[HeyJude]

HB shares that view, that the final choice is up to the LBS. I don't. Why? Because if the MLCers chooses to return but the LBS has closed the door the last choice was of the LBS. The MLCer runs the risk of no longer fit the LBS life.

But if it is a case of the LBS fitting in whatever need the MLCer may have, then, standing does not make sense. We have no idea what their need may be. We have no idea if they want, or don't want, to discart us. Why on earth stand just to, in the end, been put down? OW/OM may very well fell the MLCer new needs. Or a new mate.

this has me wondering as well Anne.. when i have met my H for our occassional chats, it is obvious he is damaged and it shows. other people might not think so, but i can tell. or maybe that's because it's me, i'm the one from his history, but is he free of that damage in front of the OW? not really, he can't keep sweeping it under the carpet day after day..or do they just rewire with new 'history'...yuck..

It is so confusing..to figure out how 'real' they are, we are told to carry on as if they're not coming back, in which case, what would 'not standing' look like. I have no desire to be in another relationship, i have a great desire for reconciliation.

I want to think reconciliation is about both of us, not him making a decision without any talk with me, and while he is sill with OW ..well no use at the moment...so..they make the final decision?

I sometimes feel he is silently assessing me, internally ticking boxes if i 'get it right' depending on my conversation, or my tone, if i'm happy or irritable or whatever...like he's got a list and i might pass but he keeps it hidden, there's some fun and laughter and then i remember...and it's back to walking on eggshells...you are damed if you do or damed if you don't.. and why destroy the very foundation where there was safety, and loyalty and trust and family ... ...and do they ever really get what damage they do to others...the generational legacy they leave behind if they don't re-turn back and face it.

I miss the man who i could talk with about anything and everything, now the conversations are 'tainted' ..it's like being part of some strange surreal movie..

Thanks for some more ponderings T !a chance for another ramble.. it is a mighty strange ride down the MLC river full of rapids and waterfalls...

EDIT FOR quotes misplaced - Oldpilot

[In this for ME]

  Now, will that person ALWAYS hold that level of trust no matter what happens in their life?  What if their mother abandons them at 15 or if they have a string of unfaithful relationships?  Will they continue to trust everyone like they did as babies?  NO!!

Wow can I relate to this! My mother pretty much abandoned me and when I detached from her I remember it so well. I was 13 and she had come to me in a panic and said after another drunken night with some stranger she'd spent at his house:

 "I woke up and didn't know where I was!!"

I remember I felt nothing.

 I did try to have a relationship with her until my 40's but I got tired of being her "parent" I had children of my own to raise.

[OldPilot]

Covert depression - He doesn't believe in the concept or at least in the context we use it.
He likens it to the term "functioning alcoholic" and stated his take on this is that if a person can hold down and job, support their family and live up to their other responsibilities but choose to drink heavily at night or on the weekends then to what end do we diagnose them as "alcoholic." 
On the same note, if a person is able to compartmentalize and go about day-to-day responsibilities then how can we diagnose them with depression, which by definition to be a disorder would have to cause some loss of order in their life. 
Interestingly enough, he used the term "dis-order" for both of these concepts and also for MLC later on and noted the hyphen to differentiate it from being a DSM-IV recognized diagnosis.

Either I am not sure that I understand what you are saying here or I totally disagree.

Is the person above diagnosed as an alcoholic or not?

If he is NOT then I guess I totally disagree with all of this paragraph.
In my mind he IS an alcoholic who has just not hit bottom yet.
Same with covert depression.
They have depression but you can not SEE it.
There are many books on the subject of Covert Depression(Masked Depression) written by people with far more knowledge than me.  RCR did not make any of this up, but has read the same books.

The rest of what he said  on the other topics seem to be right on and more or less  right in line with what I have learned.

On a side note - I did not realize that your wife Thundarr was stuck at age 2.
Trust vs Mistrust.
Interesting - that does explain a lot IMHO.
I did enjoy your intrepretation of why she would come out of her crisis. NICE.

[wondering]

I also have to disagree about his view of Covert depression.  Often the MLCer in covert depression is not functioning well or barely functioning. They often lose friendships, family, jobs. Most mask their depression with alcohol, drugs, etc. Must shun all responsibility of paying bills, parenting when they were always responsible before.   That's not functioning...that a crisis. That's not going about day to day  still taking care of their responsibilities.  Thundarr even with your wife is she functioning even close to what she was?  Is she paying bills for the marital home, for her children?   Isn't a lot of the order in her life gone, although some of it is returning?

Everything else I pretty much agree with.

[Thundarr]

His position on "Covert Depression" was expressed by the statement that we can convince anyone that they are depressed if we want to, just the same as we can convince someone they are an alcoholic even though according to the DSM-IV they do not meet the criteria.  He asserted that all too often people are over-diagnosed with depression by unscrupulous doctors and therapists who want to sell the person AD's, and given his experience I wouldn't argue with him on that.  His statement, to me, was directed more toward if the MLCer were a client and on what grounds could we tell them they were depressed.  Given they are functioning by going to work and supporting themselves (usually) and we cannot SEE how they are tearing their life apart then what would give us the right (as therapists) to tell a person they were depressed when one of the main criteria for this diagnosis is that it has to be causing significant distress in their lives.  We all have levels of depression, anxiety, paranoia and really everything else but most of us do not fall into the clinical range.  I took his statement as meaning the MLCer would not fall into the clinical range according to the criteria we have to use, just as a functioning alcoholic would not be diagnosed as such if the alcohol use were not causing the person distress.  People have a right to live their lives as they see fit and that is something we as a society often forget and therefore we tend to assign problems to people who do not act as we think they should.  Like the old psychology saying I've used before - "I'll see it when I believe it."

And, we have to also accept that before this all happened we would not have given a passing thought about someone being depressed who was smiling at us and telling us how great their life was as our MLCers are doing.  Like someone said a couple days ago - you really have to live with someone for awhile to really get to know them.  We see the changes in our MLCers that others do not in most cases (although in my case it seems like everyone around me thinks my W is on meth or something). 

[Ready2Transform]

I also have to disagree about his view of Covert depression.  Often the MLCer in covert depression is not functioning well or barely functioning. They often lose friendships, family, jobs. Most mask their depression with alcohol, drugs, etc. Must shun all responsibility of paying bills, parenting when they were always responsible before.   That's not functioning...that a crisis. That's not going about day to day  still taking care of their responsibilities.  Thundarr even with your wife is she functioning even close to what she was?  Is she paying bills for the marital home, for her children?   Isn't a lot of the order in her life gone, although some of it is returning?

Everything else I pretty much agree with.

This has been my experience, exactly.  He couldn't even care for a cat right now, and had one of the jobs he's lost tell him to "go back on his meds" when he was never on them when he worked there in the first place.  'Covert' may not look the way we traditionally see depression, but it is not a complete con job.

I'd be curious to hear what role neurotransmitters and hormones the doctor believes play.

[Thundarr]

Just a footnote here.  The DSM-IV is the "bible" of mental health treatment that insurance and Medicaid recognizes.  As licensed therapists, our diagnoses are legally binding and any diagnosis we assign may very well be called into question by insurance companies or even the clients themselves and we have to have documentation supporting the fact that the diagnosis we have given meets all the criteria in the DSM.  For instance, I may be seeing someone with symptoms of depression and may even have this gut feeling that they really are depressed, but if the only meet 7 of the 8 criteria for depression then I cannot legally give them a diagnosis of such.  There are other catch-alls (Mood Disorders, Dysthymic Disorders, Adjustment Disorders etc) that are less stringent but in many cases insurance does not cover the treatment for.  If I were ever to be subpoenaed to court to testify about whether or not a person was mentally competent or whatnot I would have to be able to illustrate how they met each criteria and could not be subjective or attribute my diagnosis to "just knowing."  Fudging a diagnosis would open the door for my license to possibly be suspended or even revoked as well as losing or having to pay back whatever amount the insurance company was billed.  Not going there.

[Thundarr]

I'd be curious to hear what role neurotransmitters and hormones the doctor believes play.

He did say that we go through a biological change around this time through peri, andro and menopause and that does change a person significantly but did not go into detail other than that.  I'll try to pick this up with him next week but I don't know what his level of expertise is on this.  It may be a good question for our psychiatrist when I'm able to pin her down.....

[OldPilot]

His position on "Covert Depression" was expressed by the statement that we can convince anyone that they are depressed if we want to, just the same as we can convince someone they are an alcoholic even though according to the DSM-IV they do not meet the criteria.  He asserted that all too often people are over-diagnosed with depression by unscrupulous doctors and therapists who want to sell the person AD's, and given his experience I wouldn't argue with him on that.  His statement, to me, was directed more toward if the MLCer were a client and on what grounds could we tell them they were depressed.  Given they are functioning by going to work and supporting themselves (usually) and we cannot SEE how they are tearing their life apart then what would give us the right (as therapists) to tell a person they were depressed when one of the main criteria for this diagnosis is that it has to be causing significant distress in their lives.  We all have levels of depression, anxiety, paranoia and really everything else but most of us do not fall into the clinical range.  I took his statement as meaning the MLCer would not fall into the clinical range according to the criteria we have to use, just as a functioning alcoholic would not be diagnosed as such if the alcohol use were not causing the person distress.  People have a right to live their lives as they see fit and that is something we as a society often forget and therefore we tend to assign problems to people who do not act as we think they should.  Like the old psychology saying I've used before - "I'll see it when I believe it."

And, we have to also accept that before this all happened we would not have given a passing thought about someone being depressed who was smiling at us and telling us how great their life was as our MLCers are doing.  Like someone said a couple days ago - you really have to live with someone for awhile to really get to know them.  We see the changes in our MLCers that others do not in most cases (although in my case it seems like everyone around me thinks my W is on meth or something).

Well thanks for that explanation.
Still not sure I agree but I am not in your shoes and I totally understand from the LEGAL and  DSM perspective.

That still does not make it right.

I see lots of undiagnosed people running around all the time.
We as a society will need to figure out that this costs us more money and grief in the long run before we change the laws that govern all of this.

Thundarr how many people as a percentage are depressed in the US?
and if not depressed mentally ill?

How many are undiagnosed?

You dont need to answer those questions but FOOOD for thought.

[Ready2Transform]

Thinking a little more on covert depression, too.  Since some of our spouses had been diagnosed/misdiagnosed as bipolar, would it be fair to compare covert depression as we know it more with an extreme or extended manic episode?