Thank you for your insights Wonka! I have in the past, being only human, said and done things I later came to regret. It takes guts to face up to those mistakes and shows you are a person of values to try a make amends. Easier to hide behind excuses or simply move on with your life and forget.
Thanks for sharing with everyone here and the help you give us all. It's much appreciated! I hope Mrs. Wonka can see the fact that you are a better person now for having made it through your MLC.
What pressure? Yes, I know that we put pressure on them to try to work on the marriage, but in the beginning, when the MLCer is thinking about bailing, what pressure is there? The LBS isn't putting on pressure yet because we don't even know yet what is about to hit us. Make sense?
Tad
Currently: M 57 XW 58 Sons 39,34,32,30
The Sitch: Married 26 years EA w/ OM 9/10 Bomb 10/10 (5 weeks after 25th anniversary) Sep 12/10 She wants D 1/11 W files 5/11 D final 10/11 XW marries OM 6/13
Tad, just because you didn't know, does that mean it didn't happen? Certainly you didn't mean to apply pressure at a conscious level, but that doesn't mean it wasn't felt that way.
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."
Hey Tad, I now know that by doing things like asking my W to go and do things as a family, things that I just saw as normal H/W activities, my W saw as pressure. I may not understand why or how she got to that point but I know it's the case. What we, who aren't suffering from MLC see as loving gestures they saw as us pressuring them to feel a way they just couldn't.
Blieve me I'm not making excuses for them or saying they were right to feel that way. In hind sight I can see it now. MLC makes them think differently then we do or they did before it hit them. If only there were a way I could have seen it coming.
Hey Tad, I now know that by doing things like asking my W to go and do things as a family, things that I just saw as normal H/W activities, my W saw as pressure. I may not understand why or how she got to that point but I know it's the case. What we, who aren't suffering from MLC see as loving gestures they saw as us pressuring them to feel a way they just couldn't.
Blieve me I'm not making excuses for them or saying they were right to feel that way. In hind sight I can see it now. MLC makes them think differently then we do or they did before it hit them. If only there were a way I could have seen it coming.
\
Assume you could...but would you have? I mean, would you really have done anything differently?
(B/C a lot of LBS's admit, in retrospect, that there were signs or cries for help or warnings, but they chose to ignore them for whatever reason.)
But for this purpose, let's say you would have done something different...like what?
AND let's say you DID DO that thing...
what specific difference would that action have made? In my opinion, If this is a true MLC, then it's not about you.
If it's not a true MLC, then stop calling it that, and own your part of it.
Make sense?
M: 57 H: 60 M: 35 yrs S30,D28,D19 H off to Alaska 2006 Recon 7/07- 8/08 *2016* X = "ALASKA 2.0" GROUND HOG DAY I File D 10/16 OW DIV 2/26/2018 X marries OW 5/2016
Thank you for your insights Wonka! I have in the past, being only human, said and done things I later came to regret. It takes guts to face up to those mistakes and shows you are a person of values to try a make amends. Easier to hide behind excuses or simply move on with your life and forget. 100% agreement with this^^. But that's also why I think the term "MLC" is useless.
Too many spouses use the term to cast attention away from themselves and to act as if some "wacky" crisis landed on their spouse. I say, Just own your part in the marital problems ---b/c you want to become the best man you can become anyhow--and b/c you don't want to be in the blame game.
We ALL say/do things we regret. Welcome to humanity!
The point of that is to grow from it. That means NOT repeating the same mistakes...and it means we improve as people. Making amends means that too.
I have heard too many people say "I made amends!!..." and then they seem to presume they are forgiven (poof!) and some of them even repeat the mistakes and then apologize. They seem to believe that words of apology compensate for actions that hurt. They do not equate.
Thanks for sharing with everyone here and the help you give us all. It's much appreciated! I hope Mrs. Wonka can see the fact that you are a better person now for having made it through your MLC.
indeed..
.
M: 57 H: 60 M: 35 yrs S30,D28,D19 H off to Alaska 2006 Recon 7/07- 8/08 *2016* X = "ALASKA 2.0" GROUND HOG DAY I File D 10/16 OW DIV 2/26/2018 X marries OW 5/2016
Yikes...your posts are still almost all about your w and her father. We don't have anything to tell them, b/c neither your wife nor her father are here working on the marriage.
You also wrote that we "need to understand that her father is a sociopath..."
Well, NO Matt, we don't NEED to understand that. Seriously. Your father in law has nothing to do with your course of action now.
No matter how many times you write out/re-write your whole marital history - and or how wacky she is or was,
or how selfish she was or is, OR how evil or crazy her father is or was, All we can help you with are YOUR CHOICES, NOW. And they are the only things you have control over.
So, back to you...any specific traits you want to work on to become the man you were meant to become?
Which GAL activities help you most to become that guy?
You know, we hammer the whole "GAL" thing for one reason...we know it works.
Please take at least some of the advice we give. Please try to GAL and Detach...
it will help you and your daughters a lot more than repeating the marital history and staying stuck.
M: 57 H: 60 M: 35 yrs S30,D28,D19 H off to Alaska 2006 Recon 7/07- 8/08 *2016* X = "ALASKA 2.0" GROUND HOG DAY I File D 10/16 OW DIV 2/26/2018 X marries OW 5/2016
100% agreement with this^^. But that's also why I think the term "MLC" is useless.
Too many spouses use the term to cast attention away from themselves and to act as if some "wacky" crisis landed on their spouse. I say, Just own your part in the marital problems ---b/c you want to become the best man you can become anyhow--and b/c you don't want to be in the blame game.
You're in the MLC forum. It is as real as your hand in front of you and yes many MLCers DO act wacky. It's no act at all.
I think your main point here was that Matt's DBing path should remain forward-looking regardless if there's a MLC or not. I do get the sense you have good intentions here when making that particular point, am I right? However, the DBing approach toward a MLCer is indeed different than one who is a simple WAS. On the other hand, keeping the focus on YOU and making self-improvements is universal requirement for success regardless if one's M is saved or not.
Please try not to dismiss MLC as nonsensical for it is very real and painful because it is a VERY, VERY long process and confusion reigns. I mean...your very own H had his own MLC, right?
Please let me know if I mis-read your comments/intent!
Tad,
You asked a very relevant question and I think it is instructive for DBers to learn the why's here.
Originally Posted By: Tadpole
What pressure? Yes, I know that we put pressure on them to try to work on the marriage, but in the beginning, when the MLCer is thinking about bailing, what pressure is there? The LBS isn't putting on pressure yet because we don't even know yet what is about to hit us. Make sense?
To a rational person reading this, the immediate question is ..."yeah! that's right...I didn't do a darn thing to introduce pressure at all. what gives??!"
For the MLCer going through a crisis, their coping skills break down imperceptibly coupled with depression...that's a recipe for a roiling inner turmoil. Over time, our day-to-day coping skills start to break down one by one. We are desperately treading water right up to our chins. Then it all becomes TOO much...thus we flee or jettison the M and family as one of the several ways to lessen/reduce the pressure we're feeling. Acquiring OW/OM is another one like a whale drinking up plankton.
Sad, but that's how it goes down around here.
I know that it is not logical nor makes sense at all to relatively healthy outsiders like you and other LBS. That is just the way how a MLCer functions during the crisis...all of their innards are in one hellva mess like C-3PO!
Matt,
Originally Posted By: Matt165
If only there were a way I could have seen it coming.
No one here, nor did Ms. Wonka, ever saw the MLC coming down the pike at all!!! There's no Life Manual on the planet that warns you about MLC other than the jokey Hollywood-version of a balding MLCer with a red Corvette and having a 20-something on their arm as an eye candy. Such a myth!!
Ok, ok. Just for the sake of argument that one can see it coming down the pike, then what would be your "best" line of defense against it??!! Absolutely nothing can beat this "invisible" disease that has no smell, no taste, no sight, no sounds. Pretty hard to do battle against it, right? No weapon can really beat/defeat MLC except unconditional love that draws the MLCer back to you as the lighthouse.
MLC just hits you right in between the eyes from nowhere out of the left field. Unfortunately so.
Hi 25, Please pay attention to the context of a post. The post that you site about talking about my FIL being a Sociopath was in response to a question from Georgiabelle about if her girls were destined to have messed up relationships or MLC's of their own because of how their FATHER was behaving. The entire post had to do with how my W, someone I know went through a horrible parental divorce and who had her father abandon her, responded to that. It was not me blaming, or complaining or restating or anything of that nature at all. The only person that NEEDED to understand that was Georgia. And that post was not about my taking or not taking any course of action now.
It is frustrating to have to read a post that complains about things that aren't the case. I was not talking about my FIL being the CAUSE of anything or how wacky my W was or even my MARITAL history. The question was from a woman who was very upset and worried about her kids and I answered her in the best way I could. Do you even look or notice if any given post is in response to a question from someone else? The only times in the last weeks that I went into any of the things you seem to want me to "get over" was when I was asked, sometimes by you.
As far as "Please take some of the advice we give here. Please try to GAL and detach" That is exactly what I'm doing and what my posts that aren't in response to questions are mostly about. I know you are trying to help but please, before you tell me to stop doing this or get over that or infer that I'm ignoring advice please make certain that is the case.
Also, like Wonka, I do find it frustrating that you keep pushing that there is no such thing as MLC or that there HAD to be more that myself as the LBS did to CAUSE my W to do the things she has. That I'm just not facing up to or admitting MY bad actions that lead to my M being "bad". Well, I'm not. I have been as honest as I can and not even my W can tell me the reasons for why she is doing what she is.
As for me and what I'm doing, my GAL activities,the things about myself that I'm working on, read my posts that aren't answering questions and you'll find the answers.
