[stayed]

Sit back men and ladies.  Let your MLC do whatever he is going to do.  Why do you even bother to engage with him/her, you know they are full of sh*t... SO STOP ENGAGING THEM. 

When they threaten divorce, tell them fine... "get on with it, you know how I feel about it, you want a divorce go get it".  I don't think you people realize that in spite of your spouses horrible behaviour, they are aware of and afraid of losing you.  Sure it doesn't seem like it, but if they wanted DONE with you, don't you think they would have DIVORCED you a long, long time ago? 

Stop beating yourselves up for letting this go.  It's done, over, but now you do KNOW... so from here on in, STOP LETTING THEM PULL YOUR STRINGS.  Time to simply wave them off, "back to your cave little monster... shew, shew, I don't want to talk to you anymore"... and get on with YOUR LIFE. 

Have you not figured it out yet... you are allowing children anywhere from the age of 6 or 7 to late teen,  RUN YOUR LIVES!  Step away people, think about this.  Focus on yourselves and stop allowing a bunch of brats (spoiled brats) run your life.

hugs Stayed

[kikki]

Bravo Stayed - I needed to read that.  Love your messages 

[Dontgiveup]

From Stayed
"SO STOP ENGAGING THEM."

This is a key thing for the LBS to learn.  Totally agree.


"get on with it, you know how I feel about it, you want a divorce go get it".

I would exercise caution here.  Not all MLCers are threatening.  I do not agree with pushing the MLCer.  I would let the MLC know that you can't stop them, but you do not want a divorce and they must do it on their own.

[stayed]

Dontgiveup:

It's not pushing when you have made it completely clear to your spouse that you have no desire to divorce.  You have said it over and over.  Often these spouses use that knowledge as a big, fat stick to keep us in line... "if you step on my toes, I'll divorce you". 

They know we don't want a divorce, if we SECOND GUESS every word out of our mouths, then dontgiveup... I can't imagine what type of a conversation it would be.  LBS standing there with "duck tape" over their mouths and MLC looking at us like we are crazy. 

U seem to think the only thing any LBS can do is.. is sooth, comfort, reassure their poor lost MLCer... and VALIDATE their feelings, NO MATTER HOW RIDICULOUS they are.  LBS'S have feelings too... or have your forgotten.  We are probably just as damaged as the MLCer at this point... so tell me... who SOOTHS, COMFORTS, REASSURES and VALIDATES the LBS... we sure know it won't be the MLC'er. 

Paving the way that way, must be one HELL of a one way agreement.  If they do return, how do you live out the rest of your life... never speak your mind freely, afraid to have an argument, how long do you live like that?  Might work in a perfect world where there is no need EVER for dissatisfaction or dissention... but in our world, I don't see how one can possibly maintain such behaviour. 

We live in the real world.  We are real people.  With real feeling of our owns.  The changes we make in ourselves have to maintainable and quite frankly I fail to see how ANYBODY can live the rest of their life tippy toeing around their partner, only VALIDATING their feelings and ignoring your own completely.

hugs Stayed..

[OldPilot]

Dontgiveup:

It's not pushing when you have made it completely clear to your spouse that you have no desire to divorce.  You have said it over and over.  Often these spouses use that knowledge as a big, fat stick to keep us in line... "if you step on my toes, I'll divorce you". 

Oh YES I agree with this.
We need to have a backbone and stand up for ourselves too.

I understand that there is a line here, but at some point the line is going to get crossed.

[Dontgiveup]

"It's not pushing when you have made it completely clear to your spouse that you have no desire to divorce.  You have said it over and over."...........you were not clear about this in your original post.

The LBS needs to stop engaging their MLCer.  And the LBS needs to stop reacting.


"Often these spouses use that knowledge as a big, fat stick to keep us in line... "if you step on my toes, I'll divorce you"."

It's actually just as common for the MLCer to try to get the LBS to be the one who files.  Certainly not always true, but my response would simply be that while I can't stop you, I will not assist.


"U seem to think the only thing any LBS can do is.. is sooth, comfort, reassure their poor lost MLCer"

Not true.  Except for Clinging Boomerangs, the LBS rarely has the opportunity to do this anyway.  The MLCer is running from the LBS.


"Paving the way that way, must be one HELL of a one way agreement."

Paving the Way seems to be greatly misunderstood on here in my opinion.


"quite frankly I fail to see how ANYBODY can live the rest of their life tippy toeing around their partner, only VALIDATING their feelings and ignoring your own completely."

I don't think anybody would spend the rest of their life doing this.  MLC is a process.

[Dontgiveup]

From RCR blog called Influence: Making a Difference

What is all this learning to communicate with a spewing MLCer about if it has no influence? MLCers are in reactive mode, they re-act to what happens and actions are always equal and opposite. In this sense, opposite does not mean nice yields mean and vice versa, rather it is about opposing. If you act in a harmful way to your MLCer, he will return the action by evening or bettering the score through harmful action toward you. Though both actions were negative, his action is opposite to yours because it opposes yours; it is against you and your action was against him. Take yourself out of reactive mode and respond to his actions instead. He will continue reacting, but his reactions will be opposite your responses which hopefully are not vindictive. Niceness matters.

[hyperglad]

I was extremely nice when i said I was not going to carry on like we were 

[Trustandlove]

I guess I want to jump in here....

I agree with DGU that "paving the way" seems to be misunderstood here -- I don't take it as "tippy toeing around the MLCer".    I also don't see it as ignoring our own feelings.  It's accepting the process. 

And for those of us who don't have clinging boomerangs, I agree that we don't really get any chance to sooth, comfort, reassure our MLCer, as a matter of fact quite the opposite.  For us trying to soothe, etc. would be pursuing, not paving the way. 

Just as the "get on with it" attitude towards non-clinging MLCers doesn't have a beneficial effect either.  That, like the reassurances, only 'works' with clingers.  RCR's two latest blog posts go over this. 

So while I completely agree with not engaging the MLCer and with having backbone, not all the rest can apply to all mlcers. 

Stayed, I know you are adamant that that all MLCers are afraid of losing their spouses (or former spouses, in many cases), but I don't actually believe that is always completely true.  I guess it depends on what you mean by "losing".  Sure, I guess I could make life more difficult for my MLCer by just disappearing and he'd be left dealing with the children, etc., but if I were to do that I would just be hurting myself more than anyone.  An "I'll show you" attitude doesn't get me anywhere. 

Again, it might with a clinger, but not in other cases. 

[stayed]

You know dontgiveup, there is a very, very fine line between being patient and kind... and being a whipping boy/girl!  You have been dealing with an MLCer for a few years now.  You get weekly calls from her, and now of course never a cross word between the two of you.  Why don't you think back a ways, to the days BEFORE she left your home.  To the days before SHE DIVORCED YOU... I think your memory has perhaps become foggy with all this sweetness and goodness that you now live by. 

If you recall, no matter HOW SWEET, KIND, LOVING you were to your MLCer at that point... she spewed it back at you.  All of these people in here are dealing with MLCers that are in there faces pretty much every single day.  These MLCers call these LBSers up and no matter how kind or careful the LBSer speaks to them... SOMEHOW IT BECOMES A DISPUTE! 

Is this jogging your memory a bit dontgiveup... is any of this coming back to you?  The point is, they are at the stage where whatever they do or do not say it is misunderstood, or twisted or distorted into something NASTY AND CRUEL.  The only way they can get away from that, is to SHUT IT DOWN.  You shut it down by telling them you don't want a divorce but don't use it as a weapon to keep me in line either. 

Then you simply leave them to do whatever they are going to do.  If it PUSHES them into filing ... so be it.  If the LBSer finally says ENOUGH AND files... that's fine to.  There are LIMITS dontgiveup.  There really are and when you totally give up your dignity and your backbone, so you will not UPSET your poor, lost, MLCer... THEN THE WHOLE SITUATION IS OUT OF CONTROL  and quite frankly they should DIVORCE.