Hi, I want to validate all that you have said. MLC isn't an excsue for bad behavior, but I believe that a true MLC - that complete change of a kind loving person into a total monster, is a mental illness.

So we can feel compassion for the suffering while standing aside from the behaviours. My xh is a completely different person to me his children and his old friends. I honestly do not think this is nnormal nor do i think he was acting for the previous 35+ years, in my case.

Something is clearly happening, and we cannot get sucked in to their drama. They may never recover. It doesn't help that next to nothing is known about MLC to the extent that most of us here even when we have seen a therapist, and the therapist has met the spouse, remain confused about what is going on.

We are counselled not to worry about what is going on, and that is right insofar as we cannot change it, and it isn't about us. But it is disturbing to have the centre ripped out of your life, and people say things like 'People change' 'Time to move on' as the best possible advice. Which it is as things stand currently.

I wonder what our children will feel like if and when they discover that it is, for example, a hormone imbalance?

A good friend of mine had a mother who was a paranoid schizophrenic. She spent much of his childhood and adolescence in and out of mental hospitals, and when at home scarcely functioned. His father bailed when he was in his late teens, and he soldiered on until one day when he was in his twenties and she was nearly fifty they discovered a drug that controlled it. Totally. She now has a happy and fulfilled life.

She was crazy, and I mean really crazy for 25 years due to a chemical imbalance. I am a great believer in therapy, but sometimes it is something else.

I do agree that the seeds appear to be sown early in life, but as you say, the child of an alcoholic doesn't have to become. Maybe the early childhood experience means that the brain is slower to produce certain chemicals. Don't know, just speculating.

Bottom line is though, we have to stay clear, they are toxic and irresponsible people. But I am now at a point, eight years on, when I can see the damage, and the misery he has caused himself and others. We have largely healed and have good lives. His is a mess. It is so sad.