[sachertorte]

Thank you for your thoughtful and loving account -- above all love for your children. I wish you the very best.

I had scanned forums for midlife transitions, and your description of the allure of a new life recalls a quote that much struck me. (I personally do not call them MLCs any longer; I think it is best for me to think of them, to the extent I can, from the perspective of the people that live them.) I think it was a man who posted this:

I'm 55 and feeling it now, a little bit. Getting lost in some thoughts of, " Why didn't I ...?" and, " I shoulda_____."

But that's all BS. The past is gone. I live now and for the future. I can start my life over any minute. I just have to choose to do so. Sometimes I do that more than once a day. As long as I retain that ability, there is no crisis.


Sometimes when I need energy to restart myself, this quote comes to mind. I don't need a new beginning, as my life experiences is my endless treasury, and my gratitude for and curiosity about the world my joy. But I feel the conviction of the speaker in these words. I also think it can catch up to him at any time. It is anyone's guess what would happen.

[Returned]

One of the joys of the return has been family meal time. In their father's absence my boys had dealt with meals as something to be done on the run and it was often overly greasy. It took them a while to get used to it, but now that their father is back everyone sits down around the table like in the old days. Although I can't say there are conversations every time, and there are occasional absentees, this lends a sort of calm peacefulness to the house. My grandson had never had much stability in his life, but having three men at the table and a healthy well balanced meal which I have prepared and which is not fast food is a tiny step toward normalization. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that this tiny house which I bought for myself and lived in alone, would house 5 people.

[xyzcf]

Your mealtime sounds lovely. There is lots of research about how important family meal times are.

My husband loves to cook and when we are together or our daughter is coming to visit, we plan meals, shop carefully for the ingredients, prepare, serve and clean up the meal together. Food has significance, recipes that his mom or my mom would make as well as new recipes. We used to call it our "kitchen dance".

I am grateful for these times, a small bit of normalcy for us as a family. The last time my son in law was here, he had never met his father in law before his crisis and he remarked to me "mom, I don't understand. I see you both laughing, preparing food, he's teasing you, you tease him back....I just don't get it."I thought "welcome to the club".

You can see how this is having an effect on your son and grandson "this lends a sort of calm peacefulness to the house"...sometimes in life, we don't get everything we would want.

As we always say on HS, the LBSer gets to choose and no one else knows our situation as we do.

Thanks for keeping us updated. You seem quite grounded without any unreasonable expectations and I hope that the family continues to come together and create new memories and bonds.

[Biscuit]

Meal times have always played a huge part in our family life. I continue this tradition when we are a 3 not a 4 piece. The table is laid with cutlery and plates etc. candles are lit and we sit down and eat, talk and gripe. Then everyone helps clear up and goes there separate ways to decompress before coming back together for a tv show or movie.
The very rare days we have a TV dinner are also important because they are rare and it feels like a special treat for everyone.
 

[Returned]

Well I sure have an interesting situation. Hard to explain.
xH has been on his best behavior since he reappeared 4 months ago.
Letting him back home wasn't as hard as you might think, we had a perfectly fine relationship before bomb drop and I have
never really been interested in anyone else.
When he was in replay I had noticed marked physical changes he had undergone since he left. At the time they made me worry for his health, but he seems to be in perfectly good health.
However today I realized that he is physically so dramatically changed that he visually doesn't jive with my memories of him. That is to say that visually I barely recognize him. Not that that should be a big deal. However it does in a certain sense make it harder to reconnect because it is almost as if he left and someone entirely different came home in his place. When I see him close up I feel this loss of the person I used to know, it is like seeing a stranger and I wonder if he will ever come back home even though he is already here at home with us.
Not that I am complaining, frankly it is a dream come true to have my family back. Just that it feels so strange.

[Songanddance]

Returned I do understand that completely even though my H will not reconcile and we are living separately.

I liken it to the comment RCR makes in one of her earlier articles that it's almost as if the MLCer has to go through the fire and the actions/thoughts/ feelings of their crisis have to be "burned " out of them.

I don't think we ever have our spouses returned to us fully; I know that there are a handful of people on here who would argue differently and the common theme they have is that their spouse is kinder, more loving and thoughtful than before and has shown utter and complete remorse with a willingness to learn and grow.

Speaking just for me - my H is a little kinder and more appreciative but there is little else I recognise in him from the man I married and had three children with. True my H had a massive stroke 18 months ago and is still physically recovering but I see the physical and emotional shell of the man I believed I knew.

MLC does something to all of us.  The more I read and stay on this forum and see with my own eyes, the more I am convinced that the only one who struggles with life and who struggles to grow is the MLCer - the LBS and children are in this the case "the winners" because they have that chance and they take it with both hands because there is no other option.

Perhaps in time Returned - your spouse will "return" in other ways to you. It is still incredibly early days for a return and you are in the process of reconnecting rather than reconciling.  That will also come in time when you are both ready.

Be patient- continue to observe and above all else protect your heart so that you can continue to love unconditionally.

[Slow Fade]

This sounds familiar. My H came back different as well. Not so much physically, but mentally he is a different person. To be fair, I changed a lot while he was gone as well. It was like we had to get to know each other all over again.
Two broken people trying to pick up the pieces and build a new life together. We seem to be doing well together, but there is still a part of me that doesn't completely trust. I don't know if that will ever go away but I'm learning to put it in a place that I don't look at very often. 

((hugs))

[Returned]

Many thoughts about MLC and return today.

Based on my experience, and the experiences of other people in the forum over the last decade, I am a true believer in the existence of midlife crisis. At the time of bomb drop he was giddily euphoric, and he relentlessly and ruthlessly destroyed every remnant of his life in order to achieve that "new beginning" he was looking for. To say he lost everything is an understatement. Home, career, family, reputation, car, dog, book collection. It all went under the ax. It was almost as if he was afraid that if he left anything at all intact he wouldn't succeed. Watching him as this went down reminds me of observers who reported watching Nero giggling and playing the fiddle while Rome was burning, he truly truly seemed out of his mind.

I can confirm some observations which were made by other forum members. I remember other LBS reporting that their MLCer had accelerated aging. Whether this is due to poor lifestyle choices or whether it is due to hormonal changes which triggered  his MLC I cannot say but my xH looks more than 20 years older and I look about 10 years younger than when he left a decade ago. Forget restitution, I feel very very lucky to have him come home alive. Over the years I have heard stories of men who died within a few years of their MLC.

I remember other LBS reminding each other that the alienator as "just a bandaid". This was not true in our case. The alienator in our case was a serial home wrecker and a  relentless pursuer and she stalked our marriage for many years. I remember her going so far as to send gifts and letters for my xH to my house both before bomb drop and during early reconnection so that I would see them on the doorstep with her name written on them. She gets a thrill calling him and knowing she is talking to him on the phone with his wife and children nearby, within earshot, it is part of the tingle. She also loves the centrality of collateral damage, and so when my father died, and my kids were distraught and acting out, it affirmed to her that she must be very important so that my xH would leave his kids abandoned and homeless in order to be with her.

The other thing that I can clearly see now is that the alienator will gradually lose interest once the destruction has left nothing but ashes. A divorced, chronically unemployed, homeless, sad, aged MLCer does not offer much in the way of bragging rights. She begins to demand secondary gain. However she continues to hang on the edges to see if there is something more she can finagle out of him, maybe if he has a turn of luck and  gets a good paying job he can send her some money or she might even take him back.

Now that he has been home for four months it is almost like the scales have fallen from his eyes, and my MLCer can now see us. He had demonized me during replay, and when he first came home he had bizarre delusions about me which were interfering with our communications. At times I can see him fall back into the rabbit hole of these beliefs, and he will suddenly cut short a conversation with me when he is triggered, and wander away to talk with the kids. As you can imagine from this description I am left with an MLCer who needs a lot of rehabilitation. My sons can see it, I can see it. He came home with a small suitcase and the same clothes and possessions he left with 11 years ago. However his steady improvement over the last 4 months, both in his personality and his awareness, has left me very much aware that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it is shining brightly, very brightly upon us.

[Treasur]

Thank you for sharing your experience, Returned.
As I said to FJ, I imagine it is very helpful to others who find themselves reconnecting with someone who is neither full on MLCer nor the pre BD version.

I think most of us who do not have that experience, or whose spouses vanished or remarried, find it hard to imagine being in your shoes or that the wisdom shared here about how MLCers and their lives turn out may apply to their own ex/spouse too with time. But there do seem to be some common experiences of it even if outcomes can vary.

But imho it’s very useful to provide some insight for those, perhaps early in, who are hoping for reconnection so much that it is not a simple or straightforward thing at all. That it is not an easy path for the LBS at all or perhaps a choice to go into without some level of strength and detachment and clarity about why you are. Perhaps not the full bonkers that follows BD, but perhaps still a slightly bizarre experience in a different way.

[xyzcf]

Thank you for continuing to write about your observations.

I am a true believer in the existence of midlife crisis.

Now that he has been home for four months it is almost like the scales have fallen from his eyes, and my MLCer can now see us.

There are presently a few other reconnection stories on HS. The insight from these and others who post updates is very valuable in understanding how this crisis severely affects the MLCer..but that there is a progression of similarities, just like there are  throughout the crisis.

One thing that I have been seeing on HS is that some of these reconnections are happening after many many years. Both the MLCer and the LBSer have changed and what has generally been written about is that the MLCer returns broken.

What happens when the fog lifts and the see the damage? Or, as some MLCers have written, there are many things that they do not remember.

"Happily ever after" is not what is being talked about in the stories of the crisis winding down.

Heartsblessing used to say "where there is love there is hope".

Many members do not come back and share their stories. I am grateful for those that do.

I relate so strongly to how you feel about being able to be together as a family. This is the LBSer's choice and their's alone. We do get to decide.

It's not being a doormat. It's not letting them eat cake. I do see it as a very unselfish act on the LBSer's part, to deal with a broken partner who perhaps is not able to meet our needs at all, not yet.........

I am a true believer in the existence of midlife crisis.

Indeed I am. We seem to have drifted away from understanding crisis ...thank you for sharing your journey here with us.