Help...feel frustrated, helpless and sad! WAW/?MLC

[bombardier50]

Purr,
Good for you...getting out of the house and spending time with friends is a big step in the right direction. The fact that your are GALing and spending time with friends will also make you more interesting and attractive, and shows your W that you're not putting your life on hold for her.

If your spouse is truly experiencing a MLC, it is a gut-churning thing for her. As I understand it, the MLC spouse suddenly realizes that someday their life will end and that a big chunk of their life is behind them. They see themselves aging, which can be especially hard on women. So they panic. They wonder what life would have been like with a different job or a different spouse, and they have a sudden, intense urge to find out. So they do crazy things: quit their jobs, have affairs, spend money on plastic surgery, etc. All the while they know they are causing you hurt and pain, and deep down they feel enormous guilt, so to deal with that, they shut you out of their life. MLCers are full of fear, doubt, panic, and guilt. They are so wrapped up in their own drama that they cannot deal with your needs right now.

I'm certainly not a mental health professional, but I'm going to give you my opinion about MLC anyway. Hope some others can jump in here and tell me what they think...

I think of MLC as a grieving process...for both of you. Remember the five stages of grief that Kubler-Ross popularized (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance)? Kubler-Ross stated that you can experience these stages in response to any major life change. Although you'll see a lot of references on these boards to the stages of MLC (denial, replay, etc.), I tend to think you can apply Kubler-Ross' model just as easily. You are grieving the loss of your relationship. She is grieving the loss of her youth. Something happened that put her in a state of shock...some sort of trigger...could have been a death of someone close to her, or just the realization that she's getting older.

So she enters denial (This can't be happening!). She gets angry (I've wasted my life with this relationship/job/etc!) She starts her bargaining behavior (maybe I can cheat aging with a face lift, maybe another partner will make me feel younger and more vital...). When these behaviors fail to make her happy, as they almost always do, she will be depressed. And hopefully, at some point, when the depression lifts, she'll drift into acceptance.

You're going through these stages as well, albeit on a different timeline, and for different reasons.

If you haven't already, go check out pathpartners.com. Read some of the articles. Cruise the message boards, especially the one for women in MLC.

Hope this helps. Keep doing what works. Baby steps. It took a long time to arrive at this point. It will take a long time to work through it.

Bomb