They withdraw from the spouse/partner first, then kids, pets, family and friends. They develop new relationships with people that do not know them, now share the same interests as they do and people who will not judge them or point out that they are acting strange. When they begin to come out of the crisis, they will do the exact opposite of what they did going into the crisis.
The stages are written as a guide. They are not set in stone. Each individual is unique, therefore their crisis will be unique. No two people will experience it the same way. Some go through the stages rather quickly and others don't. They can bounce back and fourth through the stages until all of their issues are resolved. Try to put the stages aside because they will confuse you when you are trying to figure out where he is at.
Also, if they are snatched out of the crisis for any reason, they will eventually go back into crisis and that crisis will be far worse.
When they are in crisis, the clock is very slow for them because they are depressed and very self absorbed and do not realize just how much time has passed. Some are very surprised when they children have grown up and moved on to college and/or married because they have missed out on all of the important milestones.
Many of them either forget most of what they did or they hope to sweep it under the rug because they are ashamed of what they have done. Some will apologize and others won't. However, do not think for one minute that they forget what you have said or done. Their memories of those things are very clear.
It took my former h a very, very long time to work through his issues. I finally got an email from him a year ago (24 years since his crisis began), whereby he apologized for destroying our marriage. He was one that was extremely slow in working through his issues.
I do understand trying not to think about the stages. I get it, I did it too. In fact, we all refer back to them periodically when dealing with a MLCer. We are fixers and we all try to fix what is broken, but we can't fix them. We can only fix ourselves while they are on the Mother Ship.
