[Foxberry]

An amazingly sightful post...I am staying with a friend at the moment and it is very peaceful - we are sitting in the garden with the stars above and having just read your Post WGH I feel calm and at peace....

Thank you.
Foxy xxxx

[Love being on higher grounds]

Very VERY good reminder!

[turkisheye]

This has been a great thread for me to read. Thanks for posting and all the comments too.

My H dropped his first bomb in Nov 09 and moved out for less than 2 weeks. In Feb 11 he said he wanted out again but did not leave. Things from my perspective had been getting better and better fairly recently. H was under a great deal of stress at work and financially, feeling a failute etc when he dropped the ILYBINILWY bomb 3 weeks ago. He said he was leaving so I asked him to leave. I have wondered if it was the right thing to do for our relationship. I still don't know at the moment as we have had very little contact and I have not seen him. My girls and I are missing him like crazy but only missing the good bits of him. We know he was unhappy for whatever reason and our house in more calm. No walking on eggshells here anymore. No feelings of rejection that I got every now and again etc. Only time will tell if H will come back but if he does I hope it's a new improved version.

[Tsunami]

Thank you for this post regarding the husband bashing on this board.  This is a support site, not a spouse bashing site. 

I greatly appreciate you for having the courage to stand up for our sick spouses, they cannot help their actions, but that doesn't make life any easier on us.

Yes, we are all hurt and shocked, never dreamed anything like this could ever happen to us, but they are so confused and so are we until we come here to this wonderful site and grasp the dynamics of MLC.

RCR has been a God send to all of us, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate her for sharing this knowledge with all of us.  Sometimes it makes me sad we don't express to her how much we appreciate all the hard work she does to help other women and men who find themselves in this sad situation.

Thank you WGH, and RCR too!

[Wed2Him?Whatever.]

bumping this up for the newbies

[everhopeful]

Thanks for the bump. I had never seen this. The MLC process starts out as seeming like it is all about the LBS. How can you take it any other way? Then after your head clears up, you stop feeling less desperate and confused and you see it more clearly. My H definitely thought it was all about me at first and I believed it all. And there's truth in there too. No denying it. But now that he's gone, trying to "figure himself out", he gets all--"this is not about you--why do you have to make this all about our relationship all the time?" Because from his perspective, I'm being selfish by trying to pull him back in before he has sorted out the other stuff. And he's right in a way. That's what I'm trying to work on now.

[calamity]

This is worth reading. Rider posted it on NoRegrets thread.  An exerpt:

Romantic Infidelity

Surely the craziest and most destructive form of infidelity is the temporary insanity of falling in love. You do this, not when you meet somebody wonderful (wonderful people don't screw around with married people) but when you are going through a crisis in your own life, can't continue living your life, and aren't quite ready for suicide yet. An affair with someone grossly inappropriate—someone decades younger or older, someone dependent or dominating, someone with problems even bigger than your own—is so crazily stimulating that it's like a drug that can lift you out of your depression and enable you to feel things again. Of course, between moments of ecstasy, you are more depressed, increasingly alone and alienated in your life, and increasingly hooked on the affair partner. Ideal romance partners are damsels or "dumsels" in distress, people without a life but with a lot of problems, people with bad reality testing and little concern with understanding reality better.

Romantic affairs lead to a great many divorces, suicides, homicides, heart attacks, and strokes, but not to very many successful remarriages. No matter how many sacrifices you make to keep the love alive, no matter how many sacrifices your family and children make for this crazy relationship, it will gradually burn itself out when there is nothing more to sacrifice to it. Then you must face not only the wreckage of several lives, but the original depression from which the affair was an insane flight into escape.

People are most likely to get into these romantic affairs at the turning points of life: when their parents die or their children grow up; when they suffer health crises or are under pressure to give up an addiction; when they achieve an unexpected level of job success or job failure; or when their first child is born—any situation in which they must face a lot of reality and grow up. The better the marriage, the saner and more sensible the spouse, the more alienated the romantic is likely to feel. Romantic affairs happen in good marriages even more often than in bad ones.

Both genders seem equally capable of falling into the temporary insanity of romantic affairs, though women are more likely to reframe anything they do as having been done for love. Women in love are far more aware of what they are doing and what the dangers might be. Men in love can be extraordinarily incautious and willing to give up everything. Men in love lose their heads—at least for a while.

From:  http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200910/beyond-betrayal-life-after-infidelity

[In this for ME]

EXCELLENT articale!!!! Sure seems to be the truth of it all.

[me]

Brilliant article thanks for posting.  Pretty much sums it up for me....and many more I am sure!

I am going to really "crank" up my own life right now, he can have her and all she entails. In the meantime am growing into a person I really like and soon I hope to be past all this.

I saw my doctor this morning, he was wonderful he did say all the blame they lay at our feet is because they are actually mentally not well, I am really starting to think long and hard about what he said.  Of course my doc was more interested in my own mental health after all this, I have trouble "letting go" he told me to think of it as a cancer (in my exes mind), he told me I tried hard to keep our marriage together (I did - my ex even laughed at my efforts at the time).  My doc told me it is time to make my own life without hope for him to come to his senses, he said he has made up his mind! Whoa that hurt but it is a fact, I have faced some trying times this past few years my ex could not care less. Its time I gave up I think, he did this once he can certainly do it again.  But one thing I know for sure, I know my old ex and people DO NOT change that much (you are who you are), my ex goes quiet when he is "unsure" and strange when he was unsure of anything (in the 35 years we have been together - I know that for a fact).  But it will take her time to figure that one out - as it did me.   So instead of me thinking all is wonderful in paradise maybe it is not.  Or maybe it is, all I know is I have to make my very own paradise and not waste any more time wanting my old ex back - because that is not working for me.

I have come so far on this journey, and I am sure at some point I will see the reason this happened at this time in my life. Already people are validating me in a way I have never had before, come to think of it I cannot remember the last time he said he was proud of me for anything, so maybe this is for the best. Someone who truly loves you surely gives you support when you achieve something and supports your efforts.  Thats what I want for my future, and that is what I want to give to someone else at some point. 

[Rollercoasterider]

Actually there are two types that fit MLC in that article.
Romantic Infidelity
Emotionally Retarded Men In-Love
That manifests as another type of Romantic Infidelity.