KML - I am curious; did your h live at home during his MLC? Or did he cut and run?
Round one of MLC, he lived at home. He had a short-lived affair with a traveling nurse who thankfully transferred back out of town around the time that we reconciled. He was never out of the bedroom. There were some typically strange MLC behaviors, including forgetfulness and paranoia/projection (going through MY phone to see if I was doing anything, lolol). He even went so far as to put a deposit down on an apartment,but he snapped out of it pretty quickly with the help of some antidepressants and serious DBing on my part.
Things were actually quite good for a few years, then after several more concussions and his approaching 50th birthday he got back into gloomy MLC territory. (He had long since decided he didn't need the antidepressants, and when I suggested he restart them, he insisted that he wasn't depressed, I was the problem.) He announced right after his last two concussions (2 weeks apart) that he wanted a divorce. I got him to go back to marriage counseling (pretty useless, just a place for him to project all his negativity onto me) and after just a couple of months he wanted to move out. I made him stay through the holidays so that the kids wouldn't always associated Xmas with their dad moving out.
Once he left, I began to realize it was kinda NICE not walking on eggshells around him. And when he announced he was filing a couple of months later, I let go and was done. It had been ten long years of fighting for this marriage and doing most of the work and I was finished. I promptly started dating another man and had a delicious sexy long distance relationship with a man who I saw once a month - he restored my battered sense of self.
Ex never made any moves to try to reconcile after he moved out, although I know he went through a bad depressive period for a while. (He's an extrovert and living alone for the first time in his life must have been quite a shock). He had been flirting with several women prior to moving out, and he dated a woman for a while that I suspect he had had some hanky panky with, or at least flirtation, in the previous year or two. That only lasted a few months (I gather he didn't enjoy being a step-parent to a younger child), then shortly after they broke up he began dating the woman/girl who eventually became his second wife. As much as he felt he had missed out on the single dating life in his 20's, he actually dated very little after the divorce - I think he hated being single.
The truth is, in retrospect, that while we had many good years in the marriage, he was never quite all in. It's only years later and through the insights of a good mutual friend that I came to see the narcissistic traits he has and understand how that affected our marriage even before all of his concussions. I was probably quite good for him and I doubt he could have lasted as long (26 years) with someone else. I try to remind myself of the good and figure I got as many good years out of him as anyone could.
Now, several years after our divorce, I still see some memory issues and somewhat erratic behavior on his part, some of which I think is the legacy of his 6 concussions (who knows, he may have had more since he left that I don't know about). I hope his young new wife will care for him in his old age if he develops chronic traumatic encephalopathy like the football players.
