[Thunder]

That's what I mean, SC.  I don't blame either person.  MLC just happens and destroys everything.
I don't think my X would have chose to feel the way he did.  I don't think he would have chose to destroy our marriage.   To hurt me.

You hear so many stories about MLCer's returning and they can't remember all of what happened.  Say they felt they were in a dark place and had no idea how bad they treated their spouse.  Their brains just went nuts.   
So how do you blame them??

[LisaLives]

Marriage is a construction project and THE MARRIAGE is the building.  If I was the architect and he was the contractor, there were kids and in-laws and friends and institutions that all had a role.  We may have had the weirdest building in the universe, but many people might still call it successful, who is judge and jury?  It is impossible to examine any one person's ROLE in a project.  No matter how good or bad the project is, or each person is on that project, the next project will be different and every person will play a different role.  There is NO purpose in examining how you DID on a project, the only useful exercise is to look forward.  So no, I never think it is useful to examine where something went wrong, only how to make it right. 

And nothing about how anyone was or wasn't in a past marriage is an indicator for success in another marriage, if both people want that marriage to succeed.  Even in a reconciliation, there will be two different people arriving on the project.  And I call BS on the "work on yourself" stuff, too.  If you have "stuff" you want to work on, you know it.  If you want to be the contractor and not the architect, you have to work on that.  If before you were a micromanager and you want to be different, you work on that, but if you liked your role and thought you were building a pretty decent building, then so be it.  You just need to find a place where you'll be valued. 

My current man thinks I am the most perfect being on earth, for all the reasons my ex thought I was flawed.  What if I had worked to change them and no one liked me :-(...  Love and light, ll 

[bipolared]

This is something I have thought about a lot recently b/c of our therapy sessions.  I have made some positive changes to myself but not many seem to be anything H is really complaining about;  like many others on here have said, I have gone back to the core person I was.  I think Medusa is right(as usual ) in saying that our faults were magnified to be used as an excuse for the inevitable explosion. When H brings up stuff in counseling, it seems pretty petty to me.  The MC tries to validate him to a certain extent but one of the last things she said was a question about possible faults on my behalf including infidelity-I swear she was fishing for more than the little things H described!  He almost laughed at suggestion of me straying. 
I read a long time ago that when someone is so bothered by tiny details it is b/c of a larger problem they can't address.  Like MLC?

[Dji76]

While we didnt cause it and shoud not believe all the projections, we can all stand to improve. I am a better man and a better father because of what i have learned from the destruction my wifes crisis brought about. I am thankful i was advised to look inward and examine my flaws. I was not satisfied with my role in our marriage. A common theme among lbs that i notice is we are fixers and doers. Not always a bad thing but it is a form of control. Even as standers many of us refuse to accept who the mlcer is today. Once i learned to accept her for who my x is (cheater, among other things) it was easy for me to move on. That was something i needed work on, allowing people to be who they are, not who i hope they can be. Seeing "potential" in a partner is a form of control. We are trying to bend them to who we want them to be. Even if what we want for them is "better" it is still not right imo. I spent my entire adult life trying to make a miserable person happy. I failed cuz nobody can be responsible for someone else happiness. Now she is resentful and angry that i couldnt make her happy and she continues to search for it outside of herself. Anyways, long story short, we not responsible for their crisis. All we can control is ourselves and it makes sense to focus on making positive changes while they self destruct.

[Anjae]

No one is perfect. None of us was perfect. Like others said, people have their things, and marriages go through ups and downs. But things are worked out by both spouses.

The whole "own your part" is such a cliché. They had a personal breakdown. If your spouse had cancer, would you have to "own your part" in that, too?

This. We cannot have a part in a personal breakdown. MLC is a personal and individual crisis of the MLCer. It is not even a marital issue. So, it would not make much sense we had any role in a matter that is not even a marital one.

Some people may choose to use this as an opportunity to make changes consciously. This situation CHANGES us. I think for most, though, we were pretty good people, who, unfortunately, now need to focus on "recovery" from this trauma, far more than we need "change". If we find other things we want to amend during the course of that, good for us. If not, good for us.

I agree. First and foremost we need to focus on recover from the trauma. And on taking care of ourselves. This will have already change us, and several, if not most, of us will use this to make some improvements on ourselves. Even if for me those improvements are more on a spiritual and less tangible nature than change for the sake of change.

The other thing that is going to change us is age. We will be several years old in the middle or the end of this MLC mess. Therefore we will be different than we were when the MLC started.

For me the going back to the core person I was is a mystery. I was 18 when I got together with Mr J. Unless I want to go back to when I was a younger teen or a child, that was the core person I was. And since I never lost myself in the relationship or marriage, I don't have a clue what it means.

[MsMedfly]

THANK YOU for this!!!

As a newbie, almost 4 months since alien invaded and he ran,  I can honestly say, I spent the first months, going over and over every vile thing that came out of his mouth.. and I really believed I was everything he said.. Heck, at one point, my therapist and I were working so very hard on trying to pinpoint just where these issues came from.. After several weeks and realizing he's MLC.. and that I am not all of these things he proclaims that I am and that what caused our marriage to fall apart, I felt cheated. I've spent thousands on therapy, countless hours "working" on me and it was not where I needed to change!!

But... There were several things, that I did need to work on.. and have, religiously, since he left. No, it's not made a bit of difference in our marriage. But Lord, has it ever made a difference for me!!! He's witnessed some and all it's done is created mass confusion. He's so deep in and angry but he does see it.. and it's actually making him more angry. He lashes out at me but I know it's because he's angry with himself because I've done exactly what I needed to do, to be a happier, healthy me. He's in such a dark place, he can't and it just makes him that much more angry!

I did take everything he said directly to heart and worked like maniac to fit it. I'm a fixer and doer. One of the issues in our marriage. I too, DID everything. I took many of the responsibilities on simply because the deeper in he got, the less he would do. By the time he left, I did everything but mow the yard. And I realized shortly after he left, how much I'd grown to resent him for it. I felt dumped on and unappreciated for the millions of things that I did on a daily basis to keep our marriage, our lives, our home, running. Since the beginning of the slow invasion of the alien (3 years) and more so over the past year of his ramp up to runaway, I'd become so angry with him, for just expecting me to handle all of it and would bottle it up, explode, because I'd get so overwhelmed. I've since learned since AI , I'm in early onset of menopause.

My biggest struggle is the you make me unhappy. How is that even possible?? I can't make someone unhappy, happiness comes from within. That unrealistic expectation is one of the biggest problems I see with many of my younger, single or newly married friends. They do not get that happiness is not about what someone gives to you, it's what you give to others. It's fundamentally impossible to make someone "unhappy".. Sure you can make them miserable but I know a lot of us got that speech and did not have a clue that our spouses were unhappy and what we were doing to "cause" it. I didn't know, I was totally blindsided!! I knew something was wrong and what he was saying didn't add up. I was too close to see and it wouldn't have made a bit of difference, even with a crystal ball!

 So much of what is said and done leading up to and after BD, is projection. I projected my anger and insecurity on him, I know it and I work every single day, to stop from ever doing it again, to myself or anyone else. Granted it was for stupid, insignificant things, like not helping carry the laundry up the stairs or looking at half naked girls online, behind my back when he wouldn't give me the time I needed from him. Of course, now I know why...  When I couldn't take anymore, I did respond in completely ridiculous, passive aggressive ways that would led to a screaming fight, four times in three years, I'd had it up to eyeballs, I picked a fight by stomping around, using "nothing" when he'd ask what's wrong and then finally unloading... Yes, I was that wife, that would vacuum the house, in pearls, wearing nothing but a thong and high heels.. I'm a great wife.. I know it, he knows it.. Did we have areas to work on? Sure.. Was it so terrible and awful that he had to runaway, file for the d, and the rest of this? Absolutely not!

Controlling emotions was another big complaint - It's actually kind of funny that I learned I was in desperate need of hormones, after he left. What a tremendous difference it's made and the only reason I haven't flipped out, like h continues to think that I will.

I really believe it boils down to, we've all been in a long term marriages / relationships. We've spent a majority of our adult lives with this person. The early years were rough but we all got through it and had good marriages. But when one person changes to the magnitude that all our spouses did, we could be Mary Poppins and they still would have left, still claimed it was all terrible, and there is not a thing we could have done to prevent it. They chose NOT to communicate what they were feeling inside of them. We aren't mind readers.. It's their inability to confront their demons and past issues in a mature, healthy way, that forced us all into this mess. Just like we are left behind, to work through the mess they each have made of us.

I can say there is a part of me, a very small part, that does feel grateful and blessed to have the opportunity to work on those things, that I no longer liked about me. I didn't know how much his MLC had changed me, I was so busy responding to his behaviors, trying to be "perfect", in such an unhealthy way, that I didn't like the person I thought I'd become. I'm not that person and I've learned that I'm still me, at the core, God has just given me the chance to work through some things that I needed to, to be a better, stronger me so when the time comes, I can be a better wife..

So many unrealistic expectations are thrust on marriage- plus, it's incredibly easy to simply end one too. I have friends that have been married just as long as we have and totally hate each other, no MLC, PA, nothing.. They just expect that it will get better, magically, because they are married. Marriage is work, plain and simple.. But in an MLC situation, us LBS could change until the end of time and it will not repair / reconcile the marriage / relationship.. Time, space, and God are the only thing that can heal our MLC spouses.. Something I'm still trying to cope with and grow to accept..

[LaughLoveLive]

"When we are no longer able to change a situation we are challenged to change ourselves"

A quote from concentration camp survivor and psychologist Viktor Frankl which seems quite apt for this thread.

I find it has been a blessing in disguise that I have been given an opportunity in my life to stop and make conscious decisions about how I want my future to look, including what kind of person I want to be and the kind of life I want to lead. I don't think I had made those kind of deliberate evaluations of life goals and philosophies for a long time. I'm grateful for that aspect of all this.

[Thunder]

MrsMed...everything you just said.   

[MsMedfly]

The hardest part of marriage for me was learning to share a closet and a bathroom.... And falling in the toliet because the seat was always up!!!

We picked them, they picked us... We created a covenant, till death... Change,  no change, MLC or not, none of us deserve or earned the awful, disrespectful, destructive behavior that they all exhibit...

If any of us tried to actually change who we are, to suit their outrageous, ridiculous lies, we'd all end up in straight jackets!!!

We all have to change as we get older, it's not actual change, it's maturity.. Sadly many of our aliens haven't reached that... I just keep seeing small children screaming in the toy aisle at the grocery store, begging for some over priced toy, that they will just die if you don't get it for them... and break within 10 minutes...

[Verrat]

I believe that no one is perfect. I also believe that we did not cause our MLcers to do what they are doing.

In a normal relationship, if someone does something the other doesn't like, both parties address it and try to work it out. Many of us probably had this earlier in our relationships. If, despite trying numerous times to work it out, it doesn't work, then both parties get a divorce and neither have hard feelings, because they know they tried everything.

I have to agree with this. No one is perfect and everyone contributes positive and negative aspects to the relationship, but just as one person alone can't save a relationship, one person alone can destroy it all by themselves. My MLCer has been a clinging boomerang, leaving me, coming back, and then cheating. Yesterday I made the mistake of asking him why he left at BD, and he said, "I thought I was unhappy, [in our relationship] but I wasn't." Yet he still cheated after we tried to reconcile (too early, he's still in replay). MLCers are in a fog. I think putting blame on ourselves for the failures of the relationship where it's not truly warranted is a way LBS try to feel in control of a situation that is really out of our control. Can't control the MLCer, can only resolve to be honest with ourselves, and that includes -not- blaming ourselves for things that aren't our fault.