JJ I think your description of MLC is right on the button. Age does not matter at all, that is just the average time it happens. My H is only 35 and he is definitely deep in MLC. I think the kids being born triggered it for him. Suddenly to him the future shut down. All that promise all that hope all those possibilities just seemed to him to fizzle out in a hail of nappies and sleepless nights. I had already figured out before he decided to walk away that he felt slapped in the face by reality I just didn't know it was called MLC.

My face-slap happened at 16 when my dad told me to quit school because he wouldn't be paying college fees. (In England you can quit school at 16 with qualifications). Overnight I went from Daddy's princess to out in the gutter (or so it felt). Maybe HE was MLC - who knows . Just to spite him I pulled myself up by the bootstraps went to night school and worked my way through college on my own. A diary entry from that time says - <<you are your own woman, no-one's going to take care of you but you so you better get on with it>> and I did.

It's a lesson we all have to learn sometime. I'm glad I learnt it early but I have never been close to my Dad again

Fran


if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs
Erica Jong