Wife in MLC? I'm seeking support / guidance

[Arsene]

I don’t want to start over. I know what we had for 33 years was good and can be even better, so here I am on DB trying to wait/work it out. My next thread will be posted in the MLC forum. I’ll need to come up with a clever name for it.

Thank you so much for your support Arsene, and best wishes to you and your wife.

That's the way I feel too mate. That is why I stand for my marriage. My W once asked me if I had any fantasies. I told her I had only one, to grow old and grey with her. I still feel that way today.

Thanks for your kind wishes FY.

[ForeverYoung]

On a brighter note though, many couples report having the best marriage in their lives once they've weathered the storm and have chosen to be together after all. It's like divorcing your old marriage and starting a new one without leaving your partner. You can have a wonderful affair with your spouse. Sounds great doesn't it?

[Arsene]

^^^^^ I like that as well ^^^^^^

[ForeverYoung]

Weekend:

Sat. I went to VeganMania with a buddy and had fun. He said women where checking us out. I didn't notice. Came home and W was out. Went out to a movie with a group of 5 before she came home. Got home at 10 and she was on her way to bed. Almost no conversation.

Sun. Went to see her Dad like we do every Sun. Put my hand on her shoulder while talking and she shook it off. Oops.

Back at home I steam cleaned our carpets and she helped move furniture and finished the laundry. She also spent quite a bit of time making squash soup from scratch. Made breakfast power shakes, (we always make 'em the night before) and cleaned up the kitchen when she was done. Played old country songs and classical / opera music the entire time, which was quite a change of pace for her. (and welcomed by me)

She also was doing a lot of typing on the ipad. Seemed to close a window as I walked by but I don't know for sure, and I never snoop. Very little conversation all day. Business only, unless I initiated, which I've been doing less and less of. Poor eye contact on her part.

After she finished cleaning up, I complemented her for doing such a great job and included details of what I liked. Her response: I didn't even try, I could have done a lot more. There was no smile, and no acceptance of the complement.

Question: When she is talking less, should I continue to initiate? If I don't there will be loooong periods of silence, which I don't like, but I guess might be ok. When I do initiate, she is courteous but does not engage; bare minimum response only. Like I said, I have been initiating less and less.

Maybe she is still hurting from Thursday night's conversation where I said I had no plans of leaving our house?

[Arsene]

Not an easy situation FY. If she isn't contributing to the conversation or just answering with a few words while avoiding eye contact, I'd say that she doesn't really want to talk and that she is just answering to be polite or at least not be too rude. IMO, she's asking you for some space and you're not giving it. You're not pursuing per se but if you feel the need to fill every silent moment it might get on her nerves after a while.

I understand how uncomfortable it is but I'd say if you can't stand it just leave the room and leave her alone. Go for a walk. Anything, but give her some space. If she wants to talk, she'll initiate and then you can go for it. JMO.

[ForeverYoung]

I understand how uncomfortable it is but I'd say if you can't stand it just leave the room and leave her alone. Go for a walk. Anything, but give her some space. If she wants to talk, she'll initiate and then you can go for it. JMO.

Thanks A. This is what I've been doing. I guess there really isn't any other good option. We've both always been kind of quiet, even back in our good times. We've always had a good connection though, even during much of this mess, and I'd like to keep that, which is why I dislike the days long silence.

Sometimes she's more talkative than others. This weekend just seemed extra bad for her. She's a different person around others than she is with me now. I've noticed new facial expressions and laughs; ones that she never had before. More cussing now too. She's definitely searching for her identity. Meanwhile, I'm still here for her. For now anyway.

I'm planning to see an IC next week. I admit I need more help here.

[25yearsmlc]

Dear FY,

a few things, and then I'll post an article by laura munson who waited out her h's MLC.

The problem with labelling her behavior as an MLC, is that it can give false hope of eventual return, and more importantly, it frequently causes the LBSer to not work on themselves. They point at the WAS as an "MLCer" as if their spouse is nuts and they'll "try" to wait it out, which always fails.

Whereas if the LBSer does work on their own life, they find it more than tolerable. They grow and evolve into better, happier people.

At some point soon you will need to realize you CAN be happy without your w. IF she had gotten sick and died, do you believe your life would effectively end? Think about what you'd do, if she died and your grief had passed enough for you to think straight. Then what?

Get out a bucket list and begin doing things. For my birthday I went skydiving. That made the statement I wanted to make and it felt great. A few months later, I did it again with my son. What a blast!

My GAL list was lengthy. I auditioned for theater roles, and got them.
I did stand up comedy, I took classes,
I volunteered at the women's shelter, I joined a writer's group,
I learned to deep sea fish and seriously shoot,
I got my pilot's license, I worked out, and I went to counselling weekly, and it was a lot of work just to feel "ok". But then I felt better than okay. A lot better.

So keep that in mind...

RE your wife, actually I do think your w is in an MLC but it does not mean she's not also a WAW. I don't say that to alarm you but to keep you working on what YOU CAN work on, which is you.

She does sound as if she was bored (often a form of chronic mild depression) and tired of leading in the m.

Did you ever plan a vacation?

I'm glad you figured out her LLs but the fact that it took THIS, for you to learn them, well, I don't want to hit you with a 2 x 4- but that is the type of thing a h should know early in a r.

So, now you know. Figure out what other things you may have missed and undermine the negatives she has, with positive actions...

And make yourself happy. Take a trip if you want. Take ballroom dancing lessons. You do martial arts? Okay what else would YOU like to learn to do? And if you can do it away from the house, that seems better to me. Get into a fresh area out of the house. Don't be around the home all the time.


My h is presently deployed (in the Army Reserves) and I'm not waiting for him to return to have any fun. Don't misunderstand, I'm married to him and I'll continue to keep my vows and we are reconciled, etc.

I'm just saying that even with him overseas in a dangerous place, I will go nuts if I don't keep busy and happy. Plus, I have chidren to care for and to model the behavior for.

Speaking of kids, I'm glad you feel and look younger than you are.

I feel the same way although I think it's my kids who kept me young, and h is in fantastic physical shape. Our kids energize us about life (got me on Facebook too) and got me saavy enough to function socially with people under 30.

I look forward to being a grandparent so much.

FY Is it possible that one thing your w missed out on, was having kids? Have you ever considered doing foster care?

I ask this b/c it sounds to me as if she is searching for meaning in HER Life. Without kids, or an exciting professional career

most women have a hard time feeling accomplished. Just a thought.

Anyhow, I GAL and let go of my h. I had an internal timeline of 2 years b/c then my older d would be done with high school. At that point, my plan was to move on with or without h. Meanwhile I GAL big time. You can too.

I began to believe I"d be happier than he would be, but it was not a contest. (WHICH is why when you said "if I'm having fun, SHE Might do that too"...her activities are irrelevant to yours.)

Her happiness level or misery level or her activities are NOT an index of yours or relevant to yours.

If she hurts her ankle, it does not make your leg feel better. If you go out and have fun, all that means is YOU had fun. If she has fun, you cannot "therefore" be miserable.


When I "knew" that I'd be fine, regardless of our outcome--that belief really sank in and began to radiate from me. I think he noticed more than I realized. But he became the pursuer.

I would ask that YOU focus on the changes you want to make to become the best man YOU can become. IN the final analysis, she'll only come home to you if she believes the marriage can be better/different than before.

Show her that it can be, by you changing you. It's all you can do. You can't wait and hope she "wakes up" as if you played no role in things getting this way. You can't argue to her that she "really was happy" either.

Just counter the negatives with positives so she can see that either her "data" was flawed or that it's no longer true b/c you are different now.



My next post will be the one by Laura Munson, handling her h's MLC.
(this one is long enough).

Good luck!

[25yearsmlc]

here is what Laura Munson did when she felt her h was having a MLC.


One fine June day, in the mountains of Montana, Laura Munson's husband said to her, "I don't love you any more. I'm not sure I ever did. I'm moving out. The kids will understand. They'll want me to be happy."
What is the normal reaction to this kind of announcement? You can sob and wail and get down on your knees and beg. Alternatively, you can pick up the meat cleaver and, when the car skids off down the driveway, cut the crotch out of all his suits. But Munson did none of these things. She wasn't going to let him get away with this. She said, "I don't buy it."


He apparently looked most surprised. Then he probably narrowed his eyes – for the next thing he said was, "I don't like what you've become."


At this point, Munson says, "a shroud of calm enveloped me". She thought, "It's just words." Sticks and stones. Again she said, "I don't buy it."

Then she added, "It's not age-appropriate to expect children to be concerned with their parents' happiness… There are times in every relationship when the parties involved need a break. What can we do to give you the distance you need, without hurting the family?"
He said, "Huh?"

She said, "Go trekking in Nepal. Build a yurt in the back meadow. Turn the garage studio into a man-cave. Get that drum set you've always wanted. Anything but hurting the children and me with a reckless move like the one you're talking about."
Then she said again, "How can we have a responsible distance?"
He said, "I don't want distance. I want to move out."


She Googled "responsible separation" on the computer, and printed off a list of FAQs about the sharing of keys, credit card access, pets, etcetera.
Appalled, he snarled, "I see what you're doing. You're going to make me go into therapy!"

She said, "I just asked: what can we do to give you the distance you need?"


Do you want to know what happened next? Are you gripped? America certainly is. Munson's book, This Is Not The Story You Think It Is… A Season Of Unlikely Happiness, is now a publishing phenomenon in the US.

She has been interviewed by ABC News on Good Morning America and you can see her on YouTube: a picture of all-American wholesomeness – pretty, round face, perfectly aligned teeth, long, glossy brown hair. She claims to be handy with a chainsaw and is used to hauling 1,500lb horses into trailers. You don't doubt it.

When we talk, it's 9am in Montana and Munson is sitting with a cup of tea and a view of pines and firs and mountains in the distance. She has got the kids off to school and needs the rest: she is just back from a three-week book tour. The offers are pouring in – China and Taiwan have bought the rights, the German contract is being negotiated.

Things haven't always been so professionally rosy. Before this book, Munson wrote 14 novels that have never been published. Lesser mortals would have given up, but Munson just developed armadillo hide for skin. "Yeah," she says. "As a writer, you spill out your guts and care so much about it and you send it off and you get back [the letter saying], 'This does not meet our needs at this time.' So when your husband says, 'You do not meet my needs at this time', you say, 'OK, those are just words. I know how to deal with that.'"

We return to that fateful morning. It seems pretty simple. She said, "No, you can't go, but I can give you a long lead" and eventually he said, "Oh, all right then."

"It's not like I handcuffed him to a chair," Munson says. "I just didn't take it personally. People in crisis say all sorts of things."

Surely it must have been incredibly annoying, having someone staying completely calm and saying, "Do you need a bit of distance?"

Munson replies, "Well, then he can't play victim. He has to be responsible for his own wellbeing. When you don't engage in the drama, it bounces back to the person who flung it in the first place."

In her writing, Munson uses the analogy of a child having a tantrum. The child shouts that they hate you. Do you join in? Do you answer back? Of course you don't. It's their problem, not yours. You ignore the tantrum and walk away, even if the toddler's teeth are still clamped around your arm.

She says carefully, "I'm not saying my husband was being a child." His spiritual malaise was profound – a personal crisis triggered by the failure of his business – and he wasn't merely throwing a tantrum. Of course, nobody would dream of saying thwarted middle-aged men behave like toddlers – perish the thought – but when a toddler is out of sorts, you give them "time out". And that is precisely what Munson offered her husband.

So that summer, instead of moving out – the credit card list seemed to have frightened him – Munson's husband did what he was told and took "time out". Effectively he went awol. He came home late, if at all. He wouldn't call. When he was at home, he was distant, making zero eye contact except for occasional, discombobulating moments when he desired intimacy. He forgot her birthday and went to someone else's 4th of July party. And he went walkabout. Like an old bear, he retreated into the forest. "He spent a lot of time at a friend's fishing lodge. He'd take three or four days away."
And what did she do?

"We live in such a beautiful part of the world and it was summertime, so the kids were out of school [Munson's daughter was then 12 and her son eight] and there was a lot of being with them in nature. There was more writing, more getting on my horse. I did grounded stuff: cooking, gardening. I was incredibly calm. That was a summer of unlikely happiness. I don't mean 'blissed-out' happiness, but sometimes happiness is just one little step outside of suffering. For me, that summer was a very calm, grounded time full of deep breathing."

But here there is a little pause, and she adds: "And inner tantrums. Believe me. When I was out alone in the woods, I was screaming at trees and crying and galloping my horse as fast as I could and diving into freezing mountain lakes.

"Of course you think, 'Is there another woman?', 'What sort of role model am I being?', 'How much longer can I put up with this?' This is a man I love and is a great father… and suddenly he is being a completely different person. We all have these destructive thoughts in our head. In the book I name them 'my evil twin sister Sheila'. I have no idea where I came up with that – probably a soap opera from the 80s." Yet in front of her husband and children, Munson remained composed.

Indeed, it is her unusual composure in the face of marital crisis that seems to have caught the public imagination, provoking a flurry of debate. Some see her as a Gandhi-like figure, others as a doormat, still others as "passive aggressive". Time ran a story on How To Save Your Marriage By Not Doing Anything, while the Newsweek headline read When Divorce Isn't The Only Choice.

Munson is being held up as a role model for a radical new relationship dynamic, but can anyone else learn from her experience? Marriage gurus point out that there are different kinds of relationship breakdown – long, corrosive ones – that might be beyond repair, and sudden crises that could benefit from a Munson-style stonewalling.

For all her slightly new age references and talk of deep breathing and eternal wisdom, Munson is, in fact, advocating rather old-fashioned values: stoicism, loyalty, self-control, reticence, discretion.

To her credit, her children remained more or less unaware of what was happening that summer (though they can't be now). She was also careful in whom she confided: "I didn't share it with many people. I chose friends who loved my husband and believed in us, not friends who'd say, 'Kick him out!' People love a drama, and a drama doesn't necessarily serve anyone or anything."

What Munson believes helped her cope and see what was happening to her husband was the fact that, two years earlier, she had undergone her own personal crisis.

In a short space of time, her first big publishing deal had folded, her father died suddenly and her dog was shot. "I was miserable. Suffering had become my norm. And that's when I hired a good therapist." The therapist helped her revaluate her priorities, learn to embrace the present and not judge herself by worldly success. Armed with this wider perspective – and the 14 novel-thick armadillo skin – she was prepared for anything. In fact, she says, the marital crisis was grist to the mill: "I like to say I had the map and he gave me the territory." It was, for all the suffering, an oddly exhilarating experience.


Munson had set herself a six-month limit for her husband's "time out". But a family tragedy made him start to sort himself out a little sooner. "His sister got cancer and her husband had just left her and she had five children and she actually died last 4 July. Midway through that summer, he went to live with her and help her, and I think it was that experience of seeing somebody he loved so dearly lose their life at such a young age. He began to understand what was really important wasn't his job. It was his relationships."

The day he came home from that visit to his sister, "I was in the hot tub, and he came out and got in and he said, 'I just have to apologise for everything I have put you through this summer, and I can never repay you. I am a 40-year-old trying to be a 20-year-old, and I realise my career is done with and I have to find something else."

Other encouraging signs followed: he started fixing broken doorknobs, and murmuring about repainting the porch, and getting logs in for the winter. Then came the clincher: "One day I came home and there was a satellite truck in our driveway. I thought, 'Huh! This guy is getting the satellite upgraded. He might mow the lawn and not come back. But a guy that has ordered more sports channels – he is not going anywhere!"
And he stayed. By Thanksgiving 2008, the crisis was over. Now they are back together and he has found a job. "Of course," she adds, a little tartly, "at the end it is not all tied up in a perfect pink bow."

And the moral of it all? Her book is not, she insists, a guide on How To Keep Your Man. On the contrary: "It's all about letting go. Suddenly, the minute I let go of ever getting published, and of my marital outcome, that is when everything turns round. I find that incredibly interesting."

[ForeverYoung]

25, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to stop in and offer me your thoughts on our situation. It truly means a lot to me when someone with your experience and expertise reaches out to help me.

Her mom's death forced my wife to face her own mortality, and brought up issues from her childhood that she is now struggling with. I couldn't see this coming, and as much as I wish I could, I can't fix it for her. She must work through these issues herself. Much of her recent behavior matches up to the classic signs of a MLC. Like it or not, it is what it is.

Please don't think I'm using the MLC label while not bothering to work on myself. Maybe I wasn't clear in my posts, but I do consider working on myself to be of the utmost importance. Some of the things I have done over the last 6 months. (even when I didn't always feel like it)

Read nearly a dozen marriage, or self improvement books. Was actually even reading one called "How To Live" prior to the bomb drop.
Have been active with the Save the Marriage coaching program since week one, which like DB, has LBS's concentrate on working on themselves.
Took two online courses through the local community college: Interpersonal Communication, and Get Assertive.
Worked on eliminating negative personal behaviors and replacing them with positive ones.
Started doing more with friends.
Did more projects around the house, stayed busy.
Worked with an advisor to get my retirement investments in order.
Took a vacation on my own.

Re: Vacations- My W works for a large tour operator. She gets packages to sunny resort destinations that are all inclusive for next to nothing. We have often joked that because everything is included, it costs us more money to stay home. Because of this, our vacations usually go this route, and she's the one who gets the specials list, and is the only one who can book the trip. We have done a few road trips, but it seems unlikely she would want to go on one with me now if I planned it. This is why I recently did an out of town two night trip on my own.

Re: LL- Yes, in hindsight knowing her LL's earlier would have been great. Like most people, I was not even aware of the concept of LL. I'd venture to say that most people aren't. Those who are familiar with them probably learned about 'em after hitting a rocky patch of their own, just like I did. I refuse to beat myself up for this 'failure'. I was always a loving and committed H and did my best at the time. I also consider it highly likely that these LL were being spoken adequately, or we never could have made 30+ good years together. I know I'm not perfect, but I must have done something right to make it this far. People change, and perceptions change too. And let's not forget that pesky re-writting of history thing.

Making positive changes from here forward is all I can do now.

Re: Her happiness level or misery level or her activities are NOT an index of yours or relevant to yours.
Easier said than done. After 30+ years of being "as one", this is a hard one to shake. While I know I've come a long way, I still have a long way to go. Besides, my real fear is that she will find a new partner while out having fun. Anybody have any tips on dealing with this?

I have come to accept that she may be gone for good... and that I'll be ok. But this acceptance does seem to wax and wane. Sometimes thinking of being on my own doesn't bother me at all, other times it tears me up. The torn up periods are shorter and less often than they were though. Anybody have any tips?

Re: Kids. I have nothing against kids, I love 'em. My wife and I just decided early on that we didn't want to sign up for that responsibility. At family get togethers I'm known as the "fun uncle" because I play and roughhouse with all the kids. Fostering was never on my list, but being a big brother was. Maybe now I will finally act on it.

Based on my analysis, and things she has said, these are the big issues I need to work on:

Not being attentive enough to her needs. Not knowing that she was unhappy and falling out of love.
Not being assertive enough. Avoiding conflict issues because I preferred to keep the peace.
Not taking enough charge of our life / planning our future.

Oh, and BTW, I love you too 25!

[ForeverYoung]

here is what Laura Munson did when she felt her h was having a MLC.

Interesting. Instead of avoiding Big Relationship Talks, (the popular advice) she dived right in and took charge. I like.