Hi Kissak and His Wife, the more I see of MLC and other behaviours the less I understand, in some ways.
Yes, all weak people will try and 'make' the other person take the decision. It is, I think, passive aggressive behaviour. It is another ploy for not facing themselves.
The underlying question, for me, in whether or not it is really MLC is whether they changed from one state to another fairly rapidly. My husband was a lovely man at the end of June 2005 and by mid October he had become a monster. But I have one of the very mean ones. He doesn't do 'nice' very often and when he does I have come to suspect it.
There may be other reasons why someone changes from a kind and loving husband and father into a vengeful, cold, cruel and spendthrift person, but given his script and behaviour, I am not really in doubt. What I do doubt in my case, is whether he will ever come out of the tunnel. I am not holding by breath.
As for doing something different - it makes no difference that I can see whether I am tough or kind, sympathetic and listening, or cut him off. The one thing I am NOT doing any more is taking him back again on the strength of words and the promise of reform. There would have to be a lot of action to convince me that this was not another touch and go.
You ladies clearly have spouses who cannot let go, and maybe they have to and you have to let them. I do wish someone with a bit more wisdom and experience of others would come in here. All I really know is my h, what I have read [and there aren't many quite as extreme as mine]. I have had very very little contact with my h, and probably two or three 'real' conversations with him in the past 5 years, all of them in the last few months.
Perhaps what you are doubting is not the fact that it is MLC, but whether your spouses are so stuck that they aren't moving on in resolving whatever is the matter with them - mainly a failure to grow up in a rather important way, to put it simply.
