.........the MLCers are misdirecting the anger which they couldn't express as children. They are acting out and reasoning like children, which is why they are so self-centred.................... it's really not a choice, it's a compulsion to finally deal with the hurt they were dealt as children. Once they are in the grip of depression, they can't shake it off unless they can make it to the other side of their MLC.
Cyrena, I like the way you phrased this. It's interesting that you describe this as a compulsion. My H/XH has always been very irritable about being asked to do anything to help with meal preparation, including flipping meat on a grill and rinsing salad greens. I never understood this but didn't question it. It was part of the package I got with him, but on about 6 occasions during the 5 years we were together I had to ask H/XH to do one of these things or the food would have been burned........When XH was deep in replay, in one of our convos he said to me "My first wife was the only person who never asked me to so much as rinse salad greens." (He offered this as partial justification for why he was leaving the M.) ...........Fast forward to 2 weeks ago, I was talking to XH's sister and asked her why XH has such an aversion to helping with meals. I asked "Was it because your mother was drunk at dinnertime and he associates negative feelings with meal preparation because of that?" X-SIL said "Mom never cooked", so it seems that XH was trying to recreate his childhood dinnertime situation in all of his adult Rs with women. .......we always ate our meals by candlelight with music H/XH put on the mp3 player. We decompressed from the day and reconnected, so mealtime for us was happy, but H/XH still carried this childhood aversion re: meal preparation.
Mila, sorry to hijack and put this here. Cyrena's post reminded me of this "unsolved mystery". Kinda wondering if anyone else has experienced unexplained compulsions in their WASs?
Mila, hope your meeting today went better. Will be watching for your post.
