Paul - You have asked some tough questions, but I believe that MLCers 'truth' is actually a tissue of lies. It does not resonate either with their preiouvs words or behaviours. It has no consistency with their previous selves. it is a disjunct, which many MLCers who come out of it admit to. It seemed like the truth at the time, and they neded it to be the truth, because reaity had suddenly become painful.
I am arrogant enough to believe that I know when someone is teling the truth, much of the time. Many MLCs come on very fast to the actual crisis, when they drop the bomb - they are slow in building, but they erupt like a head of steam. It is at this point, for many [though maybe not for you] that the rewriting of history takes place. It IS a rewriting of history. Their heart was NOT breaking at that party 2 years ago, They have now decided that their heart was breaking, because they are doing things they don't understand, because they are in the grip of emotional crisis, dealing with stuff that has bubbled up from the deep past. It is real at the time, but that doesn't make it real. If you build a wooden car it isn't actually a car, but a type of illusion. Is that reality?
Yes, the people I know who have come through MLC may still be deeply unhappy, but they are great fun, emotionally honest, committed to their family and friends. In short behaving like normal people.
It is not normal, in my view to repudiate all your former friends, break contact with you chldren, and family, as well as your spouse. this is about far more than an unhappy marriage. MLCers lie, manipulate, are abusive, sometimes even physically. When they work through their crisis, all of this stops. Are you seriously telling us here, that they are all still deeply unhappy people?
If I didn't believe that people can heal and achieve emotional happiness, and intimacy again, life would lose a hugely important dimension. That is not the same as 'wanting them back' it is a belief that healing can and does take place and that we can grow and learn.
To dismissively suggest that these former MLCers are still walking around in pain does not correspond to any reality that I recognise. They certainly did not go back to their families out of a misplaced sense of duty, but because they wanted to be with the peole they loved, had lost sight of that love, but found it again, and built on it. It is a choice.
The problem with your view that all reality is relative is that it gives us no vocabulary for dealing with the delusional and paranoid, if their reaity is as fully valid. If I believe that martians are controlling the thoughts of President Bush who is to say I am incorrect in your view of the world?
