This has been interesting. When I said that divorce is just a piece of paper, I was not trying to say I agree with that view. The decision to divorce on the part of the MLCer is almost inevitable. It is piece of paper to them, but it is the ending of our world for us, the world we knew and the relationship we had. It formally ends a contract and a promise to commit. Something the MLCer cannot do.
Most MLCers have an under developed sense of personal responsibility, and so they tend to marry people like us, with over developed, or highly developed sense of responsibility. We keep the show on the road, and they are actually grateful until they come to resent it. At that point they see us as controlling.
So of course they usually go looking for someone who is diametrically opposite to us.
I am not sure that people are self destructive by nature. Something happens in their development, but I agree that there is nothing that we can do, except go on feeling compassion for someone that takes a wrecking ball to their life. Yes, they leave a trail of wreckage and devastation, but what they have done to us is less than what they have done to themselves.
All of the people on these boards are hurting, or have been hurt. But you haven't inflicted pain and suffering on people you love and who you KNOW in your deepest heart did not deserve this. That is what our spouses have done. And they have to live with it, and their pain that drove them to it. Even in our hurt it is they who are to be pitied.
Sanderika - at some point we have to feel anger. I also believe at some point we have to cut the cord, and detach totally from them so that they can go into free fall.
It is hard to know how many come back. I have come to think that a MLC takes a very very long time. The ones that we see resolved quickly are unusual. WCW is in her 7th year, I believe, and I think Holly is gradually reconciling nearly 5 years on.
If we look on a time frame of 5-7 years as the norm, with the possibility of it being longer, we might get less despondent about the lack of progress. . . but equally we might decide in the early stages that we cannot wait that long. This time we have enables us to evaluate what we value in life, in ourselves, and what we valued in our marriage.
We learn patience. As many people have said, the resolution of a MLC takes TIME.
