Hello,
(Long Post Warning)
The vast majority of the people in the world have no real concept of the Bat-Snot-Crazy that our lives have turned into. As far as the "what did you do wrong" crowd goes, they are usually the ones buying into the narrative of the Mid-Lifer or have guilt about their own failings - projection anyone?
Then there is the "kick the Mid-Lifer to the curb and move on" crew - they are those that have often (in my experience) never formed deep, meaningful relationships with others and see their relational partner as a means to an end - like a car or anything else that one uses until it breaks, then they toss it aside and get a new one....
Neither group has the slightest clue of what is going on in YOUR life and the dramatic changes that have taken place in a VERY short period of time. I often compare the Mid-Lifer to either "The Bug in the Edgar Suit" from the movie
Men in Black or the Body Snatcher pod in the Garden Shed from
Invasion of the Body Snatchers because the sudden transformation from the person formerly known as "Spouse" to this
leaves us all reeling.
To answer your other questions - yes, this is the correct place to post and continue your thread and yes, this is an open forum so anyone anywhere can read here, even without an account. That is why we insist on made up names. There have been instances where the MLC'er or worse, the Affair Down, has found the forum and the LBS's thread.
Your metaphorical name summarizes exactly how most of us felt when we got Bomb-Dropped and blind-sided.
There is no real hard and fast "roadmap" to an MLC. Anyone that provides one is either speaking from their own experience or are selling you a bottle of snake oil. There are "stages" that seem to be common to nearly all Mid-Lifers but the duration and severity is variable. If one considers strictly casual commonality, the severity and duration almost appears to coincide with the amount of "damage" the Mid-Lifer has to confront within themselves from their past or their inability to sooth/nurture themselves. However, each MLC'er has their own path and their own timeline. Some never get out of the tunnel and stay in replay the rest of their lives (under the motto "It's better to burn out than to fade away." My xFIL was one of those and he died of heart failure) while others do emerge later but stay bound to whatever life they have chosen for themselves during their MLC. Still others emerge as a semi-healed individual who wish to reconcile with their LBS and make amends.... There is no way in advance to know what the outcome will be. That is why we preach "taking your eyes off the Mid-Lifer, live a life like they are not coming back, and do the work you need to do to heal your own wounds."
I personally find the whole "why did you attract such a person in the first place" stuff to be a guilt trip. No one to my knowledge has been given the power to read minds and predict the future so saying we attracted someone who was going to essentially have a mental implosion is sort of like saying that it is actually our own fault. That is sheer and utter male bovine excrement. The fact that the person we married has suddenly decided that our marriage is not worth a darn, that the LBS has suddenly mutated into the 2nd cousin of Satan themselves, and that the Mid-Lifer has NEVER been happy in the marriage should be the clue that the issue is not and never was with the marriage or the relationship or the LBS. I mean, seriously, if you were absolutely revolted by the very thought of eating liver and onions, would you have happily eaten liver and onions every day for how ever many years you were married? Probably not....
As far as his phone goes, 1) snooping is like sticking a fork up your nose...... It hurts like Hades when the truth comes out and it WILL come out in the end. 2) If it walks like a duck, flies like a duck, swims like a duck, looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, poops like a duck and tastes like a duck when it is cooked, well... it is HIGHLY likely that is is/was a duck.... From the stories here, most Mid-Lifers (especially male ones although the female mid-lifers are not far behind) will, at some point, have an affair, be it emotional, physical, or fantasy. They have essentially checked out of the marriage at Bomb Drop as far as they are concerned so they feel free to do whatever and whoever they choose without remorse.... Meanwhile the LBS is supposed to be sitting on the porch in their rocking chair, surrounded by a pile of boogery Kleenexes, crocheting lace doilies and listening to sad songs waiting for the Mid-Lifer to come back..... Well
The LBS has a life to live, places to go, a things to do that do NOT include wasting time foor the Mid-Lifer to finally get their head out of their ..... fog..... That does NOT mean that we kick them to the curb and move on. It means that we start taking responsibility for our own lives as a unit of one rather than a couple, we dig deep inside ourselves to regain that core of who we are and who we were when we were only responsible to ourselves (naturally, this changes a bit when there are kids involved because the role of Mom or Dad doesn't just vanish, just because our Mid-Lifer has done a runner - in those cases it can be even more crucial because, where there used to be 2 parents, there is now only one stable parent and one "Old weird Uncle Bert that lives in the basement"-type person running around wearing the body of the parent....
Take a look at the links in my signature Tag, especially the "Resources for Newbies" (even if you are 2 years into this Ultra-Marathon slog through the mud) and that might give you more insight as to what and how we grow forward in our lives after everything that we have known has been blown up....
UM
2 years in - feeling really panicked
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