Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums Midlife Crisis Stimulus-Response: The Experiment Continues

Just a thought train that started today:

I was thinking back to previous relationships I've had over the years, how I felt about them while I was in them, and how I felt about them when they were "over".
(This is high school through college and prior to GUBU.)


Granted, these were ones that I ended, but when I did, I was very calm, decisive, willing to work through whatever needed to be done.

I wasn't angry, resentful, feeling a need to blame my partners, hurt them, or anything else. I wanted to make it simple and clean, with the least amount of pain possible.

I felt no need to lie, to hide my activities, to be sneaky or hurtful.

And there was never another person involved.
It was just me making a decision that long term, this particular R wasn't going to be right for me.

There were very significant and easily defined reasons, and that was that.
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I can't imagine that I would have somehow had to blame THEM for my wanting to break up. It makes no sense.
What I did do was very calmly state what I was doing, why, wishing them well, and making it as easy on them as possible.

It was clear to me that it was MY decision, that it was THE RIGHT DECISION FOR ME, and there was not going to be anything that would change my mind.

I was done. Done. Done. And crystal clear on why, when, and how.

Contrast this with our MLC friends.

They are confused, angry at US while they're the ones behaving irrationally, picking fights with us, being weird as hell...cruel, bizarre...and worse.


I mentioned this recently in my thread.
The way our MLC spouses are behaving, you'd almost believe that WE had dumped THEM.

All the crazy stuff they're doing is like what I did one time when I got dumped by my first love.
I acted a bit wacky, tried to make him jealous, tried to find relief in the arms of someone else...

I don't know. It just seems to me like our WAW/MLC spouses are far from being "DONE" as they like to say they are.
That they are far from crystal clear on what they're doing and why.

Which is probably why they can't sit down and have an adult discussion about the real issues, why realistically it will never work between us, what their plans are for the future, how it's thought out, and how they need to do this for rational reasons.

BECAUSE IT'S ALL A BIG PILE OF MLC POO, THAT'S WHY!!!!

(Yes, I know we ALL know this but it was an interesting thought.)

Anybody else have thoughts on this?

---GGG

Wow GG,
My W has many of the kind of issues your H has. Childhood abandonment, having to take care of her mother after dad left, she even has abuse issues (male babysitter who ended up killing himself many years later). I too knew about these issues and made many allowances over the years of our M. Now, I too am expected to pay even more (and my D's as well). I really thought she was strong to overcome them, but she never really did.

It's not an excuse. We all have issues and she is allowing the man (her dad) who hurt her and her family back in and listening to him when he tells her that she needs to leave the M. That really hurts as here I did my best to help her get over these issues and she runs to the person most responsible for them! I don't think my W will get through her MLC as long as her father stays in her life. Amazing how much power people give their abusers. It seems like so many of the LBS's are the ones who gave up more of what they wanted in the R. Almost like the WAS just can't get enough from the S to fill the void and it just gets so big they "blame" them for not filling it the way they have throughout the M.

Hang in there GG, I think you will be fine no matter what happens.

And YES oh YES on having those same thought about the MLCer! My W is very proud of the fact that she ended EVERY previous R she had ever been in. She just ended things like you said you did. Now she can't speak to me without running around screaming like a 4 year old!

GGG, you just posted what I’ve been afraid off in regards to my H (big sigh…)
– My H said at BD time that he didn’t want to hurt me, just he was not in love with me anymore. He also was not (and is not) trying to make it difficult for me.
– He didn’t lie, he just went away, having his own life from that point of time.

- And he didn’t have OW at the time, at least not known.
– This is what H told me too.

So, I guess you just confirmed what I’ve been thinking, that H is not in MLC, he is just DONE. Oh boy…

You can't compare short high school / college relationships to a long term marriage. After 2 or 3 DECADES of mutual commitment to each other, we have long proven to be compatible with our spouses. Not so with your school flings.

The fact that the M was good for so long does not escape the MLC'er, regardless of what they say. I'd even say they DETEST this fact... which is why they have to resort to writing history.

Did you hear many complaints prior to crisis? Yeah, me neither.

Ending a decent long term M is not easy, even for those who want to convince themselves it's what they need to do to find what they are searching for. This is why so many of them procrastinate on the D. They really aren't so sure it's the answer.

It's also why if we can outlast their crisis, we likely will have an even better marriage.

Bright,


Don't take anything I said as "proof" of ANYTHING!!!

This was just my personal experience where I was trying to understand why GUBU has been acting the bizarre way he has been about our M.

We have had ZERO adult discussion.
He REFUSED THERAPY to explain anything to me, not for reconciliation, just to help me cope with the trauma.
Nope. Not happening.
When I tried to talk to him, I swear it was like talking to either a teenager or a little boy.
He would put his fingers in his ears and go "La la la la la..." I kid you not!


Every "talk" just turned into blaming me, nastiness, and the most incredible excuses and rationalizations ever!
Which is why the DBing strategy of "No R talks" was right on the money.

I did say at one point:
"Well, if the best you can come up with about why I'm so awful is that I have three boxes of dishwashing detergent and canvas shopping bags hanging by the front door, then I guess I'm way ahead!"

(Which p*ssed him off, of course. )

I was only thinking about the difference between ending a relationship for the "right" reasons:
* impossible long-term compatibility: personality/values/temperament
* different goals for the future: children, religion, money, family, location, employment, lifestyle
* real deal-breakers, abuse, neglect, serial infidelity, addiction, violence
As opposed to:
"I'm not IN LOVE with you any more/we've grown apart/I have OW/OM."
_____________________________________________________________


As for your H, I have had others end relationships with me, and I have seen that cold, door closing behavior.
The eyes get dead: "it's over", it's clear that it's final and that's that.

For some men, that's how they have to do it.
Serve it to you ICE COLD.
Because they need to harden their hearts to hurt you.
It's not ABOUT hurting you or getting even, or cake-eating, or making YOU pay. It's just time to cut losses and move on.

That is a huge contrast to the MLC "It's OVER" song and dance.
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But these were not LONG TERM RELATIONSHIPS, as ForeverYoung said.
These were "discovery" R, where we were feeling each other out to see if there was a future.
Over time, it became clear that there wasn't going to be a long term R.
Maybe we both weren't on the same timeline about ending it, but it was pretty clear that it was going to be a dead-end.

Which, looking back, is why there wasn't a tremendous amount of emotion on my end when they dumped me. I wasn't all that invested, either, and probably would have ended it myself given a certain amount of time.

There is NO WAY there isn't deep emotion and conflict involved while ending a serious, lasting, relationship with someone where there are few-none of the "deal-breakers" listed above.

A lack of internal conflict on his part would be ABNORMAL.

And as we know, "abnormal" thinking/emotion is the hallmark of MLC!!!
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So, BrightFuture, there is nothing in what I said that negates your H being in MLC or conflicted about what he's doing.

If you listened to my H's co-workers, (which I don't), he is CRYSTAL CLEAR on the fact that his M is OVER, and it would be best if I just signed and moved on because HE WILL NEVER CHANGE HIS MIND.

Well, that's what Mr. MoneyMaker likes to portray to them because he needs to look powerful and in control.

They're not the ones getting texts like I did last night about him being "sad"... etc..

And since he filed he has not said one word about moving ahead, changing anything, getting his own place, helping me move... in fact, he gets freaked out if I contact my lawyer, and I think this might be because he's worried that I'm moving ahead and HE IS NOT READY!!!!

________________________________

Each person is going to handle it differently.
If your H is a real calculating type, he might keep everything close and not deviate whatsoever. That doesn't mean he's not going nuts internally.

My H also stated that he didn't want "to hurt" me, among other things, yet he kept doing things to me that he would have confronted any other man for doing to a woman he cared for, his wife in particular!

I often want to ask him:
"If you were GUBU's friend, what advice would YOU give him about how he is going about things?"

Not that he'd listen.

But I'm pretty sure he'd tell GUBU that he was making a real mess and was going to pay for it the rest of his life.... Not that it matters, because TODAY he "NEEDS"... something.


---GGG
Who is going to have an awesome day in this unseasonably cool August weather!

Hi GG,
I got the same stuff from my W. It got so bad that once she said that she HAD to leave me because she "hated the way I chew my food"! I got I watch too much TV, I DIDN'T go out enough with my friends without her, that she had to "find my joy" and of course she couldn't do that with me around, even though I never once stopped her from trying new things and even backed her doing things without me.

I once asked her outright what she would tell a friend who was doing the same thing she was, ending her M and breaking up her family for the reasons she says. All I got was that deer in the headlights look and the good old MLC scow (the one you get when they know you're right and hate you for it). I so avoided R talks with her and when she started them I would just say "IMO, It's not me and not your M that is the problem", that way I didn't have to say what I really thought...that it was her MLC issues that happened long before I met her because that would be the last thing she'd want to hear! At one point she said "It's not me and not the M..I'm going to put that on a T-shirt!". What did she want from me? I think what she really wanted was ammunition to use against me. If I said it was her issues from the past she would have just said that she didn't feel this way until now, etc. If I said it was her depression/anxiety, she would say she was never depressed before she was M to me (yeah, and she never was depressed before she lived in TX or had kids or owned a small dog, what does that mean?).

When the MLCer is still in replay, no R talk will make a bit of difference. If they are open to what you say, 2 weeks later they won't even remember the convo. anyway, If they spew, it will be all those things that they spew that they will remember and just reinforce us as being at "fault". Even if we were able to tell them exactly what was going on and what the real problem was, they would hate us for being right! (nothing an MLCer hates more than LBS being right about anything!

The hallmark of MLC to me is that NOTHING that they state as a "reason" they must end a M would be a deal breaker in a normal mind! Part of them understands this, hence the holding the fingers in the ears and saying "La, LA, LA"!!

GGal, I have been wondering about this myself.

There is a book called "Runaway Husbands" by Vikki Stark, that describes the cold and efficient ways some men suddenly up and leave a marriage for good.

One day they are loving and attentive, the next they completely pull up roots, walk out and never look back. They almost always have another relationship lined up, and have been spending so much time planning their future without their wives that they do not consider themselves to be in any kind of relationship with their wives.

So it's done. Quickly. Coldly.

Typically there is no dance, no back-and-forth.

But it didn't really fit an MLC situation (much less my situation) where the MLCer expresses remorse, expresses blame, tells you he's going to file for D, then never files for D, or in my case, actually files for D-- and then let me know he had to cry afterward because I "pushed" him into it.

The blame is possibly the worst part of the MLC. Betrayal hurts like a mother, but to be blamed for that betrayal... it's abusive.

And to validate/affirm their feelings, that's the most difficult part. Affirming their feelings, without agreeing with them. Validating them, when no validation of your own grief and turmoil is forthcoming.

Well, no validation other than, "You know, I'm hurting, too. I'm losing my best friend!"

I actually had a conversation just like this with Mr. Gritty, before I learned not to have R talks. The background: we were friends with a couple whose female half is the BFF of OW. He's still friends with them, I'm not.

ME: If OW's BFF came to you and said, 'Mr. Gritty, I made a mistake when I married my husband! I really have these strong feelings for you, instead. And I want to explore these feelings with you.' Would you take her up on the offer?

MR. GRITTY: Of course not! That would betray both of them! I would never do such a thing.

ME: Of course not. And you would probably counsel her, say something like, 'I care about both you and your husband. He's a great guy. You're confused right now and about to make a mistake. Don't do it! You need to go to counseling, or see talk to your pastor, or something.'

MR. GRITTY: Damn straight.

ME: Yes, because you are a loyal friend. So how should our mutual friend, OW, have reacted when you went to her and told her you had feelings for her and wanted to leave your 33 year relationship with me and be with her instead?

MR. GRITTY: I can't talk to you! You twist everything around! It's not the same!

Oh, boy! The good old "you twist everything around!". Response # 4 in the MLC list of things to say when your LBS says something that makes sense!