Hi Bea, The question I have on this subject is how do we accept the MLCer the way they are now? They have for the most part rejected the very things that made them the person we choose to spend our lives with. By becoming the "mirror image" of who they were, for example, no longer putting the needs of the kids first, they have become someone that no longer has the values that attracted you to them in the first place. You see all the time here when the LBS says has become "someone I would never be attracted to".
How do you "accept them for who they are now" when who they are now isn't someone you would respect if they weren't your S? Sure, they USED to be different, have the values you respected and the change is caused by their crisis, by their messed up childhoods, etc. but many people who have had messed up childhoods don't go on to have an MLC. In fact it spurs them on to make sure they don't do to their kids what happened to them. I see my W treating our D's the way she was treated by her father, not accepting them and trying to get them to do what SHE thinks is best by withholding her love and acceptance. How can someone who has lived through this and been hurt by it now do the same to their own kids? And how do I accept that is who she is now?
If I were to "accept" that this is who she is now and that's that, I would also need to accept that I would never want her back in my life, that it's OK that she is hurting our kids in ways that will stay with them for the rest of their lives and possibly hurt their future R's with their S's and kids. This is where I'm having problems. To see someone I had so much respect for start acting like a child at age 48, totally changing their values and becoming totally selfish and self centered, I find it hard NOT to have a problem with just accepting them this way.
