Not a lot to add except best wishes for you to "survive" this crisis. That will be a fight for you. We want you to win that fight, for you, and for your kids.
As for your H and the life you expected together forever, no one can promise anything when MLC strikes. No one could have seen it coming, sort of. There do seem to be several common themes early in life, and when they finally raise their ugly head late in life - we all wish had seen it coming a long time ago, move to another country, something. But here you are and this is real. So you need to stay real.
When you two were together lately, he thought he knew what he was feeling. And almost immediately he thought he knew he was not. And he will. And he won't. So don't go looking for some sign of something you can hang on to, because he can't and you won't.
We are moving on to the subject of cake eating now. MLCers want it both ways. The want the normal parts of their life that produce ZERO stress, responsibility or obligation of any kind. They want all the irrisponsible benefits of not being normal and rebelling against everything they ever were.
When you two were intimate he was half way through Alice's looking glass - normal on one side and Mad Hatter on the other. When you asked about making plans to date it was a lot more threatening to him than you can imagine. He will do anything to avoid making a comittment he fears he won't keep, or one he fears will leave him hurt. He hurts enough already.
He is thinking about dating if he is not already dating.
That is part of cake eating. That is why some spouses stop being intimate with a MLCer. It is a risky lifestyle, not knowing the truth, and not knowing what their MLCer has been doing. MLCers lie. Sometimes they don't know it. Much of what they say is a lie.
Other spouses see intimacy with no strings or expectations as a risk worth chancing in an effort to maintain some normal contact with the MLCer, at an arms reach and almost at the beck and call of the MLCer. We don't have general opinions on cake eating, except that it is a fact of MLC and one you must learn to recognize if you are going to make informed decisions.
The only way you will survive is to know the rules and make the best informed decisions you can, based on your own feelings. Just protect yourself from the alien on the other side of MLC.
You are meeting some great resources here. There is a lot of information to absorb. Give yourself time, work on yourself. Give your H time. Make new friends here. Learn. Then help others that will certainly arrive. That is actually something we learn to do here and you will find that very healing as it begins to happen.
