[thetruth]

Hi everyone,
I've been reading all of the stories with great interest and sadness.

I'm struck by one consistent theme:
Yes, the 'BD' comes out of the blue, literally like a bomb.

But where are the posts where the spouse left behind (LBS?) reflects on what role they played over the years leading up to the bomb drop?

Yes, I've read some posts where the person mention "hints that something was being wrong but never expected this" but those seem to be overrun by  other people who say something like "No, he/she is definitely an MLCer", reinforcing what the original person thinks. And so it goes...give them time space etc...they have the issues, they are the child/adolescent etc.

Surely to goodness, there can't be so many perfect spouses, meeting all of their spouse's needs want' etc. that the term "mid-life crisis" came about only because of the MLCer and his/her behaviour, how its all the fault of the MLCer and that the LBS should just let them go and spin (my words) till they grow up. Seems an  awfully convenient way for the LBS to avoid confronting their issues which will only resurface in the next relationship.  Or maybe that circle only applies to MLCers? I'm not sure, can someone explain this?

Or maybe I've missed the point and the forum is intended to support the LBS without any questions about their role in the breakdown of their relationship.

Thanks for reading,
Looking for the truth...

[superdog]

Hello,

I suspect you may get quite a few answers to your post, so I guess I will try and start them off.

To me it's a bit like hating bacon and having a real problem with it all together, in fact you tell your spouse you love it. So guess what you get bacon every day because you never told the spouse your true feelings, but your spouse thinks he/she is making you happy.

Until bd that is, I am leaving you because I hate bacon and you have given it to me to eat for the past 20 years. I never said a word to you, but you should have known I didn't like bacon.

I hope that ridiculous example will half way explain why the lbs is here and trying to work out what are valid complaints from the mlcer and what are veiled projections. No one here is professing to be perfect in any way, in fact there are many here struggling to believe they are worth anything at all having taken the projections and complaints from the mlcer and replaced by a new model.

Looking towards your role in your marriage takes time because you are first of all way too broken by the sudden turnaround. This site is not that old therefore many are just coming to that stage.

No marriage is perfect,no person is perfect, and each person wil naturally reflect on themselves as part of the growing process.

Maybe if our spouses had alerted us to the fact that bacon wasn't acceptable we could have reflected on a few things earlier, who knows. All we do know now is that our spouse do have major issues which in one way or another have changed us and we are all currently trying to find our feet and who we are without them.

Sd

[limitless]

Interesting post and question to put out there.

I'm no newbie and my initial posts are pretty old (October of 2010) but I went through months and months of feeling shame and guilt over my far less than perfect track record of being a wife. But I was particularly hard on myself and used to be someone who was more than willing to take responsibility for other peoples actions. Years of self reflection and hard work have helped me to learn to take ownership og only MY part in the failure of my long term marriage.

That being said, I did not break up our family, I did not abandon my kids, I did not stray or have an affair. My Ex owns those things.

No. I didn't see it coming. In hindsight, I was in denial.  The signs were all there.

I did not show the respect that I should have for my husband. I did take both him and our relationship for granted. I don't believe that these errors were fatal nor that the two of us could not have worked through the problems in our marriage had we both put efforts towards this. The problem was, once he spoke about his unhappiness he was already involved with someone else and had checked out. In his mind he had already divorced me.

When this happens, there are many stages that the lbs goes through. There is another thread on this site that is discussing the lbs stages. When hit with bomb drop it is very easy for the lbs to wallow in victim mentality. The Mlcer will do and say many things that are very hurtful to the lbs and the family.

Edit http://mlcforum.theherosspouse.com/index.php?topic=2625.0 - add in link for thread mentioned above OldPilot

But being the victim doesn't help us in the slightest. In fact, it harms us. It makes us believe that we have no power in our own lives. When in fact, we do.

Not sure where you are heading with this thread, but there is my truth.

L

[TopsyTurvy]

I am not perfect but prior to BD I thought we were happy.

As to the role I played....sorry but not sure that I did until he tells me.

I never got monster, he also said it was him and not me.  He is a shift worker so my main complaint was not seeing enough of him.  Maybe I put my life on hold, I had my personal time when he was at work and he had his on his days off when I was at work. 

In hindsight in the last year he focused a lot on work, wouldn't take holidays as too much work to do when he got back. But still said he loved me, surprised me with dinners out, cosy afternoons watching old movies, being normal as per the whole of our relationship.

BD was completely out of the blue...I then had 4 months where he couldn't decide whether to stay or leave...obviously I then knew something was very wrong.


H changed...I am not the only one to notice...obviously it bothers me he chose an OW but the personality change too???

[Anjae]

Or maybe I've missed the point and the forum is intended to support the LBS without any questions about their role in the breakdown of their relationship.

Since MLC is a personal issue of the MLCer and not a relationship or marital issue, the LBS does not play a role in their partner/spouse MLC. It is like addiction or a mental illness, it is an issue of the individual, not of the marriage/relationship.

There is not much point in looking for what role the LBS had in the break of the relationship because the relationship did not break (not in the normal sense of relationship break).

What the LBS do, after BD,  is to heal and work on themselves. But that work is done for the LBS.

The hints of something being wrong are from when the spouse is already in MLC. MLC does not start at BD, it starts before. Sometimes years before.

Often what we notice is that our spouse is depressed/irritable but we do not know exactly what is going on. Nor does the MLCer.

It is also not a question of perfect spouses. No one is perfect. Our MLCer also weren't. And there is that small factor called 180 in which the MLCers does a complete change of personality.

No to mentions that, out of the blue, after 10, 15, 320, 25, 30 or more years, the MLCer all of a sudden starts to say they never loved the LBS, they have always been unhappy, etc.

It is really starting to be tiring this thing of constantly wanting to know the role ot the LBS in a spouse MLC when MLC is an individual issue of the MLCer. Nothing we had, or had not done lead to our spouses MLC.

Read the articles on my signature.They explain you MLC.

[sleepless]

180 personality change and sudden overspending have nothing to do with LBS. Signs that this is their crisis.

That said, nobody is perfect and it is a great opportunity for LBS growth. I know I have gained patience and lost trust in relationships. I don't know where I will end up with that relationship trust thing... currently I am being patient with myself on that. Big gain in trust of God which is most important gift I get from this.

In many cases here friends and family thought these marriages were great. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that we were about the last couple that friends thought would ever break apart. I agree, we were great together.

For whatever reason, FOO, age, hormones, etc this has happened and is our reality. Takes a bit to figure that out because it is such a change from the life we knew.

We gave our kids a solid moral base. I'm still doing that role.

[nah]

TheTruth, you pose a perfectly rational question for a normal divorce.  Problem is most people on this forum are not going through a normal divorce.

I have a letter my husband wrote to me on our 24th anniversary.  "we are not like normal couples, I can't believe how lucky I am, here's to 40 more years blah, blah, blah.  Three years later he's telling people that "we decided together that we were not meant to be"...it took 28+ years to figure that out?!?

Was I perfect...of course not.  But he did not say one word.  NOT ONE WORD.  He shut me out and ran away.  No warning.

Sorry this LBS did not deserve this treatment.

[confused_but_trying]

I've recently been pondering this as well (for my situation only).  What I can say though is that, for me personally, my W came up with a lot of what I now realize are simply excuses to justify her behavior.  But at the time I took it all to heart and therefore all of the blame.  Others have had similar experiences from what I have read.

For example, she gave reasons such as "remember that time 12 years ago when you took the covered parking space at the apartment we lived in", "remember that time when you used my phone upgrade", and "you would never want to go eat at any seafood restaraunts" (let's forget the fact that seafood makes me sick and she ended up getting seafood where we went anyway).

In my mind these are things that are not only fixable, but one time occurances that she should have at least told me about before now or at the very least been able to get over after 12 years.  I came to the conclusion that had I not done these things, she would have had other excuses to replace them with.  No one is perfect; we all do things that are selfish or mean at times.  We are, after all, human.  I chose to forgive and forget; it is apparent that she chose to remember every little thing I did that bothered her.  She then used these as ammunition to justify her leaving.  Did she plan this?  I doubt it, but she did it none the less.

Placing the blame on me rather than owning up to her own feelings is from what I understand a trademark sign of a MLC.  There are other similarities as well.  Things the do and say for example.  They will tell the LBS the exact same things VERBATIM.  "I love you, but I'm not in love with you", "I just want to go and have fun", "I don't want to work it out, I just don't want to be married anymore".  They take on a childlike persona.  My W got a belly button ring, cut off all of her hair and bleached it blonde, began to run like she did in high school, and started working out excessively.  She became narcissistic and took on a whole different attitude.  She really is like a stranger now.

As mentioned above, this is often a shock to the LBS because we had no idea.  Yes, looking back of course we can come up with all kinds of things that we have done to our spouse that we probably shouldn't have.  But you know what, so has everyone else.  Our spouses included.  Did I suddenly feel the need to break up my family and leave?  No.  Do I blame all of my feelings on her? No.  Neither does anyone else who is thinking rationally. 

When I went to the doctor to get help; I told him what I was going through and some of the things that she said.  He has been my W's doctor her whole life so he knows her very well.  Even he told me "she's not thinking right, that isn't right; that isn't normal".  I'm not trying to blame my situation on a midlife crisis.  I didn't just think to myself "oh, that must be it".  I wasn't even the one who thought of the possibility of it being a midlife crisis; her mother did.  I did a lot of research before I came here and shared my story.  What really solidified it for me was an article I read that was supposed to be a generic outline of a person in a midlife crisis.  That generic article could have been written specifically about my wife.  It was scary accurate in it's details.  The author explained that while everyone is different; all midlifer's "play from the same play book".

[OldPilot]

Here is my .02 about this even though you have gotten some great responses.

The LBS has faults that they need to work on.
They are probably not the reason that an MLC divorce occurs.
They can actually be very difficult to figure out exactly what "MIRROR WORK" you need to DO.

I am sure you would be willing to DO anything to SAVE your marriage.
Unfortunately that might be exactly the problem.

You have entered the OPPOSITE WORLD where everything is not as it seems to be.
And it does not make perfect sense for quite a while.

So what were YOUR faults and transgressions that led to the demise of your marriage?

[Darth Obo]

My $0.02:

The answer is based on each individual situation, circumstances and history of the couple. I will agree that the MLC portion of problem is definitely on the MLCer and their own issues. However, I do believe there are three basic situations presented on this board:

1) Those that had the "perfect" marriage (i.e. no purposeful neglect, abuse, stonewalling, etc..) and were, for the most part, a good couple.

2) Those that had some marital issues at one point or another, maybe ongoing, that exacerbated the complaints of the MLCer.

3) Those that had major marital issues in conjunction with the MLCer; the marital problems were not only real, they triggered the FOO issues of the MLCer. In this case, I believe you have a combination of a WAS & MLT/C situation.


I personally believe mine falls in between #2 & #3 somewhere! She has major issues of abandonment & "daddy" issues! This was exacerbated by my military career....deployed over half of our marriage; she was forced into "single parent" role while I was off in far away places. I believe the disconnect started a long time ago! She stopped talking about anything, and if I asked what was wrong I got the typical "Nothing" or "I'm fine". Continued lack of communication pushed me away from her to the point where I was neglectful.

Eventually, we were walking parallel paths but we were no longer a "couple". Sure, when we were out with friends, everyone thought we were the model marriage.....facade!

In the end, it's over for us. And that was my call...the LBS made his choice...and it didn't come without self-reflection and fully looking back on the entire marriage, looking for the red flags, looking at my part as well as hers, and the MLC itself! She may be in MLC, and I truly believe she is, but to be honest, we aren't compatible anymore either and I don't think we ever will be! It's sad, and explaining to the kids was the worst part, but D11 seems to be adapting fairly well. No issues at school, no outbursts, none of the typical issues yet that I can see!

That's my particular situation anyway!


Obo