Dealing with a recovering MLCer for years was not easy and took an enormous amount of patience.
I've been reading a lot of posts and threads here and while I am relatively early on in the whole process I have some observations of others' experiences. The conventional wisdom is there is nothing you can do. Your MLC spouse will do what they need to do and will go through it at their own pace. But after spending a lot of time reading here, my feeling is that is not entirely true. Sure you can't control what they feel and do, but the reaction of the LBS seems to me to be really important to the outcome. When I look at the tone people adopt in their posts from years back when talking about their spouses and then look down in the footer to see where they stand now, if I had two words to describe those that reconciled with their spouses, I would say that they were "patient" and "compassionate" and those who were divorced had been "resentful" and "angry."
Now, it may be that everyone wants to spin those that moved on and divorced and started new lives on their own as success stories but considering the divorce rate for those who engage in second marriages is higher than the first I do think there is some sort of personality traits in the LBS that do shape the outcome. I don't buy that we are helpless in all this. Sure the MLCer may actually himself/herself be resentful and angry but if you both are, what chance do you have? None, because there is nothing to attract either one of you. But at least if you are patient and compassionate, you are giving the other person a potential reason to stay.
So no, I don't buy that this is something that the MLCer has to get through on his/her own. That may be true, but you CAN influence where he or she winds up, that is so clear from these boards. It might feel better to be absolved of any blame in all of this but frankly I think a lot of LBS do play a role in increasing or decreasing the odds of the marriage surviving.
That's just my observation, but I am just keeping in mind that most people come here just to talk about themselves. Some may be doing the right thing, but some may be doing absolutely the wrong thing. If we want to learn anything from reading this board, I think we do need to pay attention to the outcome we want and look at whether the people we read have achieved that outcome, or else we could be influenced in a bad way.
