25yearsMLC - 10 years later I FILE D

[25yearsmlc]

Real piecing is when both partners are putting both feet back into the marriage or into a new better one.

You must come up with tools to make sure things are different and better. Or they will revert.


In fact, I'm mostly referring to better conflict resolution.

Oh - 25 I am so sorry to hear this - although I knew that you had moved cross country - and since you started posting again I suspected something like this was happening.

So I read a lot of the above book but I will have to re-read it again to follow it all.

Do you think your husband ever finished his MLC and really recovered or has he just reverted to this strange behavior all over again?

Hi Cadet,

It's extremely hard to be objective about this^^. Because I do see and hear from family members things they noticed, now that I did not really take in before. Things have been said to me like "no offense but your h was always selfish, h was oblivious to other's feelings, h outsourced empathy to you"...

I do know that While active duty, the military moves you so often you don't get a chance to be restless. H grew up in a military family so in a way he maybe addicted to chaos b/c he so very often created it in our lives.

The "MLC" of Alaska the first time, was such an epic fail for him, I'm sure he was mortified.

But it was his mother' illness that got us out of there so he never had to openly tell his heroes they had let him down or he had mishandled anything. No real resolution.

Do you really think that conflict resolution would have kept this from happening?


Real Conflict resolution ? Specifying the lessons learned and how to avoid the mistakes again, would for sure have helped.

Conflict resolution itself?? Well I think so - The past 10 years at least, When he didn't get his way he either fumed about it till we caved, or deceived and got his way anyhow, or openly got his way anyhow and called it something else. He did compromise before we had lived in Alaska. Sometimes I wish we had never gone but I can honestly say that agreeing to that assignment was, at the time, the most loving thing I had ever done for someone.

So maybe the question is, what if I had learned to enforce boundaries earlier?

What if h had learned how to be content with the glorious family & life we had created??
What if he had not lost his religious faith?

Yes, those^ things would have made a difference to all of our family.

Also, sidnenote - when you truly believe down deep that you are a good person who deserves love, but you screw up, you just own it.

You apologize partly b/c you know that admitting a mistake does not make you a loser.

Somehow h never really acted as if he believed ^^This. The only mistakes he ever admitted to were the smallest of things like not setting the alarm right. Nothing that hurt someone was admitted, that I can recall at the moment. Looking back, that seems really significant. Plus, when I apologized for something, it rarely calmed him.

But like I said, it's extremely difficult to be objective at the moment. I know a lot of what did NOT help and perhaps by practicing DB, we lasted longer.

Still, I feel like we really made breakthroughs in Retrovaille and there was such a closeness and openness and forgiveness then.

I probably held onto those moments of clarity too long.

On our 34th anniversary h made a toast to me and thanked me for all my sacrifices and he began to cry (h was not a crier). He hugged me and kept saying "i'm so so sorry".

I was touched although taken aback. He also talked of how the next move would be my turn. This was another moment of clarity that I held onto...for too long.

Then my mom died the next day. So, who knows? It's like the moments of painful clarity he had, somehow always raised shame in him

and that shame thing, for my h, was absolutely too much. From what I recall, whenever guilt or remorse lasted in him for more than a minute, or that was not immediately fully forgiven & forgotten,

always always converted into blame. You could not discuss how we (or he) would not repeat it b/c of the damage done, you just had to accept his one sentence apology like the one he gave our d for missing 2 years of her life. A "sorry I missed so much. But I'm here now", which did not appease her feelings of being unloved, very much.


I must admit some of the other reconciled people I know have had similar things happen.
Having met J3B last fall, I can tell you he was not really fully reconciled either.
His wife still had issues for sure.

J3B and I were in contact a lot and his words of support then, would echo now. They would be what my own journal from 2007 said. "IF this happens again, walk away and don't look back." I miss J3B.

And It's the not looking back that is much harder than I thought.

Well I send my best and hope you can keep moving forward in whats best for YOU!

Reading my own notes from long ago, helps me move forward possibly more than anything else.

This place has value no matter what happens to the marriage itself.