Well citygrl is as blonde, cute and sassy as she sounds! It was lovely to meet IRL.

Got me thinking though on the train journey back about where I am on my LBS journey and what I (think) I've learned. About me, my H and MLC. About life and what matters to me now.
(My H is currently being a mix of polite puppy emails about practical D stuff, quick flash of self-pitying Monster because I'm being more blunt about the 'to do' list and another navel-gazing early morning email which I've not even read.)

Does it matter if it is MLC? I think it's natural to try to find an explanation when someone changes dramatically after a long marriage. You're in shock so you flail around trying to find your own answer to the 'WTF just happened' question. You google everything, invest in endless books and try to talk to your spouse. Maybe you snoop. Maybe you set fire to your wedding photos. You send emails into fat silence and bore your friends. You try on a whole bunch of different 'this is what it is' hats. You look back to see if the life you thought you lived was real and you hunt for a hopeful door out. Ideally one coming up soon. And you're doing this at the same time as being punched over and over again in the face by the person you trusted most, when you're not sleeping, not eating and not even breathing properly.

My two years, looking back, went in phases. Each one was about 3-4 months. We all call it the rollercoaster for good reason and we all know what it feels like. My H fell apart in front of me and was diagnosed with severe depression/anxiety...so I learned about depression and waited for the magic pills/therapy to work. Then I learned about depression fallout as he popped his shark eyed head out of the undergrowth and tried to focus on how I could change my behaviour in response. Then it got crazier (as if a spouse ending a marriage by sending you to Coventry was crazy enough) and it became about death threats and realising he had an OW so I started to DB and focus on my survival. Then D entered the mix and things got crazier still as I had to focus on the practical stuff of being divorced against my will by someone who was a silent vanisher...and then the next series of shock waves from the disclosure process about OW, stealing money, fraud, drugs....blah, blah. Now I think I'm dealing with MLC because it's the only thing that seems to 'fit' what I'm experiencing, so I learn about stages and behaviours and replay and monster spew. MLC makes sense, but it also might just be a placebo to make me feel better about the unacceptable and it definitely makes me think that 5-7 years is an impossible challenge. That it is just too hard to see a better shared future so it is time to walk away more than let go.

With each phase, you get more and more tired. Tired of the crazy. Tired of hope hurting. Tired of being brave. Tired of being a victim and collateral damage. Tired of trying to make sense of things that make no sense. Tired of feeling love, anger, compassion and despair all at the same time. You GAL and journal and post and ruminate like a motherf**ker...but can't seem to break out of a new crazy normal. You let go, you detach, then you don't, then you try again. You realise that it is killing you and all you have done so far is survive. Which is no mean feat...but not enough.

And then you trip over a bit of solid ground when you realise that you get to choose the story of what happened in a way that makes sense to you. Even if you know it might not be the whole 'truth'. A story that you think you can live with without your brain frazzling, that protects the things that matter to you, that feels healthy for you. You breathe out.

Each of us will pick different stories. Mine? I choose to trust my instinct that the person I knew loved me and my M was a good one. That my H had broken bits that could not withstand a tough time in our life and that he spun off into some kind of identity crisis, and he chose to deal with it by destroying twenty years of his life and our M. That he became a different version of himself, a self-destructive and self-obsessed man child, who did not care about anything or anyone. The person I knew no longer exists and there is nothing I can do about it. No amount of love, logic, compassion or action on my part will make any difference. MLC makes sense of the non-sense for me even if others don't believe in it. He may return to life. He may not. He may be happy. He may not. His story is his own and unlikely to be the same as mine. I may never know what really happened and I may never know what happens to him.

Meanwhile, on my side of the street, I still have to deal with all of the collateral damage whether I like it or not. I have to find a way to package an unbearable reality while focusing on what next. I decide to think of my H as dead so I can treasure my memories, think of his face with love and smile. I accept that divorce means dealing with MLC H and that it will be easier when I no longer have to. I stop trying to mind read or guess what will happen to him or if there will be a post-MLC H, let alone what he will look like. I accept that I am choosing to create my own kind of crazy cognitive dissonance where an H who loves me is as real as an anti-H who is indifferent (at best) to my existence. I know that's a bit weird so I don't tell many people but decide that if that's what I need to think to live with what's happened to me, that's fine.

I decide to stand for my right to love my H and treasure our relationship, but no longer stand for my marriage. I accept that my MLC H has destroyed his 50% of the last 20 years and 100% of a shared future, but I refuse to allow him to take my 50% or to shape my 100% of my future.

I'm not going to post much more here in DB. Partly because I don't think I'm DBing now. Partly because in the short-term while I'm still having to interact with what looks like an MLC spouse, I'm finding the another forum more focused on that. I haven't been here long but I wanted to say thank you to all of you for sharing your struggles and experiments and route maps, and thank you to those of you who have listened to mine.

Last edited by Cadet; 09/15/17 09:35 PM.

Me: 53 H:38
T:20 M:14
BD ILYB etc 10/15, H diagnosed severe depression
S 1/16
PA 4/16
H filed 1/17