I should point out at this point that due my own personal history I have been through a lot of therapy and am relatively experienced in psychological processes, trauma and my wife and I both spent years talking about our childhoods, issues that arose from that, and both had been very self aware of our demons, past and present. And suddenly she went from a thoughtful, empathetic and very complex person to a child that blamed me and the world for everything and went from a strong independent woman to a victim of life. I knew something was going on but had never really realize what MLC really was about.
Fortunately and thanks to resources I found (here and including someone from here) it all started making sense and clicked. I started reconstructing what had been happening and I was stunned that even I had missed it, she had hidden her inner turmoil that well. I knew there was something going on but had no idea the depth of it. Her MLC and leaving triggered my own abandonment issues from childhood so because of that and her I went back into therapy and it was incredibly helpful. I quickly detached, stopped pursuing. arguing, hid my real emotional state, let her go and started coping on my own. It was incredibly difficult, it has been a very hard year and there are still bad days, but I talked to friends, my therapist and my sister who is also a therapist herself. But I absolutely did no engage her. I also realized that we were so close I had been seeing myself through her eyes for years, and when her lens got distorted with MLC I had started to really diminish myself as she criticized and subtly put me down over time. So the NIC, distance, realization that she was distorting everything and I had to reframe things, and my own growth all helped me with regaining my footing, and I have moved on with my life as much as I can without her.
She is cycling over this time, with regular touch and gos, and she has ranged from almost normal to a few days with me, her and OM where she acted like I did not exist while acting like the OM is her husband (and I am the stranger). She will be in contact via texts daily for a while, then will go silent for weeks. In fact we had not even seen each other for five months until a couple of weeks ago where she came to visit for a few days where I was. She has also been heavily abusing certain substances and the few times before this last trip where I saw her she was not sober almost all the time (which added to the distant/gone look). But I understood what was going on inside her, that she is in deep pain, confused and lost. I have managed to put away my love for her most of the time but maintain deep empathy. I do not get angry with her because of empathy not from denial. And I keep everthing light and superficial unless she engages.
