1) Do vanisher's ever come back.
Simple question. Not so simple answer.
On this forum it seems like the vanisher's have very little chance of return...but why?
*LBSers of vanisher detach quicker so if vanisher's do return it's often too late.
*LBSers have less to write about so they often don't stay on the forum as long (well until this awesome thread 
)
*No communication = no relationship. This is not the same as little communication but I mean zero for years and years.
In real life my father was a true vanisher for about four years (six years after BD). When he contacted my mother looking for reconciliation she said, "NO WAY!!"
So it does happen.
It is so very normal to wonder what the heck is going on in their heads, how can they be doing this, what stage are they in and the mother of all questions.... will they come back.
We can't answer any of these questions, we can only guess.
You will hear this again and again on this forum but it is really true.
All we can control is ourselves and the best thing to do is to let them go and focus on ourselves.
I agree - as usual - with nah. My own perspective with a vanisher? And I was a really slow learner
I think the brutality of being suddenly abandoned, left in practical limbo and ghosted by your own spouse (and I'm wondering if this is more common with men than women actually, IDK) is almost unbearably painful. It is bewildering and harsh to be rejected so completely and it makes you feel absolutely powerless. Eventually, your need to a) not lose your mind and b) deal with practicalities forces you to make decisions regardless of the vacuum...and then you start to feel a bit less powerless and a bit more in control of some things. For me, I had to push myself to accept an incomprehensible reality with hardly any information to go on in order to survive. Once you start doing that, and because you have nothing to hold on to, you do start to detach quite quickly. It took me a looong time to start to really detach (maybe because I knew once I started, I would be done or because I worried I'd have to rewrite my memories to do it)...so it took me about 18 months maybe. But once I started doing things like getting rid of stuff, moving house...I moved pretty quickly on feeling more and more detached, and less and less hopeful or interested in what my STBXH was doing or thinking.
In terms of being on this forum? With a vanisher, I think it forces the LBS to do all the hard work inside themselves in isolation. To unpick things, look back, ask questions and answer them, try to figure out how to survive, heal and move forward from a big empty silent explosion. I've posted quite a lot because I was late to MLC as a possible explanation, so it coincided with me trying to fight my way (out loud on this forum) from detachment to acceptance to rebuilding the next bit of my life. So, most of my posts are big on musing and light on action or informative MLC examples! (Until today ironically). I just happen to find writing as a way of processing quite helpful, but I completely understand why others might think posing 'Same old silence. No clue. It hurts. Trying to survive and figure it out' gets a bit stale after a few months
No communication = no relationship is absolutely true. In 26 months, I've seen my STBXH 4 times, probably spoken to him on the phone for a total of about 12 hours max and received maybe 20 replies to emails/texts and recently about 6 'thinky' emails initiated by him - what's that, about 1 email a month since BD? an average of 20 mins conversation pcm and a sighting on an average 6-7 months? Not much to talk about here. And as time passes, you do feel that there was your H and now there is a stranger living in a place you don't know, with friends you don't know, maybe hobbies (other than sex with OW!) you don't know about, who wants to be completely different in their tastes and lifestyle than the person you know. I'm not even sure where my STBXH lives. For months I only knew he was alive because his salary was paid into our household account! And if you ever did start talking, the silence has created such a huge list of awkward undiscussables that even having a simple friendly chat would be difficult. Right now, I know more about the life of the lady in my local food shop that I chat to than I do about the life of the man I shared 18 years with! Which is pretty weird, but what he wants and made happen.
I genuinely don't know if that means vanishers are less likely to return. I guess it depends on them. I do think the silent abandonment creates such a huge wall of unfinished business that it would need a lot of courage or desire from the MLCer to turn back and breach it. And courage is not always an obvious gift of MLC, is it? I think for the LBS, a vanisher makes the choice more stark really - let go or drown - and there are just less visible reasons to hope or believe that your spouse has any feelings or interest in you at all.
Most people who knew me and my STBXH were really shocked by what happened. Almost all of them believed that he would 'get better' and come home within a few months. Almost all of them still think that when the divorce is done, reality will 'hit' him and he will show up again within 12 months after it. Very few of them now think that I should even contemplate giving him the time of day if he does. Only two of them would want me to be open to reconciliation if that happened...and one is the priest who married us! Me? I thought he'd come home in the first year too...he almost did...and then ran away again, and started the OW/divorce train running. I did think that he might pull back from the final divorce step when he was dragging his feet...and then I started to question if I could even find the energy if he did. I don't believe he will magically hit an awakening after the divorce is done...I could be wrong, but I don't think so. He might feel an itch of unfinished business but I don't think he is brave enough or will value what he threw away enough...if he did, it would really hurt him so it would be much easier to keep running and not look back.
And if I'm wrong, and he pops up in 2 years time for instance, like nah's father? Well, being open-minded, I suppose IDK...but I expect to have another intimate relationship by then (because I really need to have sex before I forget how to do it
) and, although I can forgive him from a distance, I don't know if I could forgive myself if I chose to have a man in my life who I knew could do what he has done to me. I think I wouldn't feel ok about myself if I did that...if I trusted someone who I knew had literally been indifferent to someone threatening to kill me or my having cancer surgery. Loving compassion is one thing; foolish masochism is another. And I find it tremendously sad, really the biggest tragedy of this, that I can't remember my H just as he was for 18 years without having to also balance it with the stark reality of who my STBXH has been for the last 2 years and may be for the rest of his life. It is a sad waste of a good person and a good loving relationship, but it is as it is.
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
Anyone else have a vanisher? 13
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