NLT -I do not post much any more, but I often think about your sitch, and hoped that your xh was waking up from his folly.
Like you, I feel uneasy with the 'canned response', but think it is more about the mindset we need to get into. Non-engagement, and listening without getting sucked into their drama. We do not need to take responsibility for what others choose to do, or accept the 'blame' for it.
This isn't to say we were perfect during our marriage, but these people have issues, they really do.
So it is a matter of putting the approach into your own words. I said to my xh that it wasn't what I wanted, and I was deeply sorry that it had come to this. I urged him gently to reconsider.
I have ocme to accept what my therapist said seven years ago, that he thought my xh had a personality disorder, and untreated these only get worse. I believe that many of the MLC spouses have this - they live with it for many years, often, until it starts to take them outside the bounds of 'normality' and they begin to engage in behaviours that are definitely not normal.
Unfortunately we live in a world where marital breakdown and adultery are fairly common, for a variety of reasons, and their behaviour is therefore less obvious than if they suddenly started on physical violence, or major fraud. In other words they are doing stuff they can get away with in our current society.
From what you have posted previously the OW is a nut job - how could she be a real alternative to you, for a normal man? The people these MLCers leave us for are damaged goods, and the MLCer doesn't seem to see in, in fact they seek them out, I believe, to validate their craziness.
But the MLCer doesn't see their damage. Take care of yourself emotionally and financially - it can get ugly, whatever they say at the outset of divorce, like 'it's just a piece of paper' Really? So is a will, but it is a darned important one that totally changes the legal and financial relationship, not to mention the emotional one.
