[Not Applicable]

C4E what you wrote really resonated with me, especially how all these MLC spouses had nuanced personalities until this took over. I am not sure if you saw what I posted on ventromedial prefrontal cortex, but if you read what happens when this part of the brain is impaired you have a very similar description to what we are calling MLC.

Velika I went back and looked at some of your earlier posts and I couldn't agree with you more. There was something you said in one of your earliest posts:

One of the most confusing things about this is how suddenly my husband's entire personality has changed. He seems completely detached from me and the memories we have shared and has totally departed from long held plans and goals. I feel that if he could have seen what is happening a year ago he would have been horrified -- but now I can barely get through to him. The result is so disconcerting that it is almost eerie to be around him.

That's exactly what i have been feeling about my husband. There was a conversation we had about 3 years ago maybe. I don't remember the details but I remember where we were sitting when we had it and basically he was criticizing other people in our community for certain behaviors. He thought they were terrible people, no morals, no respect for their spouses etc, and he said he would never do something like that. I told him you don't even need to say that because I know you won't. And what happened? He has done it himself. I keep thinking if the man that had that conversation with me were able to travel forward and time and meet the man he has become, he would be so ashamed and hate himself. In fact, I think he may actually at some deep level be ashamed and hate himself.

The other thing was that at some point a couple years ago too he wrote me a letter, promising me that he would never do a specific thing that would hurt me. I never suspected or expected he would do it, but he went out of his way to promise me he wouldn't. I did nothing to prompt him to write the letter. It came from his own mind. Again, all the promises he made in the letter were broken. And he seems to have no remorse for it.

Our long term goals and the goals we made right before all this happened are pretty much intact and we are moving forward with them, so that is different in our case, but that's all that is moving forward. The practical aspects. The emotions and the closeness and the intimacy, gone. He's focused on doing the practical things but nothing more. In fact, he is better than he ever was before about most of the practical things, oddly enough, but I think for him it is a substitute for the other things.

My husband actually had some self-awareness going into it. Partially maybe because of there was a certain deliberateness in his actions that is usually lacking in most cases. In fact, as he started to descend into the midlife crisis we had some long heated talks that actually brought us closer to one another with a greater understanding than ever before. And then after that incredible closeness was achieved, he disappeared down a hole. He asked me for patience, to give him time, that eventually he would come back a proper husband, he told me he didn't want to hurt or humiliate me, he even at one point kissed my foot, which in his culture is something that would be so humiliating that it showed he had nothing but the utmost respect for me. He even had the self-awareness to tell me he would get bored of the OW after a while. As he started to fade into the fog, I challenged him about his feelings, and he said that of course he has feelings for me but he can't show them. As if to show them is too much for him to handle. As if he was afraid that it would hurt him too much to show me. For a while he was in a state of self-awareness, now he has slipped away.

There's one big issue that has been the biggest wedge between us about this whole thing. There's something I really need from him that he has withdrawn from me. I have told him it is important that I am not happy because of his withholding it. That I NEED it. His response? Besides some weak lame excuses, he repeated the words, "I can't." "I can't." "I can't." Not, "I don't want to," not "I'm not interested." but "I CAN'T." It was like asking someone with paralysis to move their leg. He can't explain why he can't but I truly could tell from his voice he can't. I told him ok, I'll be patient, like I promised. It's not something he CAN'T do. In fact, it's really quite easy. But something in his brain has taken his ability away. Just like the nerve to the legs is severed in paralysis. It's things like this that make me really believe there is something going on in the brain.

[Not Applicable]

As for depression, definitely I can tell my husband is depressed. Sure he sometimes jokes and he laughs then. But he does not smile or have the relaxed feeling about him that he normally used to have on a regular basis. He's definitely not happy. Even at one point I said to him, "Smile" and he said, "Why should I smile?" in a deadpan voice as if smiling was just not something that people do. If MLC were about finding a better woman that makes them happier, they would not look so dark and down all the time. There's an emptiness and a sadness in his eyes. It wasn't there before. He used to be up and down somewhat, now he is just down.

Then there is something else that I have noticed. He had certain habits, certain things he used to say all the time. Some of them he just suddenly stopped saying about a year ago when he first started showing the earliest symptoms of midlife crisis. They haven't come out of his mouth once, even though they were something I might hear at least once a week, if not more often. And there is no reason for him to stop them. It's as if certain parts of his brain where these habits were stored have just been locked down and they can't come out. Like you talk about the memories disappearing, for me it was the habits.

[Thunder]

Changing,

I think maybe where they could start would be to interview therapist.  You can't tell me they have not seen patterns with their patients who have MLCer's.  I'm sure they get plenty of them.  Whether they believe in MLC or not they had to heard the same things over and over again.  The dramatic personality changes, the complete emotional check out, the not caring about their kids, the huge selfishness and self-centeredness.  When their spouses never had these traits before.

Also their ages.  Most common age for a male MLCer is 46, for a women it's more like 40.  How does that play into things?
Then how does their hormone's come into play?  It's no different than a woman going through her change because of estrogen levels dropping.  Men's testosterone levels drop also.  Is that part of it?

I'm not sure there is a cure for this, but at least it would help the medical professionals diagnose what it is and really help their patients.  Instead of just saying...welll, people change, like my counselor did.   
NO people change but not to the degree these MLCer's do.

I doubt anything they come up with will cure or change the MLCer.  But it would help us to better understand we are not crazy and it is not about us.  We would have some kind of validation.

[Not Applicable]

The fact that I strongly believe there is a medical component to this is 50% of the reason I am willing to ride this out. The other half is because my husband went into it self-aware and asked me to be patient and give him a chance before anything serious happened. A skeptic might say he took advantage of me but while he still had some self-awareness I know he did not do this because he wanted to hurt me in any way but he has now gotten in further than maybe he realized and it is now out of his control.

If I wasn't aware that there is a script that people follow and that there really is nothing you can do to snap them out of it, I would never in a million years accept any of this. But this is not my husband acting out, it is something bigger than his conscience or his conscious mind that is pushing him to do it. How can I blame him for that? I can't. I feel he is trying his best right now even if his best is crap.

So I think just an awareness that there is a reason behind this madness would help a lot of couples and families get through it with their marriages intact.

[Not Applicable]

Hormonal yes I definitely think there is something there. My husband has had a low libido for years. It was a bone of contention between us and he blamed me for it, but I always suspected that he may have an issue that he was covering up.

Surprise surprise, it came up quite by chance the other day he admitted he is having performance issues with the other woman, and he actually blamed himself for that (his own mood). That he has little desire for sex in general.

That said he was pretending he was going to be this big Casanova with her a couple months ago.

So yeah, hormones, testosterone, at least they could play some role in the physical aspect of it.

A few weeks ago he was still blaming me, but he actually has turned the blame on himself now. As I said he is a bit more self-aware and maybe honest than the average MLCer.

[xyzcf]

There's an emptiness and a sadness in his eyes.

Yes.

there is a script that people follow and that there really is nothing you can do to snap them out of it

Yes again.

I have been on this site for over 6 years. The similarities in behavior, actions, change in character, loss of morals and values, treating their children with indifference and the contradictions in them are uncanny.

I have met many LBSers both here and in real life, and there is something that we understand about our spouses that family and friends don't see.

Many LBSers when they find Heros Spouse connect with somewhat of a sigh of relief, because something finally makes sense about the destruction of their marriages.

Unfortunately, even for those of us who firmly believe that this is a "dis-ease", due to whatever cause (developmental, biochemical, physiological, stress etc) the pain that it causes for the LBS is enormous.

Knowing more about this does help to accept and continue to love them with agape and unconditional love.

I do think sometimes this is like dementia, in that there is such a  personality change yet many are still able to function and appear normal...and that is the hard part because we know they are not normal, yet they appear to be.

Thanks C4E for you thoughts on this. It is always a good reminder to me.

The dead and sad eyes remind me again that there is something terribly wrong.

[Not Applicable]

For the past 8 months i keep turning to the Heros Spouse articles and the Hearts Blessings ones again and again. These are written by amateurs, women who just happen to have husbands who went through this and are familiar with what others have gone through. But they nail it really. Even the stuff that made no sense to me early on, I can see how right they are. If there wasn't something underlying all this that contributed to the sameness, how could two really non-experts, non-psychologists, non-medical professionals, get it so right??? Yes, outsiders might miss it, but those of us exposed to it, totally can see this is all just too predictable.

[Not Applicable]

Here's an interesting study about testosterone.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26129722

One has to wonder if some of these men in such studies actually were suffering from MLC but they weren't looking at the big picture to see that.

[Velika]

C4E I'm really glad you are posting here, especially as I am more detached but watching my husband's condition appear to get worse in many ways. How many diseases have started out so poorly understood or misunderstood, surrounded by taboos and stereotypes?

Two things you wrote really struck me. (Actually many but two I will point out.) First: the everyday way of talking. This was the same for me. My husband had a very good sense of humor. We were always joking. We were even always singing jokes to each other! As soon as this hit his sense of humor went from this very special gentle humor to cat videos on YouTube. Even when I have tried to bring in humor to the situation not as a way to reconnect but to help us both through it, he seems unable to participate. He often appears incredibly grim.

The second: "I can't." I have read this over and over again on these threads. People saying, "I have to leave." "We have to get a divorce." "It has to be this way." Some people will describe the eyes as well, looking like they are trying to communicate: I can't control this. I have personally seen this. It is scary and heartbreaking to watch, and I agree it is this uncanny experience that often leads me to feel, even when my husband has treated me the worst, that it is not right for me to vilify him, because something is very wrong here.

When you read about MLCers with more clarity, like your husband, it also shows there is some awareness that something is not right -- that something is going on beyond their control. I know one poster's wife knew she could not feel empathy.

My husband's grandfather, great grandfather, father, and sister all did this. A good way to research, I believe, would be to examine the children of MLCers. I think many would participate in a study having watched the incomprehensible behavior of their MLC parent. Periodic physical and psychological tests through midlife could reveal changes to brain function snd chemistry, hormone levels, and/or psychological process.

When this all started my young science-loving son kept saying, "Maybe daddy has a brain parasite." We have a book on all variety of animal parasites and there are some that can turn the infected into a zombie acting in the parasite's favor. It can even be so sophisticated as to create a multi-stage series of behavior to transport the parasite from one species to another or one setting (e.g. land to water) to another. Studies about toxoplasmosis show that this common, relatively benign parasite may have a significant influence on entire populations of people.

I was floored recently when I met a neurologist and homeopath who both, unprompted by me, told me that my husband may have a hereditary brain parasite. I had never heard of this and it was something I meant to look into again. One of the most bizarre things about my husband's family history is that some of the people who had severe "MLC" were not blood relatives. How can this be?

One reason I also believe this is poorly studied, in addition to the affair, is that men are afflicted more than women. Just anecdotally, it seems from what I see on the forum that a LBS man is more likely to have some level of acknowledgement/support from the family that something is wrong. Even when my SIL had MLC, the family got more involved. Many of her family members actively attempted to intervene. But when a man has an affair and traumatized his once-beloved family and even chooses bizarre or untrustworthy affair partner, the family and professionals will often refuse to intervene.

My MLC H and I went to two therapists after bomb drop. Both of them heard a well educated person (me) insist over and over again that this was a sudden and radical personality change. These are both two hallmarks of mental illness. Yet because of the affair, neither referred my husband to a psychiatrist. Neither asked him what medications he was on, or if there was a family history of depression or mental illness. They simply looked at this as a choice, when I feel quite certain if the roles had been reversed, they would have looked at the medical aspect much more closely.

[Roma]

MLC is like a mental illness yet isn't. It's a temporary (yet long temporary) condition we've got try to accept as it is.