[WHY]

If it was to be rebuilt it would require the willingness and great deal of effort, and few MLCers seem to have the skills to do it (in fact if they did they would have done it before the building fell down).

Marvin you absolutely NAILED it.  If they had the maturity and coping mechanisms to deal with this, they wouldn’t have entered crisis in the first place. 

[Treasur]

I think this rings true to me too. Plus the extra damage created by their crisis choices on top of whatever else they were carrying. Having said that, to be fair, there are some cases of reconciliation, just not many. With hindsight, I find it more remarkable that there are any tbh

But, to also be fair, part of what changed was also my lens. There came a point when I just no longer believed what I used to believe or had the same priorities. Once I got to that point, there was literally nothing that my xh could have said or done. Wanting reconciliation became as inconceivable to that me as MLC BD had been all those years before. So, although I never had the choice in my situation, I stopped wanting that choice to be available if that makes sense. And it’s important to my sense of peace to own that too. I’m not sure my h completely killed my residual love for him entirely - although he gave it a good go lol - but he did succeed in killing my trust in him as a good person to have in my life and most of my beliefs about his half of our relationship pretty thoroughly.  To me, that was a sad thing and a big life loss. To him? I have no idea. Which is probably the biggest change in my perspective.

[FrenchHusband]

So my thought for today is this: if you are early in this journey (say first 2 years) I think it is absolutely normal to try to "understand" and "fix" and want the old life back. Yes you will hear that that life ended at or before BD1. But its one thing to hear it, another to have to let the consequences of that true resonate and shape your life. That part takes time and comes in many many layers.

But when you have stabilized maybe ask yourself this: what kind of odds would you require if someone could "predict" some kind of reconciliation in let's say seven years (a number that I believe randomly is thrown around a lot). Would you be willing to take a chance at waiting 7 years of the odds were 1 in 100? 10 in 100? 50/50? And how would you feel if waited for seven precious years and then discovered that your MLCer is really exactly where they were at BD1, but with some minor tweaks and changes. Maybe the crumbled building has been cleaned up a bit and has a nice parking lot to torture the analog.

So hello from the seven year mark, where my W is just as unhappy, just as anxious, but with new coats of paints and slightly different games than when she started.

Hi Marvin,

thank you very much to share your knowledge here and to continue to post for the newbies that we are, less than 2 year mark. I am at 1 year after BD, and thanks to the wise advices here I am completely detached and I have dropped the rope. I am still open to a reconnection and reconciliation, but I know it won't come from me : I can not "fix" or "save" our marriage. I have accepted that our marriage is broken and I have understood that it needs 2 people to build or rebuild a relationship, so I don't waste any energy on it right now. I have "done the job" and continue to work on myself, I do it for me, not for anyone else even if I believe my inner work is benefitial to all my relationships.

For me "Standing" does not mean "Waiting". I make my own choices, I do what is good to me. I continue to behave as a husband, a father and a man, I am faithtful to my vows, for myself and not for the marriage.

The advices given here are fine : "live as if she will never come back" - "forget the timeline" - "detach" - "protect yourself and the children", etc... It fits with what you write about the odds and the unpredictability of the future.

I hope there might be a reconciliation in the future, but I am not expecting it. I know I will be fine whatever the future.

[FrenchHusband]

Hi Marvin,

I have read all your story from the beginning (well the beginning in THS), and I thank you so much for the hindsights and the wisdom you bring here. Many times I nodded when I read. We have chosen different paths : you chose to move on after 6 months. I chose and choose to Stand with a live-in spouse under MLC. What you write helps me a lot to understand what I am facing, and also what I have to choose for me and for my life. Thanks to continue to write in THS and to share your thoughts

A marriage requires compromise at times and thinking that somehow our marriages were "unhealthy" seems to me to be rewriting history and somehow finding fault with our role in the breakup...when indeed, it truely is not about us or about the marriages we had.

Thanks XYZCF I only want to make something very clear. I am in no way saying that marriages are "unhealthy" or rewriting history. I think it is absolutely possible to invest in the "3rd party," the common marriage, whatever ones religious or early upbringing shaped beliefs are. And still maintain a healthy separate individuals, both contributing, shaping, creating and nurturing the "3rd party." These things are not mutually incompatible. It does not remove the need to still maintain the separate individual, not dependent or placing ones core well being into the relationship. I made my own personal mistakes as I have shared where in my own work I placed a bit of my safety and the trust in the relationship, not in myself, and then from there contribute to the relationship.

Maintaining a healthy independent individual in no way diminishes a healthy strong relationship. There is a difference in trusting the 3rd entity in a bounded way than NEEDING the 3rd entity to be ok.

Regarding codependency and counterdepedency, I totally agree with what you write : in a marriage (or maybe any relationship), there is Me, You and US (the third person). And we have to consider what belongs to each member of the relationship. For me a healthy relationship needs to consider each person "needs" and "wants". For Christian believers, there is an analogy with the Trinity, God being the Father and the Son, & the Holy Spirit the Love relationship between them.

To go out of this dependency / fusion that is a symptom of unhealthy marriage, the way is independency & interdependency. Independency because each one of the relationship has to be whole, not seeking someone to "complete him". Interdependency, because there are things/activities for which we need/want to be 2.

And to use your great analogy on the container filling, each day we choose to fill the third entity with our love.

[...] I do not believe in "magical" ideas of love nor do I believe in religious definitions of marriage as a lifelong enforced bond. I believed that what my W and I shared was valuable because we CHOSE to share our lives for almost 23 years, whether married or not. Until the day she decided to no longer choose me.

Love is a choice. That was my belief before BD. Now, I have switched to another definition of Love, the quote that is in my signature. It is more close to unconditionnal love, I know. After BD i was lost, then with TIME I have found again my balance and I have found that I have many joys in my life that fullfill my love container. As the container is overflowing I am able to give love to other people (including W) without expecting return. For me giving love without expecting return is a liberation.

[marvin4242]

French husband I am glad that sharing my story has given you some thoughts. I spent many hours myself reading other peoples stories and it really did help me early on to start understanding and deciding for myself. That is one of the many great things about finding a community like this.

And looking from the outside it seems you are firmly finding your footing. As terrible as something like this is all you can do decide how you will handle and experience this.

[marvin4242]

Hello everyone. I wanted to post a quick thought that has been sitting with me for some reason for a few days now that I think may be of interest. What I am about to say is rather obvious, and it is said a lot, so its not meant to be insightful in itself. Rather it is the fact that after many years I am finding yet another depth to it that further solidifies this idea.

I am sure like many of you did I knew my wife was my best friend. I had a good deal of trust in her in many ways, I knew I could share almost anything, I could rely on her and she would always "have my back." So the biggest loss to me was that I lost my best friend. I have realized this from the early days. I also realized that she treated me terribly, specially in the first couple of years (and now on rare occasions).

What has been sitting with me is this: no friend or even acquaintance, or even a nice stranger, would EVER have done to me what she did, nor would have treated me as someone of such little value or worth nor cared so little about my well being. I feel I understand very well why she did and what kind of disordered state she was in, but that is not important. It is more the deep realization of how out of sync my expectations were with the reality of the situation in the early days, and how much that caused my emotional and rational mind to struggle and twist itself around. Looking at it from a distance it is SO clear to me now. If she had not been hiding what was going on, if this had been in any way normal, and we had drifted apart I would have had time to adjust to the new reality and to act accordingly. But it really was like being thrown off a cliff when you didn't even know there was a cliff.

So why do I share this? Well maybe if in the early days we could force ourselves to simply accept what is said, that there is no "us," and actually you are now dealing with someone who has absolute ZERO care for you, or at least act that way even if we struggle with it, it may help us avoid more hurt and damage.

Another way of saying acceptance is a key, and that reality is what it is, not we want it to be.

[KayDee]

What has been sitting with me is this: no friend or even acquaintance, or even a nice stranger, would EVER have done to me what she did, nor would have treated me as someone of such little value or worth nor cared so little about my well being.

Yes, which I suppose is quite instructive. In this way, it does kind of make it 'personal', like perhaps we are like an extension of the crisis person that needs to be amputated. Maybe a bad analogy, but the dynamics of this are extreme.

Your post is timely for me. I feel like I accepted very early that my H did not/could not care about me. I understood to have no expectations, and I feel that I accepted what had happened then too. What I still often struggle with is this complete volte face. That the person who cared so much about every aspect of one's life, suddenly becomes this cold stranger. I know it happened. I think, like you Marvin, I have a grasp of the whys, the psychology, but I still get hit with that bewildering feeling every now and again. I do quite well, saying 'who knows' to most of my questions, but I still cannot match up my warm, loving husband with the cold stranger he has seemingly become. How do others reconcile this?

[marvin4242]

I do quite well, saying 'who knows' to most of my questions, but I still cannot match up my warm, loving husband with the cold stranger he has seemingly become. How do others reconcile this?

FWIW I completely get that. The "trick" I used is to think of my W as two people, the old W and the new W (I even referred to her in my head as the old (name) and new (name)). It seems simple but using this allowed me to separate the two incarnations that looked the same but were completely different. When I recall something or have a momentary pang to "share" something like I used to I direct to the "old W" incarnation. I believe its a little bit like holding the memory of someone who has died.

[KayDee]

Ah yes, it is helpful (although weird when the dead send you emails about splitting assets ) (sorry, dark humour). In the earlier days, I did see my H as 'splitting' - I called his cold, perfunctory (email) self Mr Kit (as in Keep it Together) and then, there was the emotional him that I saw when we met in person. That was another level of confusion. But as I haven't seen him in person for over 6 months, I mainly get Mr Kit.  I do draw parallels with aspects of Structural Disassociation (reading this theory made a lot of sense to me at the time. Now I am more circumspect). But, maybe this is where the 'dead' side is - in the part that had to be buried to keep going.

[Ready2Transform]

if this had been in any way normal, and we had drifted apart I would have had time to adjust to the new reality and to act accordingly. But it really was like being thrown off a cliff when you didn't even know there was a cliff.

So why do I share this? Well maybe if in the early days we could force ourselves to simply accept what is said, that there is no "us," and actually you are now dealing with someone who has absolute ZERO care for you, or at least act that way even if we struggle with it, it may help us avoid more hurt and damage.

Another way of saying acceptance is a key, and that reality is what it is, not we want it to be.

FWIW, I feel this same way, BUT...you can't get there overnight. Just like it would have made more sense if we'd all drifted apart gradually as couples rather than being thrown into this traumatic event, we must gravitate toward acceptance in a way our brains can handle it. Healthy neural pathways are deliberately dug trenches, and it just takes the gift of time to get there. There's no way the very aware "me" of today could time travel back to 2011 and have a chance at all of convincing that earlier version of myself to let go before she was good and ready. And I'm glad for the lessons that it taught me that actually helped to get me here. The best we can do as those farther along the path is to present a good example of what's on the other side, once people are ready. And they will be.

In the earlier days, I did see my H as 'splitting' - I called his cold, perfunctory (email) self Mr Kit (as in Keep it Together) and then, there was the emotional him that I saw when we met in person.

I called my xH's new persona "Hoss" (he took on this uncharacteristic 'country'-fied bravado that well suited it). It helped immensely! It helped me stop analyzing whether the behaviors were normal or not. And it was funny. A little dark humor went a long way (at least for me) to help start to take back my own life and not be so terrified all the time.