[StandandDeliver]

OK, 2 months after H left a lot of other negative things happened to me, i.e Mum had a cancer scare. Sadly my Grandmother died, she had been unwell, she was extremely old and had had a full life, so it was not unexpected. Nonetheless I was very close to her and due to the breakdown of my marriage, the level of anxiety I had at the time and the number of prescription pills I was on, I was pretty much numb about her death. It was like I just could not take any more high emotion and just shut down my feelings. Now, many months on I have moments of sadness about her death, about being unable to say goodbye to her, about not attending the funeral. She was my Granny, so as I said, I was lucky she was in my life so long and that she knew her great-grandchildren. I am aware though that others on here have suffered very deep losses during this process, parents, siblings, maybe even children. My question is this: assuming that you have suffered a bereavement and your MLCer was entirely absent from the whole ordeal - unable to support or even offer basic social grace (as was the case with mine), can you ever get past that failure of friendship and understanding? How do you reconcile all the times that you offered a shoulder to them when they were grieving, only to have NOTHING at a time when it would have really helped?

Furthermore that reminds me, my H did suffer a bereavement of a great aunt who was over 100 when he was heading into MLC. She had been important in his life, but he behaved as if his own mother had died - and he sobbed (literally sobbed) all over our then 5 year old and then told me that it was important that our S learned "it was ok to show emotion". While I agree with the final statement, I also remember thinking that the reaction was melodramatic, and possibly a bit scary for a 5 year old who rarely saw his father sad and was just starting to ask questions about death.  My son had met the aunt once for 2 days when he was 2 and yet he went on and on about how sad he was about her death for months after that, he didn't know her, but H's behaviour had clearly had an impact! I remember feeling that H was acting very odd about her death despite the fact that it was far from unexpected. I mean even with my Grandmother's death, my S saw some quiet tears from me, I told him it was sad that she had died, but that she had had a long and happy life, and S was satisfied with that and didn't say much more about it. He lived 5 minutes down the road from my Granny for close to 3 years and saw her every week and yet the great aunt's death who he didn't know created so much more drama thanks to H's response. IF i hadn't had a 6 month old baby at the time I might have realised with this episode that something just wasn't right - or maybe not, who knows.... Anyway that was a long aside, my first question was the main discussion point .

[LisaLives]

You posted this right after I posted my last update.  The timing was crazy because just as I ended my last post saying that after everything I had done for him, when I finally needed him to be there, he couldn’t be, I read your post and really started putting it together.  But then I was crazy busy and I only just now had a chance to think it all through... 

I know not all our MLCers are the same, but I can’t help but wonder how many are narcissists, and especially of the fragile variety.  They are not the same as the more commonly recognized outward NPDs and I never realized I married one until he left.  I could post some stuff if anyone is interested, but I think I also posted the Catholic marriage site here somewhere—if you google “selfish spouse” it comes up, and there is a quiz that was what really opened my eyes. 

Anyway it was only after he left that I realized we had the “perfect” marriage because we had a very charmed life.  We had never faced tragedy, death, serious illness, financial hurdles, nothing that I couldn’t take care of until five years ago.  When I started a business with a crooked franchise on the eve of the recession, our kid was diagnosed with cancer, and I got sued all in three years—all of a sudden our life was no longer charmed, or all about him, and he bailed. 

And I never noticed it because I am strong and I always was strong, but I also had very little self esteem and only started growing a backbone after I started my business, well really, I do give him credit for helping me plant a backbone.  I felt like he made me strong.  I had so little self esteem that I felt if someone so great could love me, well I must be sort of okay, but you get the picture, I allowed this to happen to me and I might have predicted this if I had been more cognizant of his personality and my weaknesses... 

I allowed him to be the “breadwinner” to have his career and laid all our lives down for his needs.  It didn’t seem like a lot, or too much, and I didn’t really feel like I was giving too much, until the last five years.  It was then I realized I had always given and now that I had a business, and was no longer just a part-time worker and a full-time homemaker, and needed some help with the kids or the house, or the dogs, or everything else he needed that he started resenting it and got more and more miserable. 

And when I look at all the things he said on the way out the door, it still makes sense, and it doesn’t seem like he is a real MLC case, or maybe he is and more MLC cases than not really are laying down the mask and unveiling the true self, which in the case of my exH, is a selfish jerk.  Is it possible that in his tunnel he might realize he’s a selfish jerk and doesn’t want to be—maybe?  But it doesn’t erase the fact that he was always a selfish jerk and took way more from me than he ever gave, so why would I sign up for more of that?  Isn’t it also possible that his tunnel is a narcissistic temper tantrum and in there he will realize his real self is not all that acceptable and he’ll learn to put the mask back on? 

And I am not in any way trying to say that because I married a selfish jerk, so did all you and you all should think like me.  However, I see too many stories like mine and too many women like me here to think I am the only one.  How many people here are standing because they fearfully believe they could never do better than their H—even after the way they were treated on the way out the door?  And how many reconciliations happen because a wife stuck in that belief accepts back the same selfish jerk because he went out and found out he really isn’t all that great and no one else was willing to put up with his “needs?” 

And I don’t think this discounts any of RCRs theories.  I think some people do go into the tunnel and fix themselves, but I think many more really don’t.  I have seen too many that have not, and surely if you look around you know some of them, too.  And I promise you, if you start dating, you’ll meet more than you ever wanted—it’s an eye opener, let me tell you…  There are a lot of sad sack 50yo men out there who are on their second divorce and still don’t get that maybe they’re the problem…  Therefore, while you can view MLC as a process with stages, I don’t believe a majority finish the process, I think most of them get stuck and die before finishing. 

Just my humble opinion, and I do want to make it clear that I don’t say any of this with bitterness or anger.  I feel truly sorry that there are so many lost and damaged souls out there that will never really allow love into their hearts.  And sadder still that there are so many broken families that create these souls.  I am trying as hard as I can not to do this to my boys.  I want them to have whole hearts that can give and receive love, so it is imperative to me that I understand as best I can how this happened to their father and what the best actions are for me to repair the considerable damage and not keep sending it on to all our future generations.  So thanks S&D for your post, it was another missing puzzle piece for me!     

[TrustingMyHP]

S&D this is an interesting question.  Thanks for posting.

I believe that, if I suffered a major loss right now (sibling, dear friend) my H would at least reach out to me to offer sympathy.   He may not come to the funeral--he certainly wouldn't stay with me 24/7 to offer support--but he would call/email/do something.  Maybe even invite me to dinner or coffee.  Although he's been living with OW for 7 months, since BD, (and, unknown to me, was in EA then PA with her for 2 years prior to that) we do see each other once or twice a month, email and text occasionally, and have a cordial relationship.  Both my and his parents are deceased. 
 
Things were very difficult between us before, during and immediately after BD but are way calmer now.  (Not to pat myself on the back, but I will, I credit much of H's cordiality to my treatment of him which is dim contact, validating convos, no r talk ever, no questions, no pressure, OW's name is never mentioned, and just basic friendliness and kindness.  Cool but kind.  He's responded very well to that.  Also, I have to say it, he's a decent man.  A good guy who's verrry lost and doing a bad thing.  A true MLCer.)

The fact remains, however, that he wouldn't be available to really help me process my grief in a substantive way, not like it would have been pre-MLC.   One of the issues in our marriage was that I did a lot of emotional "collapsing" on my H.  I'm prone to depressive episodes (relatively brief periods) and I would lean hard on him, at times, for relief.  I think this was one of the things, frankly, that he got tired of and contributed to his feelings of unmet needs and fed his desire to look for greener grass. 

I also wanted to make an observation about your H's reaction to his great aunt's death.  That sounds like a classic example of the MLCer responding to the issue of mortality.  It probably wasn't his aunt's passing that evoked the over-reaction but the reminder/exposure to death, happening when he was in the early stages of MLC, and thus triggered his own repressed denial/fear of dying which, as I understand it from my reading about MLC, is a big part of what the MLCer is struggling with/trying to avoid during their crisis.  So his excessive reaction was, perhaps, not about grief for the aunt but grief and fear for himself and his own mortality. 

So that's my .02.  Thanks for the interesting question!

TMHP

M  58
H  60
D  22
M  38 yrs.
BD  Jan. '11
H living with OW

[StandandDeliver]

LL - sadly I do agree with you to a large degree and I don't know why so many men (and quite a few women) manage to go through life and cause so much destruction around them and never look within. (My father's alcoholism, I believe, started in earnest during his MLC in his 40s and he has never really accepted that it affects anyone else and that there is an element of choice in NOT seeking help for a problem we all know is there. He has never taken responsibility for a lot of areas of his life, everything that went wrong in his life was someone elses fault, everything that went well was all his own doing, that sort of thing). Some people are just not capable of nuance. Especially when looking at themselves. Often it is people who are most worried about what the rest of the world thinks of them, that are least able to look within, because they can never divorce the outside world's reflection of them, from their own inner dialogue about themselves. Do these people come through MLC? I guess many don't. I will not hang on forever for H, and even if he returns I may not have him back but I intend to be in a place where I can explain to H with grace rather than anger that I will always have some love for what we once had, I have made peace with what happened between us, but in the meantime I have grown as a person and I know I am fine with him remaining a (mainly) fond memory.

I think part of it is the society that we live in. It truly does not encourage deep self-reflection, sacrifice for community, nurturing and the greater good, long lasting relationships, gentleness, compassion. You can find those things - many people (most I like to think) possess the necessary traits, but they are not valued, encouraged and developed in our individualistic, materialistic, power driven world. My H has many narcissistic traits (in one of my less fine moments in the lead up to BD I accused him of being a psychopath, his behaviour was SOO narcissistic) and the world he inhabits and has chosen to compete in (the business world) prizes many of these traits - self-promotion, competition, hierarchy etc while paying lip service to "working together for the common good" and "looking after each other for the good of the company". It is hard to have a soul in the western world - we use negative phrases "do gooders", "fruitloops" "flake" etc. for anyone who does not buy into the status quo (unless they are magnificently successful: become a famous rather than a mediocre artist for instance). We are so much less negative about people who are mediocre at a mainstream job, because we think they "did the right thing" "worked hard for their family".
Of course we ALL lie somewhere on the narcissist continuum.