[Roma]

Hi Speed,

Something happened in your W childhood and because it was never addressed correctly her mind regressed to the age it happened so she can finally heal.

It really has nothing to do with you.

[Velika]

Speed Racer, I have asked myself this many times. What do single people do when they have a midlife crisis?

A neighbor told me that a close girlfriend of here, who is single, is acting exactly like my husband -- but to her close girlfriends. She lashed out, alienated herself, acted so poorly even her own mom changed the locks.

My neighbor said, like me, she initially treated as an authentic problem and tried to tackle as such. She slowly realized her friend was irrational and she could not get through to her.

I too find it uncanny how the person fixates in the spouse as the source of happiness in most cases, however. I have heard this compared to PPD whereby the woman, who is severely chemically imbalanced and overwhelmed, erroneously assumes that her baby is responsible, and then either rejects or attempts to harm the baby.

I am someone who thinks this is at least in part neurological, maybe like major depression or bipolar. Just thinking out loud, maybe the affair creates a false comparison that then allows the MLCer to blame the spouse for their problems?

Also, I think we all to a certain extent have longterm and short-term grievances against our spouses. These are manageable. If MLC involves chemical imbalance maybe this becomes out of whack.

I believe I had a mini-crisis in my early twenties due to birth control pills. I wasn't married, but I ended up being very frustrated and bringing up all sorts of things with my parents. (And I was in therapy at the time.) While some of these were authentic complaints, the situation completely resolved when I stopped taking the pills. Essentially, I was unknowingly chemically imbalanced. My problems didn't somehow get "processed"; I just experienced them differently because I was not under the same chemical influence.

[Beacon]

I believe MLC is a culmination of things such as age, hormones, neurological functioning, issues from the past resurfacing. All these things seem to come together at a mid point in life, that is why when MLC is discussed it is given a general age from say 35-50. Everyone is different of course. I saw in my W that the actual thought of hitting the age 40 resulted in depression and then perhaps the hormones flooding kicked in and with that issues from the past resurfacing. It's all a very complicated and yet still a "new" study for science. Scientists are still trying to figure out the brain and it's psychological functioning to this day and perhaps in years to come more people with MLC will be willing to be studied (if they ever admit to it  )

Overall it is definitely a time in ones life in which there is a lot of self reflection and learning. Velika makes a good point as to what happens when single people have a crisis, it's the same except there is not a spouse to project blame. The fact that people come out of Mid Life crises is a sign that this is not an issue that can't be worked through. Although wouldn't all us LBSr's like to know what in the mind of our MLCr's would make them come back to reality. I honestly see it as a mental illness. I see my W and say to myself "Wow she is really struggling in every aspect of her life". I guess that is what keeps me in the standing pool.

I don't know if that helped any but I wanted to weigh in with my opinion.

[sisyphus]

Speed, I have had similar questions. My W didn't abandon our kids or her parents or quit her job or run naked through the streets. She mostly just decided she wasn't happy with me and started having an affair.

I can't get square with it.

[MyBrainIsBroken]

SR, your wife is not living fulltime with her children anymore. She has abandoned them. If most or all of the characteristics of a typical MLCer fit her, most likely she is going through an MLC. It may not look like it but the MLCer is in a lot of pain, they are unable to accept that there might be something wrong with them, and the spouse is the closest one so it's natural for them to assume it's the spouse's fault. Plus, they have a strong desire to run and if you do anything that looks to them like you're getting in the way, they're going to lash out at you. Right now your wife is trying to run away from a raging fire and you're trying to drag her back into it.

[sisyphus]

I will say this. My W blames me for everything. Most of our conversation that I assume could be considered the beginning of R mean she proceeds to tell me everything I did wrong.

Today, she told me that when I wrote my wedding vows and read them aloud, it destroyed her. She said I had promised not to write them and instead, shoot from the hip. I'm a paid writer.

This is the ish I deal with now.

[Velika]

Today, she told me that when I wrote my wedding vows and read them aloud, it destroyed her. She said I had promised not to write them and instead, shoot from the hip. I'm a paid writer.

Our wedding went wrong too. I learned shortly after bomb drop that we did not dance at our wedding. When I pointed out that we did dance, I learned that we did not dance "enough."

[sisyphus]

Ha, Velika, that sure sounds bonkers. I wrote down all the ways I loved her and spoke them aloud and that was an unforgivable act of betrayal. Lol. It's crazy.

I said "You realize you were sleeping with someone behind my back, lying to me, the kids, and our families for eight months and I had to find out?"

I mean, what the hell are we comparing here?

I told her I am not the person to come to when you're feeling down about our failed marriage. I'm not going to let you off the hook.

[Velika]

I mean, what the hell are we comparing here?

!!! Exactly.

[Dji76]

If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck... It's probably a mlc lol. I think wanting an answer is tied to having an expectation, at least it was for me. "If its mlc I just need to wait 2-7 years and she go back to normal and come home." Thats not how it works and I was setting myself up to be disappointed.