[WarriorPriestess]

Anne, thanks for clarifying.  Online posts can often be misconstrued for sure.  I try to speak up if I am not sure about how something was meant. 

I agree Lisa - in MLC, there is only one person working on the marriage.  The other is running far.  This is the reality that most of us are dealing with.

Kikki, thank you for saying this!  Recently I have caught myself getting frustrated again because regular relationship rules aren't applying.  This is so utterly crazymaking...

[offmyrocker]

Yep it is... Oh i was critical too... And with good reason. But i guess back then i didn't have the tools that i do now. I didn't validate his feelings... He had been going through this a few years before BD and kept trying to fix it with other things before he started the affair shortly before bombdrop... At that time he had a great fear of telling anyone that he was spiraling downwards... He was trying to fix it while doing his best to hide it. I think that i was the only one that knew something was off. So eventually i became the reason why he felt this way... I was the only thing left... It must have been me. The OW manipulation worked wonders and he was Soooo sure that this would fix him. But 3 days after he left us, the ow's fiancee hung himself. So talk about some heavy emotional blackmail for being someone's "twin soul flame"...  real scary.

OMR

[kikki]

Kikki, thank you for saying this!  Recently I have caught myself getting frustrated again because regular relationship rules aren't applying. 

WP - I believe this absolutely to be the root of the whole thing.  Regular relationships rules don't apply.

I guess that's what you are saying affaircare.  We need to keep applying regular relationship rules, even if the MLCer isn't?

OMR - oh my goodness!  That is so awful about the OW's fiancee - I'm really sorry that that is part of the mix.

[Anjae]

WP, you’re welcome. Yes, online posts can be misconstrued. Even if we use smiles we do not see or hear each other, so we miss on voice tone, facial expression and body posture. A thing that is said in a calm tone of voice can sound rude, for example.

Star, we are all trying to make sense of this all and the smartest decisions. It is not easy.

crazy, yes, would say that some situations may accelerate, or accentuate the crisis. But don’t think it is just down to one thing. If our part is not enough to help it…well, think it not enough to help it, no.

Lisa, almost all, if not all, marriages have issues. Not necessarily permanent issues, but occasional ones. All couples have more stressful periods, ups and downs. It is normal in any long term relationship. The existence of issues does not make a marriage a bad marriage. And most of the issues, I think, are worked out along the marriage. Exactly, it takes to have a marriage, two to work on the marriage but, in MLC we only have one person doing, or willing to doing, the work.

omr, so sorry that your husband is still feeling suicidal. And what a terrible story, the OW’s fiancee. One of my cousins has been severely depressed until some two months ago and had been suicidal for over one and a half year. His perception of those around him, his life, his job, is life achievements were all confused and seen as a problem. Since he come out of the deepest end of the depression he started to see things in a different fashion, more clear and, fortunately, realised that he has worth for those around him (he thought he did not. Not because anyone has told him he had not but because he was seeing himself as a failure).

kikki,  funny how, sometimes, in time, they end up realize why we were critical, or thought some things were not so good for them.

[LeaveThePastBehind]

Annej said:

Star, we are all trying to make sense of this all and the smartest decisions. It is not easy.

Yeah, I realized afterwards, I said "my situation is complex" but all of our situations are complex, lol. I just feel like mine is a little more unusually complex or maybe even.. oh, I don't know... I'm just confused.

[Faith]

I haven't read the entire thread yet, but I guess my frustration all along has been that I feel like I did own up to my failures.  I asked God to point them out to me and he did....and it wasn't fun.  I cried, apologized, and tried to fix my mistakes.  None of it was reciprocated by my H.  The only thing he would admit to doing wrong was "not telling me my faults earlier".  I was so willing to do ANYTHING to fix our marriage and keep our family together, but all I heard for two years while he lived in the basement was that it was "too little too late".

So, I completely agree that it takes both spouses to mess up a marriage.  I just wish my H would have been willing to forgive and move forward because I was.  Now we're in the middle of a divorce uglier than I could have ever dreamed possible.  Just so sad and senseless.

[Gutted]

I told hubby I would move mountains, work hard on making us great, wanted to go to counseling. 
He dismissed his first divorce filing saying "it's not going to work but I' WILLING to try".   Then wanted out about 3-4 months later when I found out about an affair.   

We never worked on it.  He just lived here while being with an incredibly unattractive woman 10 years his senior.   

I tried, was willing to change anything (and did he admits), but we never went to one counseling session nor would he go to ONE for 'me' for closure.  He just mentally than physically ran.   He's now with this woman that looks 70 and we are on the eve of the divorce process.

I tried, I tried.   OMG Faith!  Ditto!

[Stillpraying]

I'm only jumping on here briefly as I need to get dinner ready and a big storm is about to hit us.................

I am aware that I have been 'bagging' my H.  I don't know where else to vent it.  Venting here helps me to not tell every living soul around me here.  I just confide in my sister.

I know in the big picture they aren't the enemy but he sure is treating me that way in word and deed.  And that is what I am finding so difficult to come to terms with and cope with. 

I completely accept that I was also responsible for our marriage issues and I continue to read and learn etc.  H has pointed out many of my faults as a wife and also brought my father into it.  His fault?  Marrying me.  So he apologised for it.

When H wrote me a letter back in Sept 2009, I had also written him one.  You see, he wasn't the only one unfulfilled and unhappy in the marriage as it was.  We both felt that.  He was so surprised that I had written him a letter when he gave me his.  He expected that I would reply to his as he was supposedly the only unhappy one.  He never thought it may have been 2 sided.

Well anyway, we went to counseling but you know what?!!!!!!!!  Part way through atleast, if not earlier, he was exchanging photos of himself with a young 20 something!  in a seductive pose.  So much for trying to work on US!!!!  He is 45.  I am 45 but today a number of people said they thought I was 38. I am attractive looking by what others say so I don't believe it was because I had let myself go (even though I've put weight on since the kids).

So I agree with what Affaircare is saying.  It is both parties who are responsible for the marriage relationship but I think in many of our case, we were truing and working on changing us and the relationship but the MLC'ers just focused their attention elsewhere and bailed out.  Took the EASY option.  Sorry, but really, some of them just plain well don't want to work hard at anything.  My H bails out of every relationship as soon as there is a disagreement and he blows his stack off.

It doesn't matter that he's gone.  I'm still working on me.  I've stuck with the same counselor and keep reading and learning.  I do feel sorry that somethjing was lacking or wrong in his childhood and he can't handle all this but he has made his choices,  Not once, but twice.  I am the second wife.

SP

[honour]

The OW manipulation worked wonders and he was Soooo sure that this would fix him. But 3 days after he left us, the ow's fiancee hung himself. So talk about some heavy emotional blackmail for being someone's "twin soul flame"...  real scary.

Very scary. Truly dreadful.

honour

[Trustandlove]

I've had a pretty quick read through this thread, and wanted to jump in....

It seems to me that there are two different things being discussed.  One is about issues in a marriage, the other about MLC.  I think most of us generally recognise our own role in our marriages, our own role in whatever difficulties each of our marriages had.  And most of us take on board that we aren't/weren't perfect, and that we each need to address those legitimate complaints that our spouses may have had.

And we as a rule are WILLING to address those issues.  Our MLCers aren't.

That is different from saying that our actions or lack thereof caused our spouses to have an MLC and to leave/find someone else/whatever else they did or are doing. 

The difference to me here is that our MLCers aren't allowing us the opportunity to address those legitimate issues, and whatever unhappiness they may have been feeling about the marriage before BD generally they didn't say.  I can here of course only speak for myself -- in the months preceeding BD I did know that my H was unhappy, but never that it was to do with us -- even he was looking for all kinds of other reasons, and I ran around like a headless chicken trying to help.  It was only at BD that he said that he had "discovered" that the entire problem was me.  And that it was now "too late".    A very familiar story here. 

So it isn't the MLCer who is the enemy, although their actions while in crisis are extremely hurtful.  It is MLC itself that is the problem, and therin lies the reason we walk this tightrope.  And it often means protecting ourselves from the person our MLCer is right now.   

Like someone said -- normal relationship rules don't apply here.