Please forget time lines. Everyone who has been at this any length of time will tell you the same thing. MLC is not a formula. It is when fragile coping strategies break down, and they become their shadow.
Without wanting to put words in Job's mouth, 'they become' means that is the person they turn into for a period of time. The length of this is unknowable.
A few people are relatively fortunate and their spouses do not stay in crisis for long and return to themselves and restore the marriage. Others take much longer and may or may not make it through. Wonka may well be right that the meaner ones stay in crisis, but not enough is known about the whole difficult business for anyone to be sure about this. What I am writing below is my own observation and may well be wrong.
There appear to me to be two groups of MLC marriage. One where the MLC person was amazing and the marriage was very happy, and the other in which the lbs realises that there were always problems (usually drink, drugs or affairs, but sometimes simply difficult behaviour). However ALL of them, I believe, even niceness are coping strategies for deeper problems which they mask until an event triggers the coping strategy breakdown. This breakdown can be more or less gradual. In my case I waatched my husband disintegrate (although I didn't know it at teh time) over a three months period prior to the bomb.
So that the bomb can happen fairly early in the crisis or somw time into it, depending on the length of fuse, if that makes sense.
It is we who have to survive. The MLCer may or may not make it through, and even if they do, the lbs may have moved on and away from the damage, with no desire to return.
I wonder if the really mean ones feel more 'guilty' and have a greater sense of the wrong they have done? this may be what makes it harder to make any sort of amends.
I believe that my xh is having a very severe MLC. He has been in obvious crisis now for nine years. that's right nine! During that time he has been fairly consistently hostile and mean, to the extent that he is currently suing me. He has alienated all of his children, and his two daughters in law.
However, even my xh has had a few periods of clarity before plunging deeper into the tunnel.
Pre crisis my xh was a loving man who valued his family above all else. We were happy and united. We were married over 30 years when the bomb went off.
I am so grateful that I found these boards, without them I do not know what I would have done.
Will he ever come out? Honestly I do not know. Several experienced posters have suggested that he may remain stuck, which is why it is so important to move forward with your own life.
I do not like who he is now - who could? And I do not think he likes himself much. He is full of suppressed rage - that is the biggest change in him, the rage is much more evident over the past year or so. He is so angry is is like a thunder cloud. This may be because he realizes what he has lost, but hasn't got a clue how to put it right. So he continues to loudly proclaim how right he was to leave me.
He recently remarried (not the original OW) but without much enthusiasm, as far as I can see. We have little contact, but when we do speak he still seems like an alien, someone from another planet, and impervious to 'normal' feelings.
Sorry if this is a depressing post. The good news is that I am pretty good, and have rebuilt my life. My kids have pretty much recovered, and my dils are amazing women.
