Can you tell me some more about this "manic" thing?
(I'm not going to DSM-III (or whatever the acronym is) my W, so I'm nervous about what to call how she's acting.)
Her "up" moods still have her sleeping, and she seems pretty calm. Not eating much, but eating some at least.
Basically, it looks most like resolve, if you know what I mean. She seems self-assured.
As much as I try to keep my *** out of the sling called "emotional codependency," I have to say that this puts my head into a spin in a wholly new way.
I mean, is she just getting to be fine with the idea of dumping me? Is she now "fine" with the fact of having an affair with a bona fide "bipolar," "ADS," "OCD," (and God knows what else)chump in his viagra years?
Holy cow!
Can someone shed a little bit of light on this thing? Even a little AA Mag-lite beam would do something to put my weary heart to rest.
Does she sleep all the time? Did she used to? Lots of sleeping a decent sign of depression.
This manic thing, is pretty much like a yo-yo. Is she up and down one day to the next? Is there anything you can do about it? You? no...her? maybe sometimes meds help...
This resolve how long as it looked this way? And second thoughts on her part, even in passing?
This is a roller coaster because of the twists and turns and ups and downs. Yours specifically and hers.
How are you doing today IM?
Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn. - C.S. Lewis
Life is usually all about how you handle Plan B. - Jack3Beans
Listen without defending; Speak without offending - FaithinAK
Well folks, I've looked over a lot of literature on depression and its variations, and I'm as confused as ever.
Nothing is ever black and white, it seems.
My W might be depressed. She might have an eating disorder. She might be undergoing a MLC.
In fact, she has spontaneously raised each one of these questions on her own.
So what does that mean, anyway?
She's in her mid-thirties, her career is not exactly taking off, she hates her job, she resents the fact that we haven't started a family, she can't bear the thought of my Ps, and she's really confronting the horror that was her childhood.
And she resents my "control," the attention always focused on me and my needs, and is still hurt and angry about everything that I ever did to let her down.
She's gambling on a big chance, career-wise. So that's on the table too.
Well, it's no wonder that depression could hit. Likewise everything else. But sometimes she seems so sane (moreso than me, for instance), that it seems that she's not exactly in the same boat as every other MLC person.
Can someone be "partially" in MLC? Or is this a sort of artificial designation anyway, one whose boundaries could fade away into a whole bunch of different sorts of things?
See, before I would have said unequivocably that she was really out of the loop. Even now, if she's still with her OM, I'm convinced that she isnt thinking straight.
(I'm using her own words here. She said that she felt "lulled" or "hypnotized" by him, and that he made her feel like she was mentally ill. Of course, she also said he made her feel at home, so who knows?)
But now she seems more together, albeit sad. But there is NO sort of indication she would even THINK about coming back to me.
In fact, she keeps talking about how she's "sad". Why? Well, it's the unspoken "because I cannot be married to you, but I love you more than you'll ever know. In fact, we'll always be married in a way. Etc."
Jeez louise.
Look folks, it's hard to be "detached" when you're sleeping with the woman you love more than anything else in the world and she's telling you how much she loves you too. She wants to cook dinner for you. She wears your clothes. She massages your temples when you have a headache. She giggles when you kiss her.
All that stuff, you know. But she doesn't want to be married to you. She says things like she wishes she could stay in this 'limbo' forever. But the unspoken is that one cannot remain in a holding pattern for the rest of their lives. Gotta move on, no matter how much it hurts.
Understand that you won't. It is not logical in any way IM. For my money I never wanted to understand what she was going through, seemed like it was hellish enough, if a crazy person makes sense to you...you're...crazy.
Don't be hopeful for a mini MLC. She can appear calm and confident at times when she needs to, when she is in an area that she is not confused about.
An MLC in the most basic terms, the way I understand it...comes about when issues that should have been dealt with in a person childhood were not. Those issues surface years later and rip the person's life apart, as that person now more or less reverts to a mix of adult and child mind frame to deal with this/these issues, this usually happens by an event to trigger the mind in realizing that something happned waaaaaay back when. To this...how can we blame the MLCer for crap that happned to them as a child?
Quote:
Look folks, it's hard to be "detached" when you're sleeping with the woman you love more than anything else in the world and she's telling you how much she loves you too. She wants to cook dinner for you. She wears your clothes. She massages your temples when you have a headache. She giggles when you kiss her.
All that stuff, you know. But she doesn't want to be married to you. She says things like she wishes she could stay in this 'limbo' forever. But the unspoken is that one cannot remain in a holding pattern for the rest of their lives. Gotta move on, no matter how much it hurts.
Dec 05 - Mar 06, very similar.
Go to go through to get better.
Don't be around so much, have a life outside of home. Will she go to C with you. You can set boundaries, which you can read about in the Resources at the top of the threads too.
Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn. - C.S. Lewis
Life is usually all about how you handle Plan B. - Jack3Beans
Listen without defending; Speak without offending - FaithinAK
The brief article referring to Six Stages get used here like a mini bible, and it has its place. But it is the tip of the iceberg as it was intended to be. Some simple statements in that article become very telling, if not fateful in a real Mid Life Transition turned Crisis (MLC).
You, I, everyone that lives past a certain stage in life will pass through a very natural life stage transition to their second and final adulthood. Seems this one is cataclismic to someone with unfinished business in life. Most often we are told about this unfinished business being in their youth, suppressed through their first adulthood.
Frequently this matches a pattern of young girls not having a loving father at home making them his princess in words and deeds. Sons are often seen actively enjoying time with dad, and growing up just like him. This in itself creates problems when a son mimics a disturbed father in certain ways. But take that father away or let dad beat the son down mentally so he has no self esteem and a seed is planted that will grow and rise up later in life, through words and deeds.
On this site I think what you see most often in the men are sons who were not nutured by their mom. She was in the best place at the best time to make the son feel his worth, his value, and his place in life. Absent that ... a dark seed is embedded and it is certain to rise up one day in the worst possible ways.
In my personal situation, I desperately want to dig up her deceased father and kill him some more. Her mother is still alive and may yet find a way to mend some of the unintentional damage she did. Out of courtesy I will say no more.
What is this first adulthood, second adulthood ...? Leave high school or college and start a career while beginning a family and you have first adulthood.
Being a little prick at 18 and being able to vote or go to war is not quite yet what we are talking about. You get the idea. Been there, got the tshirt.
Second adulthood is saying to a person that is primed for a transition crisis: "Ok, I am here and I am ready for you. You will never be 21 again. Your career has probably peaked or in decline and your family has grown; independent of you. It is too late. Anything you wanted to accomplish beyond this point will not happen. There is nowhere to go from here but out the exit door."
Now most of us know better.
Not the person with unfinished business. They are the insecure children forced to behave like adults. They are the ones without enough self esteem to rise to the real challenges of the second adulthood. They know what is expected, and reject it with all that they are. They will continue to do so until they are able to return to those unresolved issues and "grow" through them ... one at a time. They know they must be 18 again. They don't know when they will feel different about this, or why they are driven to act on the urges. But we know they are, and that they did not wake up wondering how they can hurt us today. They feel guilty, but must act anyway. It is 180 degree opposite of who they were in life prior to this point. Their action is 180.
This is why the length of their journey varies so much. This is why each one of them has such different issues, and behaviors in their crisis. Each one will come out of the crisis as a new and different person.
None of this may help you understand your W. There may be no answer and it may have nothing to do with MLC. It may just be what I had on my mind at this moment in time. Perhaps ... I am MLC.
I don't think we're in MLC. Either we've been through or are going through MLT, but we don't have the Crisis that you mentioned in the beginning. Having a MLC Spouse triggers a MLT in LBS. Look at us on the boards. We have to deal with the crisis of our WAS in our own ways, but even GAL and PMA can be classified as MLT. We have to change to get to our second adulthood in order to meet our WAS on the other side and welcome them back.
Regarding the parents, I agree that how we were raised determines how we handle the crisis of transition. Most of us that are on the boards can probably say they had at least one, if not two great parents that gave them the support they needed to handle a crisis. I know that my mom was that person since I got to watch how my father handled his MLT and nearly drove my mom to the breaking point (she's still on anti-depressants, but they have been married 40 years come May). And, even though my dad's no saint, I can honestly say that he stuck to his family while in transition. Instead of running off trying to relive his youth, he simply refocused on what was wrong and corrected it.
My W's family is a lot more fractured. Financially, they are in a very bad place and have been for most of the last two decades. Alcoholism and other problems run rampant in the family, and, unfortunately, W is following the example as she tries to recapture her "glory days". So, she had no basis on how to handle the transition and slipped into crisis.
The truly ironic thing in most of these situations is the people that seem to spring up out of the woodwork to aid our MLCers into full-blown crisis mode instead of easing them back to transition. Most of them seem to come from similar bad family situations and advise that the crisis attitude is the only way to get through to the other side.
The only bright side to all of this is that at some point, most of the MLCers of LBS to regain that stability. It's just really painful to watch them give up on everything to figure that out.
"I made the wall of shadow draw back, beyond desire and act, I walked on.
Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost, I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you."
I can honestly say that he stuck to his family while in transition. Instead of running off trying to relive his youth, he simply refocused on what was wrong and corrected it.
We live in a different era. Our parents were taught that life is hard and so on and so on before them some of us were too. Work hard, over come.
Most of us and our kids were and are taught that life is supposed to be easy. Play hard, give up.
Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn. - C.S. Lewis
Life is usually all about how you handle Plan B. - Jack3Beans
Listen without defending; Speak without offending - FaithinAK
