2 lasts. 

Is it still the same 7-10 years for men.  Or is it less?   

Please be weary of these "rules" and arbitrarily stated patterns and ideas. I know that early on we LBS tend to want to assert some control over what is happening and try to look for a "system" or guide or something that will let us understand and plan. But what we call MLC is a major psychological event, there is no single cause, and there are no patterns to how MLCers will behave, how long "it" will take, or if there is even any chance of them ever putting themselves back together. It can cause LBSes to remain stuck, looking for tea leaves, or believing that it is a process and it just "takes time." I have read many versions of these ideas across many sites, and it all comes from non professional people with good intentions.

Hardest thing is to accept there is no rhyme nor reason to this except it all begins with deep seated issues in our MLCers, usually from very early days. What happens after that, how they fall apart, how badly and when and if they ever start putting themselves back together is not something that can be generalized and made into a recipe. I believe the sooner we start accepting this truth the sooner we can make informed decisions about the only thing we can control: how do we move forward in our lives.

[WHY]

If a MLCer does not finish their MLC and gets yanked out the first time.  And 10 years later they go in for round 2.  Does anyone know how long round 2 lasts. 

Is it still the same 7-10 years for men.  Or is it less?   

Please be weary of these "rules" and arbitrarily stated patterns and ideas. I know that early on we LBS tend to want to assert some control over what is happening and try to look for a "system" or guide or something that will let us understand and plan. But what we call MLC is a major psychological event, there is no single cause, and there are no patterns to how MLCers will behave, how long "it" will take, or if there is even any chance of them ever putting themselves back together. It can cause LBSes to remain stuck, looking for tea leaves, or believing that it is a process and it just "takes time." I have read many versions of these ideas across many sites, and it all comes from non professional people with good intentions.

Hardest thing is to accept there is no rhyme nor reason to this except it all begins with deep seated issues in our MLCers, usually from very early days. What happens after that, how they fall apart, how badly and when and if they ever start putting themselves back together is not something that can be generalized and made into a recipe. I believe the sooner we start accepting this truth the sooner we can make informed decisions about the only thing we can control: how do we move forward in our lives.

So true Marv.  So true. 

However, there are guidelines.  Like 7-10 years for me.   3-7 years for women etc.  I’m just curious if there’s a guideline for MLC2.  Thanks. 

[Nas]

WHY, I think the unfortunate truth is that there are no real guidelines. You will do yourself a disservice if you look for milestones at certain time markers or hold fast to a specific number of years. Each person is different and no one who is having a true crisis is going to magically wake up based on an arbitrary ticking clock. There is real work that needs to be done, grueling, brutal inner work. If that work is never even started, my opinion is the person never “recovers.” I also do not believe in the double dip crisis, where a person supposedly comes out not “fully baked” and then years later goes back in. I think it mythologizes a person’s disordered state and often can keep an LBS from facing reality. Jmho.

***

I attended a huge fundraiser today where the word gratitude was uttered approximately 9,782,312 times. And I maybe saw double that number of eye rolls from the people in attendance. This is a great article about the sometimes frustrating topic. We’re all familiar with the fight flight freeze (and also fawn) responses that are so often talked about. You don’t see much on what happens after AND HOW TO GROW BEYOND living in that state.

“What Happens After Fight/Flight/Freeze?

When the traumatic event has passed, the trauma trigger remains. The individual can easily be re-triggered to feel the danger has returned by things that look, sound, smell, or feel like things experienced at the time of trauma.
As a result, many survivors feel “on edge” all the time. A feeling that terrible danger is at hand haunts them everywhere they go. This chronic sense of danger often activates a withdrawal response.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/expressive-trauma-integration/202001/the-neuroscience-gratitude-and-trauma

🎶 https://youtu.be/GrC_yuzO-Ss?si=12za9lKeAU6eEWmB
(and I’m reminded of a funny meme I really love and use often. It says: some of you should try walking a mile in my shoes… Because that would mean you’d be a mile away from me and that would be fantastic. Keep the shoes. 😂😂😂 )

[Nas]

I think WHY’s question has led to me thinking a lot more on this subject this morning as I drink my coffee.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/expressive-trauma-integration/201809/roadmap-after-trauma-six-stages-trauma-integration


https://www.eti.training/post/experiential-self-regulation-in-trauma-therapy

I forgot to include the two above links in my last post but they are links that are within the first article. These are really good reads. Healing from trauma takes a concerted effort to want to heal, I really believe that. That’s why I believe that anyone who is in crisis that stems from Trauma who does not take steps to heal will maybe appear to “come out of crisis”, but really they have just become another unhealed version of themselves. I do think it is dangerous to believe that Midlife Crisis is some thing that simply happens and then unhappens. Perhaps midlife transition is that way, more like puberty, phase that people work their way through. But crisis… Crisis is something different. A crisis is an internal break that needs to be actively healed, not passively waited out. (these are my opinions.)

Digging in to severe trauma is difficult. In some ways, it may have been easier for me to never have addressed mine, to continue through life with the virtual graveyard of buried trauma in the back of my brain, pretending to be whatever I needed to be to fit in.  “Fake it till you make it” does not apply to trauma. I’m coming to realize that more and more. Faking it in the hope of making it hurt me more than it ever helped me. I think we often see MLCers (and others) faking it for decades and never trying to change. Sometimes “faking it” turns into complacency and just settling into another inauthentic version of yourself.
Catastrophic life events forced me into this work of true healing. It’s messy and overwhelming and at times terrifying and turns people off and I probably appear insane sometimes. I thought I had done the work already; I was so wrong. I was never healed, it’s just that life was “consistent” enough for me to bury everything and just move through the days on auto pilot.

Knowing about the fight flight freeze fawn responses is great, but that is not enough. One has to understand that is what’s happening and then do the uncomfortable work of moving beyond it and relating in a different way. I was essentially numb for large part of my adulthood, and then experienced multiple new traumas that caused me to revert to typical trauma responses. Going through life constantly fighting, flighting or freezing or fawning is not ideal. I shortchanged myself for many many years; I want better now, so I’m working for it.

It does take a level of humility and an acceptance of being misunderstood - that in itself is hard work. There’s the saying, dance like no one’s watching, meaning go ahead and let yourself be authentic without concern for other’s judgment or expectations. I guess the motto now should be “heal like no one’s watching.” Until eventually becomes just “heal, it doesn’t matter who’s watching or what they think.”

Anyway, this has been off the cuff coffee thoughts with Nas. My opinions, like my coffee, are generally strong and not to everyone’s taste.

🎶 https://youtu.be/Feu6v9bdvRs?si=oR04vdfAASjPcF3o
Stop my flight to fight
And die
And take a stand to change my life
So savage with red desperation
I clench my hands
You draw your claws
A hidden rage consumes my heart
Fuelled by years of wasted time

[KayDee]

Both the articles and your interpretations make a lot of sense to me Nas. I've always considered MLC as a kind of umbrella term - descriptive of a crisis that hits tipping point at certain point of life - a point when someone who had fragile coping skills and thus created more defense mechanisms finally shatters. Or the defenses can no longer hold. Perhaps this is most common at mid-life because it is the very time that our parents begin to ail and for many of us, we get drawn back into our FOO, which often means being drawn back into the same type of dynamics and schema we experienced in childhood. Maybe in relatively healthy families this is manageable, but for people with childhood trauma, who have likely spent a lifetime running from the issues created within the crucible of the FOO, it could trigger a trauma response. This is exactly what happened to my H and, yes, after anger, his response was withdrawal. At the time, I didn't fully understand, and took much of this personally. My response to his withdrawal probably added another trigger response related to abandonment. Ironic really, and I do not blame myself, because this is such a complex thing. I think your strong coffee ponderings give much food for thought. Thank you for sharing.

[Treasur]

Thank you for sharing your coffee musings, Nas.
You put words to an instinct that came back to bite me a bit this week, that realisation that my own healing seems to have no end point that I can see. I can only see my own progress. And the occasional bit where I get stuck in something I don’t understand for reasons I don’t always understand. And sometimes resent 

I can only speak for myself but there is definitely a pre-PTSD me, a PTSD one, a post PTSD one, and a something else where I seem to find myself now. Idk if there is a post-something else, we’ll see…..

I miss the pre-pTSD me a bit like missing my teenage self who was in actuality so beautiful and bold and lovely although I didn’t know or see that then, and much as I miss her, I can no more go back to her than I can go back to being 14 with colt legs.

I fear the PTSD me. Actually, she terrifies me like an unseen monster under a child’s bed. I’m pretty sure she’s gone now, vanquished in inches, but I fear her return so much that even a hint of her paralyses me. Bc I am really not at all sure I  could survive a second visit.

I admire the post PTSD me because I know how much work it took to build her. Like a beautiful bespoke dress….I know the stitches sown at midnight, exhausted, the tiny specks of blood from a pricked finger that no one else can see. I’m not sure I like her much, she’s rather earnest and tiring, but I do appreciate her.

And I don’t know the Now Me yet tbh….so my jury is out. I know she is different in lots of ways from the pre-PTSD me and I’m not always sure how I feel about that tbh. (I get a bit impatient with her bc I think I want her to be speedier and shinier than she is  )

It was my experience too that nothing started to heal until I was so desperate to heal that it was an absolute priority. Pretty sure at times it may have made me look or sound a bit bonkers to people who knew me before. Not sure I cared much though. You don’t worry much about your hairdo if you’re drowning, do you? Very ‘heal like no one’s watching’ indeed. I don’t talk about it much now bc usually I have no words for it (and as you all know I am a creature of multiple words ha ha)….so I very much appreciate your words and links to others’ words.

I don’t know what happened to my h or what his experience was if it. Or how much he suffered or how much he chose to heal. A vanishing spouse comes with their own tumbleweed sound effect, I find  But if he experienced anything close to what I survived, much as I resent the bits he unleashed on me, I feel some compassion for that. Albeit a rather tentative, guarded and unspoken compassion. (Insert tumbleweed sound effect here  )

And in the same spirit, a poem….which I think one can see as a half empty of half full glass. I choose to see the last line as encouragement bc that is still my Babe-ish nature  https://waxwingmag.org/items/Issue9/28_Smith-Good-Bones.php

[Reinventing]

OW/OM

https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2023/08/stole-your-man-or-woman-mate-poaching-is-related-to-psychopathic-traits-research-finds/?fbclid=IwAR3IXsACrvyifOBTxMcyu4lW_E4DC5AW0S11Nqx1qpAexEVJO3OLlFm7V24

[xyzcf]

Interesting article. I really cannot understand how anyone would go after a married man. I just would not.  And then of course the man who leaves his wife for this woman..nothing good about either of them.

[WHY]

I read a RCR piece on narcissistic supply and then did some digging myself. 

I found this website extremely helpful in terms of dealing with our MLCers.  During the MLC years, they genuinely do become full blown narcissists, even if they were never like this before. 

https://www.choosingtherapy.com/narcissistic-supply/

[Reinventing]

I agree. I can see the build up of narcissistic traits and it peaking at BD and just after BD when I look back. It would make sense too, given all that they do that they need to be narcissistic to keep thinking it is justified.

That is why monster appears to defend their fantasy world.

As Marvin282 once said, "okay, move back slowly and don't make eye contact......."