[hopingfourbetter]

   HeartsBlessing     ((((If he's not at home when I get home; I visit on the board..BUT, if he's home; you will not see me here...he gets my time; and he's more important than this board; and will always come before it.))))

  I wish for what you say here, also leaving messages on a board or most forums like this I would not consider bad as long as it is open for all to read.

[readytofixmyselffirst]

Dear Rebel,

My wife was outgoing, but the kids came first. I think that as she realized they were growing older, her feelings of self worth dropped. There are a lot of issues at play with her. I have learned a lot about myself and that I have really been to understanding and supportive of her at times. I have to learn how to concentrate on me.

It took me a while, just like the others at this site, that the MLCer has Satan at work. Satan does not get the LBSer to commit adultery or other sins. No, Satan gets the LBSer to doubt, to lose faith in everything, to question their own beliefs and faith. For Satan's goal of getting the MCLer to sin is easy, but Satan really feels good when he gets the LBSer to lose faith and quit- not just on their spouse, but to give up on the joy of life.

That is why detaching is an act of faith. It really burns old Satan and he tries to respond with spew and threats. But that is all Satan can muster. God's grace will heal you and give you strength even in the greatest of crisis. Sorry I went of on a tangent, but I had a moment and when I read HB's writings, her words inspire me and I feel the need to spread the word.

[Rebel Yell]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-4b8x38QAw&feature=related

[LifeGoesOn]

Sorry for the t/j

Satan does not get the LBSer to commit adultery or other sins. No, Satan gets the LBSer to doubt, to lose faith in everything, to question their own beliefs and faith. For Satan's goal of getting the MCLer to sin is easy, but Satan really feels good when he gets the LBSer to lose faith and quit- not just on their spouse, but to give up on the joy of life.

Thank you for this. I have had a war going on in my head for days. My thoughts were leading me down a path, away from detachment. I am  convinced my H is preparing strategically to D me and take everything. All my thoughts were knocking me off my standing block, hurrying me to call my attorney. Everything I was reading and hearing was pushing me. Not in a "Oh I'm not sure if this is right for me or not", but in DO IT NOW, type of way. Then today, after praying the hedge of thorns for the umpteenth time, (were the thorns turning me away from H as well?) I heard "have faith." And then, every negative thought about my M and my H was overlaid with "faith, have faith". And then I read your comment.....Thank you....

[Rebel Yell]

Tell me if this sounds plausible.
A man's needs tend to by physical and a woman's tend to be emotional.
So a man is more likely to have a PA and a woman a EA.

Signed,
Captain Obvious

[hopingfourbetter]

Makes sense

[Bewildered]

An article for the men left behind by this crazyness...

Think it's only middle-aged men who buy superbikes, and take young lovers? Meet the WOMEN having midlife crises too

At first glance, it bears all the hallmarks of a classic male mid-life crisis: there’s the spouse, abandoned for a younger Spanish lover; there’s the high-flying career, ditched for a ‘journey of discovery’ around the world; there’s even the Harley-Davidson, bought to help escape the confines of a marriage that had gone stale.
There’s just one key difference. The person hitting the road on a motorbike in a quest for adventure was not a man, but a woman.
For Lucy Valantine, 47, it was the feeling that there must be more to life that prompted the ‘male’ mid-life crisis, complete with the above symptoms.
Wild one: Lucy Valantine chucked in her old life for a toyboy with a Harley-Davidson
‘I know it sounds like a cliche, but I was desperate to break out of my marriage and do something exhilarating,’ she recalls. ‘For three years before I left my husband I had growing feelings of doubt which, in the end, I just couldn’t ignore.
‘It was a terrifying process to leave behind everything I knew. To give up my marriage, my job and my way of life. But I couldn’t continue as I was. I knew I wanted something different and I had to go out there and find it.’
So Lucy left Mark, her husband of five years, and their picturesque cottage in Hampshire to embark on a year-long adventure that would lead her to a new life, in a new country, with a new, younger lover.
She is not alone in her quest for a new beginning in mid-life. What was once seen as the sole preserve of the middle-aged man is becoming increasingly common among women, who view it as a chance for a new beginning or an opportunity to recapture their youth.
Figures published this week revealed that women tire of their marriages far sooner than men, growing steadily unhappier than their husbands the longer the union continues, with the crunch point often coming in middle age.
The trend has been fuelled by the popularity of Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling book Eat Pray Love. It was turned into a major Hollywood film last year, starring Julia Roberts, and tells how the author left her husband in her mid-30s to find fulfilment on a journey of self-discovery through Italy, India and Indonesia.
Now, inspired by the story, increasing numbers of women are following suit. And whereas once it was wives who were left behind to cope with the practical and emotional fall-out, now often it is husbands who are left struggling to cope as their wives suddenly change their looks, their hobbies or their relationships.
Specialist websites such as midlife club.com, which were set up to offer support and consolation to women struggling to adjust to their husband’s mid-life crisis have now had to broaden their remit to help men cope with a wife’s version.
Among the advice and forum pages, filled with tales of male confusion and turmoil, it offers an explanation for the female mid-life crisis by medical practitioner and author Dr Eva Bell.
Toyboy: Lucy Valantine and her new boyfriend Antonio
‘Husbands may also be passing through their own mid-life crises, and are like irritable hedgehogs,’ explains Dr Bell. ‘Or, in a reversal of roles, they become overly dependant on their wives.’ Either way, Dr Bell says women begin to feel trapped.
‘A woman may feel that life is passing her by. “Who am I?” “Does my life count for anything?” An inexplicable loneliness overcomes her as though she has no real self-identity.
‘Conscious of her gradually fading beauty and energy, she sinks into depression. This feeling of worthlessness is compounded if there is marital dissatisfaction.’
It is against this background that many women seek to change their lives, embarking on what Dr Bell describes as a ‘second emotional adolescence’.
Often that means leaving behind a stale marriage. Women instigate seven out of ten divorces according to statistics, and with an estimated 30 per cent of marriages collapsing in mid-life, the female mid-life crisis carries a heavy toll.
The question is: are the women who seek to escape just being supremely selfish, or a little courageous for seeking an alternative to a dull relationship and mundane home life?
For as relationship coach Francine Kaye, author of The Divorce Doctor, points out: ‘Until relatively recently, most middle-aged women stayed within the mould, even if they were bitterly unhappy — and accepted it as their lot in life.
‘Nowadays, a mid-life crisis has become much more commonplace among women. In fact, it’s often not a crisis at all but more an identity issue; a wake-up call when women start to question what they really want from life.’
That was certainly the case for Lucy Valantine. The catalyst for making radical changes to her own life was the news, in 2003, that her mother had terminal ovarian cancer. Lucy was 38.
Crisis: Lucy thought there must be more to life after five years with her husband Mark
‘We pulled together as a family to care for her and support each other,’ says Lucy, who worked as a management development trainer. ‘But it also had the effect of forcing us to look inwardly at how truthful we were being in our own lives.’
Lucy admits that, on the surface, she and Mark looked like the perfect couple — yet she found herself battling feelings of profound turmoil.
‘I remember sitting in my London flat thinking about Mum, thinking about life, thinking I’d soon be turning 40, and what had I achieved?
‘I questioned how happy I was in my marriage. Were we man and wife, or more like brother and sister? I had become acutely aware that I had been pushing away doubts about our relationship.
‘I started to realise I actually could, and would, do the unthinkable: I would leave my safe existence, my great job, my marriage, family and friends, and take a year out to travel round the world on an adventure.’
The couple didn’t have children — Lucy says she had never felt particularly maternal — and any thoughts of having a family were eclipsed by her burning new desire to break free.
When, a year after her mother’s diagnosis, Lucy broke the news that she was leaving him, Mark was devastated. But as far as Lucy was concerned, there was no going back. She told her mother about her plans before her death in 2005, and was relieved to receive her blessing.
Lucy’s next 12 months were packed with what she calls ‘life-enriching experiences’. She had a tattoo done on her stomach of shells and seahorses with the words ‘Live Life’.
Then she bought a Harley-Davidson motorbike and spent five weeks riding through France and Spain. She then returned to the UK before going to Costa Rica to work as an English teacher.
New man: Lucy met Antonio, 34, in the Spanish city of Granada in 2007 where he was the assistant director in a bank
Lucy’s adventure cost several thousand pounds, funded by the sale of the house she and Mark had shared, and the division of their assets.
Next she went to Mexico, then spent five weeks in Zambia helping in an orphanage, did a tour of Australia and New Zealand by motorbike, and spent three months teaching English in China before catching the Trans-Siberian railway across Mongolia and Siberia.
Lucy says hitting the open road was liberating, but did she have any regrets about the husband she left behind?
‘Half way through my trip, I was in Africa when my sister sent a message saying my divorce had come through,’ she says.
‘Until then, with all the excitement of my adventures, I’d not thought much about it. But as I stood on the banks of the Zambezi River, poised to cast my wedding ring into its waters, I felt an overwhelming feeling of sadness and disappointment that things hadn’t worked out. Had we tried hard enough?
‘But I’d made my decision. It had been the most awful and difficult decision of my life, but I’d followed it through and now I was moving on.’
Lucy’s journey finally led her to the Spanish city of Granada in 2007, where she met new boyfriend Antonio, a 36-year-old assistant director in a bank. She has since set up and runs a travel business there called Go Granada!, dividing her time between Spain and Hampshire where she lives with her sister.
‘It’s been a long and emotional rollercoaster ride,’ she explains. ‘Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if Mark and I were still married. But, no, I have no regrets.
‘Mark is with someone else now — they have a baby and I am happy for him. I tried to follow the conventional path, but it is only now that I feel I have discovered who I really am.’
Harley: More women are having a mid life crisis and doing something radically different - in the way many men do
It’s a phrase that Francine Kaye knows only too well. As a relationship coach she works to save marriages, but admits even she wasn’t able to salvage her own when she got her ‘wake-up call’ at the age of 35. ‘Its like you suddenly realise you’ve been wearing the wrong clothes and they don’t fit any more,’ she admits.
‘I’d been married since I was 19 and we had two children, aged five and eight. But once I hit my late 30s, I wanted to know what else life held.
‘For me, it was about realising my ambitions. So I started a counselling diploma. I think my husband and I both knew our lives were taking different paths, but we didn’t know what to do about it.
‘While I was questioning what I wanted to do in my life, my husband was having an affair with another woman, then it was too late.’
Yet despite the temptations and pressures that a mid-life crisis may bring, for some women it doesn’t automatically herald the end of their marriages. There are other things they seek to change about their life.
By her own admission, 47-year-old Rochelle Peachey is in the middle of a typically ‘male’ mid-life crisis. She’s started dressing far too youthfully for her age and has taken to driving a Harley-Davidson.
Her friends wide eyed amazed – just think she is crazy.
If some are tempted to judge or react with horror, she just doesn’t care. In fact, it’s part of the appeal.
The bike cost me £12,500, and I feel like a young girl again when I am riding it,’ she says. ‘I love the shocked reaction from people when I turn up at meetings in my leathers.’
More surprisingly still, her transformation comes with her 48-year-old husband Phil’s blessing. Indeed, the couple, who have two sons aged 25 and 18 and live in Pinner, Middlesex, joke that they’re having a mid-life crisis together.
‘Phil and I are determined to grow old disgracefully together, and our relationship has never been stronger,’ she says. ‘He has bought himself a Jaguar sports car and I have my Harley. Buying it just seemed such a wild and fun thing to do, though my sons were horrified.’
For his part, Phil says: ‘I love the fact that Rochelle is re-inventing herself. We work together at the “keeping it fresh” thing, and I think the mid-life crisis is a blessing to any long-term marriage as long as, like us, you face it together.’
Or, as Dr Bell puts it: ‘A good husband will not only be emotionally supportive of his wife, but also give her the space she needs to develop her sense of self-worth.’
Yet any man who turned that phrase around to suggest that a ‘good wife’ should allow a husband having a mid-life crisis ‘to explore his sense of self-worth’ would be branded a hateful misogynist.
Yes, more and more women may be having a traditionally ‘male’ mid-life crises. But whether that makes them any less self-indulgent or immature than their male counterparts is another matter altogether.
 

[Trustandlove]

I'll be honest; this made me feel a bit sick.  Reading the line about her saying "well, I made my decision, there's no going back" and casting her wedding ring away. 

It makes me wonder if my H only now feels that he has found "who he is", and the rest doesn't matter.  The bit about "wearing the wrong clothes" also sticks. 

Is there a double standard? If it's a woman do we, female LBS, still think "well, it's OK, she must fulfull her potential?" 

I have a female friend in MLC, who kicked out her husband, saying that he was what was wrong with her life, that their girls would be OK, that she wanted more our of life, all that.  I pull no punches with her; and tell her what I think. 

And know another woman here locally who kicked her husband out about 6 years ago, basically because she wanted the grand passion and he wasn't it.   They have two children, and share them.  He has now found someone else and has a new baby,  she did fine her passion, but he ended up dumping her, and she also went through treatment for cancer.  Now it seems that the disease may have spread....    not good.  From what I hear she is wondering what on earth she chucked him out for; saying that had she known about the cancer she wouldn't have done so....   

I went through a thing when I was young, 18-24, where I was going down a very different path in life.  I came to my senses and went back to who I really was; in the process I left a man (well, boy); it wasn't nice, but I definitely had no regrets, and cut all ties completely.  Everyone I knew was hugely relieved.   But I didn't try to make it about him; I just was firm.  That wasn't MLC per se, it was me having had a very hard time at 18 or so, and running away then.  That boy was my "alienator", if you will, except that it wasn't at midlife.  I had left my life, then came back to it 6 years later. 

Boy, this stuff makes your head swim. 

[Beenthere]

Bewildered,

Thanks for the post.  It is disgusting to read but in the end pretty much the truth (as I see it anyway).

This is my first post here but I have been reading for some time.  As a male LBS who has been on the receiving end of my Ex's MLC for roughly 4 years now, I can say without hesitation that there is a script each MLCer reads and adheres-to.  I see so many women on this site walking in the same painful path that I followed (that ultimately led to divorce and my Ex marrying her OM) and it is painful to witness.  We all want our spouses back but, in my experience, only a small percentage of MLC-affected marriages are saved.  Miracles do happen but my advice here would be to hope for the best but prepare for the worst - since that is what is most likely to occur.

My heart goes out to all the LBS' out there.

Beenthere

[Dontgiveup]

As a male LBS, I'll give my perspective on this story.....it doesn't bother me too much.  It's bad from the perspective of what happened to a marriage, but here's some things that stick out to me......

I'm sure she was in a midlife crisis....the age is there and a traumatic event is there with the death of a parent....the common signs if you will.  I don't believe that she has no regrets.

Her marriage was a 5 year marriage.....it's possible the MLC was already brewing.