Just thought I would tell you, I read through your threads.
I guess I will never understand MLC, makes me glad my WH behaves abusively, I am looking at least 4 OW to date, gambling and alcoholism.
I guess he is a Hyde/Hyde wanna be MLCer?
V
To briefly answer your question.
Midlife is the time when our age starts to catch up with us. And anything that has been wrong in the past gets magnified, and blown around and many times gets much worse.
For instance I had a bad knee in high school and college, now it hurts a lot since my operation in college left bone on bone. My mother who was bipolar her whole life got to the same age as we are now and blew her life up, destroying everything in sight. Divorced my father, ended up in jail, and just really went crazy. For others we do not notice that they were gamblers, or narcissists, depressed or whatever other things that had gone wrong in their lives. They had unresolved childhood issues that at midlife blow up in their faces. So we all go through mid life transitions, but some become a crisis when they go off the rails.
identity crisis a period in the psychosocial development of an individual, usually occurring during adolescence, manifested by a loss of the sense of the sameness and historical continuity of one's self, confusion over values, or an inability to accept the role the individual perceives as being expected by society.
life crisis a period of disorganization that occurs when a person meets an obstacle to an important life goal, such as the sudden death of a family member, a difficult family conflict, an incident of domestic violence (spouse or child abuse), a serious accident, loss of a limb, loss of a job, or rape or attempted rape.
So a crisis combines with age, hormones, depression, childhood issues, trigger point and you get MLC.
It is quite possible that you husband is a gambler and in a MLC. It is possible that he was in MLC when you met and married him and that you did not recognize it.
Don't worry - none of us knew these things as it is not taught in school.
A MLC can end and the person is still bipolar or still depressed, or still has a bad knee. Maybe the knee just doesnt hurt as much, or the other symptoms are not as pronounced.
There are millions of pages written about MLC so that is as much detail as I am going to go into here.
