I remember during my husband's MLC last summer, he was a totally different man. The night I found out about OW, he was furious and called me a b. He was truly acting out of his mind, and I remember thinking, this is not my husband! My husband would never treat me this way.
He said and did a lot of things that were not him. I remember how detached he was when he looked at me and said he didn't care how I was going to make it, that he was going to leave me and our daughter so he could get his own apartment and write music.
During MLC, they are a different person, they are going through some heavy emotions and changes inside that are scary to us. It is hard to navigate that ...... and the changes seem nearly over night at times. The thing is, they were thinking of going long before they drop the bomb. I know my H was.
My H describes that time period for him as being very scary, feeling out of control, anxious, depressed, trapped, and feeling desperate. he told me he felt like a volcanoe of emotions that he couldn't control.
The OW is a symptom of the MLC. At least that is how I saw it. It does not lessen the pain or the blow of it but it helps to understand it.
And they do seem like aliens, with all the things they say and their behavior so changed. I felt extremely afraid when he was going through this, but what really helped me was to start the process of GAL. I'm serious. GAL will change your life for the better and help you gain some strength through this.
I was holding on tightly to my H when he was in MLC, which is the worst thing I did. It was not until I took the steps to GAL and act as if I could go on without him, did he stop and realize what he was going to lose, me and our daughter.
It is very hard to look the one you love in the eye, feeling frightened that they are going to go and say, "Okay, leave". Those are words I did not want to say. But what it took to save my marriage was for me to give him all the space in the world and go on acting as if I was going to live my life with or without him in it.
