[DnJ]

Good Morning Eagle

I understand the mixed emotions rising up after the call.

With each call and as time goes by, we keep getting better and better at letting go our expectations and letting our temporary feelings flit. It is perfectly normal for one feel and expect after interactions. Our control is in us letting go of those and returning to our core self again. It gets easier to to step back and view the big picture. Don’t worry, you are doing fine - experience makes masters of us all.

I am glad to see you are planning on remaining in the house during H’s upcoming visit. Be kind and cordial. Friendly not friends. His visiting is no stranger than anything else on these weird paths. I suspect you may learn some things depending on how loquacious H feels like being; the less you say the more he will. Most just can’t help themselves, and they blurt out. Keep boundaries when necessary and filter out any projections and blame-ridden justifications - do not take the bait.

Since OW1 "was the love of his life", do they have the same feeling about OW2? I almost can't believe this is possible?

An OW2 is possible. The answer you don’t want to the unasked question - an OW2 is actually quite probable as well.

The other woman is just a band-aid. She is just a shinny object which the crisis person runs to, in their ineffective attempts to escape their pain and torment.

A MLCer’s feelings are a mess. Emotions cranked up to bizarre levels. As such, irrational behaviours and decisions abound. Their feelings are real and like all feelings - temporary. And as their own feelings flit and start and stop and shift and so on, they keep feeding their narrative. They have too.

“The love of their life”. That is equally comical as it is sad. My XW stated she was 100% completely faithful to OM. Think about that statement, and the head space one has to be within for that to make sense. A faithful loving relationship of 30 years, a family, four children - all thrown away. Her months new boyfriend, the now love of her life and she is faithful to him. Funny and sad.

These tormented people are very lost. They desperately grasp at whatever and whoever they can to make themselves feel better. To feel anything. They are not faithful. They do not love themselves. They, therefore, cannot love anyone else.

It is not uncommon to have subsequent affairs. Their first affair is really illicit and based upon lies and deceit, for it breaks up the marriage. It becomes easier to pretend further affairs are “better” as they are not based upon such impure acts. Lol. Such funny sad desperation. Wholesome marriages have a high enough failure rate, imagine the failure rate of affairs. Some stick to just one, and others go through many. It matters not. For all of those are built upon sand and exist in the shadowy world. All are illicit and carry a heavy high price on an already tormented soul.

And therein lies another big problem. The guilt. The affair and running furthers their pain. These crisis people are emotional driven with no empathy nor regard for anyone else. They will quite literally; and this is actually literal not just figurative; step over their own children to run to their new partner, and selfish chance at happiness. And the guilt compounds.

Each partner is “the love of their life”. They have to be. They need to be. Therefore, the MLCer makes it so. The MLCer has destroyed so much in their path and they have to double down and keep plunging deeper. Remember just how terrible and consuming a crisis is and how desperate a MLCer is to escape. And desperate people to desperate things. Affairs, drugs, spending, illegal behaviours, and such - all running. All an attempt at finding that high; finding some feeling in their blank tormented lives; finding some purpose; finding some relief. Of course, one cannot outrun themselves. And their attempts are fruitless, and the pressures and trauma(s) of their past will not be silenced that easily. And until they tire enough, they will not look within, and they run.

OW1, OW2, the made up feelings towards that person - all a temporary fantasy reality created by a tormented mind and soul. Some find their way back. Some do not. And no one knows the future or anyone’s outcome.

We, LBS, live our best path, for ourselves, and let go. We become.

Experience makes masters of us all.

D