Hello all. I've been through the site and much of the archives over the past two weeks and this is my first posting. I'm still struggling with the acronyms, but I get MLC and LBS. Anywho...
My Lovely Wife is going through what I believe to be MLC. As I've read from many of you, there were in my case, signs of what was coming and then July of last year is when I really knew something was wrong. I responded in kind with frustration because I was hurt and being selfish I responded not with understanding but with frustration. I've never called my wife names or physically harmed her. I am guilty of ignoring her emotional needs. Of treating her like a buddy for the past 10 years and not a partner.
The first week of August last year my wife went into withdraw and lockdown on me. No words spoken and left the home when the kids went to bed just to be away from me. I did not lash out at her. I immediatly went into "fix" mode and offered her space filled with loving words and kindness. All the while I was hurt down to my core in ways I've never known possible. Haven't we all?
Interestingly to me, I never looked into MLC until I approached my sister-in-law a bit over two months back and told her I didn't know how much more I could take. I have a better relationship with all of my in-laws than I do with my own family. We both cried, me for my children and knowing that I would not see much of the in-laws as I am an introvert. Not one week after talking to my sister-in-law, a switch inside me flipped and my pain is seemingly gone.... but I get ahead of myself.
From the beginning I have defended my wife and I still do to this day. It's just that now it's a bit easier. My sister-in-law spoke of how she felt my wife was going through MLC. I started looking into it and at least one shoe fits rather well. I was pleased to note that with the exception of talking to my sister-in-law, I had been doing rather well in some of the actions/decisions I've made over the last year. Not knowing what I was doing I did make mistakes as we are bound to do when someone we love is going through MLC. I no longer reach out to family about my wife. We all know something is wrong, but I know now that I'm the enemy and I'm not helping my case by shedding light on an issue my wife does not or can't address right now.
We have two wonderful kids which are the reason she hasn't left yet. I did find the folder back in November containing legal separation documents. I was trying to do something nice for my wife and found the folder by accident and handed it to her. I did not react in anger. I told her I was doing my best and that I was sorry it wasn't enough. I've not seen the folder since, but I'm sure it's around. It makes no difference to me today like it did 3 or 5 months ago.
We had an anniversary last week and the night before we talked, which is rare this past year. She was not mean to me at all and I respect her honesty. She resents me. Told me several times through the conversation as it applied. But I'm not the same person today that I was to months ago. Today it bothers me none what she said of her feelings. Knowing what I do about all this, I understood it in my own way. For the duration of the 3 hour conversation, I was mindful of listening to her, I avoided the words "understand", "love", "please", and "change". I am not pathetic as she has seen me this past year. I have found my detachment and hearing the words from her mouth "I love you, but I don't think I'm in love with you" gave me an inner smile. I was humored by it - not being cruel, just seeing more clearly now.
I do not believe there is another person in her life. I'm not naieve, I just know that since I've found my detachment that if something feels right, it most likely is. My gut instinct is what's keeping me happy these past two months. I'm smiling so much more and I really am happy even if my wife can't see it or believe me. She's not happy with me at all right now, but she's told me I don't deserve this so I know she's at war with herself. I'm helping her the only way that has felt right and that is time, patience and peace. I try to keep up the house as best I can and I do it when she's not around so I don't give her the impression that I'm trying to "show" her I'm a changed person. She either will or will not notice when she gets home after work of wherever. No worries from me.
I do not love the person sleeping in the living room, but I am deeply in love of the beautiful person inside her. I do not expect to see my wife emerge for another year or two, but I suspect I may see glimpses of her in that time. I believe in her and yet I no longer fear losing her. I do not know if she will follow through with filing for divorce, but I really have no opinion on it. It's surreal feeling this way and whenever I try to make sense of it I can't stop smiling. I don't know what to tell any of you, only that I'm here, not in sadness at my situation but as someone who's found peace of mind. I hope that perhaps I can help with some meager words of wisdom in that we are all victims of MLC, I just happen to be on the outside looking in.
I've read and reread your thread 3 times. Figuring out what I want to say. Not to give offense. You seem to be a very sane, sensible person. Although I realize you only describe your feelings over the last two months, it seems that you, yourself are in emotional lockdown. You call it detachment, it seems to me to be repression. Not that everyone has to scream, cry and tear their hair out to be emotionally cleansed and detached; just that your thread sounds . . . . Cold. Yes, I can see where you might be an introvert, and that colors your emotions in regard to your marital situation.
Question: Would you and/or your wife consider counseling?
I do not expect to see my wife emerge for another year or two,...
1. Expectations will result in the following:
a) disappointment b) pain c) both a and b
We all did/do it. It must be human nature. Try to put expectations out of your mind as quickly as the thought of such occurs.
2. Avoid estimating any timeframe. If you cannot, Use the military cost contracting estimate formula I was taught years ago:
estimate x 2.5 = actual amount
If you're estimating 1 to 2 years, you're looking at 2.5 to 5 years.
"Hope for the best but plan for the worst." Advice from a damned fine surgeon (looks and abilities) just post bomb.
"Fear is the mind-killer" Muad'Dib Me 53, XW 44, DD 14, DS 12 Bomb and OM 12/15/06 Separated 01/02/07 Divorced 05/13/08 X married OM(OMH) 08/2009 Married 06/09/13
I have to say, I was right with you until I read the line that Sleeper quoted...
Expectations, will kill you in this.
However your suspicion that you will see your W occasionally is pretty accurate.
IMO (in my opinion), women seem to handle MLC a little differently than men do. I am not sure why other than the possibility that women are more outwardly emotional by nature than men.
There are some really great men here who have survived this, not all by reconciling but still survived and thrived. I am sure they will be along soon enough... try to get to know them.
If nothing else, journal here, know that you are not alone in what you are experiencing.
And believe it or not, many of us here are introverts
"Acceptance doesn't mean resignation. It means understanding that something is what it is and there's got to be a way through it."--Michael J. Fox
I agree with Sleeper and Cat that expectations can be detrimental to your progress when dealing with a MLCer, but I will admit that I'm impressed that you're going in to this realizing that it is more likely years that you're looking at instead of weeks or months.
The question most LBS have to decide is whether they can or want to try and out last their spouse's MLC.
All - Sorry I was away again. Jack asked a good question - Do I need something or do I want to be an example. I left some things out of my post as it was getting long and I get distracted at times. I thought I could elaborate more on Jack's question, but then Punkin had more great insight - Am I in emotional lockdown? I'll have to look into that.
Basicly, I don't have an answer for Jack. As an introvert I could tell you that my life is filled with a large assortment of aquantences both in and out of work, but I have no "friends" so-to-speak. I have grown up with trust issues so I don't have bonds with people that you might see in the movies or just normal people. I've always had females as friends because I feel like I can talk to them whereas with dudes I can't get past feeling judged because I don't like golf, baseball, playing poker and ogling women as they walk by. Those aren't the only guys out there, just the many that are in my area.
I can see where I come across as a bit cold. For the better part of a year I was trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. I felt the hurt, frustration, anger and pain. In my efforts to "fix" myself I learned, 38 years late, that I have ADD - not ADHD. I don't want to muddy the waters here so please take my word for it that I'm on the mild end of ADD symptoms - I lack focus. I'm not a big drinker, I don't gamble or seek affections from the opposite sex, but I do have some self esteem issues - don't we all?
My "coldness" most likely comes from my perspective that it was me, who found an out. Am I on lockdown? I like what you're seeing, but I disagree in some respects. I hit a low point some two months back. I kept questioning myself about how much more I could take and then I just stopped. I looked at who I was and who that person was that's sleeping in my living room. Did I like either of us? - No. I was so full of the hurt and feeling like a failure I was scared. I guess I stopped wanting that to define me, the person that I know I am. That's all I've been since my wife shut me out. I disagree about the lockdown because I've replaced hurt, anger, frustration and pain with happiness, kindness, optimism and just being thankful.
I looked at the woman, who at the time stopped coming home some nights, and she reminded me of my sister around the early teenage years. That's when it all kind of came out for me. I saw my wife as rebelling like a teenager - and my sister wasn't just rebelling, she was a movement .
I admit it took a few days to really dig into my thought process on this and I was slowed up by my kids asking me difficult questions of which I had no answers. Our kids are 11 and 6 and it was getting hard on them. The oldest posted on his facebook page asking if anyone had seen his mom. Needless to say she's come home every night since then, because I think in her desperate attempts to get away from me she saw what she was doing to our kids.
Since I've started looking at my wife as a teenager, I've found I can be happy again. Kids are perceptive and when I look at it they only started to ask questions about us when I was at my low point and as of late, with the exception of us not doing things as a family, everything seems..... well better than they were.
There's so many people here that have battled MLC for years and still haven't found their move-on point. Please understand, I do love my wife and she is the one I want to spend the rest of my life with. Do any of us deserve this? No, but I have no interest in that. My interest comes in the form of supporting her by giving her time and space, sprinkled with patience.
One or two more years is where I see her mood/attitude, but not full recovery. When my wife and I talked two weeks back it looks to me she's not happy with the results of her actions. She still will go out with friends, but not even close to regularity that she had been. She translates my silence as tension, but she doesn't see me smiling as often as I am so perhaps that's her own guilty conscience about how she's been acting? She did aplogize to me for the first time in over a year - for anything. She told me she was sorry she wasn't the person I deserve. I would argue that I'm the person she needs, she just doesn't see it. She had taken a big step in opening up to me about being unhappy ( with me ) and depressed ( cuz of me ) and things around the house have been cooler coming from her, but that's this week, I don't know who will show up next week. She's made steps to open up, but this mood of hers will not change for the better for some time, but that's on my side. 2-5 years in a marriage that could last for 50-60 is just a blip. If she chooses to come around I'm in a place where I have grown up a bit and believe I can be more than just a "buddy". I can give her what I should have been for the last decade.
The issue of counseling - No. I'm not against it, but she's nixed that idea and I agree.... for now. I had been going to couples therapy alone, but leading into my mood change I noticed that when I left the session I no longer left relieved or happy. If I found no joy in going to therapy I knew I needed to find joy from within. It helps I was very active over the summer with team sports that I partake in - I'm not obsessively introverted. But I stopped my therapy because I wasn't being torn up inside anymore. I'll visit with her againdown the road, but for now I'm content.
Oh- and my wife will not do anti-depressants. I never even hinted at a medical solution, but she brought it up to me saying that she didn't want to have to take meds for the rest of her life in order to be happy. I did find a "knowing" amusement about that comment having read about MLC and the war people are waging inside themselves.
So with that I wish to leave you with something I learned that I shared with others. It is only my opinon, but that's why we're here....
I learned about how I see hope. Since my wife started this ride of hers I hoped and hoped. For me, hope is what helped me to sleep at night when I tossed and turned. Hope is like saying "I hope it doesn't rain today". It didn't rain, but it's 100 degrees and you wore a sweater and jeans. You either 'hope' it cools off faster than it will because of your current discomfort, or you take stock in the fact that it didn't rain after all. The trick for me was learning to be thankful. I no long hope and then build on that hope with another hope and so on - unrealisticly. I'm thankful strangely for this experience because I've reidentified with myself and I've learned to trust more and be a partner. I learned how to make "my" small miracles into big ones and that with all I have to be thankful for - it could always be worse than it is, but that's my choice. I've not given up on hope because it makes us warm on cold nights, but I've also learned that if that fuzzy blanket isn't working, I'm the one that has to get up and get the fireplace working.......
Hey Sadak, I am kind of where you are right now, my hubby is still acting crazy sometimes in the middle of MLC, and I have reached the point I can see a lot of his behavior is just like a rebellious teenager, and I can go, "it's ok...Same Stuff Different Day..." Like you, I am something of an introvert. I don't mind being alone so much, as long as I don't EXPECT my husband to be there for me. I have reached a certain acceptance that he can't really be anything for me right now. But that's OK. I don't mind my own company, and I have a good job and great kids and a single lifetime friend as well as my own family. I can be content. I am not terribly patient by nature, I am a little type-A even though I am an introvert. But I am learning to be more patient with him. I honestly can wait a few years and make a good life for my family. If he chooses not to come through it with me, we will be OK. I love him and I sincerely hope he will come out the other side with me. If he doesn't, we will be just fine.
I have learned that although I love him and I hope he will recover, I can and will build a happy life for the rest of my family. We want him to be part of it, but if he chooses not to, we will be happy anyway. Loss is part of life. We can be happy in spite of loss, if that is his choice. This is not cold. It is saying, "you are free, dear spouse, to make your own choices in life. But I am also free, to choose to make a happy life for our family. We hope you choose to be a part, but we will go on and build on whatever circumstance we have".
It is very, very, very empowering to be able to say..."I love my husband, and I hope he will be here. But if he is not, I am strong and have the love and light inside me to make a beautiful life anyway." It frees you both.
Many blessings,
Tina
H50 W44 M 4 D 29 D 28 D 26 S 22 S 20 D 17 S 15 S 5 D 3 1st Bomb 4/2009 Separated 2/2009 4 months 2nd Bomb 6/11 Separated 7/11 to ???
Thank you Tina, that does sum it up for me. I really only have two major differences and that's the lifetime friend - I was an army brat before internet and I moved a lot. The other is family. I'm closer to my in-laws than I am with my own. This has caused me to think about some stuff I'd read in the forums here. Is MLC something that has to do with unresolved childhood things?
My wife's biological father passed away some years before we met. He had left her mother and her and never called but 2 or 3 times a year. You would never know this the way she speaks of him or how it seems her greatest memory was a trip to go see him when she was in HS. When he got sick he came home. She cared for him until the day he died. In sickness he gave her what she always wanted - her dad. Her mom had remarried before this went down and my wife's current father is the best, which leads me to another thought.....
It would seem to me, although only 38, that I'm quite the candidate for MLC. I've not known my father since i was 3 and have never had one since. I had been raised by an older sister and my mother. I love them both, I just never related to my mother and my sister and I are busy with our own lives. we catch up here and there, but I've never known family like what my in-laws have given me. They are there for me and treat me as their own. She has something great in them and they are standing on the outside waiting for my wife. They have expressed their hurt "for" me so I've made a point to leave them out. My wife will go to them before she ever comes to me for anything. I don't want to get in the way of that.
Having been an army brat I've been around the world and experienced so much, but I've been slow to grow up to adulthood. There are reasons for that as there is with anything, but I have often gotten angry over this past year about not having a father, someone I could learn from, someone who could have helped me get back on the horse in a tough childhood. Someone who could have taught me that being a man isn't what I saw in old war movies and action flicks, but a dude who could share what he feels on the inside every now and then.
And yet I feel fine......
Also, I reread what I wrote above and I forgot to point out (ADD), that while it's true that females had been my friends the majority of my life, I ended all that. When we moved in together 13 years ago I chose, out of respect for my wife to be, to not befriend females. I never wanted her to doubt me. Oddly enough though, some 9-10 years back she found a long brown hair in the shower. She has black hair and I guess it was enough hair for her to want to question me about it ( I have 'short' brown hair ). I did not get upset with her, but I still remember how I felt hurt that she would question my integrity. I gave up any friends I had for us because I liked spending time together. I made a choice with my own free will.
One other thing Tina, thank you for making me smile today. It comes easy these days, but this is different. I feel a little goofy when you called me Sadak. I chose the name from my favorite painting - "Sadak in search of the waters of oblivion". I used to see the painting as my struggle with learning about my ADD and how my life went from knowing what was to a bunch of what if's. I lost a lot of teeth getting slapped with that one. It was a picture of my struggle to find myself and my wife. I see it differently now. I don't see pain, I see that no matter how hard the journey it is, or will be - it was/is worth it.
.