[Nas]

”I find myself wondering how long this stage of MLC will last.”

If I may, I would strongly urge you not to think in terms of stages. Doing so may cause a conscious or subconscious belief that you only need to do temporary things to hold on until things go “back to normal.” Accepting the new normal is a difficult thing, and you’re taking good steps with getting legal advice and starting to put aside money. I’d just caution you to think of these as steps towards your security in the new reality rather than steps towards holding you over until he works through a stage. No one knows what might happen, but the only thing that matters now is what’s best for you. Also, if he’s coming and taking whatever he wants or needs from the home, make sure it’s not things you actually need and/or have a right to.

[Treasur]

First of all, well done on taking some of the steps you have taken on legal advice and the need to protect yourself and your kids from an uncertain future. That takes tremendous courage, especially so early on.

I agree with Nas about the risk involved in viewing YOUR future through the lens of HIS stages of MLC. Imho what you can know for certain is that your future, and your kids’ future, will not be as you once thought it would be. (And it takes a little while to grieve and really accept that new reality imho). Your h has metaphorically set fire to your old home. And even if there is a new shared metaphorical home in your futures, the original is still a smoking ruin. That’s a sad awful thing to be so blunt about but it’s still true bc that’s how life works.

As LBS, I think we cycle around the why, what and how for quite a while. And it’s pretty exhausting. As a general rule, the most simple answer to the Why in most humans is bc we want to and think either the costs don’t matter as much or won’t effect us. That PoV can change of course as things unfold, but right now your h does not value what you value or care about what you care about. And that’s hard to understand bc your brain is not wired in the same way as his, which is why it is literally incomprehensible to you.

So, for most LBS, beguiling as the why might be, the What and the How tend to be more useful. Both in dealing with MLC type behaviour and in plotting our own path forward. Focus on what you need to build a safe, solid, pleasing next chapter for you and your kids after the old one got blown up and regardless of what your h thinks, says or does is my best advice. If he turns out to be one of the few MLCers who doesn’t create too much destruction and learns wisely from his own mistakes in those MLC stages, you can always choose to invite him back into your new metaphorical home but you need to build it first so you will all be ok regardless. But until/unless that happens - and the odds of it are pretty low - it would be more like inviting an arsonist into your new home after he burned down the old one and giving him a book of matches. Don’t do that; it won’t help you and your kids and tbh it won’t help him either bc you are neither the problem or the solution. And adults tend to learn from the normal consequences that come from our own choices, don’t we? Or not.

Sadly your h has changed the trajectory of your family’s life irrecoverably, regardless of what happens down the line. Let him do him and learn - or not - from the seeds he is sowing. Meanwhile you and your kids get to choose the best shape you can build for the new future you didn’t choose bc you can still choose the what and how of that.

[forthetrees]

NPR did an interview with a truck driver who wrote a book about his MLC. He used the metaphor of having taken matches to his life and having burned it down.

[WHY]

NPR did an interview with a truck driver who wrote a book about his MLC. He used the metaphor of having taken matches to his life and having burned it down.

Do you have a link?

[LC]

I’ve read and reread replies over the past 2 days. Some things I highlighted as personal reminders for when the same questions keep popping up in my mind.
Reinventing:

“One way I understand it is that they fell out of love with themselves and we are part of them so they reject us and their past life as well. That can include children.”

I think it’s true. I really don’t think he likes himself very much. Although the selfishness can make it seem like the opposite is true.

Nas:
“If I may, I would strongly urge you not to think in terms of stages.”

I am reminding myself daily that the changes I am making are permanent, regardless of divorce, retirement, unlikely reconciliation, and advice I am giving my youngest daughters. My oldest D is hardworking and has her own money.

Treasur:
“I agree with Nas about the risk involved in viewing YOUR future through the lens of HIS stages of MLC. Imho what you can know for certain is that your future, and your kids’ future, will not be as you once thought it would be. (And it takes a little while to grieve and really accept that new reality imho). “




To be completely honest, I would rather it be that it was something I could change, than deal with someone whose compass needle keeps spinning and rely on them for financial support and co-parenting. But I know  I can’t change anything, because I’m not the cause of whatever this is, neither do I have a solution.

Right now, I am mourning the man he sometimes was. I miss watching movies with him. I miss laughing at funny stuff together. There were rare instances where he seemed happy with me. I’m grieving and almost at the point of acceptance. If I am completely honest with myself, this crisis was just waiting to happen. I could see things beginning to surface and get pushed down again, like prodromal labor pains occurring days before baby actually arrives. I would tell myself it was probably just the general stress of living on planet Earth, during a global pandemic. His depression got worse after life returned to normal.

I am surprised at how far skewed my perceptions were of our life together. Instances come to mind of decisions he’s made over the past 5 years that I would see as orange flags for an instant, then I would quickly rationalize them away in my mind. Financial decisions made could be rationalized away as getting ready for retirement. A separate bank account and credit card here in town doesn’t mean he is leaving. It means he wants to retire here in town and he is paying off and canceling all the other credit cards. I feel like such an idiot.  I never want to be that trusting and ignorant again.
The last 3 years, he stopped doing anything for Valentines Day, Mother’s Day and our anniversary. The kids and I still got him gifts and made his fried chicken on Father’s Day (he didn’t argue about that) .
Meanwhile I found myself walking on eggshells around him. He wound up in the emergency room a couple times for anxiety. Then he had prostate surgery and performance issues. Our whole family was sick with RSV last winter. Then BD at the end of April.  And everything afterward.

Treasur:

“Sadly your h has changed the trajectory of your family’s life irrecoverably, regardless of what happens down the line. Let him do him and learn - or not - from the seeds he is sowing. Meanwhile you and your kids get to choose the best shape you can build for the new future you didn’t choose bc you can still choose the what and how of that.”


My Goals:
I just need to keep moving forward. I want as much financial independence as possible. I need to detach from DH. We are on separate paths.

We only share the 3 youngest kids. The older kids want nothing to do with him and that’s not my problem. I can’t let him try to work my sympathy card one minute and sh#t on me the next. I’m looking into what another poster on this forum wrote about PTSD. I’m learning about Tap Therapy. There’s some good video tutorials online that I am finding helpful.

I think I am getting closer to acceptance. It’s vital I get there soon, although it can’t be rushed. I have a boatload of family depending on me. We are on a new journey in life.

forthetrees:

“NPR did an interview with a truck driver who wrote a book about his MLC.”

I wonder if MLCers ever feel regret in the aftermath.

I’d love to hear the interview.
Is there a link?

[Treasur]

It’s useful - if painful - imho to drop those old rose tinted glasses to some degree. We all eventually did and that’s how adult humans tend to learn and evolve; we adapt our lens.

I get that you might feel foolish or naive. I’m pretty sure that there isn’t a single LBS here that hasn’t had those moments bc where we find ourselves is so very s$it as an outcome. However, imho it’s really important to keep a bit of balance to it, to only own what belongs to you, to accept the reality of context and the practical limitations of only knowing what we know when we know it.

When people lie or manipulate or have bad intent, the core fault lies with them. I don’t know how one could ever have a close relationship, let alone a sensible marriage, without a significant level of basic trust. Do you? The fault is not in the trusting, it’s in the betrayal and with the betrayer. Important to remember that. And important to remember that the world is full of other good folks who don’t do what your h has done….if you’d been married to one of them, you would not have found yourself here and you would be reaping the rewards of a grace-filled solid partnership, right?

At the same time, most of us go through our own process of figuring out how we want to evolve and learn from this experience. Bc it is so big that it does tend to change us even if we wish it didn’t. And that often involves some inner work on why we said yes to things, or excused them, or avoided the conflict that comes with saying errr No, or put other peoples’ wants before our own, or took as normal things that we now think weren’t that normal or ok. A good IC can help with that and it takes a bit of time to figure out the bits of us that we want to keep regardlesss bc we like them and the bits that we might want to adapt.

I’m a few years out, and my former h long gone, but I found that probably 80/90% of who I was and how I’d approached my marriage was what I would have hoped to have received. I was kind, honest, generous in my judgements, fair-minded, respectful, flexible and optimistic. My former h self evidently was not so much lol….but that’s about him and his view of the world, not mine, so there really was no need for me to change those things about myself bc of him.

And to be scrupulously fair….ha ha bc that’s how I roll….not all of my changes were necessarily bc of what my then h did. Betrayal is a big damn thing, that’s true. And getting large parts of your old life being blown up practically speaking. And the MLC style mindf**kery, chaos and WTF stuff. But so is bereavement, a serious illness, a mother with advanced dementia and working my way slowly out of PTSD. Life happens, and sometimes it punches us in the face so hard that we fall over. And have to figure out how to get up again and perhaps walk a bit differently than we used to walk. Big s$it changes your world view usually imho….unless you are delusional, an MLCer or almost terminally stupid. And you don’t sound like you are any of those.

The bits that changed? (Some of which I like, some not so much maybe) I am much slower to jump into fixing other peoples stuff or thinking I know what is right. I probably invest less emotionally in others. I am a bit more introverted now, a bit quieter, less arrogant probably, more patient, a bit more self-centred maybe in choosing what works for me and letting others do the same, kinder in a deeper way perhaps, gentler, more appreciative of the small delights of life rather than rushing past them feeling all busy and important ha ha. There are plenty of situations now where I notice that my knee jerk reaction to them is different than it used to be - it would probably need other people who’ve known me for a long time to say how different or if it’s an improvement lol.

And that process, at least for me, took quite a few years. I’m not sure all of it was entirely intentional, just how I evolved in baby steps. I suspect if my former h ever met me now, I wouldn’t feel like quite the same person he knew in many ways.  Or indeed come with some of the same benefits as a wife. But ha ha, he ran off, so his opinion really no longer matters to me a jot now. And he obviously did not value me enough then, so pffft, he gets no vote on it.

So, by all means let yourself evolve - it’s rather encouraging as adults to see that we are capable of learning and changing, I think. But please don’t throw the metaphorical baby out with the bath water. Particularly not bc of a man who can’t even be trusted to have his own life bath tap!

[forthetrees]

From the interview with the long haul trucker (he changed jobs, blew up his life and went back to trucking).
Link: https://www.npr.org/2018/02/14/585719252/long-haul-trucker-was-completely-seduced-by-the-open-road

MURPHY: So I was on - living on Nantucket Island as a high-profile businessman and citizen and community activist. I was actually chairman of the county commissioners on Nantucket. I was a police commissioner. I was the airport commissioner. I was on the board of the chamber of commerce. I was a successful person, married, living in a small town. And, well, what happened is I got into a relationship with a woman who wasn't my wife. And my life exploded. Or probably more accurately, I took a match to my life and blew it to pieces. And so Nantucket is not a place where that kind of thing is going to be unnoticed or uncommented upon.

And I moved to Colorado, and I called up an old driver friend of mine who started his own trucking moving company. And I said, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing now with my life. But I had always kept my commercial driver's license just because. And so then I went back out on the road because I didn't know what to do - completely lost. And you know what? There's a lot of us out there - a lot of drivers who are like that. And I knew I'd have plenty of company.

[WHY]

Thanks for this.  Will listen.

[WHY]

So I listened to the NPR piece.  Besides the 10 year time frame for blowing up his life.  One cant say for sure the guy had a MLC without more info.

Thanks for posting though. 

[LC]

Hi All,
I’ve been meaning to update, but I’ve been busy with everything here. I’m adjusting to the 3 littlest being gone every Monday night.  Tuesdays, I now have time to relax, get organized, declutter(amazing therapy btw), and drink coffee.

We have two days worth of lessons on Monday, so they stay caught up. Then H borrows the SUV and they get take out food and watch a movie at his apartment. Then they sleep. They eat breakfast the next morning and help H unpack and organize. Then they will either go to the park or a movie and get fast food.
Then they come home and are wired and tired. They get a shower and run around all over the house yelling.😲  Apparently H lives on the 3rd floor, so the kids have to be quiet. By Wednesday they have settled down and we will have a game, during which they each open up and talk about everything they did and what happened.

My youngest, S9 is usually more introverted, yet generally happy. If anything stressful happened, he will sometimes act out or be defiant. When that happens, I give him a quiet place to talk. He tries to be on his best behavior at H’s place. At home he relaxes. D11, is outgoing, confident, and  very resilient. D14 is handling it pretty well. I don’t probe for details, I just take what is offered. I want to be a safe place for them to tell me whatever. I save my opinions and attitude for my journal😀.  D11 told me that last night they watched a movie. I asked what they watched. She told me they watched The Black Hole (1979). I said that sounds interesting. What was it about?
She told me it was about a captain of a space ship who took his crew to the edge of a black hole and turned on anti gravity shields to keep the ship from sinking into the black hole. Another crew was sent out to search for them, because they had been gone for so long. The search party found them, and discovered the Captain of the ship had turned his crew into robots. His goal was to search and explore the black hole. Long story short, the rescue crew saved a couple people and the Captain and assistant go into the black hole.  I got to thinking about this story and about the MLC tunnel, and if H consciously or subconsciously chose this movie for a reason.
D and I don’t communicate 99% of the time. He will text the kids sometimes. The other night I had the feeling, for an instant, almost as if he were here in the living room, looking in, wishing he were here. I immediately pushed it aside, knowing he wasn’t actually physically there, but wondering if I was picking up on what he was feeling at that moment.  Today I found out from D26 that H had asked S20, what night would be s good night for take out pizza for the 5 oldest kids. S20 said Friday. H told D32 to tell the other kids about pizza on Friday. I heard all of this 2nd hand. This is typical of the kind of communication in this house, and with H. I don’t care if they have plans, it just that it’s like I don't exist.
However, I know it’s about the kids maintaining a connection with their Dad with experiencing conflicting loyalties.
It’s about H and his journey.
I wonder where I fit in all of this. I certainly don’t fit into the Dad and kids relationship anymore.
I don’t fit in as a spouse anymore.
I’d live to be focusing on my art, writing, and my Etsy store, if I didn’t have to deal with Mr. Short Term Memory all the time😟
Sorry for the rant.