BTW, is it possible for MLC to be applied to my W even though she's in her mid-twenties?
There is a lot written about MLC on that forum that is good reading.
I tend to just call it crisis. If labeling it helps you then label it.
Your approach should be the same West.
As has been said to you by me and others, this is a process.
Make your choices based on your values not on circumstances or expected outcomes.
My W has been diagnosed with PTSD. Is it a factor in her choices and her behaviors...absolutely I believe.
Is she capable of healing and choosing to be a committed partner in a relationship....absolutely I believe.
I have stood for my M for 22 months now. And it has made all the difference for me and what I wanted to learn about myself, my marriage, love and what it means to love someone even when they are not capable of loving you right now.
I have written to you to look hard at your W because, while she is suffering and making choices that cause you to suffer, allowing yourself to believe that her crisis can be fixed by you or is caused by you is a place you must leave behind.
I am not telling you to walk away from your M.
I am telling you to look at the truth. The truth for you. Own those things you did and don't want to do again.
I also believe that there is not a great chance you and she will have a healthy relationship unless she decides to deal with her demons. Unless she begins to make different choices.
Is that a condition or a boundary?
I don't know. I can only speak for my own situation and say that I will not engage in a relationship with my W again unless I know she is as committed to the relationship as I am. That I see that she understands that her choices are not those that a person in a healthy relationship makes.
That making those choices are harmful to me and our M.
And she accepts responsibility for her choices and not excuses for them.
Love does not mean accepting bad behavior. I have learned it is the power to let someone go and learn from the consequences of their behavior, no matter how destructive we may consider them to be or how opposite of what we want.
Her illness (and it is an illness) is her responsibility. Yours is to learn to love her in spite of it. To have compassion. To survive it yourself and not become of a victim of it as well.
You'll be a victim of it if you allow yourself to think it has any basis in your own worth.
It DOES NOT.
The hard part is you must decide to stand (IMO) through all these doubts of yours about you, your W and your M to understand what it means to you.
What you were meant to learn if you choose to learn it.
All the way through this I had to say to myself to have courage against my fears and doubts.
If you make ordinary choices (those that others might make), easy choices, choices based on fear...
You will get ordinary results.
Then get in line with the others who have and go the places they are destined to go.
Or
Make YOUR choices. For YOUR reasons. Based on YOUR values. In the face of all odds.
Extraordinary choices that will define who you are.
And
You will find extraordinary answers.
You walk your own path and not get in line with statistics and the walking wounded who will never know the fruits of courage.
I have asked this before:
Which guy are you?
You are also invited to read my thread in MLC.
It is all there.
My goal is to some day be the person my dog thinks I am
