LBS Conundrum

[Truegritter]

I posting this here and in MLC because there is some GREAT advice getting pulled up from older posts...

That got lost with the passage of time.

I am not putting this here to start a debate because as I have reconciled all this against my own experience I find we all are really saying the same advice and have the same goal ...

Help the LBS find their way.

In hopes of clarifying...at least the way I see it:

MLC (fog) vs WAS

And…Bo Peep doesn’t work.

Leave them alone and they’ll come home. Patiently wait until they decide to come back?

Denial? Yup.

But not the way it's been descibed in the past IMO.

Denial that you are afraid to look in the mirror and answer the question.

Is my W leaving because she can’t stand me or

She can’t stand herself.

Most likely WAS is the former or maybe it runs along a continuum.

SO if you think all the man up tactics you try….the “don’t put up with crap behavior” tactic is going to change anything…

You want your W to respect you? You are entitled to it? Why?

Look at the man you were in your M. Before she decided to disrespect you.

NOW you are going to try tactics to show her she should respect you.

NOW your respect is measured by demanding she respect you and how she reacts or doesn’t react to your demands?

You’re Bo Peeping.

If I do this…she will respect me. What if she doesn’t? Where are you?

Unless you have the courage to look in the mirror and be honest with yourself then you will be the victim of your W’s decision to leave you and her continued choice not to come back to you.

Until you respect yourself… she won’t respect you.

She thinks its Holloween and you got your “I am not a lazy, a$$hole, fill in the ______ husband” costume on.

Manning up ain’t got anything to do with HER. Your NUTS are not a function of her. You are not entitled to her respect unless you deserve it.

Don’t get me wrong I believe in boundaries I just think they are tools to help you gain your sanity and find your way.

In the end, you should not attach your self worth or respect to how someone respects your boundaries.

They will or they won’t and then you live with the consequences. Both of you.

MLC? Crisis?

Does it exist? I don’t care if anyone thinks it exists. I know that some people have emotional/spiritual/inner conflict crisis in their life.

Some people in crisis might have a mental disorder that IS recognized by mental health professionals. So call it what you want. It is a challenge in your M.

Is it an excuse for bad behavior?

No.

Is it a reason?

Yup.

Are some LBS in denial? Yes. Unfortunately, they are here on each of the boards on this forum.

MLC vs WAS ----> Answer the question for yourself. Is your S leaving because they can’t stand YOU or THEMSELVES? Or somewhere in between? Are they engaging in self destructive behavior? There is a difference.

What if Little Bo Peep was a real b!tch and didn’t feed or take care of her sheep? Would they come home? Even if she went to look for them and tried to put a fence around them. Would they stay under those conditions?

Is it (crisis) an excuse to be in denial… not to see it for what it is and not to look at oneself?

Absolutely not.

The first advice given in MLC is no different than anywhere else:

Live your life, look in the mirror and be honest with your own failures, you can’t control another person, only yourself.
Detach. Protect yourself legally, financially and emotionally and live your life like they are not coming back.


In the end, your success is defined by your choices and how they align with your core. If your S wants to be with THAT person.

Then your M has a shot.

If not, then you can live your life without them and call yourself a success regardless of their choice.

[AntoniaB]

True, I have a question: how do you interpret things when the XH is doing this: "I had an MLC and now it's over. My MLC showed me that you were not the right marriage partner for me. My new girlfriend is. Now I'm a WAS who simply made the choice to be true to my desires. It's not you. You're a great person. I just think she is a better choice for me now. I'm sorry that I went behind your back and cheated and dropped this bomb on you, but it's what I needed to do to be true to myself."

My XH is not, to my knowledge, engaging in behavior destructive to himself. He claims he drinks far less than before. He works still and is doing some after-school tutoring for extra money. He doesn't look like hell. He looks healthy. He has broken away almost entirely from all our mutual friends and now has her friends as his friends. He lives in her world. He is starting over completely, getting an apt. now, building a life with her.

One day, he was telling me let's renew our vows. 3 days later, drops the bomb, and that was that. 8 months later, divorce.

MLC or WAS? Or is this what you're saying is the continuum, it's both?

But I do think you're absolutely right about the advice above.

I just know that with complete detachment as we are in now, I don't see my S ever wanting to be with me again as he has replaced our life together with an entirely different one, virtually overnight.

[AntoniaB]

Oh and True, by the way, the quoted part above, my XH has said all of that word for word to me. That's not my interpretation. That's his "explanation."

[Truegritter]

Antonia

I think that whether you believe he is MLC or not is not a black and white thing.

My W there is NO question in my mind. She hasn't said she wants D. She engaged in a lot of self destructive behavior

so I guess it was an easy one.

Are you saying that your answer to whether or not you should stand for your M would change if he is MLC or not?

I think if you see confusion, depression etc. and not just one of those things but a number of the signs listed in the resources that he may be ...

That's his "explanation."

I believe him and you should too. Because THAT is his current reality.

YOU have to decide what to do here. Stand or not. And for how long.

IMO it doesn't matter whether its MLC or not. We can only go by other's experience on this stuff. The people who post here.

Will he wake up one day? Maybe. My first W (I have been divorced from her for 11 years now) was a WAS.

Now she tells me I was the only true love she ever had.

11 years...later.

No answers for you TonyB. Just your own.

I believe understanding all this is key for the LBS and the healing process...

Through the pain and sacrifice of your time while doing it you find a whole hell of alot about yourself and life and love.

Just my opinion.

[Mila]

TG - I like your post...lots of wisdom in what you say...I'm sure that most of us mused along the same lines, but you actually put it on paper (screen), thank you for that. All of us here should think about some of the points you made...

[MHL]

Grit,

Glad you brought this back up because it is definitely a question I remember asking myself 2 or 3 months post bomb.

Is my spouse a WAS or is she MLC???

I think we want to categorize our spouses so that we can take the "appropriate course of action" based on our own diagnosis of what the f*ck happened to them.

Almost like a recepie.......

If WAS's were "chicken" follow this recepie for cooking a chicken dinner.

If MLCer's were "steak" follow this recepie for cooking a steak dinner.

The thing is the cook (LBS) should be looking at themselves first, before attempted any recepie.

The conudrum is that we LBS's usually have to "look" at ourselves within the context of the marriage first, because that is what we view as the immediate problem and it is ultimately what sheds the light on our own problems.

TIME.....ahhhh the most important ingridient.......with time, we LBS's realize (if we are doing the work correctly) that the bigger MORE IMPORTANT problem is our very OWN LIVES and that is where the REAL PROBLEM is.

Here is where it gets interesting and for me in my situation it is actually a little paradoxical.

I have done the hard work and looked at myself and discovered the larger problems in my life.........I am a much healthier person now........this is ultimately the goal of DBing, right???

Well, I can tell you that now I have done the hard work it really does not matter to me whether my XW is WAS or MLC, I just don't care. I am now healthy enough to reject any of that nonsense in my life.....no matter who it is coming from.

The paradox is that it took my spouse's affairs and MLC crap to get me to "wake up" myself, to do the work, and become a better partner in the marriage........in becoming a better partner in the marriage, I actually have the ability to "leave" the marriage and be okay.

I have sometimes found myself wondering how I would have handled things given my knowledge, work, self-examination, and experience now.........would I even stand at all for my marriage??

I think about this as I enter into a new relationship with another woman post divorce. I ask myself, "What if she were to go astray for whatever reason, what would I do???"

Live your life, look in the mirror and be honest with your own failures, you can't control another person, only yourself.
Detach. Protect yourself legally, financially and emotionally and live your life like they are not coming back.


In the end, your success is defined by your choices and how they align with your core. If your S wants to be with THAT person.

Then your M has a shot.

If not, then you can live your life without them and call yourself a success regardless of their choice.

This right up here sums it all up but you really have to "live" it......there is no faking it.

This up here is now who I am at my core......for me I had to go through the very thing that I now have the power to walk away from if it happens again in the future. I wonder if I had "saved" my marriage would I be in the same place I am at today.

It really is a a conudrum because you have to be able to do this.......

....the “don’t put up with crap behavior” tactic.....

in order to NOT have to implement this....

....the “don’t put up with crap behavior” tactic.....

If you can properly do the tactic then you probably don't need the tactic.

[MHL]

Through the pain and sacrifice of your time while doing it you find a whole hell of alot about yourself and life and love.

Just my opinion.

and a good opinion it is.

[dl443322]

Hey True, look at you, all growed up and so wise. LOL!

Hiya Misser!

At the beginning, I often wondered which my exh was. He had an affair, lost weight, etc. But, he was never nasty, said he wanted a divorce but never did anything about it for a long time, etc.

Still don't know for sure. Doesn't matter.

Here's the thing. No marriage or the two people in it are ever perfect.
There is always room for change, for growth. However, it is often not until it is too late, that we realize it.

But, we kind of get a heads up.

It is up to us whether we use the knowledge to do what we need to do.

I have posted many times that it doesnt matter what the heck your spouse is. What matters is if you are going to take advantage of the information you now have and use it to become the person you were meant to be.

We are given a tremendous gift. I would not have traded any of the pain for what I have learned.

So, WAS, MLC or crazy, take the info and run with it.

We got a wake up call. In the process, we get to learn who we are, what we want, what we will accept.

If you get a new marriage on top of that, great.

If not, man, you get to live your life with eyes wide open.

Make it a good one!

[AntoniaB]

What all of you above are saying is really good for me to hear. See my family and friends all around me insist that to them, I am in the best place I've ever been in my life. That I'm showing incredible strength and I'm showing that I'm happy and compassionate and caring and nurturing for others and confident. That for all my life, I was so wrapped up in my XH, that I never let this other stuff out. And they are right. Everything that was "hiding" in me, a ton of unrealized potential, came out when he left and shattered me. And these people are TERRIFIED that he will come back at some point because they believe that the dynamic between he and I is such that I won't be able to hang onto who I am now if I am with him.

Interesting side note: in the past few days, my XH unblocked me on fb and I could suddenly see a bit into his new life. Guess what happened? Nightmares. Two nights in a row, I had terrible nightmares, in both cases, where either my home was being broken into or I was attacked. In both cases, I was desperate in the dreams to have him back to "take care of me." On top of that, I found myself coming home from work wishing to see his car in the driveway again. I haven't felt that in like 7 months. I realized that all this came from seeing his life and him again, even through pictures only. So today I blocked him on fb. Problem solved. Peace in my life returned.

When I am connected to him, I am not the best person I can be. That's something I've learned through this.

I wonder if we eventually brought the worst out in each other because of our codependency.

So I guess that regardless of whether this is MLC or WAS, the best thing for me to do is live my life entirely cut off from him, and if it's in the stars for us to return to one another, it will be so in 5 years or something when we are both very different people. And you know maybe when we are those people, we wouldn't even be attracted to one another. Who knows?

I don't know if that means I'm "standing" or not. I guess standing means I don't get into something with someone else. For now I just don't think that's a smart move on my part as I'm still healing. I guess when I'm done healing I will know it, but it's too soon.

Thanks for this good topic.

[Truegritter]

I don't know if that means I'm "standing" or not. I guess standing means I don't get into something with someone else. For now I just don't think that's a smart move on my part as I'm still healing. I guess when I'm done healing I will know it, but it's too soon.

Why not call it living your life?

I am in the same spot. I don't want a relationship right now.

First of all I am not divorced.

So I guess there might still be ...

a chance.

BUT

I will not go back to the M I was in.

So my W has a better than average chance with me because right now

I am still married to her!

What a lucky gal.

If she only knew it...