We regret meeting you here this way. But you are here and we will share thoughts and suggestions. There are no answers to be had and there are no cures to be found. You are in a perfect storm you did not see coming.
If it is about mlc, and it seems possible, here are some consistent experiences learned by others. He feels his life is passing him by, and he wants his last chance to live it his way. He believes he must be away from you to do that. He feels guilty for wanting a life of his own, and turning away from his promises.
He will turn that guilt into extreme and uncontrolled anger against you. You are the one closest to him. You are the one he owes the most to. You are the one he must destroy in order to get his freedom. The more you resist, the more destruction will result. Try to avoid as much of this as possible.
Start by being glad he is moving out to destroy himself. It is not something you would want to observe from within the family home. He does need his time and space. So do you. You will learn in time that this is not all about you, but will become just that. It will become more about who you are and who you want to be, than what he thinks and alledges you did wrong. He will re-write history to fit his needs. He needs to justify his leaving and his need for a new life. This new life will fail him in time. You must give him that time.
During that time, you must focus on yourself and your kids. There are stories of those that went mlc and later tried to come home but were rejected. Sometimes they are turned away because of how much damage the do in the way the leave. Other times it is because the LBS grows and learns about themselve and find that the MLCer no longer fits in their new life. This is all a long way off from where you are. You are in the beginning of a storm, not the middle, and no where near the end.
Be clear and firm about finances. The average MLCer will go through a lot of money during the storm. You need to preserve all you can for yourself, and for the kids. You will be saving this money from the MLC dump. Help him pack. Help him move. Wish him the best. Then restart your life the way you would live it if a plane had just fallen on him from the sky. For all purposes, it just crashed.
The ones that end up wanting to return don't do it because they felt guilty. They sometimes do it because they were dumped by there new partner. Most of the time they just realize what a mistake they made, and they see you living the better life. They want to try to return to that better life they abandoned. It can easily take two years or more. If that is what you intend to prepare yourself for, realize there is no rush on your part.
You won't need to have a complete roadmap for life at this time. You will create one as you go, at your own pace. He will be in and out of your life and your contacts. He will do things you never imagined. It will not be him, but this new super ego that is exploding out of the body of someone who has suppressed a lot of issues for a long time. His issues are deep inside and relate to himself from his youth or young adulthood, not with you.
You didn't break him and you can't fix him. He is fighting with all he has for a "Do Over". You don't say why this is his second M and his first one may have had nothing to do with this kind of crisis. Or, he could have gone through an early Quarter Life Crisis without fully resolving concerns about his mortality that are now surfacing again. There is a lot to this, but so little can actually be explained in short posts.
Find things to read about mlc. Find things to do to avoid being consumed by it. Keep updating and folks here will try to share support.
