Agreed. But it is very valuable to me to understand this stuff, if only for closure. It’s changes nothing in terms of hope, expectations, my upcoming D etc. But it’s for me.
Because I never truly wrapped my head around the depression explanation. I suspect “delusional disorder” is a symptom vs a cause. But my god does it explain a lot of the behavior.
Check the persecutory type. Explains the hate towards the LBS. these false beliefs they are tightly held beliefs, where evidence doesn’t change their mind. The rewriting of history. This view of fantasyland vs reality. It makes sooooooo much sense.
Put it this way. It’s a lot easier for LBS to understand and make peace with the rewriting of history (and not blame themself) when it’s explained in the DSM.
I wonder if it might be helpful, Why, to post a bit on your own thread about the current circumstances you are dealing with? I’m not sure if you are living with your wife still, or not, or how things are unfolding for you? And understanding more about your situation might help us be more helpful. But I can see you are searching for answers and throwing out questions so I understand - we probably all understand - that drive to be able to put a diagnostic label on it as a kind of ‘aha’ bit of closure.
Imho labels like this are tricky things. There’s a reason why professionally trained psychiatrists exist lol. And a reason why some may make mistakes too. And why just seeing a good one isn’t a magic fix. Humans can be pretty complicated imho.
Are you right about delusional disorder? Idk. Maybe. Am I right in saying my xh had an MLC? Idk. Might be right, might be completely wrong. I accept that AND I found that sometimes having a sort of shorthand label for a clutch of WTF things beyond my understanding and beyond my control was helpful. But I’m not sure it helped anything much practically in my situation if that makes sense. I think it just helped me accept (eventually) that, whatever I called it, it wasn’t something I could stop or fix and it was really happening. My then h did do all the things he did and did seemingly not give a stuff about how it damaged my life or hurt anyone else involved. And that trying to talk rationally, negotiate or get answers was like trying to pin a jelly to the wall.
Bc, however one labels someone else’s behaviour, DSM or not, does not in itself change the behaviour or the mindset behind the behaviour, does it? We humans tend to change how we see things, and consequently our own behavior, and then create a different loop between both, when and if our current framework hurts too much to hold. That’s as true for we LBS, I think, as it is for our spouses. Not done lightly or quickly for any of us, if only bc it is much much easier to hold to our own lens and blame others/events for not fitting in with how we see things. At least that was my experience when I developed PTSD….looking back, I had plenty of diagnosable PTSD symptoms for a couple of years before I sought out PTSD related help. Did I know something had gone awry in me? Yes. But I only sought help when I couldn’t live with it as it was and by that point, it didn’t matter much to me what it was called….what mattered to me was being able to engage with what I was actually experiencing in a different way and try some stuff out to see what helped and what didn’t. The label sort of helped and didn’t….it made me feel validated perhaps, it suggested trying some actions over others as a first shot bc of the mechanics of how PTSD works, but it did not in itself solve the problem. That happened at a much more day to day level with a whole bunch of try this then try that moments. Not a one size fits all process at all I found. What probably mattered most was my intent….i genuinely felt I could not live one more day where I was and would have tried anything or any label if it made even a small difference to that. I have no idea how close or far that is for MLC type folks who find their own recovery path though.
So, let’s say you are right? What does that give you that you did not have before? And what if you are right but your wife/ex wife continues to believe something else? What do you do with that set of cards?
I think there is a time for many of us when we honestly believe that the ‘right’ diagnosis will open a door to the ‘right’ kind of therapeutic help and that will change how our spouses see things and that will restore our relationship and that will then make our life better….there are, of course, quite a lot of ‘if this then that’ assumptions embedded in that process which may or may not turn out to be true. And of course quite a lot over which we have virtually no control or influence at all. Lots of potential slips between cup and lip
I don’t think I am the only one here who believed something similar and whose then h did actually seek out psychiatric care at BD, but maybe I’m a minority. He knew something was deeply wrong with him and that he was a hot mess. He was looking for a diagnosis, I think, a label and a way to fix whatever was going on. And initially, if I remember right, his BD of ‘ILYBINILWY/I need soace’ was combined with begging me not to give up on him or us. Very confusing for me as I’m sure you can imagine. And he found a diagnosis…..severe depression and OCD….and was under psychiatric care and on medication for over a couple of years to my knowledge. Did that ‘fix’ him? Well, not from my point of view lol. In fact, his behaviour got rather more extreme in many ways. From his? Idk, he never said and then vanished off into his new life with ow, so no way to know. What I do remember is that my voice or perspective did not matter a jot to either him or his psychiatrist, and that I could never quite see why abusing me, creating chaos for both of us ending our marriage was an appropriate solution to a couple of DSM diagnoses! But, self evidently, in his head, perhaps in his psychiatrists head even ha ha, it was because that is what he did. And of course I have no idea how honest or accurate he was in his conversations with his psychiatrist or what his psychiatrist believed; I only know he lied a lot about a lot to a lot of people including me at that time.
Did those diagnostic labels help him? I genuinely don’t know for all the reasons I said. I do know that they did not help me at all and I never received any kind of explanation about the link between the diagnosis and his behaviour or his departure. Although I did turn myself into an Amazon ‘expert’ on both deoression and OCD for a while
So, where did all that take me eventually?
I suppose it helped me reach a point where I changed some of my beliefs and therefore my lens, and therefore my behaviour. Took a few years though lol. I could not honestly give you even now a 100% label to describe what happened to the h I loved so much and thought I knew so well. I could however see what the effects of it were. I could see what he did and didn’t do even when I did not understand the why of it if that makes sense. I could see what had my fingers in it and what just did not, what came from me and what came from somewhere or something or someone else regardless of anything I did or didn’t do. Even if I had no idea what the somewhere, something or someone else was. And found slowly that getting myself out of the chaos and pain of it came from focusing on the what not the why. It was a bit of a mindf**k though, not least bc it went against my natural impulses and some of my lens on the world to do that. And yet it was still the only way through it. I simply reached a point where it was obvious to me that I would not survive unless I changed my lens. Which takes me right back to my earlier point about how humans, LBS as much as our spouses, tend to only make big changes in our mindsets when we really feel we have little other choice. And how changing our own lens changes our own behaviour too. That was just as true for me as I so fervently wished it would be true for my then h and, having gone through that process myself, I have nothing but profound respect and compassion for just how very hard it is to do.
I don’t know where you are at right now, or what you currently believe that shapes your lens on the situation. Hence the value perhaps of your sharing more specifics on your own thread. What I am pretty sure about however is that, wherever you find yourself, it is more likely to change because you change your lens and change the questions you ask yourself and your own behavioural responses than any amount of speculation or diagnosis you might come to about someone else’s lens.
35 pages of stories in 2017, where are all those LBSs now?
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