[Biscuit]

For my situation the only people that noticed were me (obviously!), our son and W's best and oldest fried....so the people that really know her. Other people didn't notice a difference and a couple of mutual friends said they didn't believe me when I told them what W was saying to me behind closed doors - I never confided in them again!
These MLC folks are very good at putting on face and showing the world how 'happy' they are. Anecdotally, from most of the stories we read on here, the mask tends to start slipping a while into their crisis.

[LC]

I remember about 20 years ago when I suspected H was cheating with a co worker. We were in the living room watching a documentary about the actor Spencer Tracy. I wasn’t paying much attention at the time, but I do remember something he said. When Spencer Tracy was asked if he found acting to be difficult. His reply was, “Acting is the easiest thing in the world.”
H said he agreed with him.
When I heard him quickly agree, I had this background feeling of, “Uh oh.”
I think co workers can be fooled.  Friends they are not terribly close to can be fooled.  Distant family can be fooled. Looking back, I have to be quite honest, he always worked later when his family would stop by.  We have no friends in common.  No church or social groups in common. One has to wonder why…

[Ready2Transform]

I actually almost started a thread about this because I've recently had a casual friend pop up in MLC. I wanted to assure you all, that YES, other people sense something is off!

In my case, his family loved the MLC version of him more, so I got no friendly shoulders there. But I had our accountant and other friends and family members point out to me how weird he seemed and that something was wrong. The exact words of my accountant were, "That's not the (MLCer) that I know." He also lost a lot of local guy friends that had originally been his compadres in all of this because he just got too extreme with his behaviors. Several of them started coming to me with confirmation that he was going off the deep end. He even shared with me once that at the first MLC job he started (and soon lost), they'd asked him to leave meetings because his weird tics and behavior were disruptive. His manager asked him if he was on meds, and when he told him that he'd gone off of them, the guy said, "Maybe you should consider taking them again."  He told me this because he wanted me to feel bad about how mean people were to him. 

But from my perspective now of seeing someone else doing ridiculous things to their spouse and definitely pushing away any family and friends that don't agree with them (and I totally expect to be one of them soon since I tried to elucidate her about MLC and the trap she was falling into), it's just as repelling and weird as I'm sure it was for other casual friends around my xH. She has the classic war with spouse/war with family (she's cut off both parents and her brother)/war with job (refuses to work at all, but especially in the field she got her master's in)/and war with God is in the form of switching religions to a very strict Evangelical style when that was not her at all before, pulling her kids out of school suddenly to homeschool, and judging everyone. We all know the underlying "war with self" is going to be the biggie. I have no clue how she'll meet an alienator, but she's talking about going to expensive retreats, so the odds are getting better. Even knowing about MLC as long as I have and having experienced this first hand, it's still so bizarre to see it play out so literally.

[Nas]

Off topic, but:
I have no clue how she'll meet an alienator, but she's talking about going to expensive retreats, so the odds are getting better.
Yeah. I have An old partying acquaintance that I’ve written about on the vanishers thread who has been holed up at various Caribbean getaways and different retreats for like 2 years now. She’s had a steady stream of OM, and often tries to send her castoffs to me. I’ve had to block a few emails from strange men, several with unwanted pictures, saying “M gave me your info…” If you could smell these messages, they would definitely smell like Drakar Noir, old cigars and scotch.
And I notice her weird selfish, entitled, ego-driven shadow self, but I’m not sure many others do, or they shrug it off because it simply doesn’t affect them.

[Baxter1]

My W put pics of her and OM on social media so her family and mine definitely noticed. He gone now but the damage has been done.

[AllieKat]

Sorry for so many posts…its the only way I know how to cope! My crazy brain H filed! I want to have hope but its now a ticking clock attached. Ppl say its just paper but to me its the end of a 19 yr life!! It definitely won’t happen overnight but still I’m feel hopeless. I have no real reason why he choose this. He left and hasn’t spoken to me other than to say he doesn’t want to talk to me ever again! Its pure craziness. We had a argument he had been very stressed with his job, he had been having ed issues than had this health scare and refused to go to er! I was mad and we didn’t talk for a few days! I than wanted to talk it over and he got so mad and said if I didn’t stop pressing he was leaving. So he left. He told our daughter a few weeks later he loved me very much and was just hurt. (I assume because I didn’t talk to him ) i called him at work a 2 weeks later and he refused my call and than sent me a text to say he wanted to end our relationship! I didn’t bother him again but I accidentally included him in a text that i had talked to a lawyer and it was heartbreaking to think of divorcing. Two weeks later he filed!!! This has happened so fast and I have no answers and now D on the line!! I can’t help but think he rushed to file because of that text but it doesn’t really matter because he did file!

[JohnnyBravo]

If you could smell these messages, they would definitely smell like Drakar Noir, old cigars and scotch.

I don't remember messaging you... (Just kidding, I ran out of Drakar Noir long ago.)

My Members Only jacket is around here somewhere...

[JohnnyBravo]

Hi, Allie

I don't think anything you could have done would have changed whether or not he filed; he would have found whatever excuse he needed. I hoped my ex wouldn't file, but figured she would, and she did. A week before Christmas! On the plus side, that ended the questions/waiting/worrying, and gave me specific tasks to focus on in response. Somehow, I didn't feel particularly emotional about supplying my own information; that was just business. Seeing her information (credit card statements, etc.) was more of a downer, but I only briefly glanced at one of those. I had a lawyer to deal with the numbers. My ex was a bit unrealistic with her expectations for asset splits, to be sure.

Not much solace in that, but hang in there and focus on pushing yourself through this. Post here whenever you need to (but it's best to keep everything on one thread by replying to your own thread).

<hugs>

JB

[Baxter1]

Allie,

Same boat here, she filed in March, we have a pre-trial meeting in November. I agree, it’s just a piece of paper but it holds a lot of Memories and holds your whole lives as a couple. I’ve heard that some file and do nothing. I’ve spoken to people here who have their spouse file and it just sits and then the LBS picks up the ball and runs with it. I’m not trying to give false hope because every situation is different but it does happen. The courts move slowly so I am finding that this is giving me time to heal. Also I am in the ‘not lifting a finger’ club. She wants a divorce? Ok, go for it, I can’t legally stop her from doing what she wants but I don’t have to help. Maybe im delaying the inevitable but again more time=more healing. Some talk a big game but when you have to pay retainers and all those fees some will back off or delay. Again each case is different, good luck!

PS Give yourself some grace. Dont beat yourself up about that text, I agree with JB.

[Treasur]

I can see that you are deeply distressed, AllieKat, and I am so sorry. Please don’t apologise for posting - we get it and most of us know what it is like to feel how you feel at the moment. (Although you might find it better to keep posting your questions and thoughts on one thread so we can follow along with you, no need to start a new thread for new questions and the moderators will help with that if you need help)

With that feeling of distress, your brain and body feet a bit wired and flipping around, don’t they? Usually sleeping and eating is a bit tricky too. How are you doing on those basics? I ask bc experience tells us that the best way to navigate this is to try things to calm your brain and body down, to go a little slower even though your brain is probably telling you to do the opposite. To take baby steps, to breathe, to be kind and gentle with yourself. To find some support….a decent IC, family, friends. Someone here told me to treat myself as if I had been run over by a truck and was in the emergency room and that was good advice bc that was exactly what it felt like. But doing that tends to mean dropping back into small slow ways to focus on your own well-being in the moment, to focus on things that help 1% rather than looking for things that are a big fix in one leap of that makes sense.

Your brain right now is probably telling you a couple of things (bc that’s how normal brains respond to shock and trauma). The first is that the ‘answer’ lies with your h. The second is that if you can figure it out, you can make it all go away. Experience here sadly tells us that both are unlikely to be true.

So, is there hope? Yes, always yes. But does it rest in the hands of your h? Almost certainly not. And will this situation magically go away? Almost certainly not. It is as it is, and that current reality is what is on your plate…..hope lies in the place on the other side of that and as yet it’s probably pretty difficult to see what that might look like. But hope is still important…..it’s just right now the situation requires you to keep walking forwards without being able to see it clearly bc so many things are uncertain.

Do you have a lawyer? Bc, regardless of how you feel about it (and it’s normal to feel how you feel), your h has pressed the button on a legal process which has a life of its own that is nothing to do with feelings. And few of us can do our best thinking legally when we are so distressed….so you need to outsource that thinking to someone who knows legal things you don’t.

All of this is not an easy path to navigate with one’s sanity and resources safeguarded for better days to come, we do understand that. But nonetheless, the best any of us can do in life is work forward from the reality of where we are today.

How can we best help you right now, my friend?

PS in case it helps, here is a link about breathing from a great coach I worked with on some of the basics for a little while https://www.facebook.com/chloe.stephens.74/videos/531401573165954/