[crazyforhim]

Just when I was feeling broken again...reading all the insight into the OW is fascinating and so true.
Only when I look back a few years- i can see it all unfold and now that the honeymoon phase is over in their relationship then I have more hope and more security knowing it is all "fake". The real thing is right here and one day he will realize that (hope that day is soon).
H and OW are moving and it is going to be right around the corner. Our kids will go to the same school, running into each other at the grocery store....it all made me feel very sick to my stomach but I know it is OW putting on the pressure for a bigger house, bedroom for my kids to visit and stay over (ewww)
So I was having a pity party and just when I thought I was doing so well at detaching and moving on with my life....then you fall a bit backwards.
I need to move forward again...just knowing that their relationship is not what it seems on the outside makes me feel better. I just wish I was a fly on the wall at their house to be totally reassured that the relationship IS falling apart. How crazy is that? lol
I know I will be strong and won't freak out like I am sure OW wants me to!!!
Thanks for all the reassurance- they will break up one day right?
CFH

[Mamma Bear]

   CFH,  Totally. If we'd only step back and just pretend for 1 minute that this is happening to a close friend of ours instead of us.     We could see clearly that this is NOT NORMAL behavior. The clingy boomerang also. I mean WTF?  It seems so obvious that they are confused and almost in a panic.
    Mine anyway. I just need to re-read Pursuit distance. After a month of nothing he's been really cycling this way since last Sat.
    I'm going to be the squirrel and be aloof.    Not to scare anyone off...I wouldn't want him to see me having HOPE...that scares them     Now your OWs dangling around,  moving here,  moving there,   I mean come on' our Hs are going to wake up and be like     How'd I get here?    Keep the Faith Crazy for Him       I have a feeling Trick or Treating will be interesting in your neighborhood this year!

[Dandy Lion]

I know I will be strong and won't freak out like I am sure OW wants me to!!!
Thanks for all the reassurance- they will break up one day right?

I will be strong..................if there was a lLIKE button on the forum then I would certainly LIKE this.

[Anjae]

   CFH,  Totally. If we'd only step back and just pretend for 1 minute that this is happening to a close friend of ours instead of us.     We could see clearly that this is NOT NORMAL behavior. The clingy boomerang also. I mean WTF?  It seems so obvious that they are confused and almost in a panic.
 

Sometimes I do that, look  at it like it is someone else life. The MCLer way of doing things is fascinating. More than hamster in the wheel is hamster running around like mad trying to escape the cage and bangging its ahead against it, trapping on their own feet.

It is panick, Mamma, pretty sure it is panick on top of confusion.

[crazyforhim]

Thanks MB, DL...
My H totally seems like he's in a panic...not sure how this is their happy life, but all this happened after they broke up for 1 day and then got back together. H came to me and brought printed out divorce papers, talked about selling the house, all of a sudden started looking for a bigger house with OW and don't tell me this wasn't ALL OW's idea, come on!!! WTF is right.
This is crazy- so a couple of weeks later, no more divorce talk, they find a place to move to right around the corner so her daughter can go to school with my kids...OMG (not sure how to handle that one) and now he wants to keep our matrimonial home! How do I keep my sanity with all of their insanity??
Thank God they don't move here until after Halloween MB...LOL!
Someone tell me how to deal with them living right around the corner- it has really got me in a tizzy especially when I was doing so well at detaching. OW really has the whip out now!!! Blows my mind how they see that relationship as so much better than what they had with us. If only they could see what we see.....

[Mermaid]

I've been meaning for some time to write about the alienator. I know the feeling of blaming her, hating her for causing so much hurt, and not wanting to blame our H so much (because we love him). Of course our spouse is to blame for the lies they tell and the way they abandon us. But what about the OW? Why do they do it? Who are these OPs anyway?

They could believe the lies that your spouse tells them about you -- that you don't understand them, that they were never truly in love with you, or that they only married you for the kids.

I've always found this reason hard to stick. Unless the alienator does not think, how come someone is going to believe a person spends decades with another person and was not happy with them? Also, when the alienator knows the couple some of the lies may be also hard to believe. Except, of course, if you are deluded and so “in love” that you can not see past what they are telling you.

The going for the money, family or social connections makes more sense to me. Or they simply fall, or thought they had fall, in love and our spouses played along.

There are all types of OW. There are those with their own PDs, who thinks that a man will make her feel whole, etc. There are money grabbers. There are some who are so self-centred that they don't appear to think about the damage they are causing.

H's OW's opinion was that a marriage doesn't end because of a third person, but because of the problems it has in itself. That neatly ends any sense of responsibility she has towards it.

But I do believe that she thought that his marriage had actually ended. I saw the emails in which H told her so, and others where he said that his feelings for me had just gone out. He sent her photos of himself on holiday with his children, not mentioning that I was there too. He stopped putting photos of me on FB some time ago. She probably never knew that we were still ML all through the time when they were meeting up. Decades of unhappiness with his wife? Her own parents had a disfunctional and loveless marriage for years.

So, yes, I think that OWs certainly believe the stories.

I have friends who have been the OW, but all very different. One is a minx, provocative and seductive, and was certainly needy. She caused his divorce, and married him, then had his child. But after a decade as alcoholics together, they split.

Another friend of mine became OW after her own marriage failed (her H was unfaithful). She lived with her married man for 15 years, but he still went on holiday with his family and spent weekends with them so that his MIL wouldn't find out. Strangely enough, it was during his MLC that he went back to his wife, only to find that he was really unhappy. But my friend will not have him back.

Yet another friend became the OW, believing what her lover told her, that he was very unhappy with his wife, despite having three children together. When my friend moved in with him, and he divorced his wife, his wife became incredibly bitter, making life as difficult as she could for my friend, her H, and the children. My friend only married him after living together, very happily, for more than 25 years, then he died a year later. Even at the funeral, the wife was bitter, and caused a scene that can't have helped anyone. I know my friend is a very kind and balanced person, and I know she reached out to the ex W, who scorned her at every turn.

I don't know if this helps anyone. I know that I need to get rid of any bitterness left in my heart about OW, because it is such a terrible feeling to live with. 

Some OWs have deep issues, some are manipulative and needy, or just selfish. But not all of them are. The worst thing we can do is to end up like the ex W of my friend; so full of hate that she poisoned her own life and those of her children.

[Mamma Bear]

    AnneJ,  I haven't really SEEN too much of my MLCer since FEB. Sure the drop offs and pick ups but it is easier for them to keep their mask in place if they rush in and rush out. These last 5 days I have been around him for some small periods of time.
      It is very interesting to really look at their mannerisms. He's been texting and calling me a lot as well. Fixing my car door. Hanging with the kids back at Bowser's after they do HW here.  Buying me ice cream.  Of course I ask a question "Where's that little gate to keep kids inside"  " Oh" he says "I took it bc on Fridays WE watch a kid. Well some friends come over and they have a kid."  So I get teary eyed and hide it well. He is very
    considerate of my feelings. If in the last few days I feel like buzzing away from him bc he says something about the future in his 'new life'  I can feel him chasing me down to apologize.
   His new thing is to mouth the words "STOP IT!"  in a weird smiling way. Like I shouldn't worry.

[Anjae]

Mamma, maybe your husband is sensing he must reconect with you. Maybe he is starting to see life with OW is not that great. Still, of course, the crisis is not over yet so, he may just change again.

Mermaid, if alienator never knwe the couple before I can accept that they believe the stories our spouses tell them. If they knew the couple before, after a while, unless you never stop to think, you're going to start wondering.

Keep no hard feelings towards OW1 or OW2. OW1 knew husband was married, should had stayed away from him. But he should had not let her get near him. OW2 did not knew, when she met husband, that he was married. She thought that he was a single guy that had broke with his GF (OW1) a few months before. She knows he is married for more than 3 years. Again, he is the one who is responsible for letting her thought he was a single guy. Keep no bhar feeling tiowards husband. He does not know what he is doing. But he is still responsable for his actions.

"Yet another friend became the OW, believing what her lover told her, that he was very unhappy with his wife, despite having three children together. When my friend moved in with him, and he divorced his wife, his wife became incredibly bitter, making life as difficult as she could for my friend, her H, and the children. My friend only married him after living together, very happily, for more than 25 years, then he died a year later. Even at the funeral, the wife was bitter, and caused a scene that can't have helped anyone. I know my friend is a very kind and balanced person, and I know she reached out to the ex W, who scorned her at every turn."

Some people really are unhappy in theirs marriages and some marriages do get stale and in a rut. But, its that thing, one thing is to walk out of a marriage because you are unhappy, another to do so when there is an alienator. Well, not all spouses have this forum to help them. It is natural that the wife become bitter and did not wanted OW to reach out to her.

Must say that a marriage does not end because of infidelity. It depends if the betrayed spouse can, or cannot, forgive and how much work the cheater is willing to do. And, harder this sounds, some marriages only survive because there is a 3rd person.

People whose spouses cheated on them that end up being the other person confuse me. Do they think the spouse of their lover is going to feel different from what they felt when they were cheated on?...

In all the cases you mentioned the relashionship with OW lasted for ages. So...but maybe they were not MLC cases...

[Mermaid]

No, none of them were MLC cases. They were just OW stories. OWs of MLCers don't often realise that the man is in MLC, and swallow the stories. As you say, if they have know the couple for years, they should have some judgement.

Must say that a marriage does not end because of infidelity. It depends if the betrayed spouse can, or cannot, forgive and how much work the cheater is willing to do. And, harder this sounds, some marriages only survive because there is a 3rd person.

So true. The end of a marriage is far more complex. Infidelity can be the outward sign of something going wrong, and can trigger other changes, sometimes positive, that may not have happened otherwise. It's still a hard thing to get over, though.

[Anjae]

Non MLC other person stories can be very different than MLC ones. My uncle had a OW for 9 years (not MLC) he end up leaving and they are still together. Its been more than 25 years since he left. Now we all know her, she is very nice. My aunt has a boyfriend and in my cousing birthdays they all get together and everybody gets along fine.

Of course things were not like this for years on end. Everybody has gotten old, the children had children, aunt got a boyfriend, life moved on. But my uncle never did any of the crazy things MLCers do.

Infidelity is hard to get over but MLC and all the damage that goes with it is far worse. Of course there are always complex reasons for the end of a marriage or to infidelity, often, like in MLC, issues of the cheating spouse. And yes, some positive things can come after infidelity. Not saying one needs infidelity to make good things happen, one does not. But a bad thing can be turned into something positive.