Now facing divorce

[Rita]

Hamburg, something that I keep noticing on your thread is that you are referring to stages of MLC as if she has already gone through one. Didn't this whole thing just start? I see you are extremely upset and your mind is racing. I think you are seeing her first steps into the tunnel as a series of stages. I know you have heard this before, but this is not something that happens over a few months. It takes YEARS. My H went through several years of hardcore replay, then a year of seeming to come out of it, and then last year he rebombed me and started over -- his second round, in year five since BD 1, has included filing for D.

I am a little unusual on this board because I am a hardcore stander. I see my marriage as a covenant with God, no matter what my H does. I plan to continue standing no matter what he does, including divorcing me. I only say that to point out that there are many possible responses to a spouse's MLC. You don't have to do what they say you have to do.

I think you have to make a choice to either really understand and study MLC and take twenty steps back and start working on yourself and on detachment; or you have to follow what people outside of MLC world think and take her words at face value. I don't think you should do the latter, as her words mean almost nothing right now.. You can't judge anything she says or does if you want to accept that this is MLC. She is a teenager right now. She will be a teenager for possibly years. The sooner you step back from her, the sooner you can start healing yourself, no matter what she does. I wouldn't make any decisions about her or your marriage for a long while.

Is it possible for you to mark your calendar for six months or a year from today and wait until that time to think about what you want to do about this? Can you see it as a sort of a discipline, where you can learn strategies to stop your mind from focusing on her for those six months or a year? A DB coach can help if you are not going the religious route. Can you just try to live your life detached until then and let her spiral without studying her so much? I know exactly how you feel, we have all been there. I am on year six, and I just worry about you because you seem very focused on her andI know that won't work, having been there too.