[zartheit]

Hello,

I want to start by thanking everyone for their generosity, patience, and good nature. I've read many threads and the amount of compassion that comes through is admirable. I've greatly appreciated the glow of this community as a lurker.

Now, I'm posting because my life as I understood it exploded. A tale as old as time, just one I had never imagined before. My friends and family are exhausted, confused, and as understanding as they can be. I still feel the need to talk about my problems but realize it is more than they can handle. Here are my puzzle pieces:
M - 31
W - 31 @ BD (now 32)
Together ~12 years, living together 10, married 5
No children
BD - April 23, 2022 - doing drugs at a concert
June 7, 2022 - removes her ring to symbolize that she must prioritize herself, the alternative was a legal separation
August 18, 2022 - she stops sleeping in our bed
September 6, 2022 - she tells me she is moving out, and does so sometime between September 8 and September 11 (I was visiting family that weekend). It would have been our 12 year anniversary
OM - I don't know, but I assume so. Or maybe it's OW

It's odd to see the worst 6 months of my life itemized like that. Amazing how much pain can be packed into a few letters on a screen. Let's dive into the MLC mad libs where I contribute new faces and places. This will be long and rambling; I just want to type most of it out somewhere.

---- background, likely beginning of the end

Me and my wife had moved to a new state mid 2018 as I started a new job. We bought our first home. It was a great time. I felt that we grew much closer together that year. I now view this, paradoxically, as the start of our unraveling. We didn't have any friends or family in the area, my new job was incredibly stressful in ways I had not anticipated (i.e., poor management), and my wife was working from home. It was cloistered.

I noticed my wife start to exercise quite aggressively. She wanted to buy a motorcycle. She branched out and made friends with a local hobby group. Most of the people in the group were not in the best places mentally, but her best friend was a really great woman. Things seemed ok, even if I could sense a bit of distance. Things ebb and flow, right? I did nothing different.

The pandemic hits. I start working from home. We don't leave the house for days at a time. Sometime during this phase she proposes we move. Her work is offering a big promotion but she must be on-site for it. I think it is only fair as we moved for my job. I convert my position into a fully remote one, we sell our home, and move to another state in the middle of 2020. Throughout this process I can feel her annoyance with me. In my mind, relationship dynamics shift and responsibilities are malleable, even if I am feeling a bit strange about it. I do nothing different.

We move to an apartment in the city. We don't go out due to the pandemic. She is working from home, ironically. We see friends regularly, which is nice. She works more and more. I interpret this as her not feeling secure in her job. I try to reassure her while also helping her to create more boundaries for work. I imagine this fixer behavior was off-putting to her. I now also believe she was working more to avoid spending time with me.

Through her hobby group network she meets what becomes her best friend. This woman is pure drama, but seems nice enough.

She wants to buy a home. I am hesitant but eventually agree. She is aggressively house hunting online. We find a realtor and spend every day for a month driving to houses. We eventually get one. She wants to do some renovations before we move in. We move in sometime in September 2021.

---- bombs, landmines, and all things that go boom

Now is where the script is retrieved and it progresses as you'd expect. Early December 2021 her online presence massively shifts. She begins to save and share very juvenile things, depression jokes, that kind of stuff. In January she unveils to me 3 months of travel to take place in the summer. She works longer and longer hours. She goes into the office more and more. I confront her about this and hear in response "since covid is over, I just want to get out". I accept this, even if I feel quite uncomfortable with it. It has been a cramped few years.

We travel to see my family in early March, 2022. She works normal hours while there. No one notices anything overt but did say she seemed a bit sharper with me. When we get back, a friend of hers stays with us. We then go on a road trip with her new best friend and that circle. She is quite distant from me throughout. She then leaves on a work trip, returns just to flip suitcases and heads off to an out of town concert with a good friend she's known for years.

It is here where she texts me talking about how much she enjoyed doing various drugs. She uploads incredibly scandalous photos to her public profiles. Multiple people ask me if we're ok. With the bomb dropped, my stomach melts out of existence. When she returns I confront her about it and she interprets this as an attack on her spending time with her friends. I am controlling. This confrontation has me seeing that something truly insidious is lurking in our relationship, but that insight is quickly buried. After a few days I am in complete denial and take the entire burden on my shoulders. I have destroyed this marriage by not taking the trash out frequently enough.

I write her an apology letter. I outline mistakes I've made, how I didn't live up to my own standards, how I intend to do better. She tells me that she loves me and values the life we have together. I am immensely comforted by this.

The next few months are a slow burn, until they're not. She says she wants to date. I misinterpret this as I haven't been taking her out enough. I start organizing more and more dates. Things continue to go down hill. I get us into couples therapy, when she is in town. The therapist tells me that she needs to melt-down and cool-off. I have no idea what this means and he won't elaborate.

She starts being secretive. She radically changes her wardrobe and her hair. We stop having sex as she is not attracted to me. She loves me but more like a sibling. She starts using her phone nonstop. She tells me that our entire relationship, from the very beginning, is toxic. She tells me that she put too much effort into the relationship and she refuses to try any longer. She takes off her ring. She starts hanging out with the new and young employees after work. She starts going out every night and only coming home when the bars close. Sometimes she doesn't come home. She tells me that she lost herself in the relationship. She tells me that she can't be the person she wants to be around me. She starts buying very expensive things. She seems quite enamored with status. She attends drug-related weeklong retreats. She moves into the guest bedroom. She is pushing me away and pulling me close. She tells me that I can have a girlfriend. She stops talking to the friends of hers that I like. She tells me that she isn't cheating on me. Her best friend starts being openly disrespectful to me. She does more drugs with her new circle. She crashes our car and the next day tells me she didn't appreciate how I used the event to try and get closer to her (I sent a tow-truck to her, then picked her up, got us dinner, we spent the evening talking). She tells me she is not considering a divorce. A grandparent of hers dies and she says simply, "I can't take any more emotional turmoil right now"; I am not invited to the funeral. I am losing my mind, which apparently weighs 20 pounds.

I find sites like this one. I begin trying to detach but I am still arrogant and naive about the situation. Our situation isn't that bad. We're not quite there. We're the exception. I give her space as I understood it. I stop communicating with her outside of in-person interactions. I try to minimize those.

Things seem to steady out. Her summer trips of avoidance end. We have a few weeks of stillness. There are no escalations or fights. We are barely roommates. One weekend I go for a road trip. I return and tell her couples therapy is not helpful as we don't even know if we want to stay together. I sever our joint account aside from bills. I inform her that I am going to spend our anniversary with family as it is going to be a painful day for me. She says "this feels like an unraveling of us". I agree. She mentions that we feel separated. I agree and say "we are separated". I see hurt in her eyes but I don't ask her about it. She goes to work.

After work, we have our last therapy session. It is inconsequential. Afterwards she unloads on me. She interprets the phrase "separated" from that morning as me saying that I intend to file for a legal separation. She spent the entire day with her stomach twisting into knots. She tells me that she then accepted it and felt free. She did not bring this up in therapy. I validate her feelings and apologize for my miscommunication. I don't see her for 5 days.

When she returns, she tells me she is moving out. She tells me that she can't be in a relationship that doesn't prioritize her mental health. She tells me that she wants to leave the door open to dating in the future. She is planning to move out when I'm visiting family. I give her an anniversary present with a note. She refuses to let me read the note to her. This is our last conversation.

I return. She left no forwarding address. She left gifts I gave her over the years, including the anniversary gift. She took half of the spices. She took half the towels. She left a single poloroid of me sitting on the window sill in a completely barren room. This was one of the most difficult evenings I've ever lived through.

I later text her to remind her to move her phone number off my account. I sent an email asking to freeze her share of equity as she is no longer contributing to the mortgage; she agrees.

Her birthday is around this time. I get her a small, mostly symbolic, present, hand it to a mutual friend and ask them to give it to my wife. I ask the friend to not tell me if my wife accepts or not.

---- a view from the crater

After she moved out I had intense motivation, which has since faded. I re-arranged the house. I went camping alone in the middle of nowhere. I went to a concert overseas on a whim. I have been lifting weights regularly (squatted 210 pounds at my max). I go for walks daily. I journal daily. I started writing again in general. I attend therapy weekly. I have a morning ritual of meditation, tea, and reading before work. I have been trying to embrace more desires, no matter how fleeting which has resulted in making soap, having a clock with only the seconds hand, and reading up on satanic panics throughout history. I have been intentionally more open and vulnerable with friends, and family. I have been sitting in the pain and discomfort, as much as I can. It's quite a feeling to be crying during a meeting.

I've had a number of epiphanies. I now accept that happiness is fleeting, which was a deep and unacknowledged fear of mine. What matters is showing up every day. I've taken quite the liking to Sisyphus. I now understand that I am not my emotions, or thoughts. My emotions are sensations just like vision. I choose to act on that information as I see fit; I am above simple reactions. I now understand that I am responsible for me in my entirety, which includes comforting myself. No man's an island, but the responsibility for my life is mine alone. I've stumbled across many similar emotional truths (who knew you could experience multiple emotions simultaneously, even "contradictory" ones!). All obvious in retrospect. I am grateful for this knowledge.

I feel anxious at times. I feel a wobble in my core at times. The future is menacing at times. I have days where I feel that the abstract idea of familiarity no longer exists, like it was removed from reality; everything around me has been replaced with exact replicas that are foreign, alien, and frightening. I am a mountain compared to the puddle of cartilage and bone sobbing on the bathroom floor sometime in June. I am proud of where I am even though I recognize that I am nowhere close to where I want to be.

---- current day

I haven't communicated with her in over 3 months. She's never initiated any contact. I see that she is still posting the same type of content on her profiles. It's a mix of hyper-sexual, depression, lacking money, and juvenile content. She stopped communicating with any of our mutual friends, as far as I can tell. I don't ask them about her. I am assuming this means she is a vanisher.

I recognize she might be a bit young for MLC. That being said, my wife's father is currently an alcoholic to the point that it is impacting unrelated medical treatments. I imagine he has been an alcoholic her entire life. Her mother is an emotional trainwreck and generally unpleasant to be around, even though she isn't malicious. The family moved when she was quite young (under the age of 3, I believe), which probably isn't helping the mix. She has threatened to go no-contact with her parents in the past. Maybe she has a personality disorder, maybe she is having a kind of identity crisis, maybe she's just living her best life. I have no idea.

I am still feeling attached, and generally depressed. I don't feel like a victim most days but the hurt is ever-present. I still want us to be together. I still think "we" can make it work. I have seen the threads. I can envision the eventual update and how this is likely to resolve, but I can't feel that now. I am frustrated about that but am accepting it is where I am. My current goal is detachment. I want to fully accept that she left me, that she has changed, that we are done. It doesn't feel real most times. I miss her.

[WHY]

I’m so sorry you’re here friend.  Welcome to the club…

A few things that stick out here.  She’s very young for typical MLC. But the rest smells so much like MLC.

Which makes me think her FOO issues run deep to present so young? It was a long to read.  Did I miss something about FOO?   Sever childhood trauma?

Which brings me to my advice.  I truly believe that letting go and moving on is what MAY have a chance at reconciling. 

[titleholder]

Hey Zartheit! So sorry you find yourself here. It's the club nobody wants to join.. Luckily there are a lot of lovely people on here to help you on your journey!

I'm a newbie aswell, 9 months in. My xH is also on the younger spectrum of the crisis/MLC (33 at BD, 34 now). I recognize a lot of behaviours of your W in my xH especially the suddenly behaviour change in drugs, wanting to date other people, heavenly focus on sex. You can alway read my thread, maybe it helps you

There are a lot of 'younger' newbies joining the forum these last couple of months. Is MLC 'changing'? Is it the pandemic.. I don't know but I find it really peculiar..

[Treasur]

Dear zartheit
First of all, you are funny, very funny.

  I have destroyed this marriage by not taking the trash out frequently enough.

and your line about your mind weighing 20lbs made me laugh out loud. I say this bc it is all too easy to lose sight of who we are in this kind of chaos.

It is good to be reminded of all the folks who read along but don’t post who are also part of this tribe. Having said that, I hope you will find that posting your story will help you see two things clearly. That whatever is going on is truly not about you. (Or the trash lol) And how very far from a ‘normal’ marital problem this is, that it is a life tsunami not a wet afternoon. Which means you have very little control over it/her and that taking care of your own sense of normal and trusting it is important for your own wellbeing.

My take fwiw is to worry less (years on) about how we label things. I think MLC is a shorthand we can use here for what seems to us to be a rather extreme and unreachable kind of unravelling which is destructive and self-destructive. But it is less useful imho as a marital toolbox or a predictive guide. There are similarities in stories here, but also differences. With hindsight, most of us see some unresolved FOO baggage and cracks, some life triggers and a simmering period until the cap blows off. And then we tend to see a period of time when people we thought we knew very well do a whole bunch of things that we would have found unimaginable and that don’t make much sense to us for quite a long time.

I can see from your post that you have done some of the practical things we suggest you are wise to do. I can also see that you are only a few months past the big BD of her running off so I guess you are still reeling. How are you doing on the practical stuff like sleep, food, your emotional health etc? And any level of depression or anxiety which is pretty common for most LBS?

It isn’t for me, or anyone else, to tell you what to do with regard to your marriage. Your lens on that will unfold with time. But part of the process of detachment imho - and it is a process that takes most of us a lot longer than we think it will - is to wrestle with your own sense of disbelief or denial, to be your own reality fairy. Or use us as a spare until you can  Be kind to yourself that detachment is a process, not a straight line. That most of us DO detaching long before we FEEL detached. That the gift of the reality fairy is acceptance but acceptance of things we do not want, don’t understand and can’t control is harder than it sounds.

Imho when spouses unravel like this, the only way to survive it is to make choices in how you live as if your relationship is dead in the water. Why? Bc that is the presenting reality. If that changes, you are on more stable ground anyway so it is a win-win. The gift of a vanisher is de facto quite similar to someone suddenly dying.....I found the emotions and process and time involved in getting up off my knees was quite similar too.

If you were more detached, whatever that means to you, what would that look and feel like? What would you be doing differently than you are doing now? What are your priorities currently?

[Reinventing]

Be kind to yourself that detachment is a process, not a straight line. That most of us DO detaching long before we FEEL detached.

That's some good truth right there. The doing detaching was one of the tools in my healing toolbox, for sure.

[Treasur]

Woken up a bit more after coffee, so an extra thought.
You may want to consider changing your relationship with social media for a little while. Why? Bc reading whatever she is posting is probably not terribly useful to you and may be setting off some mind monkeys. Bc it will limit your temptation to post for effect in the hope that she is looking or driven by transient feelings. Bc the way through is about more things that are real and tangible and present in your life than the allure of virtual versions of these things. Bc you may be heading towards legal agreements down the line about money, stuff or more formally separated lives and most lawyers advise a cautious social media time out. Bc it pulls your eye towards what you can control and build and repair rather than what is more ephemeral in your life. Bc just bc we can does not mean we should. Bc there is a growing body of evidence that social media is not always good for our emotional health and we are all more vulnerable when we are healing. Jmo.

[forthetrees]

I am sorry that you went through the acute pain of BD and are dealing with the drawn out pain of loss. You do seem to have done the practical things to preserve your financial situation and have learned and applied strategies for self-care. From the peanut gallery I offer:

Until your W deals with her drug issue and FOO issues, your joint marital issues are not on the radar. Once someone goes down the drug path it is hard to disentangle the drug reliance from the FOO and the interplay requires expert intervention. As much as you care for her and about her well-being, you have ceased to be the person to "bring her to her senses", offer help or even lead her to help. At this point it´s like she cut communication with the home planet and will have to rely on her own set of tools to address the mess. It´s little consolation but in comparison to drugs and FOO, your shortcomings as a spouse are at most a gust not a hurricane.

If you choose the path of radical acceptance- that for now she is a mess, is gone and does not want you in her life, you can spend your daily allotment of physical and emotional energy on you- on lessening the pain of loss. The pain of rejection seems to fade way faster than the pain of loss. Finding some sort of outlet in the arts and one in terms of physicality help IMMENSELY. For me it was song writing and guitar with gardening and walks. The goal is to get out of the fight/flight pathway or at least do so when triggered into it. People in your daily IRL don´t seem to "get" the pain of this and on a good day that´s a good thing because it means they have not joined this club. But, on a bad day it seems like they are numb to your distress. I think that´s why this forum can be so helpful because of the shared pain. The only way past it is through it. Be kind to yourself.

[Ready2Transform]

Everything FTT said! The only way through is through, and it will not always feel as sharp as it feels today. That I can guarantee. The change happens so slowly that it's hard to feel, but in hindsight, you'll see significant growth in yourself.

I will offer this (and it's not a direction in any way to reach out and suggest to your spouse) - my xH was on the younger end in his 30s when all of the real madness started, and that's when he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It's not that bipolar or otherwise diagnosable people can't have MLCs; I think from the anecdotal evidence I've seen, it's actually more likely. But some disorders, like bipolar, share a lot of behaviors with what we call MLC. So what I'm saying is, your spouse may be dealing with something like that, that's not yet (or may ever be) diagnosed. Either way, YOU must do the same things to heal, so that's all that really matters. Big hugs because none of it is easy, but know you are capable of getting through it.

[Biscuit]

I'm no expert Ready, but I've heard that in a lot of bipolar cases, as with MLC, that the person who suffers from it often doesn't want those around them to point out that anything is "wrong" with them for want of a better word? Is that the case?

[zartheit]

WHY, thank you for the advice. Trying to truly let go. There are so many layers that are grabbing on and it is hard to find them all, let alone do the work to force their claws open. One day at a time!

Which makes me think her FOO issues run deep to present so young?

She has a terrible relationship with her parents and essentially non-existent relationship with the rest of her extended family. Her father is an alcoholic and it'll probably kill him. Her mother has intense emotional problems. They moved when she was young, but I don't know exactly the age. I would guess under 5. I can imagine her parents neglected her, and she spent a lot of time in various daycares. I don't know if she had any physical, sexual, or verbal abuse as a child. If she did, we never discussed it. My heart aches for her if that's the case. I cannot imagine being married and not discussing those things with my partner, but I realize my imagination is not particularly imaginative.


titleholder, worst club to join, best club membership!
I read through your thread and appreciate the pointers to Eric Erikson and James Marcia! I'm sorry to learn of your own tragic tale. You xH must inhabit a dark place if his own daughter has no effect on his selfishness. The position you find yourself in is not fair. Your strength and resolve are impressive. I find comfort in hearing of your deeds, even if the context in which they're drawn from is so unfortunate.


Treasur, thank you for the compliment. I always thought of myself as playful and was hoping this season of my life wouldn't diminish that. Your words of encouragement and perspective were helpful. I never fully appreciated how soothing validation was and you've poured me a vase full.

How are you doing on the practical stuff like sleep, food, your emotional health etc? And any level of depression or anxiety which is pretty common for most LBS?

I sleep a few hours at a time before I wake up covered in sweat rapidly forgetting strange dreams. I am currently procrastinating grocery shopping but will do that sometime today. My emotional health is way up now which has me frightened because I am anticipating the inevitable crash. I am a bit saddened by that realization. My anxiety is through the roof and I jump when I hear an unexpected sound walking around town. The depression comes in waves; I'm at low tide for the moment.

If you were more detached, whatever that means to you, what would that look and feel like? What would you be doing differently than you are doing now? What are your priorities currently?

These practical questions are insightful. What would I be doing differently? Nothing... Well, maybe I'd file for a separation or a divorce. What would it feel like? Like she was just another person and that my life was not impacted by her actions. Both of those things are true at this point in time. I think I need to steep in the discomfort of the situation and appreciate the current landscape for the benefits it is providing.

You may want to consider changing your relationship with social media for a little while.

Great point. I was good with this until recently! Logging out as I got enough drama without having my buttons pushed by robots.


Reinventing, thank you for the emphasis and confirmation I am on the right path.


forthetrees, you are right. Earlier I was upset that she wasn't bringing her problems to me and now they're beyond whatever help I could have given. She's gotta figure this out on her own. The image that was playing in my head was wandering through the wilderness but I like your intergalactic take more.

The pain of rejection seems to fade way faster than the pain of loss.

Damn. I think I'm at that junction now. This helps explain a few feelings. Thank you.

People in your daily IRL don´t seem to "get" the pain

Yes, I can verify this. A good friend of mine was frustrated hearing of my relationship so I stopped bringing it up. Sometimes he'll ask about it and it always ends up being a frustrated conversation.


Ready2Transform, thank you. Patience is something I'll be needing to learn. As for bipolar, that would make sense. I've had a mutual friend quietly speculate as much, but I believe I overheard her internal thoughts more than an intentional point on her part.