Paul - I think I have been connected with my spiritual being for a long time, but the connection has deepened as I have got older. I had cancer 10 years ago, and had to face the possibility of death, and ever since then I have looked at life differently.
While any of us could have an affair, I am not sure that we could all have a MLC. I have just read a book 'The Search for the Real Self' by James Masterson. It is not a book of pop psychology, and while I don't fully agree with all it says, the central idea is that the more that we are touch with our true self the more easily we deal with what life throws at us. People who operate with a partial or full false persona are much more vulnerable and fragile, because they have a distorted view of their reality. Narcissism, which plays a big part in the MLC is particularly tricky, as the person has a grandiose sense of themself, often hiding behind an apparently quite unassertive exterior.
I am not saying that people with a propensity to MLC are better or worse, just that they are less well integrated. I was brought up in a loving family where people talked about their feelings, and loved each member for who they were. Many of the people here have that same sense of stability. We attract the more fragile people like moths to candle flames.
I think cases like yours where both partners have MLC are rarer, but I could be very wrong!
Yes, when you look into the face of death, it does change your outlook on life and what it's all about.
It was the summer of 1992 when I began my "awakening." My oldest sister and her husband came to visit from Arizona. The three of us were driving back from a visit to the Henry Ford Museum when my sister said she had something to tell me.
My first thought was, she and her third husband were getting a divorce. That was not the case. She told me that her and her husband were HIV positive.
The schock of her telling me this felt like I had been hit in the head with a hammer. In 1992, becoming HIV positive was like being given a death sentence.
She told me that she had been wanting to tell me for years. In fact when the family got together in Las Vegas the year prior it was her intentions to brake the news. Her husband was sick that weekend and she didn't have the strength to tell me then.
They had both been diagnosed in 1985, when my sister was in the hospital and extremely ill. The reason they hadn't told me sooner was in those days, you kept it a secret as there was great fear about the disease and it's contagiousness. They feared loosing their jobs, their insurance, their friends and their family.
When I returned home that afternoon I took a shower. I cried the whole time while showering. The next day, I told my sister about the crying. She said, "you've started the grieving process."
This was foreign to me. I had never grieved for someone who was still alive. What I was grieving was the loss of the future. That my sister and I would not grow old together. She would not be there when the time came to bury our parents. Everything I had experienced with her in the past, her children and my children playing together, celebrating Christmas and the Holidays with family, would not exist in the future.
The biggest challenge for me ws learning to let go of the things I could not change. As much as I wanted to fix my sister and find a cure for her illness, it was not within my power.
It felt as if it was all a bad dream and the emotional pain I felt inside made me feel lost and confused. My life as I knew it, had been turned upside down. And when things would eventually settle down, my life would be much different.
Facing your own death or the death of a close loved one is a very trying time. But it is also a time of great opportunity. My experiences with death of family members and friends and aquatences has taught me many of lifes lessons. For those who have passed before me, I will forever be greatful for what they shared with me.
In reading Today's thought from Hazelden the other day, it made me give thought to how the LBS is in a way going through withdrawal from the MLC spouse.
As long term marriage partners, we become "addicted" to the relationship. I know this may sound harsh, but if the MLC spouse leaves the home, their is a period of withdrawal that the LBS experiences as a part that made them feel whole is no longer present. We go through a period where it feels much like the loss of a close loved one to death.
Alcohol or drugs can fill the void that is inside of us. The "drug of Choice" gives us comfort and helps us to feel "not alone."
When our MLC spouse leaves us, we have feelings of being all alone. This seperation from the known to the unknown brings about great fear and anxiety.
If all life experiences are to teach us lessons. What is the lesson to be learned in the seperation between the two spouses?
I think Today's thought from Hazelden may help to explain it.
Reflection for the Day
Among the many gifts that we are offered in The Program is the gift of freedom. Paradoxically, however, the gift of freedom is not without a price tag; freedom can only be acieved by paying the price called acceptance. Similarly, if we surrender to God's guidance, it will cost us our self-will, that "commodity" so precious to those of us who have always thought we could and should run the show. Is my freedom today worth the price tag of acceptance?
Today I Pray
May God teach me acceptance- the ability to accept the things I cannot change. God also grant me the courage to change those things I can. God help me to accept the illness of my addiction and give me the courage to change my addictive behavior.
Todat I Will Remember
Accept the addiction. Change the behavior.
This message comes from the book A Day at a Time, by Anonymous.
Maybe all of us have some form of addiction to something. Each of us have the opportunity to learn the lesson of "acceptance" whether it's a sibling who is dieing or the death of a marriage and relationship.
Each of us will have many opportunities to learn acceptance in our lifetime. It does get easier with each new experience, but it is still something I resist and fight as I want to control or change that which is not within my power.
Sorry for the delay in this response. I had a few moments and thought that perhaps I would take a minute to reply. As always, your threads are so thought provoking and insightful. I feel privileged to have this opportunity to learn from you and to share here.
Well, I started this post a few days ago but somehow deleted it so I will try to gather my thoughts again …
So to answer your questions as best I can… here I go.
Yes, I have always been afraid of rejection in an almost paralyzing way to be honest. I am a pleaser largely due to never being able to meet my mother’s approval. I excelled in school but that was never good enough. I never rebelled as a kid or a teenager (I had to wait to get to my 30s to do that instead) and that was not good enough, I never did anything that would get her twisted but somehow she was always twisted with me. I never wanted to disappoint the adults in my life, in fact they relied on me heavily to be the responsible one so, I only know responsibility.
My childhood was okay. Not the best but certainly not as bad as it could have been. It was not overly loving when it came to my parents but my grandparents were always loving and caring so it sort of balanced out my wacko parents. School was the highlight of my life. I was depressed when I was not there. I hated to go home at the end of the day. I hated the weekends. Summers were okay because I got to be outside with friends … School was great and really got me through my childhood. Things did not pick up for me when I left grammar school though. My mom sent me to an all girls high school. What a mess that was. I went from one sheltered dysfunctional environment to another… I always feared letting people down and so I suffered silently and sometimes begrudgingly.
MLC to me is sort of revisiting of your spirituality. I had always gone to church and prayed growing up but somewhere in the process of getting married, working and just being too busy… I stopped and herein lies the beginning of my issues…
I believe that what my husband is going through now has been in him all along. I believe that he is getting in touch with the side of himself that he left behind or turned from when we got married and settled into grown up lives and responsible jobs. We did not have the young lives that our friends had, we were in our 20s and in jobs that it took our coworkers YEARS to get. So, we hung around an older crowd instead of doing fun and youthful things together. Now, we barely speak.
I believe that The Creator can see the beginning, the middle and the ending all at once which is why He does not stress it so much, he knows how the sitch will play itself out ultimately.
I also believe that things are not as they seem or appear. Actually, I think that because things are happening concurrently we will never really and fully understand the magnitude of our existence and experiences on this planet. If you think about it, one change in our plans for the day can absolutely impact something huge in someone else’s life. I think that something is going on with my husband but because we do not communicate, I am not quite sure that I will ever really know what he is going through. Men are less verbal than women when it comes to feelings and ways of being.
I also believe that like birth and death, MLC is something that you go through alone. No one can make it better or go away. Although there are things that you can do to make it better … counseling being one of them.
I do feel a spiritual presence in my life. I never feel alone any more although I am lonely. I feel comforted despite the fact that things are in turmoil for me right now. I have a renewed sense of hope though because I have decided to focus on purchasing a home before the new school year begins. Once that is done, I will have to make some decisions about my marriage. I believe that the Creator put this order of things in my mind because when the year began, I had planned to start the D process in March. One morning between sleep and awake, this warm feeling came over me and I woke up knowing that I should buy a house… I cannot explain it, I just know it intuitively.
I feel privileged to learn from you as well. Thanks for sharing what you have experienced and learned during your life.
I too felt as if I could not meet my mothers approval. It seemed as if she would find fault in anything I did and struggled to pay me a compliment.
My mother didn,t have high self esteem and probably didn't love herself. That's probably why she couldn't give love. It seemed as if my mom was looking for me to give her the love that she was missing inside. She wanted me to take care of her "needs."
It was opposite of what a so called normal mother child relationship should be. Of course I'm not sure what "normal" is.
There's what works and what doesn't work. It is my opinion that our relationship didn't work and created issues that I have struggled with my whole life.
I have forgiven my mom as she did the best she could with what she knew and understood. Her childhood was not a good experience for her and she was simply playing out what she had learned, or didn't learn as the case may be.
Fearing rejection has been a struggle for me as well. I want so much for people to like me, appereciate me and think good thoughts about me. My own feelings of being inadequit and not good enough has been a life long strugle to overcome.
It's something I continualy work at healing.
As I child, there were many times where my needs were not met. I was to young to take care of them myself and needed my parents to take care of them. Due to their own issues, they were not able to meet many of my needs.
From many experiences of asking my parents for something I needed and not having the need met, created many opportunities to learn rejection.
In time, you stop asking to have your needs met because you fear rejection. You don't develop "trust" of others when you can't count on your parents to meet your needs.
As an adult, I didn't trust others to meet my needs. I also didn't know how to ask for my needs to be met. I believed that I was responsible for getting my needs met, that it was not appropriate for me to ask others.
My wife and I are in marriage counseling. We have spent a fair amount of time talking about "needs" and how to have a healthy relationship with each other in asking for what we want.
I have struggled with getting to the point of what I want. I talk around it and am not direct. Our counselor is helping me to be more direct. To be more authentic.
It is a challenge breaking the pattern of my old habits and behaviors. But it is working and our relationship is growing.
Today's message from Hazelden speaks to "needs."
Today's thought from Hazelden is:
Expectations of Others
It is our job to identify our needs, and then determine a balanced way of getting those needs met. We ultimately expect our Higher Power and the Universe - not one particular person - to be our source.
It is unreasonable to expect anyone to be able or willing to meet our every request. We are responsible for asking for what we want and need. It's the other person's responsibility to freely choose whether or not to respond to our request. If we try to coerce or force another to be there for us, that's controlling. There's a difference between asking and demanding. We want love that is freely given. It is reasonable to have certain and well defined expectations of our spouse, children, and friends.
It is reasonable to sprinkle our wants and needs around and to be realistic about how much we ask or expect of any particular person. We can trust ourselves to know what's reasonable.
The issue of expectations goes back to knowing that we are responsible for identifying our needs, believing they deserve to get met, and discovering an appropriate, satisfactory way to do that in our life.
Today, I will strive for reasonable expectations about getting my needs met in relationships.
Today's message come from the book, The Language of Letting Go, by Melody Beattie.
It is my belief that MLC peolpe didn't get their needs met as a child and didn't learn how to ask for what they needed.
As an adult, they feel they have not gotten their needs met by their spouse, and eventually seek getting them met elsewhere.
The LBS is greatly shocked that their MLC spouse feels as if they were not there for them. In the LBS mind they were there for them, but they also had the responsibility of taking care of the children, the house, work and other peoples needs, they never realized their MLC spouse had needs that they were not meeting.
The MLC spouse did not know how to directly ask for what they needed. And from their past experiences with their parents, they didn't trust anyone, and felt even if they did ask to have their needs met, they would be rejected or be ridiculed for their request.
The MLC spouse has major trust issues from not having their needs met. To them, they feel the LBS knew what they needed and the LBS chose not to meet their needs or didn't care about them.
Being with LBS is not a safe place for the MLC spouse. They don't trust them as they didn't meet their inner most needs. They felt rejected, not good enough to have their needs met, as their feelings were not validated.
From a LBS perspective, the MLC spouse was not clear in what they needed or expected from the LBS. To the MLC spouse it was very clear to them in what they needed. And it is also very clear to the MLC spouse that the LBS did not meet those needs.
The MLC spouse eventually grows tired and gives up on trying to get their needs met by their LBS. For them, the answer is to leave the relationship and take control of getting their needs met by what ever works.
I'm sorry for the long post but it takes me awhile to get to the point. Just as it takes me a lot of words to ask for what I need from my wife.
Paul- Another great post, to which I would like to add - I think that there is a variation on the MLC persona that fits my h and some of the others that I have seen described on these threads.
I know that I did meet my h's needs for a long period in our marriage and that he fully acknowledged this - I recognised him as damaged and needy, fairly soon after we married, but was committed to marriage, and to him, and decided that I wanted to try and make this r work - and as I have said, many of the LBS have attracted these spouses precisely because they are so emotionally strong. [Having said that he was also great fun, and a brilliant husband - that is he functioned well, provided that his emotional rock was in place]. The wise spouse of a needy partner doesn't try and 'fix' the spouse, but tries to encourage them to develop friendships, and other relationships, and to grow. Therapy is good if they can be persuaded, but most of them really don't want to open their can of worms. They are safe and happy with their partner, never mind that they are to some extent emotionally the child in the r.
With some MLCers the instability that plunges them into MLC, and teh sense of their needs not being met by the LBS is triggered by life's events,[ fear of death, being laid off at work, getting older, passed over for a promotion, parent or loved in-law dying, are some obvious triggers] and they become dissatisfied with their life BUT because their spouse HAS provided for all their emotional needs up until now, and now they are unhappy, it must be because of a deficiency in the spouse - Right?
[I agree that in a healthy r you don't look for all your needs to be met by one person - something that I recognised, and tried to persuade my h to develop stronger friendships and links, which ironically have kept him going throughout his MLC. Without these I think he would have disintegrated earlier.]
So they rewrite history, ofen very adroitly, so that only those closest to them realise the tissue of lies from the outset [He even had me believing some of the stuff, so unblinkingly convincing was he - including things he categorically denies ever having said.] The lies become more apparent to those who know them less well as the MLC progresses, and the 'story' constantly shifts to accommodate the MLCers changing perceptions as one strategy after another fails to deliver the 'promised' solution.
As an example: My h recently had dinner with some friends, and tried to ignore the fact that he had had an affair that lasted over a year as a PA, and rather longer as an EA - that is he tried to write it out of his script as of any significance, but unfortunately for him these were the friends to whom he went at the outset to tell them how much in love he was. . . . He appears to have completely forgotten this.
Parts of this post really struck home with me today:
Originally Posted By: M Go Blue
The point I'm trying to make is that with death, we openly talk about the spouse who has passed on with our children and family. With divorce, we avoid talking about the other spouse freely and with love and admiration. It seems at times it is almost taboo to broach the subject.
I think my children don't want to talk about their mom in my presence as they feel it my upset me. They may also feel it would be disrespectful to their mom to discuss things about her with me, the person she has so much anger and resentment towards.
We seem to live in this world where if we don't talk about it, everything will be allright. We supress our feelings and don't share them with one another. This simply leads to more ill feelings inside that we push down and bury in ourselves.
My children will quite possibly go through the same experiences with their marriage partners that their mother and I did. It's what they learned. What is learned is often played out in life.
You have put into words some of my greatest worries and concerns. It worries me enormously that my S14 doesn't seem to feel like he can talk to me about his dad, or listen to me talk about his dad. I know some of it is that S14 doesn't like to see me get upset. But that SO reminds me of H--doesn't like to see negative emotion in others, refuses to deal with conflict and negative emotions openly. I SO don't want S14 to grow up this way, and part of avoiding it is to encourage him to talk about it all openly. Sigh. I guess I've just vented on your thread but you really struck a nerve.
I'm thinking the best response may be to face it head on--just say to S14 what you said in your post about how we treat death vs. how we treat D.
Originally Posted By: M Go Blue
An affair is still about one spouse spending time and energy with another person who they are attracted to, which takes away from the time and energy available for the spouse they are married to.
Amen. Frankly, this turning away of attention and energy pains me far more than the physical turning away...in my experience physical attention from men is pretty easy to get but the emotional attention is something else entirely!
