Wife in MLC? I'm seeking support / guidance

[25yearsmlc]

Don't be too hard on yourself mate. It's amazing what we take for granted when all is "well". The thing is, though, we're not the only "baddies" here. Sure we didn't know how to love them the way they needed it but I'm pretty sure the same goes both ways. You didn't know her love language and she probably didn't know yours.



not sure how useful this^^^ "tit for tat" is since it sure sounds like keeping a scorecard. And you know how useful those are...(NOT) What's the point of keeping score here, about the past, while trying to solve today's problems? To ease guilt? Forget that. You don't ease guilt by slinging it onto someone else.

Learn to forgive, your spouse and yourself. Model that for your spouse and kids.


Besides, even when the WAS did in fact know our LL, often we took it for granted OR we ignored their love language of giving (= how they GIVE love is also a love language, not just how they/we receive it.)

When we gloss over their acts of service or gifts or physical touch OR whatever it is they give us, in their love language,

we deny their love language. OR we turn from it.

At the workshop "Essential Experience", I heard a physician declare that he FINALLY realized how loving his wife had been, and how he'd mistreated her, for years--He said:

"I turned away from love being given to me, b/c it was not wrapped the way I wanted it wrapped. That's so fu$%#^g stupid and tragic!"

Whenever I look back I see things in our lives together which could have been done differently, from both ends. I don't think that changing anyone of them would have made much of a difference in what has happened. The only thing we can do now is make sure it doesn't happen again. Make sure we don't become complacent again and stop appreciating whet we've got.

Agreed. But not sure how chiming in about the spouses flaws, so we don't "Lose" on our measuring chart, helps achieve that appreciation OR goal of making sure it doesn't happen again. After all, if we are measuring, we're spending energy on THEM that we could spend on OURSELVES..

Good point Arsene. As unhappy as they say they were, if we look close enough we can see that we probably weren't as happy as we could have been either. All the more reason to make life changes for ourselves.

Yes it is ALL the more reason to make life changes for you. But don't go revising the marital history now - either way.

When SOME LBSers get the bomb, they decide that the "marriage was great, even PERFECT...UNTIL the evil OP came in... and THEN everything died..."

They quickly stop looking at what THEY can do to work on themselves, b/c it's far easier to blame the OP and call the WAS a "cheater".

Other times the LBSer decides to revise the other way, "Now that I see it more clearly, it's not that I could have been more attentive, it's that I was the unhappy one! Naturally I could not be loving and kind enough b/c I was NEVER treated right and NOW I realize I've been miserable ALL these years and blah blah blah..."

it's all hogwash and at some level, the WAS may realize it.

Probably neither view is fair. What matters is us doing OUR work. Period.