[Rollercoasterider]

It sounds to me as though you are talking about two related things, Triggers and Roots.
It’s just semantics, but since I am writing a book, I try to be specific regarding my terms. It seems most of you are discussing Roots. I think that is a bigger issue than Triggers.

So I use Trigger to refer to an inciting incident, phase, series of incidents…that was 12-36 Pre-Bomb. Roots are the root issues within childhoods; those developmental phases missed or skipped and the traumas from youth.

Think of it this way, your DNA codes for many things throughout your development. You may have it in your blueprint to turn gray at 59. But if you are 45, that has not yet happened. There is a genetic trigger that will turn on the gene at the destined time, or that may turn on a gene only if certain conditions are met.

Common MLC Triggers
   Death of a parent or close friend
 

• Illness—self, spouse, family…
• Traumatic Event: 9-11, Hurricane Katrina
• Job Changes
• Empty Nest or children growing up—no longer feeling needed
• Moving

And sometimes you may not know the trigger, some are fuzzy phases like not feeling needed as the kids grow up and leave home. I am still not certain as to Sweetheart’s trigger. 18 months before Bomb I received notice my employer was closing the company and everyone had 8 months. We knew it might be coming, but I was just finishing Grad school at the time—was I going to be able to finish?

I don’t think it was my becoming unemployed, that seems to be a norm in my industry as companies are bought and sold and as I have always had a long commute. But combine that with finishing Grad school…when I discussed it with him the day I was given notice he freaked. I did finish and paid it in full with my severance package. But that seems the closest thing to a trigger.   As for childhood...? Is any family functional? His parents are married--to each other and have a good marriage. He has two brothers and a sister, all close.   But his Mom was a controller, though she worded it so that everyone thought it was Dad. She followed old-fashioned gender stereotypes...ask your Father. The kids all attended parochial school and Sweetheart and the youngest went into the family business--his Uncle's carpet store. Sweetheart did not do well there. He was teased, called stupid and given the nickname Anchor by the workers--some were his cousins.   Anchor can be a positive term meaning stability, but they meant he weighed them down. Some still call him that. A couple years ago he went into the store to get something and came out nearing tears because someone had called him Anch. They used it as  regular name. Just the way people in Junior High used to call me Sour Grapes--I always wore purple. The kids who did not know me, but wanted to be nice and say hi didn't know be by any other name. But at the carept store, they all know his name.   He eventually left and started his own carpet installation business and put himself through college--where we met. Even after college his main income was through carept laying for several more years and so he was always running into his old reputation.   His confidence has always needed boosting. Some MLCers are ego-inflaters, Sweetehart has always been an ego-deflater. This has been so pronounced that he does not look well on high confidence. I have always been confident in my Self and he believes confidence can be inflationary. This caused us problems early on. I would show him a manuscript and he would criticize a single comma which he thought was wrong--it wasn't--and berate me for submitting the manuscript. But when I showed him a Caldecott book that inspired a manuscript, he said he liked my story better. I eventually asked why he criticized like that and he answered honestly; he thought it was his job to cut me down to size. He meant that; he thought it was what he was supposed to do and since he meant it, I was not insulted!   He worked very little in his major--Physical Fitness. The competition is with personal trainers who take a quick class and work for low wages. So finding his niche has always been difficult. That may be a primer for MLC--feeling like making it to where you are supposed to be as a successful adult is always ahead of you. Who are you then? It may not be a distinct Diffuse state of identity as in adolescence, but it is like a permanent search for Self without finding enough, or being satisfied with what you are finding.   There were a few traumatic incidents in his childhood and they were nothing that anyone did wrong. When Sweetheart was  somewhere between 6 and 8 his father was in an explosion at work--went flying. He stopped laying carpet and I think became the foreman--he was always in charge. When Sweetheart was a teenager his younger sister almost died of Lupus. That disease often starts in adulthood, but for her it's onset was puberty. She will always be frail. Around that same time a younger cousin drowned at a family outing.   During those times there was likley less focus on Sweetheart and he was afraid--naturally. But his roots do not seem as distinctly primed for MLC as so many others. For some, it is more predictable--in hindsight at least.

[MarkedandHealed]

I'll restate mine simply... trigger was convoluted and many things, but the one thing that stands out was the moment I yelled at him - when I had had enough and he thought I was going to D him. I saw a light go off in his face and the mask come on. I literally saw it and thought "uh oh, now what have I done."

However, by then, OW was in the picture on some level, and he had been withdrawing for some time, so you can see that there was something brewing under the surface.

But the trigger to the whole crisis was the one time I yelled at him.

[Still]

MarkedandHealed,

I think many things can be a trigger. For my H, it seemed to be a physical illness, but the bomb was unleashed, according to him, by my constant "badgering" to know what was wrong.

He told me that our relationship might be just fine today if I had just left him alone to work through his feelings. He said when I pushed him to talk, all of what he was feeling came spewing out and then it wasn't going back in. To me, this was just his way of starting the blaming and projection.

[Rollercoasterider]

MarkedandHealed,
 

I'll restate mine simply... trigger was convoluted and many things, but the one thing that stands out was the moment I yelled at him - when I had had enough and he thought I was going to D him. I saw a light go off in his face and the mask come on. I literally saw it and thought "uh oh, now what have I done."

However, by then, OW was in the picture on some level, and he had been withdrawing for some time, so you can see that there was something brewing under the surface.

Do you really think that was the MLC Trigger, or could it have been what triggered him to enter Replay and drop the Bomb?

If there was already an Ow int he picture, he was iin MLC. The Trigger is actually Pre-MLC and MLC may or may not start right after.

It sounds to me as though it was not so much a mask going up, but also a mask falling off and being replaced by the new mask--one persona for another.

[MarkedandHealed]

Hmmm, something to think about. I had a feeling he was looking for an OW prior to this OW. He made some complimentary comments to an old friend, recently D, on FB and hid his comments from me... it sent up red flags at the time. Then he met this OW at the HS reunion and kept their communications private from me. He was looking for an A, in my retrospective mind. Oddly enough, by examining his behavior, I think he was looking for an OW but it was not conscious, if that makes sense. He hid the seeking behaviors from me and somehow explained them away to himself so he didn't feel like a louse just stepping outside the M for an A. It was like he was driven to find an OW and this one just stepped in and filled the shoes.

There was no trigger, then, that I know of. Other than him turning 40 and being so very tied in his mind to youth and not wanting to admit that he was getting older, always saying "it's how old you feel" and stuff like that.

The lack of a trigger was one of the things that made me suspect this was not MLC for so long.

He never dropped the bomb, I snooped and found the bomb (OW) and then he came out and said he never loved me, I controlled him, everything was my fault, etc.

No one died, no one got ill, no accidents, no job loss. Nothing changed other than our finances pooping the bed, if you will. And his oldest going to college and then dropping out and staying home.

Mostly it was the loss of our love... due to neglect, that I think did it. H is a HUGE romantic and believes the Hollywood version of love, and will not see anything from the experts at all. He thinks he knows what he's talking about and they do not... that love just happens, it stays forever and if it doesn't, it wasn't meant to be. You can't work to get love back once it's gone... now, mind you, this is all MLC talk. He was open before to the 5LLs etc but now says it's all bunk and junk. He told me that he should not have to tell me how to make him happy, it should just happen and if it doesn't, it wasn't meant to be between us.

Anyway, we were one of those really in-love couples for a very long time and having the kids come live with us back in 2005, when just recovering from his EA at the time, threw us into one very big, long neglectful state of our M. I think the loss of our love was such a shock to him, he thought it would continue forever just without any effort. He never saw the effort I put into it, I guess, and just thought it just "happened" the way it does in Hollyweird.

[hopeful59]

I think one of the triggers for my H was his surgery.  He had by-pass surgery in 2001 and never really recovered emotionally.  He never dealt with the depression.  Still to this day he says that he feels "broken".  After recovery he decided to change jobs and went to school to become a black-jack dealer.  He went to work at local casino and that is where he met OW.  Until a few years ago I didn't know how much he had become involved with her.  She was married at the time but that didn't seem to matter to her.  Since then her H passed away and now she is the merry widow.  We had several traumatic events, one piled on top of another.  We lost our home, no, our home was ripped out from underneath us, we had to file bankruptcy, ongoing problems with oldest D.  H was unhappy at his job, he had left casino to work in an office type setting and had an extreme control freak for a boss.  We had to move, unfortunately we ended up moving very close to OW and H struck of friendship with her from years prior (he had left casino 2-3 years before).  I didn't see the problem with him going to her house to play darts and just relax.  I trusted my H completely.  Plus he was not a lot of fun to be around...always cranky and angry.  I should have realized that while I could trust my H, I never should have trusted the OW.  She is a very predatory woman, I have compared her to a pedophile, in that she groomed my H to her way of thinking. I personally think that we were just a powder keg waiting to go off.  H as said many times that OW didn't cause our problems and I agree with him.  She didn't cause the problems, she just amplified them. H quite office job and went back to work at casino. H has new friends, casino co-workers (OW works there too).  I was not a part of his casino life.  H began spending more and more time and money at casino, playing slot machines ( I am not a gambling enthusiast, OW is).  In retrospect, I now see that the main attraction for him was that OW is the exact polar opposite of me.  I became the enemy and she was putting him up on a pedestal, worshiping him.

[Writingmom]

Funny, I often get the idea that OW is a predator type as well.  She wasted no time in beginning PA and subsequently getting pregnant.  H is her boss, the CEO of the company.  That was no doubt an allure to her as she is (as I've been told) very materialistic and shallow.  She likes to appear wealthy and her dentist husband never made enough.

Not that what H has done is right at all, but he used to reassure me that an affair would be out of the question, especially in the work place.  OW has done the same thing in the past; zeroed in on someone, thrown her entire self in to the situation only to regret it later on.  Interesting.  Wonder if MLC affairs have this common thread--manipulative affair partners. 

And I agree that there seem to be triggers and roots.  I think my H has both.  Dysfunctional childhood and learning that MIL was terminal a few years ago.  But when my son was 12 1/2 and beginning to experience puberty, it seemed like something snapped.  H was antagonistic, very demeaning and appalled at normal adolescent behavior.  He kept saying that he knew NO ONE that acted that way (withdrawn, quiet, grumpy) and that he NEVER acted that was at that age.  It was very bizarre.  It's like he was writing his own child off completely!  Odd. 

[hopeful59]

Luckily for H, OW cannot get pregnant (hysterectomy).  As of now, H claims that there is been no PA, of course he also denied EA.  I am still undecided on that.  Don't quite know how he could have sex with her, she hideous.  My D's say that she resembles Mimi from the old Drew Carey show and they are correct. 
My H also had very dysfunctional childhood, alcoholic mother, father was a wonderful person but overshadowed by wife.  Found it interesting that H tried to make it sound as though his childhood was wonderful when we took S's to IC and tried to blame me for all our problems.  I have admitted that I had/have a lot of problems and am working on my issues.  I am a work in progress.  H seems to think that our family should be like the Brady Bunch.  Told him during counseling that he may have wanted the perfect family but, he did nothing to help it get that way.  H didn't like that comment very much.

[MarkedandHealed]

I'm currently reading "In Midlife" by Murray Stein and he says "As the midlife transition begins, whether it begins gradually or abruptly, persons generally feel gripped by a sense of loss and all of its emotional attendants: moody and nostalgic periods of grieving for some vaguely felt absence, a keen and growing sense of life's limits, attacks of panic about one's own death, and exercises in rationalization and denial. Sometimes the reason for this sense of loss is obvious: the death of children or parents, a divorce, an obliterated career. But quite often the immediate cause of this opening phase of the transition, with the attendant emotional phenomena, is not at all plain. And even when the cause does seem blatant, a person will often go on searching anxiously and vainly, looking for another deeper cause of this distress, because acknowledging the obvious one does not pluck the thorn of pain. This thorn may be extremely hard to find because of its deep unconsciousness, and a person cannot seem to get to it and resolve the anxiety it is creating."

This seems to me to suggest that what I was thinking in the beginning - that H couldn't be in MLC b/c there was no clear trigger - doesn't really mean anything.

Thoughts?

[Writingmom]

Marked,

I guess I'm wondering what baggage your H brought with him from his previous M and what stress the kids coming to live with you may have brought.  Maybe he had guilt or remorse buried from one of those two instances?  I guess I would be surprised if MLC just occurred with no root or trigger at all.  If your yelling at him caused him to "snap", I would wonder what you said that triggered the crisis.  Not that you are responsible, just wonder what it was that he heard that caused him to retreat into himself.  It would seem that maybe something you said hit a nerve, in other words; like he'd had thoughts stirring around and your yelling brought it all to the forefront of his mind. 

The quote from the book sounds interesting.  I have wondered lately why there is such a lack of information and knowledge out there!  Look how destructive this is for us all, and still society at large thinks of MLC as a red convertible and a younger girlfriend, end of story.  Our lives are turned upside down!  This is a mental disorder!  Still I find myself explaining it away as if it's some rare, third-world disease that only I have read about.  I feel like I have to convince people that what I'm saying is true!  Let us know if you find the book helpful.   

Wish I were more helpful.  I am learning as I go, but your situation does sound like there may be other strings attached from the past.  Maybe if he thought his first marriage was a failure, EA was a failure (I think that's what I read) and kids coming to live with him triggered some thought of failure, either potential or real, and you seemed to have had enough...interesting. 

Either way, I guess we're still in the same place.  And I'm not sure that I'll ever get used to this.  I am finding myself meeting more people, but doing things that H would have loved.  Still such a loss.  Feels like we'll never see remorse or awareness.