Kimmerz, Yes, they do go back and forth in the ages. One minute they are a terrible 2 yr old and the next time they are 15. Usually when they bounce around, it makes me think that their emotional growth was stunted at the younger age and they are trying to go back and grow from that point on.
We are very lucky as the lbs! None of us would want to experience the pain that the mlcers go through. Yes, it looks like they are having the time of their lives, but when the evening is done, the shades are pulled and darkness settles in...that's when thoughts of what they had come calling and they do think about us quite a bit. The emotional pain is great and that's why they self-medicate.
To us, what they are doing looks like fun w/no responsibilities attached, but it's not. We are meeting our pain head on and when the dust has settled, we will have marched right through the pain and come out the other side. Unfortunately for the mlcer, they are delaying the process of meeting the pain head on and will do so at the end of the crisis...by that time, most of us will have moved on and will not want to reconcile or have anything to do w/them. It's rather sad, when you look back and see that had they sought professional help, a lot of what they are doing could have been avoided.
Kimmerz, you are doing great. Keep up the good work!
Sit quietly, the answers will reveal themselves when you least expect them to. The past is gone, the present is a gift and you need to focus on today, allow the future to reveal itself when it is ready.
Ya know Kimmerz, I see a glimmer there in your post. You are really starting to get "it".
AJ
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter" MLK Put the glass down... "Yesterday I was clever so I wanted to change the world Today I am wise, so I am changing myself."
Interesting Snodderly.....when looking at the emotional maturity level when skipping around in cycles and spewing, I think XH is stuck at 9 years old. Why? D9 and he have the exact same temper....and when he spews it's not much different than when D9 has her meltdowns. D9 has a serious temper.
So I guess if I want to go off into "forensic psychology" here, I do know between the ages of 7-9 some sort of emotional trauma happened to XH and it was between 2 step father's too. When one step father came back into his mother's life several years ago XH really started getting angry and weird. We had shared the downstairs apartment in her house. It was then XH finally was ready to move into our own place, after me requesting it for two years before. This was the first time I had seen XH seriously seething with anger, resentment and just repulsion. Im concerned that particular step father and his step brother did something horrible to XH. When I tried to ask about it, XH became extremely defensive, yet demanded I not even speak about that man or any relations he was having with his mother to him.
So something serious happened there. And within the next year, wonderful MLC symptoms started happening. Very interesting time line I must say.
It really is sad, how the MLC plays out in the long run. LBS's facing the pain and issues head on, plowing through that storm, and MLCers standing back and avoiding it, only causing more pain for themselves. I guess that's why I do want to reach total forgiveness towards XH. Maybe Im being dramatic here, but I've just got this "feeling", what if he comes out of the tunnel and he's completely alone? I just can't do it. I just can't leave him there like that..... if it ever came to that. Only time will tell.
I guess another big thing Im learning is claiming personal responsibility for myself and the relationships that I have, and whether these relationships need to be maintained or wish to be maintained or not.
I guess that goes hand in hand with me discovering the co dependency issues I've developed over the years and how I put personal responsibility on myself to make other's happy.
Im going to write about this in hopes maybe it can help someone else, maybe they can identify some of themselves in what write here.
My family was very dysfunctional. My mom was really in alot of emotional pain at times and carried alot of anger and resentment with her and towards herself and others. But I was the joy of her life, and she told me consistently. However over time I saw that my sense of humor and overall personality always seemed to cheer her up, as well as many other people in my life. It was then that I got it in my head that it was my responsibility to make people happy.
It seems that myself and unhappy people are intertwined alot of the time, and I ended up thinking it was my job to fix everyone, because everyone expected that of me. Given I've been pretty good at helping people, when I couldn't fix or help my XH when he started going through some issues, to me that represented TOTAL FAILURE.
I mean how can I be such a help to others, how can others like me so well and really value my opinions, but XH completely be repulsed by me? It must be something Im doing wrong! It's got to be all my fault, doesn't it?
Well thanks to the last year, I've realized that no its not me and it never was. It wasn't my responsibility to fix anyone, let alone my XH. Care and compassion, understanding, and patience, you betcha! But emotional responsibility, no. Only to myself.
Having to re learn some self respect, and responsibility to myself really helps me out when I start that backwards "stinking thinking" again, and think it was my fault in the demise of my marriage.
Kimmerz, Your posting about your xh and his possible emotional trauma made me think about a thread I posted many, many years ago. I hope you don't mind, but I'm posting the link here and maybe it will help you and others along the way.
Sit quietly, the answers will reveal themselves when you least expect them to. The past is gone, the present is a gift and you need to focus on today, allow the future to reveal itself when it is ready.
