[Nas]

I'd be better off trying to find a golden ticket in a chocolate bar than to believe some "real xH" is floating around in his skin, waiting to pop back out and return us to the love of our youth.

I’m not sure I ever knew my “real” H. He was always faking in various ways.  He took on traits of those around him who possessed qualities he admired, and even tried to absorb aspects of me. In the end it was the things about me that attracted him that he most wanted to destroy. One of the hardest truths to admit was that the man who emerged fully after BD had been in there all along. It was shocking in its suddenness, but it wasn’t an alien abduction. It was more like a full assembly of previously disjointed parts.

I don’t think about love the same way I did when I was young. The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan called love “essential duplicity” (and I once spent a whole semester trying to write a short story with that title) - a selfish act, we give love to get something in return, or for the object of our “love” to mirror us back to ourselves as we want to be seen. Paraphrasing: “Love is giving what you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it.“ Another loose translation of it is “Loving is giving something you don’t have to someone who doesn’t exist in order to get something you need.” I was trying to offer myself up to a projection that didn’t exist in the hopes he would provide me with what was missing in myself. I didn’t do it consciously and it didn’t mean I didn’t “love”him. I was young and misguided. Perhaps in a different situation (with someone who wasn’t an abusive narcissist) we could’ve grown together and that young misguided love could have evolved. I can’t speak for my former husband. But I own my part - not proudly, but I own it. I can’t imagine him owning his.

Can you honestly imagine your MLCer digging down to the core, facing any traumas and admitting their faults and failures with brutal honesty? If you truly can, congrats, there may be a chance of them doing the work at some point. Because that’s ”the work.” It’s not surface level speculation. And it’s not magic. It will never just happen.

[Atari25]

I am not at all being negative or pessimistic, but I am not sure where this concept that "MLCers will simply wake up" started and what supports this. I completely understand that initially almost all of us have this hope. Everything is so unreal that we can not believe this is real, that this is what the new truth of our loved ones is. So we construct a "transient" idea to what is happening. Kind of like an illness that will pass, a cold as if it were.But it's nothing like that. This is a major major crises, in a lot of ways a death or collapse of a certain version of our loved ones. I know for at least the first six months every time I interacted with my wife, no matter how much I "realized" what was happening, it was a complete shock.

I still do believe what is happening to my wife while also completely shocking, is also somewhat transient. The big question is time. I don't believe for a second she will be the same person after she goes through her MLC but I do think she will get through it. I see some mild signs. Maybe that's because she is out of the house now, I could be wrong. My therapist feels that the time away from the house was probably best for her to defuse what was building for months in her head. Of course she is just going on what I have said to her.

Can you honestly imagine your MLCer digging down to the core, facing any traumas and admitting their faults and failures with brutal honesty? If you truly can, congrats, there may be a chance of them doing the work at some point. Because that’s ”the work.” It’s not surface level speculation. And it’s not magic. It will never just happen.

This is what I worry about. The childhood trauma and admitting fault of any kind. My wife has shown unwillingness to admit or face any of this. She has agreed to get therapy, we shall see. I want to be optimistic for my own sanity.  Maybe I am kidding myself to prevent anymore heartbreak.

[WHY]

That was one of my W's biggest weaknesses before.  Admitting when she was wrong.  Talking about it but never taking responsibility (meaningless stuff thinking about it now in the big scheme of things).

But this personality trait does not give me much hope for self awareness and accountability.  I'm hoping she'll be able to draw strength from the kids to do the work. 

[Atari25]

That was one of my W's biggest weaknesses before.  Admitting when she was wrong.  Talking about it but never taking responsibility (meaningless stuff thinking about it now in the big scheme of things).
But this personality trait does not give me much hope for self awareness and accountability.  I'm hoping she'll be able to draw strength from the kids to do the work.

The personality trait is a major flaw and clearly a contributor to many of our situations. My daughter is putting pressure on W to get moving with therapy. I think without her nagging she would not have agreed to go. I have told my daughter (23) that she is likely the only person that can help her mom get help and she is ok with that and understands.

[Nas]

Nothing is a foregone conclusion and there's never anything wrong with having hope. It takes a while to let go of wanting to predict or control the outcome, but the realization that we can do neither of those things is very freeing. That's why I focus more on my own experience and learning, how I ended up in my marriage, how I showed up in my marriage, and how I would want to show up in a relationship now with the benefit of growth and insight. That's all that's within my control.

[Treasur]

That’s perhaps quite a big burden to inadvertently give to your daughter. Would you say the same for instance if your wife was an addict or alcoholic? Bc tbh ‘help’ - whatever that process looks like - is a very horse to water principle, isn’t it? And it really isn’t your daughter’s responsibility if the horse drinks or doesn’t. We humans, MLC or not, tend to reach out for help when we find our current situation sufficiently unbearable and the kind of help we look for and when is often a function of how we see the ‘problem’.  And we often push back hard on those who try to push us before we are ready, willing and feel able.

Undetstandable that she, and you, might want to encourage your wife and it may even be a pattern in your family of wife needing help and others being the helpers, idk, although it wouldn’t be unusual here bc damaged folks can create some odd dynamics over time. And we often can hear things from folks who have no skin in the game that we will not hear even from those who love us.

Imho I’d also be encouraging your daughter to not try to own things that don’t belong to her and that are simply beyond her control. To speak her mind, to have respect and compassion, to have some decent and honest boundaries but not get sucked into carrying someone else’s monkeys, no matter how she feels about her mother or how reasonable her concerns are. Or yours. That’s a pretty good life lesson writ large usually, but maybe just as hard and important for LBS kids as LBS?
Jmo.

[WHY]

That’s perhaps quite a big burden to inadvertently give to your daughter. Would you say the same for instance if your wife was an addict or alcoholic? Bc tbh ‘help’ - whatever that process looks like - is a very horse to water principle, isn’t it? And it really isn’t your daughter’s responsibility if the horse drinks or doesn’t. We humans, MLC or not, tend to reach out for help when we find our current situation sufficiently unbearable and the kind of help we look for and when is often a function of how we see the ‘problem’.  And we often push back hard on those who try to push us before we are ready, willing and feel able.

Undetstandable that she, and you, might want to encourage your wife and it may even be a pattern in your family of wife needing help and others being the helpers, idk, although it wouldn’t be unusual here bc damaged folks can create some odd dynamics over time.

But imho I’d also be encouraging your daughter to not try to own things that don’t belong to her and that are simply beyond her control. That’s a pretty good life lesson writ large usually, but maybe just as hard and important for LBS kids as LBS?

This is a good point.  Because what if your W doesnt "recover" and your daughter will blame herself.  She should not carry that responsibility.  The responsibility lies with your W.

[Atari25]

That’s perhaps quite a big burden to inadvertently give to your daughter. Would you say the same for instance if your wife was an addict or alcoholic? Bc tbh ‘help’ - whatever that process looks like - is a very horse to water principle, isn’t it? And it really isn’t your daughter’s responsibility if the horse drinks or doesn’t. We humans, MLC or not, tend to reach out for help when we find our current situation sufficiently unbearable and the kind of help we look for and when is often a function of how we see the ‘problem’.  And we often push back hard on those who try to push us before we are ready, willing and feel able.

Undetstandable that she, and you, might want to encourage your wife and it may even be a pattern in your family of wife needing help and others being the helpers, idk, although it wouldn’t be unusual here bc damaged folks can create some odd dynamics over time. And we often can hear things from folks who have no skin in the game that we will not hear even from those who love us.

Imho I’d also be encouraging your daughter to not try to own things that don’t belong to her and that are simply beyond her control. To speak her mind, to have respect and compassion, to have some decent and honest boundaries but not get sucked into carrying someone else’s monkeys, no matter how she feels about her mother or how reasonable her concerns are. Or yours. That’s a pretty good life lesson writ large usually, but maybe just as hard and important for LBS kids as LBS?
Jmo.

My daughter has done most of what she has on her own. She has experienced my wife's behavior and withdrawal from her life also first hand. She is very upset with her mother and has expressed those opinions to her directly. It's very different when you have an adult child living with you and experiencing the full brunt of MLC directly. She is not pushing her mom for me, she is doing it for us all and to try and help her mother get through MLC.

Don't get me wrong, my daughter is incredibly compassionate but my wife's behavior over the past 8 months has been unacceptable to all of us. We (my daughter, my son and I) have been openly talking about her behavior since the summer. I don't expect or ask my daughter to do anything other than to understand what has and is happening. I have tried to be as neutral as possible. I don't know what else to do but she has been my rock and we are closer than ever so if nothing else, that is my one blessing from the craziness.

[Biscuit]

Back to the original thread subject. I think it's important for us all to see that, despite the staggering similarities we all see in our spouses going into the crisis, that at some point those end.
The next stages seem to play out as differently as individuals themselves. Every one of them is taken down by different problems and they are all different people. So we see some that come through fairly similar to how they went in (sometimes with some personal development and better awareness of what took them don the rabbit hole in the first place) at one end of the spectrum. And at the other end we have people who, 15 years on, have not changed much at all from the early part of their crisis.
The problem for the LBS, is that no one can predict which part of the spectrum our loved ones will end up in.

[WHY]

Good point.

Something else I struggle with is this constant talk of depression.  I have this idea of depression in my head.  It’s not exactly what I’m seeing in my MLCer.

I wish there was a better way to describe what they’re going through.