Exquisite - thank you so much for taking the time to post this.

The inner story of my xh's MLC is based, I firmly believe,on a terror that I would abandon him. It started when I first got cancer.

It sounds strange that a man would leave to avoid being left, but fundamentally that is what I believe he did, and I think his subsequent obsessive behaviour supports this.

My husband's parents had a very strange relationship and both were emotionally abusive (without meaning to be, certainly in his mother's case, less sure about the father - (ex military and a mean sob. I have some great friends who are military btw, so this isn't a condemnation)

When he left my xh told me that his father was unhappy because he was married to his mother. Not as I saw, that is for sure. His father had real problems, and was incapable of joy, by the time I met him. Having him as a father must have been horrific.

Anyway, I would now run a mile form anyone who had an unhappy childhood and hadn't dealt with it. It poisons you as you get older, while a happy childhood nourishes you. It doesn't have to be nuclear family - just at least one parent who loves you, and lets you know it.

My late MIL actually wrote to her kids to say that she knew she had messed up. How sad is that. One thing I wished is that my xh had sorted things out with her before she died. She was strange but actually deserved better of life, even though she unwittingly sowed the seeds of my xh's crisis.

Anyway, enough about the sad past. And just to say yes, my xh is almost certainly suffering from unrecognized obsessive love for me. I don't think that hanging out with him would eve be enough, even if I was prepared to do it.

When we last spoke I mentioned that I hadn't been as well as I usually am, and he got anxious, right then and there, quite disproportionately. Wanted to know abut symptoms etc. this from a man who walked on his family 8+ years ago.

And this is the weirdest part. There is still a deep deep bond between us. I wish there were not, I wish it would go away, but it is there, like a heartbeat.

I do not dwell on it, I live my life, and I am OK, but breaking that link is proving almost impossible. Anyone wishing to have me certified as crazy can do so now! I did all sorts of exercises last summer to try and break the link, so if anyone knows any more I would like to know. We were together for more than 35 years.