[LaughLoveLive]

I do believe I'll come out of this ok and I expect that she will be and probably already is miserable, but that doesn't bring me any satisfaction. Just dismay. I'm not interested in revenge.

This is how I feel too.

I also know it's not utopia over there with OW but yet he stays. I don't know if he feels trapped there? Or if it's too humiliating to admit he was wrong? Or he just can't be bothered / is not capable of making the effort to leave.

I saw a psychic a while back. She said to me "she's not easy, she doesn't do nearly as much for him as you did, but he thinks he's found his soul mate" ... So there is perhaps some kind if emotional connection I suppose.

[MyBrainIsBroken]

I don't think it's an emotional connection. I think it's a subconscious compulsion that they misinterpret as love.

The trauma therapist I'm seeing thinks my wife was traumatized as a young child by her monster of a father, that his death triggered that buried trauma, and that she's with a narcissistic abuser reenacting that trauma in an attempt to heal the trauma. I've studied the theory and it makes sense and I saw the compulsion last summer and fall. It didn't make sense then but it does now. She's trying to make her dead father love her but she thinks she's drawn to the OM because she loves him. It's like an addiction. It makes me sad and sick at the same time.

Another factor that I think comes into play is conditional love, They learn when they're young that they won't be loved unless they act in a certain way so they can't believe that we could still love them after what they've done. My wife told me this summer that she couldn't believe D31 and I were so close because I used to get upset with D31 when she insisted on dating a string of losers. I told her that I may not have liked D31's behavior but that didn't mean I ever stopped loving D31. I wrote D31 a letter 10 years ago telling her that I didn't approve of her behavior but that I would always love her. D31 gets it and she and I are close. My wife doesn't get it. That's not what she learned. 

[UKStander]

The trauma therapist I'm seeing thinks my wife was traumatized as a young child by her monster of a father, that his death triggered that buried trauma, and that she's with a narcissistic abuser reenacting that trauma in an attempt to heal the trauma. I've studied the theory and it makes sense and I saw the compulsion last summer and fall. It didn't make sense then but it does now. She's trying to make her dead father love her but she thinks she's drawn to the OM because she loves him. It's like an addiction. It makes me sad and sick at the same time.

Wow, pretty knotted psychology!  I've never seen an OP relationship described as scientifically as that, but it would make sense - it would explain why it's an addiction...  But like trying to roll a stone uphill, it's just never going to work. Agree it's very sad and sickening.  Helps me understand what might be going on in the love nest. Thanks MBIB.

[MyBrainIsBroken]

The sad thing is that they aren't happy yet they stay in an abusive relationship and they don't even realize why. And standard therapy doesn't help because the memories that are causing the reenactment aren't just repressed, they're fragmented when they're stored and can't be retrieved by the conscious mind. Yet they linger in the subconscious mind. Also, because of the way they're stored there's no history associated with the unpleasant feelings so the feelings seem like they're current instead of being related to events that occurred decades earlier.

[UKStander]

I didn't know that - about standard therapy not helping.  Are the memories fragmented at the time the trauma happens?  Or do they become fragmented later on, as life passes and the MLC-er re-writes their own history to make it less distressing? 

So, if there's no reaching these memories, how do they ever recover? 

Does the process referred to here perhaps take the MLC-er to a place of recognition where they have to realise, finally, that something is not right. At that point, they suspect the memories are there, but don't necessarily have to confront them, just realise their thinking has been skewed? 

[Snowdrop]

Maybe they need those regression/hypnosis type of therapies.  Problem is you have to first identify that you have a problem and then be willing to take whatever therapy you might need, and then some.

[MyBrainIsBroken]

My understanding of this is that memories are not stored in a single location in the brain but in separate locations. The details, things we can put into words, are stored in one location, while sensations and feelings associated with an event are stored elsewhere. These are combined during retrieval.

During a traumatic event or during a prolonged period of high stress an individual may go into a dissociative state. This is more common in young children. While in a dissociative state feelings and sensations are stored while the details are not, thus the memory becomes fragmented. The conscious mind uses the detail portion to reassemble the memory and without the detail the conscious mind can't access the memory fragments. These fragments can still affect the subconscious mind, are experienced as current because they have no history associated with them, and can affect current behaviors. Surfacing of these fragments is situational and is based on the occurrence of a triggering event. Traumatic Reenactment occurs when an individual is driven subconsciously to place themselves into a situation that is similar to the traumatic event in order to try to process the stored memory fragments. This can work in a controlled environment and is referred to as Mastery. When done inadvertently in the real world it seldom works.

Treatment requires tools designed specifically for the retrieval and processing of traumatic memories such as Traumatic Memory Inventory (TMI) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and can't happen unless the individual chooses to seek treatment. My therapist is an expert in the use of EMDR to treat trauma and teaches EMDR techniques at a local university.

[Snowdrop]

Bit off topic but thinking of the thread title. 

I used to say to H, "You should just go find yourself some woman in a bar who drinks all day, laughs at your jokes and thinks your amazing!!!"

Didn't know he would take it literally!!

[UKStander]

MBIB, how on earth does anything to do with the EYES help with trauma?  I'm fascinated to know...

Snow - I too said things like that that I now regret big time!  Casually made suggestions... 

[Snowdrop]

Snow - I too said things like that that I now regret big time!

Oh I don't regret it, not at all.  Just shows who I thought he would be a better match with.  Funny isn't it.  Maybe I already knew that we were growing apart and I wasn't the person he needed, he needed someone who would settle for very little in the standards department.  Maybe he got her after all.