Trusting it took my xh about 16 months between asking my forgiveness and starting to be remotely reasonable. Like you, I thought when he broke down and said how terribly sorry he was, that was the beginning of the end of MLC, but no. After a short time of being sorry he was back to being Mr Terrible. It is only for the past month or so that we have had email contact that is civil. He is also reaching out to his children again, and starting to contact old friends . . .. It is almost 6 years since he started real MLC type behaviour, [depressed for a long while before that] so yes, it lasts a long time. And I am not holding my breath, just enjoying teh occasional email interchange. It could all change on a dime.
