[LisaLives]

I can just imagine a child from a MLC household saying, "I am so pleased for my MLC parent, they discovered the true them, they are now at peace and at one with life. They are self-actualized and the world will now be a better place. It is just a shame I have been left with anxiety, depression, low self-esteem and abandonment neurosis due to the trauma of all that happened between my parents.

honour

I love that, I said something similar to that in another thread--but you said it so much better.  I am so sad that my ex must never thought of what his kids will have to say about "us" in 10 or 20 years.  Will they ever be proud of him? 

[Rookie13]

Honour, My father "realized" his mistake shortly after the "affair" and apologized to the "family". I can say it has been forgotten by us siblings and he is well received in the family as time healed that wound. My parents never divorced but i can tell my mother hasn't forgotten and continues to badger him about anything and everything! Lol and she is 73! lol.

Us kids are pretty healthy ( all 11 or us! lol) about it but all bets would be off if he left us at that time.

[kikki]

I'm just wondering if the 'New Age' search for self, is more common in women?
My mother had what we all consider a MLC at the age of 47.  Left our wonderful, kind, patient father.  Blamed him for everything under the sun.  As she really had nothing much to complain about, it mostly concentrated on how different they were.  She was, and still is to this day searching for something that I doubt she'll ever find on this planet.
She immediately had an affair with a married man which lasted only a few weeks, then was with another divorced man for around four years, and has been on her own ever since.  She still complains bitterly about how difficult my father was to live with - we don't buy it.
She denies any sort of MLC to this day, and is only getting over 20 years of extreme selfishness (to some extent) now.

When she becomes up in arms about my H's OW, I have reminded her that wasn't she the OW once?  She changes the subject.

Jim Conway writes in his book on MLC  - Years ago the NEW YORK TIMES ran an anonymous but pointed letter which read in part 'I was forty years old and my husband forty-six when the eccentric behaviour began.  An otherwise reasonable and family loving man suffered, not depression as we understood it, but rage, fatigue, incommunicability, suspicion, hostility.  But every incident was my fault supposedly.  I was the woman and I was alleged to be in the change of life.  Unfortunately, doctors, psychiatrists, men in general, have kept it all under the rug where they have swept it themselves.  They are in terror of the truth of acknowledging a condition which affects their behaviour beyond their control, but which they readily ascribe to women without mercy'.

With more doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists now being women, what is the excuse now?  When this crisis hit our family, I struggled to understand it and it was hard to find much information.  Why is that?  Why does our society not inform it's members of this great tragedy?  We are all left struggling to cope on our own.  Where is the community of elders who can come in and advise and guide us all, including the MLCer in denial?

I believe in other cultures, this support often does happen?  It would be termed a spiritual crisis, and I guess it is widely known about and accepted.  Therefore I guess the help given to the person in crisis is more likely to be accepted.   

What about Kundalini?  Does anyone know much about that?  I have read a little, and my understanding is that once the energy begins to rise, the person experiencing it can feel as if they are going crazy.  If you are from the East, would you understand what was happening to you, and be more likely to get help or 'go with it'?  Without this knowledge or support in the West, is this where the denial comes in?  "Nothing wrong with me' etc.  They're terrified at what they're experiencing, and unwilling to admit it.

How do we get MLC out from underneath the carpet?

[Rookie13]

kikki, unfortunately the MLCer "feels normal" and justified in their behavior and therefore you or anyone cannot tell or explain to them otherwise. They surround themselves with people who support them that their decision is correct and the LBS must be an ahole no matter how good a spouse they are like your dad. Blood is thicker than water so family members on their side will not upset the apple cart and if they do the MLCer crosses them off their list and stops communicating with them coupled with they probably have the same problems coming from the same environment coupled with the fact that divorce is becoming an accepted norm in society's mind.

The MLCer will refuse to seek help from any professional or book period. There is absolutely nothing you can do until the MLCer wants help. They will even refuse the works or books or articles or movies from fellow MLCer whose write about their journey's. From what I have learned you cannot make a MLCer see anything no matter how much knowledge is out there as it is their feelings that they work off of and you cannot make them feel they love you or their "old" life period. It is an awful journey that they must ride out. Sad but true reality....

[kikki]

Rookie, you're so right.
I'm guess I'm thinking some global societal shift needs to occur, for any of this to change.
Goodness knows how that would happen of course!

[arp1]

So much good stuff, though some of it goes over my poor little engineer head 

In my W's case I suppose I thought that her becoming a mother and wife was what she really wanted in life; that this was her true self and that the 'party girl' who flitted from boyfriend to boyfriend in her teens, the head-in-the-clouds dreamer, was the person she left behind. From what she's said - she wants to be free, to be herself, so party, etc - maybe I've got it backwards and that really is her true self and the wife/mother is a mask she wore/donned for her families sake, i.e. this is what I'm expected to do?   

One of the things the Relate counsellor who did our assessment picked up on straight away was her 'thing' about expectations and living up to some sort of ideal. Her eldest sister never did the wife and mother thing at all or very well (two failed marriages and no kids), so maybe she felt she had to do this well - provide the perfect nuclear family and the grandchildren for her parents to see and say great, well done. Hmm.... 

[BonBon]

Hollis says he's happy now but how does he know he wouldn't have been happy had he stayed with his wife?  That's an unknown variable.  From my understanding, there are plenty of examples of MLCers who thought the last thing they wanted was to continue their life with their spouse and/or children yet they did, or, they returned, and, have never been happier.  How many MLCers who don't return won't admit they made a mistake?  Lots I bet.

As for the destruction and hurt people they leave behind, if someone can do that and then feel mighty fine about themselves, that tells me quite a bit about that person. 

[OldPilot]

I am late to this party but I finally got a chance to watch this video!
Excellent, I agree with RCR.

I think the part that is lost here is that the MLC'er is one person before the crisis, another one during the crisis, and a new person after the crisis.
There is no way for us as LBS'ers to look at the person within the crisis and know what
their new persona is going to be.

The crisis occurs because they are fighting the fact that they need to become a "NEW" person.
But until that new person is born we will not know who our spouse are.

I do not believe we should judge out spouses while they are in the tunnel.
I would agree that none of us are going to like that person, but I think to judge them at  this time is premature.

[BonBon]

OP,
I'm quoting you here:
"I do not believe we should judge out spouses while they are in the tunnel.
I would agree that none of us are going to like that person, but I think to judge them at  this time is premature."

I do agree.  Completely.  And yet, I have.  Consistently.  As I've written many times, I do not find empathy nor compassion at all and I do indeed judge.  I am embarrassed to admit that because I do indeed love the man I married and because I consider myself to have a healthy amount of both empathy and compassion and not only when it is convenient or easy.  I've made life decisions and changes based on my empathy and compassion. 

And yet, I have so little for the one person I should have it for, the person I have loved more than any other and the person for whom I've always had compassion for prior to MLC.  All I can figure out is that when I am the wounded party (for lack of a more descriptive term), I can not seem to find that empathy nor compassion.  Forgiveness?  Yes, mostly...maybe all the way some day.  But the other things?  No.  Does that mean I am not self actualized?  I have no idea.

Did not mean to make this about me.  I was just responding to the judgement aspect since we're going deep into psyches here.

[Rookie13]

Good post BonBon and I will add a little to your feelings on that. The humiliation and embarrassment and the total destruction of all our goals for the past X amount of years is not taken into any consideration. Judge away! lol as you were and are HALF and it cannot be all about them! No matter what they are experiencing as they have mortgaged your half also!

I know, we have the "chance" to start over too BUT....... lol