Way Less Lost!! Pt 4

[Pattnee5]

I can’t believe how many people are telling me at the moment they know friends or people going through the same thing as me. Their H leaving marriages walking out, MLC modes similar age demographic to H. At leas 5 different people have told me the same thing about their friends women left or walked out on by their H, or women walking out on their H who have become recluses and drinkers. I do wonder how much of this was COVID’s fault. Unfortunately as the worlds most locked down city during the pandemic I would say there was a lot to blame there ( that should narrow down my location 😊 263 days stuck at home). I actually loved it, the break from work, being home with the kids I would walk daily and socialise with local friends and even trained myself up for a half marathon which I ended up doing at the end of 2021. H just worked, stopped the gym and spiralled I guess.

Goodness me I am so scared of having a MLC 😂how do I avoid it.

Had an amazing night out last night I wasn’t going to go, I was just going to go home and ended up catching up with a friend from an old workplace who I don’t see as often. Had such a good laugh and chat and it’s so amazing to be able to vent and laugh and feel so supported. She said “ you are such a beautiful soul that has so much to offer this world, never let a man dim your light”
That comment just made my absolute weekend

[Pattnee5]

Oh so did my gym trainers comment this morning…. 😂😂
I was being a bit flat lifting some very average weights and she comes over and loads up the bar “ ok it’s time to ramp this up and get revenge hot, there’s nothing better than revenge hot”
Hahaha I have no shame it telling anyone anymore what I have been through
Months ago I hid everything away from shame and fear. Now I tell anyone and everyone “my H has left me and doesn’t want to work on our relationship” and it’s amazing how everyone has rallied their support
It’s such a good feeling and I strongly encourage never hide what you’re going through

[Card29]

Pattnee, excellent progress. You are an inspiration. I've inched my way back to exercising

[DnJ]

Good Morning Patt

Goodness me I am so scared of having a MLC 😂how do I avoid it.

Yes, seeing first hand just now devastating a crisis is to someone does bring about concerns and questions of if it is avoidable or is it inevitable.

At the root of a crisis is emotional turmoil. Significant turmoil! Trauma(s) that occurred that the individual was just not equipped to cope with. These traumatic events are usually from their childhood, a time of immaturity. This healthy emotional immaturity gets overloaded and one’s perfectly normal defence mechanism - denial, kicks in. Denial needs to happen with stuff one cannot handle in the moment, elsewise one’s psyche would break. Denial is normal and healthy, the first step of grief. We deny, put aside something, until we can find the bandwidth to look at it.

Problem is the immature coping mechanism. The trauma(s) which usually happened from an authority figure are buried, and reinforced by the authority figure, and even those around the poor young person. Just imagine how messed up a young girl that was assaulted by her uncle and then had her parents and grandparents covered it up (twice), would end up being. The poor young soul withdrawals into themselves and even blames themselves. Their relief is that burying of it. Denial compounds and time crafts unrecognized and unreleased past trauma(s) that they carry with them. And that which is buried alive, will come back to haunt.

Throughout their life they likely experience various triggers which somewhat uncover these pains. Yet, their underdeveloped coping mechanisms, from when they were emotionally stunted, does its thing and buries it again.

Life has stages, which are a main source/trigger of emotional reorganizing and awareness and growth. Child to teen, adolescent to adult, entering mid life, entering golden years, as examples. As one passes from one life stage to another, some things get dropped and other appended. During this categorizing of one’s life so far, successes, failure, goals met, goals missed, goals dropped, all kinds of measures are looked at. One makes peace with where and when they are, and what they’ve done, or they don’t. How one lives does have a reckoning. And none more so than at midlife.

A midlife one faces the reality of their own mortality. Kids are grown and starting to leave the nest. Career is entering the wind down stage. Retirement is growing ever closer. One’s physical limitations are evermore apparent. Reflexes, strength, speed, agility, and so on, wane; we definitely cannot keep up with our kids in video games.

Of course, the midlife person enters a time of better thought and reflection. Language skills vastly improve and one usually becomes a better speaker. Even becomes rather eloquent and on the positive side of loquacious. Lol. A lifetime of events and experiences to drawn upon does yield benefits. Of course, that is for one who has found acceptance with their past and life thus far.

That is the crux of a midlife transition. Or any stage’s transition. Are you at peace with your choices? Did you live well? Did you utilize your time thus far as well as you could? Midlife just bringing all that very much more to the fore, for at this point whatever one put off is pretty clear.

A midlife transition is a significant thing. Everyone has regrets, missed opportunities, dreams let go of and forgotten, and so on. Some find their peace with it and enter their next stage like the golden years - peaceful, content, happy, and such; and others turn bitter and blameful at their lot in life. Pretty easy to see examples of these folks, just look around a mall or store. How many shinning happy faces see you vs sullen expressionless faces stare back at you.

Enter free will. We all have agency. We all make choices. We all make sacrifices. Be those decisions, choices, and sacrifices realized or unrealized; we make them. And we reap their benefits and consequences.

I found the biggest problem, or lie, in society is believing we can have it all. We can’t. There is simply too much for our limited time and resources. No matter how much money one has, their clock is still finite and the world’s smorgasbord is vast. Personally, my axiom, one of my unwavering tenets of life from way back in my twenties: When given a choice between time and money, always choose time. And I’ve lived that belief and conviction.

I’ve turned down promotions, moving, and so on, for more time with family and children. And time for myself. I don’t have millions of dollars stock piled in the bank. Over my life I’ve chosen to invest into time vacationing and making memories with family and friends. Yes, I’ve made sound financial decisions along the way, always letting the philosophy of quality time lead them.

So, is a crisis avoidable or inevitable?

When a midlife transition gets just too much, a crisis is born. There is a tipping point when one enters their crisis and now must traverse that journey. If one has too much unrealized trauma and pain, too many unreconciled life choices, especially those choices that were tore out of their hands many years ago, they have a high probability of a crisis.

A MLCer’s is depressed and consumed. They feel life has passed them by. They want a do-over. They cannot embrace their “golden” time. This is even beyond those bitter grumpy old folks, for the grumpy folks have traversed their transition, they just have more a resignation to their life and past, rather than acceptance and peace. The MLCer is running from their life.

How to avoid it? How to avoid a crisis? Make peace with your life and immutable past. Dig into yourself and see your values and value. Do you like what you see? Strengthen that which serves, craft that which you aspire to, and alter/discard that which does not serve. Purposefully decide and choose your path towards your future. While, counterintuitively, letting the future unfurl as it will.

To achieve that apparent conflicting juxtaposition of purpose and letting go the future, live the present moment. Everything happens in the here and now. Fretting over the past, is present time. Planning for the future, happens in the present moment. Live your present with purpose and your future will unfurl with purpose.

I suppose, overall, I believe in free will. Therefore, a crisis is not inevitable. One could take actions to alter their trajectory. The problem is they don’t know that; the very root of the crisis being those buried trauma(s).

Knowing about midlife crisis, learning about it, understanding it, rationalizing it, empathizing with those suffering it, changes things. And that, is what makes it avoidable.

D

[Card29]

Amazing perspective, DnJ

[Kind18]

I don’t think there’s more divorce than before. It’s just that when you’re embroiled in the middle of it, you mention it to people, they talk to you about it, and suddenly you notice it’s all around. Divorce rates in free countries have forever hovered around 50%, I don’t necessarily think it’s COVID related.

Personally, I think divorce is mainly related to five things:
- unresolved childhood trauma or poor parenting
- MLC
- pressures of parenting
- selfishness
- a society where people aren’t taught to take responsibility for their own actions.

Ah yes, I know that city and well and frequently travel there for work. How’s the North Face vest holding up? 🤣

While I like your trainer’s joke about becoming revenge hot, be careful of your motivations. You do things for you because you want them and they make you happy, not to try and manipulate someone back into marriage.

It goes like this:
- Pattnee decides to get fit for Pattnee
- Pattnee feels better because there’s structure in her life by training every day
- Pattnee is much happier because she starts sleeping well again
- Pattnee becomes confident in her body and sexiness, so then becomes confident/outgoing/relaxed/fun to be around
- Other people find Pattnee attractive

I did spend a bit of time at the other forum about MLC. It has a lot of good information about MLC. But I don’t think it’s the best place to go to save your marriage/yourself. It allows people to externalise blame (ie we got divorced because he had an MLC) which means they don’t do the hard work to fix their side of the fence.

Ultimately, I think DB is better because while it acknowledges MLC, it places the responsibility of change and personal development on the LBS.

[Pattnee5]

Kind- I am SO glad to see the back end of that north face jacket 🤪good riddance to bad rubbish


Thanks DnJ for that perspective I certainly will be trying everything I can to avoid my own crisis if and when it comes.

Kind, I completely agree with you regarding reasons to get fit-while I did laugh at the trainers comment, for me it’s more about feeling good at the moment and burning off steam.Its really a nice positive constant thing in my daily life which I look forward to for me.I am not in any frame of mind or headspace to be thinking about other men or rebounds when I’m still in love with my H. I’m certainly in no place for that sort of thing anytime soon and don’t think that’s going to fix my wounded heart that’s for sure.

Unfortunately I ended up having to lay low this weekend after being sick and bedridden. Such a shame as I had to cancel a lot of plans. I had a very brief encounter crossing paths with H sister who was in town for work and needed to drop stuff off and I was the only one home. I wasn’t sure how that was going to go considering none of them had reached out since BD. She did ask me how I was going in my heart and if I needed to talk. I was a bit taken aback by that and unexpected. I was honest, said it had been a very rough 8 months and I wanted to make my marriage work and unfortunately H wasn’t in the same frame of mind. She did say he’s “a complex creature”. I didn’t ask any more or say anymore and left it as amicable as possible. She did say he had been emotional with her recently so he wasn’t doing great either. At least he’s talking to someone I suppose. I can’t say I am a huge fan of her she isn’t the greatest advocate for fighting for marriages but what can you do. She did briefly ask if I wanted to chat but I did decline as I was feeling pretty rubbish and didn’t really want to get into anything and risk making her sick by inviting her in. Plus I don’t think I need to go talking to any of his family about our issues . He can tell them what he wants.

H stepped up this weekend when I was sick and took the kids for a good chunk of the weekend which was good. Unfortunately not much I could do for “me time” but get better. H came and did some house work etc. he did make a comment about how he hadn’t felt I had respected him in the past with our relationship( he made a similar comment a month or so ago) and highlighted a few examples. I hadn’t thought of it at the time as disrespectful but now that he mentioned it I can see it. I just tried to validate this statement again today and said something along the lines of “ I’m sorry that you felt like that and I can see how it made you feel. At the time I really wasn’t aware and wasn’t doing it with any intention to cause you disrespect and I wished he had said something sooner” I probably worded it all wrong but in the moment it what came to my head. He did admit he would never say it as to not cause a fight. So yeah communication down the drain.
Such a shame I think him feeling disrespected in the marriage is now the biggest issue. I was so unaware. It was never bad things like swearing or putting him down or anything like that. It was more based around me making decisions like booking holidays, or renovating the yard. I would always ask him and he would just agree. Little did I know until now that he really didn’t agree but just never spoke up. He also made a comment that he wants to be able to retire and not have to work his whole life. I don’t know where that came from (H is 48) but I guess his siblings being much older and with adult kids and financially sound it may come into play.

Anyway overall a fine weekend. Both interactions were fine. Nothing I’m hanging on to or boiling about. I was a bit down on myself after the respect comment, but I can’t change the past now, nor was I a mind reader and could tell that H really meant No whenever he said Yes.I guess I need to work on myself a bit more now on building respect and showing respect better. It may be too late for H and me now( he’s basically said “you won’t change you will just revert back and do it all again” and let’s be honest it’s hard to prove it when they aren’t around ) but hopefully in any future relationships I am better at it.

Anyway hopefully a good week ahead this week. I just wanted to get down my two interactions. While prob not handled correctly I still find I’m feeling indifferent and unaffected emotionally by both so I guess that’s a positive. I still love H though. Seeing him this weekend I still felt all that love deep down despite how different he is to the man I have lived with for 20 years. Despite so much love looking at him I don’t feel I am an emotional mess anymore anytime he comes and goes and interacts. And that one little moment he opened up about what bothered him was at least a positive in him opening up cracks of what’s inside so I’ll take it and keep cleaning up my side of the street

[Rockon]

Pattnee, I read your post her as positive signs of your progress with DB and I’m sorry you’re not feeling well. Well done with strong boundaries for yourself with H’s family. And that more honest and vulnerable conversation with H about feelings around past R dynamics - again well done.

[Pattnee5]

Thanks Rock. I’m still a work in progress, could have done it better and prob should have but doesn’t phase me anymore. Feels good to no longer dwell on these moments when they happen.

In as far on my see-saw and if I call a meeting and start finalising stuff or not I am still sitting on it. I’m still a see saw with my decision some days I am ready to pull the pin other days not. So for now I am just sitting on these emotions for now for a few more weeks to see how they come about. I know H doesn’t want to change or work on anything etc so I know I need to make the call but still getting that courage. D14 and I go up north for a sports comp in a week so really looking forward to a few days away with her and getting some warmer weather. Then it’s my birthday in a little over a month. I think I’ve realised H is just cushy now and not keen on making a move either way so it’s all on me to make the call. Lazy, procrastinator.

[Pattnee5]

So a bit going on in my world but just wanted to come back on for a quick debrief and update on the Pattnee Show which has right now is a pretty steady ship, while H seems to be spiralling somewhat.

Recovered after a weekend virus so back into the gym the last few days. My work days are long, 7:30am start and finish around 6pm. So for me the only time I can squeeze in the gym into my day is before work. Yep better believe that alarm is set at 4:40am for a 5am workout🫤. Do I enjoy that time? Heck no. But sometimes we have to make sacrifices, and after work is always horrible( tired) busy with the kids etc. So anyone on here making excuses for the gym, DONT. There’s always time no matter how much you prefer sleep 😂.

So anyway back to my short story week. H seems to be spiralling a bit and guess what I no longer am making it my problem and have enjoyed taking a massive step away from him and his dramas.I feel like I just don’t care, even though I really feel for him, I just don’t care enough to want to step in and even make it my problem. He sent a text the other day a few hours before I got home from work to warn me he had a bad day and will try not to be snarky. I thought it was odd to actually be warned for once. Anyway he disappeared relatively quickly which was nice ( although he wasn’t snappy at all) and made a comment about really needing a beer. I just ignored it this time. Stress+bad day = beer to cope( or vodka even).

The next few nights he had a few snappy episodes at the kids in the afternoons while picking them up. Both came home in such a foul mood almost like they absorbed his negative vibe. D14 was in tears over something then confessed to H snapping at them and being all agro and how it really brings her mood down. Had a chat to both kids, changed the mood and vibe around them and watched a funny show together and both kids pepped up great. Next morning on my way out to work briefly mention to him that he had upset D14 with getting angry. H admitted his work was really stressing him out and he was really worked up so would apologise and talk to D14.

Gosh I am loving no longer being the punching bag but I am hating the kids copping his brunt. I am trying so hard to bite my tongue as I know H will lash out at me. I pick my times, mornings seem to be good. And very brief short conversations strictly kids ( zero R talks for a while now).then I leave for work.

Anyway fast forward to tonight ( 2 days after above outburst) D14 messaging me while I’m at work saying “dad is super agro again, yelling at me and S12 over nothing, and my friend is with us so I am so embarrassed”. So hard to be at work when this is unfolding. Let’s be honest they are teenagers and by no means little angels all the time so I know they would have been bickering over something but they are generally great when you tell them to calm down. I think alot of how you deal with kids is in the way you come across in the delivery. Ooze anger and stress they will absorb that negative horrible vibe, stay calm and positive and they tend to simmer pretty quickly. Anyway I send D a few messages and she said she was going to talk to H on her own once her friend wasn’t around. She confronted him, told him how bad it made her look and feel, told her she and S12 hate how he takes his anger out on them and why is it their fault for his bad work day, also told him he seriously kills their mood and drains them. She told him all week he has been snappy at them at school pickup and they don’t like it. Absolutely bursting with pride for D14 who has absolutely shown the maturity of an adult and called out H for poor form. She said she isn’t even scared to tell him how it is and “dad is just an idiot sometimes.” She said H was pretty quiet after that.

D14 did come to me just before bed and said she didn’t want me reconciling with H because H is not the same person we have known, and he just brings everyone’s mood down. Clever kid. She is my absolute strength and courage right now.

While all of this is going on in the background the last few days I want to say how awesome it’s been to not being around that anger/stress. I have steered a very wide berth during this week.D14 is an absolute little champ putting up her boundaries and calling it what it is to H face.

It still saddens me to see this absolute stranger of the man I once knew, spiral downhill. I no longer want to help him because it is seriously draining when you get dragged down in their drama and mood. It was exhausting mentally and physically.

I’m loving being so much more detached. I don’t think about H at all during the days, no longer worry at nights worry how he will cope with his current stresses. It’s on him now to do what he wants. I am doing me. I am loving doing me.

Next week D14 has a sports comp up north. Originally was the two of us but a few days ago decided to buy S12 a ticket and take him too ( will surprise him). He will love it, warm weather beaches pools and no school for a few days. I just kept thinking the alternative is H would have him, they would do the same usual routine and then H would drown his stressful week in gaming. Stuff it, he can do that on his own S12 will have a much better time with us and create some great little memories.

So yeah even though Pattnee world is still chaotic at times I feel like all that chaos and noise is just happening elsewhere and nowhere near me anymore, it’s just background noise. I am just on my calm little steady ship me and the kids and sailing out of that $h*tstorm I wasted 2023 stuck in.