First off, please do not leave the board. Your contribute a lot to discussions, and show people that they can move beyond this. Your own journey has been tough and moving to read about. I find your insights valuable.
Your post confirms to me what I have suspected for quite a long time: I have noticed that there are [at least] a couple of main types of MLC poster. One is what I would describe as a full blown MLC where the WAS becomes the exact opposite in almost every way of the person they were. The other type is where the MLCer becomes more extreme in what and who they are for example - the drinking moves out of control, there were previous affairs, they replicate the previous pattern of the relationship they have left, and so on.
In the second case, the LBS comes to realise that the relationship was actually unhealthy when it broke up, and that it had become highly co-dependent. The MLcer was already the walking wounded, but the LBS did not necessarily realise it at the time.
But in the first type, although the relationship may have become sticky as MLC loomed, the underlying relationship was healthy, and actually sustained the MLCer for a long time, until they could no longer cope, and 'snapped'.
Of course everyone has issues, and in both cases the LBS has to make changes in themselves and adapt, because either way until the MLCer admits and is prepared to face their own issues, any relationship down the line will not work.
I don't know if this makes any sense?
Anyway, you have handled the interchange in a way that you are OK with, and that is what matters, not what anyone else thinks. You know him and the situation best. Seems to me that you have made a huge leap forward.
