Her MLC: The Battle I Didn't Choose

[Brubeck]

I want to journal this also cause it's just something I realized, that W has really detached from her own relatives.

When I think my sitch reaches a plateau - she changes, or I realize something else about her MLC or myself.

I remember early last year (about 2 months after BD) when I first discovered she was in MLC. She accused me of "abandoning" her during one of her very first spews. I did a web search on "abandonment issues" and "confronting your mortality". I read all about MLC, I found DB and finally got my hands on heavy MLC information.

At the time, she only matched out 1/4 of the MLC checklist. I knew about OM but thought it was just an EA instead of a PA. All the other stuff hadn't flourished yet, and damn it did - overspending, detaching, staying out, new friends, crazy exercise, filing for D, ignoring the kids, etc. A year and half later - I don't recognize this person. She is someone spilling over with enormous selfishness, anger and cruelty who has done things I never thought her capable of. Images from her cell phone make her smile more than her children do.

I only realized about a month ago that she's detached from her own relatives. I feel so silly for not noticing sooner. I suppose it's because I've stayed in relatively decent contact with a few of her cousins myself.

Her cousins and their children are the same age as us. There is a birthday party almost every month. I just realized we have not been to any family gatherings in a year and a half. At the last party she attended, W sat at the dining room table and talked to one person all night. Six months later, we made our annual Halloween trip to a pumpkin farm. At the last minute, she decided to stay home and I took the boys without her - to spend the day with her relatives.

That was the last time we visited with any of her relatives. We have not been to any family birthday parties in 2017. Those parties are typically organized by the wives via Facebook. I don't know if she ignored the invite, declined, or was not invited. Her relatives know she filed for D.

What detachment I've been able to accomplish for myself has allowed me to step back and also see just how incredibly damaged both of her sisters are. I read on someone's thread that their spouse and a few of their siblings are all in MLC. I can't say that my W's sisters are in MLC, but they are definitely messed up.

I've never sensed any bond between W and her sisters, or between the sisters and their mother. They were friendly with each other, but there was a formality present - they socialized like co-workers. I wondered for years about it, but I never asked W. I assumed some family structures are like that, even though I always got a great vibe amongst her other relatives who were more like my own family (minus the wine and bad language).

Big sis is the Alpha-type. Big money in real estate, huge house with all the status symbols. Beginning in her mid-30s, she developed a drinking problem. She's been lost deep in alcoholism for 15 years now but hiding the problem like a pro beneath a fancy wardrobe and great social skills. She racked up drunk driving arrests, hospitalizations, loss of business, etc. Then she got cancer - stayed sober through it and beat it in less than a year - and then resumed her drinking.

She got her drivers license revoked. Her H cut off the money and took away the car keys. She found ways to have wine delivered to the house using a gasoline (credit) card. Big sis is passed out drunk most days by 3 pm - her 2 teenage kids would step in and help her keep it together while H was gone most of the time managing their business. She tries to go sober and crashes every couple of months.

Apparently her H is waiting another year for the younger child to graduate HS and leave for college before he files for D and sells the house.

The phone calls that W gets from big sis are usually "I'm drinking again", and pre-BD W would seem remorseful about the sitch big sis was in. After BD, she would still take these calls and offer sympathy and then complain afterwards about her neediness. The most recent call from Big Sis was the same deal, she's drinking again and thinks her H is going to file for D any day now. W offered her all sorts of support about how they're both in the same boat and they're going to be get through these D's together. Afterwards, W makes a call complaining all over again how Big Sis needs to "grow up and get over it already".

Big sis came to visit about two months ago. She's bone thin but is starting to get that bloated, wrinkled face that long-time alcoholics get.

Middle sis is worse off than Big sis or my W - an incredibly angry and selfish woman who only calls you when she wants something. She is always starting "something new", and she never completes any of it. She's still bouncing around from one entry level part time job to another in her late 40s. I can't imagine the number of unfinished arts & crafts projects stuffed in her closets.

Middle sis got a D a few years ago. She tried to launch her own clothing store and it started to fail right away, so she had an A. She and her H eventually re-married, but things aren't the same between them. He was friendly & sociable before her A, but since they got back together he has become far more reserved and even a bit cold. I think he reconciled just for the kids.

Years ago, W made clear that the physical abuse she received as a child was equally doled out to her by her mother and middle sis. W said middle sis was always mad about something and sometimes would literally use my W as a punching bag to get the aggression out. As long as I've known my W, she has always avoided middle sis, because she only wants favors and offers little in return. You would only be invited to her house on an occasion where you're expected to bring a gift.

I never really stood back to look at them until a month ago. I just never evaluated them through their flaws, because we all have them. Only now do I see how W's sisters are struggling just as badly as her, albeit in different ways. They all seem to be hanging on by their fingernails. Middle sis has probably never known anything else and has made a life of it.

Middle sis is 8 years older than my W, and Big sis is 10 years older, so I guess because of the age differences, they got affected in different ways. I don't know if middle sis or big sis had to deal with the verbal, physical and sexual abuse that my W received.

I can't imagine the things they had to deal with growing up with such a brutal, angry drunk of a mother. No money, sometime little food, no father, always moving house, not much personal space - cramped in with relatives, mother is always away at work or partying and she's bringing home the wrong kind of men (including the man who sexually abused W). In their family photos, their mother is seldom smiling, looks angry most of the time. They are clearly all trying to survive something, what it was I don't know.

I know I'm supposed to be talking about GALing or venting frustration about understanding MLC behaviors, but this is just the stuff I need to say to help me keep going. STFU smoothies are getting hard to drink with all the spewing W does at me and the kids.