[OffRoad]

I am so sorry you find yourself here, but glad you found us. Your emotions are still very raw, imo. It was 2 years before I felt truly normal again, but everyone's mileage will vary. I had an 18 month stay at home, which was a massive mistake all on its own, for me anyway.

As you have heard,, take care of you. It's good to see you attempting to get out and about, but be gentle on yourself if things don't go as smoothly as you'd like. You have been betrayed by the person you trusted would not do so. It's a shock to the system, because who does that? Well, people in crisis obviously do. But that doesn't make it easier on you.

Did you "cause" him to be a vanisher? I'm going to be honest, a consequence of your actions may have been his respecting you not wanting to talk to him and needing space, so he stays away. And here's the rub. Sometimes they vanish because they don't want you to see how messed up they are. Or don't want to "hurt" you. Or countless other reasons they use to justify their behavior.  Even if your behavior "caused" him to vanish, and I'm not saying it did, that isn't a bad thing. Respecting yourself and having boundaries is how you heal yourself. You teach people how to treat you.

I always say, keep moving forward. If he heals himself and catches up to you, you can figure out if it can work then. If he doesn't,  then you are still moving forward and working to be in a good place. That is always a win for you.

I don't know where you live, but I joined meetups. Coloring. Knitting/crocheting. Off road driving, the latter of which saved my sanity. For a day or a weekend, I drove with a group of people where no one was left behind, no matter what. Restored my faith in people in general. Maybe you can find a thing you like to do. Volunteer somewhere, perhaps. But don't be upset if it takes a while to get to feeling normalish.

It's not likely to be linear (wasn't for me), but you will get to a place that feels calm and right. Remember that when your mind is racing at 2 am and you have work the next day.  😉  it sometimes helps get you through.

Big hugs. I can't say I wanted this journey, but I came out better for it. I hope you can, too.

[FaithWalker]

Hello Sunshine and Rain.  I was 37 at the time of Bomb Drop and my H had just turned 40 a few months prior.  I turned 38 the month after our divorce, which was 4 months after BD.  The D was 10 years ago in April if you've not ready my story.

You are in some good company and I'm glad you found your way here!  My kids were 10, 13 and 15 at BD and we had been married for 14 years.  I think if I had not had the kids to keep me connected, I would have done the same as you, either put boundaries in place or moved somewhere else to get away from it all.  For my peace, for my healing.  I don't think you putting boundaries in place and him becoming a "vanisher" really changes the odds either way.  Everyone's story is different and you have removed yourself from the equation, so he may find his way back, he may not.  However, you and he are both irrevocably changed by his shattered trust and if there is a relationship in the future, you will both have changed and grown.

It will be 11 years for me come December that I have been on this journey of healing.  I'm not the same person he left.  I have raised my children, I've pursued hobbies and passions that interested me, I've traveled, I've changed jobs, I have done inward work and I'm in a really good place.  It took me a while to heal, and grief is not linear, so there were times that I rotated through all the emotions and back again.  Sometimes in this upcoming season (the Holidays), I still feel a residual effect, but I've learned that life is still beautiful and I'm still worth any and all trouble I may have been!   

You are newly in, so be soft on yourself.  Take care of yourself.  One day at a time, that's sometimes all that you can do.   One foot in front of the other, two steps forward, one step back.  But you've go this!  You will be okay.

[SunshineAndRain]

Thank you Xyzcf. It does me good to hear that people can be ok after this, it gives me something to aspire to and keep trying. Thank you so much for the polyvagal chart, I am currently right at the top in the blue and want to work hard at getting closer to green, I will start reading about attachment trauma and how I can take steps to heal.

I was the same as you, and I also couldn’t believe how people could forgive rejection and cheating and take back a spouse. When I was a little girl I remember a neighbour came over to talk to my mum, in floods of tears, because her husband had just told her he didn’t know if he loved her anymore (in hindsight very possibly MLC), and my friend’s wife’s dad bomb-dropped that he had been having an affair with a younger work colleague and was moving in with her, followed by a huge breakdown. In both instances the marriages reconciled and I never understood how there could be forgiveness, but I do now.

It’s so beautiful that you were able to give your daughter the reassurance that her dad was being so well cared for at the end of his life. I can’t imagine how traumatic the whole experience must have been for you, but I can see how it was a gift too and a chance to honour the person who had once been so good to you.

I looked it up, but common law isn’t recognised in the UK. He was always very reluctant to marry because he had been married before. We don’t have any shared assets, and he didn’t provide in any way (other than a bill he covered for me a few years ago), and vice versa.

I am able to talk to my mum, and my best friend. They are both empathetic to me. I don’t get to see either of them much, but I do get to talk about it when I do.

[SunshineAndRain]

Thanks so much Offroad! I really appreciate your thoughts on how I could have influenced him to become a vanisher. If that’s the case, then I am pleased with that outcome because it suggests there is still a seed of respect toward me, and I also can’t imagine how frayed my nerves would be if he was still clinging so fiercely.

Thank you, that’s great advice. Early on in this I made a list of all the local groups and activities that I might like to go to, and some volunteering opportunities that would get me outside and in nature (since I don’t have a garden, and used to spend whole days each week gardening at his). Work has been so full on for me (a good distraction in itself) that I haven’t been able to explore as many of them as I’d like to, but once I’m more able to I will make sure I do! I’m so happy it was a restorative experience for you!

Big hugs to you too. I really appreciate your advice and I hope I can become a better person from this as well!

Faithwalker - I remember reading your story because I was 37 at BD too! Thank you so much for saying that you would have put those boundaries too, if you didn’t have your kids, as I have been torturing myself over whether that was the right thing to do, but realise now if I hadn’t done I don’t know how I’d have coped with the clinging craziness!

It sounds like you have reached an amazing place of peace and acceptance and that you have so much in your life to be proud of! It’s inspiring, and I really appreciate your advice - ‘one day at a time’ is my mantra at the moment, I have to remind myself that I need to get through the day let alone be worrying about a million eventualities that haven’t even happened yet!

[SunshineAndRain]

Journalling:

Sunday morning was incredibly hard. My mum sent me a voice note saying she could sense I was struggling, and she said she kept being hit by the shock of what has happened, and how unfair it is. I still get that shock too, the pure disbelief that someone I had such a precious relationship with seemed to stop caring about me, his lifelong friends and his family so suddenly. Sometimes I worry I’ve deluded myself, and that none of our relationship was real, but then I’m able to remember how he described it to me the week after BD, sitting on my sofa crying and saying ‘It’s like I went to clean my ear out and a wire came loose in my brain’ and automatically his whole sense of reality had changed. He hated what he could feel was happening, and knew it didn’t make sense. It isn’t true that he never loved me, I know he loved me very much. This was the same day I learned he was questioning our relationship, even though he previously said he hadn’t been, because he said he felt that he had told ‘the person who is my whole world that she’s now just an option,’ and he hated himself for that. There just seems to be a strong gravitational pull that drags people under, and even though they - at first - don’t want to go they are eventually powerless to it and get pulled down and away from everything they once knew.

I have a lot of empathy for that, because it must be awful, and I will always be grateful for how hard he tried to fight himself and stay with me. It was a final act of love.

After a hard morning I went to meet a friend from my university days who I hadn’t seen for three years, which was the day he got married. He is adopting his first child and I am so happy for him and his H. We went into a shop so I could choose them a soft toy for the baby. My friend worked as a business psychologist, so has some understanding of psychology overall, but he was not familiar with MLC. What’s interesting is that when I did describe what had happened, he wondered if my ex had recovered some repressed trauma from childhood based on how he had behaved. I do believe HB’s work about the MLC stemming from childhood, and the family dynamics at play are disturbing in hindsight. Because my own childhood was traumatic, in more obvious ways, I don’t think my ex realised that his had played a huge role in his emotional state since it looked more subtle than mine, and that’s sad because I imagine those subtler traumas are harder to identify and unpick.

Last night I dreamt that I was coaching him through his crisis. I think my brain was processing all the info I’d learned so far. He was asking me why he was having an affair, and why he couldn’t leave, and I was explaining limerance to him and why he was drawn to escape/avoid behaviours. In the dream, his OW passed away suddenly and he wanted to come back to me. I remember telling him that wasn’t possible, because his crisis wasn’t finished and he would probably just move on to another woman to keep running. Even in my dreams I am putting my boundaries in place! I guess my brain was helping me know that time is needed for a person to move through their MLC, if they even do, and nothing else will help.

Early on people told me if my home was a mess then that was ok, but I always frantically busied myself with dishes and laundry. Well, now I have plates stacking up and no clean cutlery, and my laundry hamper is overflowing, and I realise that this is fine because I am depressed and trying to fix these things right now take too much energy than I can muster, but when I feel like it I will be able to get things together again.

[SunshineAndRain]

Journalling:

This weekend was so much different to last one when I went to candle making and was shaking with grief. What has changed in that time I don’t really know, other than I have been reading so much of this forum and I suppose firming my acceptance that this isn’t my fault - I didn’t break it, I can’t fix it. One thing that resurfaced for me recently was how when my ex first crossed a boundary with me at BD, I remember restating my boundary and the consequences would be that I would not be prepared to continue the relationship if this particular boundary was crossed again, as I had stated it about a year prior (when, in hindsight, the pre-crisis was underway). He told me he was glad I restarted my boundary because he “never thought” I would actually leave him. That seemed profoundly arrogant at the time, and maybe it was, but in hindsight it shows that he also felt that he was somehow stuck with me, and feeling trapped with all the responsibilities of his life. Classic MLC. I can now see how his altered thinking perpetuated the crisis and all that came next.

Anyway, yesterday I worked an art market which I haven’t done for a few months. I have a day job, but I love selling my art too. My ex came to every market with me in the past, he enjoyed helping me (though again, in hindsight, the last couple one we did together he had just wanted to read his newspaper and not really interact with anyone, which as an extrovert was always his favourite thing to do). I was worried I’d struggle to do this one on my own. My mum and her partner took me and my stock, but they then left to spend the day together and came back later to help me take everything home. I had such a fun day, I sold way more than I expected to, and I enjoyed interacting with customers and other sellers. It reminded me that I am so fulfilled by selling my art, way more than by my day job. My ex made some comments in the weeks after BD that suggested it wasn’t a productive thing for me to do, and it did not align with his views of how people should live their lives, so I had been feeling a bit embarrassed about having this dream and enjoying it so much. This is actually rewriting, I see now, as I have boxes of cards from him over the years where he always wrote that pursuing my art inspired him, was something he would never be brave enough to do, and how proud he was of me. But nonetheless things said in MLC are painful, even when we suspect they aren’t true.

I now realise that my passion and sense of purpose are very valid and a huge, important part of feeling fulfilled in myself. I need to consider how I can still do the markets without his help, as most take place away from the town I live in, but I am committed to continuing to do them and I love them! My best friend is going to help me with one in November, even though it means he will be getting up at about 5:00am on a weekend to help me. I’m so lucky.

After the market I updated my diary with some other creative activities I will join in with. I am going to do candle making again, and one of the social groups I joined are going to pay me to run an art workshop for the members, so I’m feeling really good about all these things! I might feel hopeless and miserable a lot of the time, but I just have to turn up to the things I commit to and keep living life, even when it feels impossible.

I have an assessment for free counselling tomorrow and hope that I will be accepted.

I intend to interact more on here with everyone else’s threads now I am able to be outside of my own situation here and there. I remain so grateful to everyone who read and commented so far. The candle I made last weekend is still curing but when I’m able to light it I will be lighting it for me and all LBS on here, and sending you all so much love.

[Reinventing]

SandR,

Everything you're feeling is completely normal. Also thinking back and putting the pieces of the puzzle together is normal. Hindsight allows us to see the ramping up, often in starts and fits, that happens.

Also, them wanting to have us and the affair partner too is often the case. You're doing really good keeping active, even if you have to fake it to make it.

[SunshineAndRain]

Thank you so much, Reinventing! Realising that this is all kind of textbook is a relief, and less crazy making, though I wish none of us had to experience this. ‘Fake it ‘til you make it’ is my motto at the moment!