I really don't think being an MLC LBS is a competitive sport! Like Nah said, I have seen lots of situations that folks with live-in spouses or boomerangs have had to cope with and sometimes felt profoundly grateful that I haven't had to deal with that too. I have also felt a kind of unhealthy strange envy when boomerangs say something - nice or not - that gives the LBS some insight they choose to share here. I've felt grateful not to be protecting children from this painful chaos...and envious that children might be an 'excuse' to maintain some limited contact.
My sense of what life is like with a vanisher...or mostly vanisher with the odd pop up, from my own experience only:
- I knew my H was self-harming and suicidal for about 4 months. But he was still working so no-one believed me. I couldn't even run him a bath or hold him. The only way I knew he wasn't dead was that no-one had called me and if his monthly salary showed in the house account.
- It's really hard to guess what is going on because you don't directly see a lot of the odd behaviour. You just know they have run away and that this is unlike your previously loving H. It maybe makes it easier to doubt it is MLC and when you find out there is an OW/OM everyone tells you it's a 'normal' marriage breakdown even though your gut is screaming that it isn't
- It is like they have died, but you have no body, and your grief feels unacceptable to other people
- You feel such complete rejection, as if you and years of marriage weren't even worth a note or a conversation (with hindsight you realise that it would have been bats$it crazy MLC lingo so probably pretty pointless). There are no signs at all that they care whether you are alive or dead. You start to feel invisible.
- Even as a vanisher, because you are married, you have practical stuff that needs to be done. It is very difficult to do that, or manage a separation, or even a sensible divorce with someone who refuses to communicate with you at all. For months. You begin to think it would be easier practically if they had died because you're trapped in limbo...and then feel guilty
- As time goes on, you feel less and less hope that they will return and more doubt that there is any point in standing. You feel like an idiot. Other people think you're an idiot and tell you so often.
- Detaching is easier in some ways because you're forced to do NC by them doing NC. Initially this is crazy making and you send endless texts/emails. Which make you feel pathetic and abused every time they are ignored. Detaching is also harder because they are alive in your head as they were because you haven't been faced with the reality of what they are now.
- You realise how easy it is to put on a mind reading hat obsessively and make assumptions about the silence. That's a good and bad thing depending on how you're cycling and the assumptions you choose. Both make you feel insane and nothing seems to change, because you don't see enough to know if your spouse is progressing at all. It is like spitting in the wind. For months. And your head becomes your own worst enemy.
- Being left with no reason is hard. Being told someone wants a divorce by text is truly s$itty.
That's just a snapshot from me. I don't know what difference if any it makes to have one type or another. With hindsight, and info from the financial disclosures, I think my H was a low-energy silent wallower at first, driven more by fear. Then, after a brief t-and-g few weeks, he became a vanishing high-energy replayer, still silent, more about control and lies, but with OW and a mad spending habit. Now, I have no idea...he has gone back to silence after a brief flurry of odd t-and-g's. Occasionally, my instinct has told me when it feels like an angry silence or a thinky one. Gut instinct now? Probably a bit thinky or guilty. But could equally be that he barely remembers his life pre-BD or my name and is happily planning his next marriage, and everyone is right and no MLC involved...it is impossible to know. His D is almost done.
T: 18 M: 12 (at BD) No kids.
H diagnosed with severe depression Oct 15. BD May 16. OW since April 16, maybe earlier. Silent vanisher mostly.
Divorced April 18. XH married ow 6 weeks later.
"Option A is not available so I need to kick the s**t out of Option B" Sheryl Sandberg