Wow! I mean wow! Such great comments May. That also goes for Dawn and butterfly and a few others. Then we have this.
Originally Posted by LH19
You are always saying your exh is a narcissist when statistically speaking it’s highly unlikely. You know what a sure sign of a narcissist is? Thinking they are right and everyone else is wrong. Now that’s something to think about.
Okay just who are you and how did you manage to hack into LHs account? Seriously, great comments dude. My old and now renewed favorite radio physiologist talks about this all the time how labeling people, especially ex husbands has as narcissistic hit epidemic levels and do not come close to matching how few actual true narcissists there really are out there.
Nearly everyone is seeing these topics and the latest Traveler saga the same. Are we all wrong? Really? And again May you nailed it - including the compliments. I’ll just say, “what May said”. It truly is amazing to watch people do the same things over and over again. Just reinforces my belief that people typically don’t change. They are who they are. We either accept them or not. But the first step in changing is admitting there’s a problem.
I read in a book once that if you label someone as a narcissist or that it’s MLC that you don’t have to take responsibility for your part in the breakdown of the relationship.
I said I wouldn’t comment anymore but just wanted to say that I agree May nailed it!
Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mothers on the board!
he felt she would not pay him back. How do you love someone in a middle age relationship without even this level of trust?
Returning to kml's query about ILU, love doesn't require blindly trusting someone to repay a loan. Trust is earned by past actions. I know parents who love their kids, but if they loaned them a large sum, wouldn't expect to see it again.
Hi CW, my point is exactly that. Trust is earned and since trust is the foundation of any good relationship, you may want to slow things down till your partner has earned your trust.
If she did not pay you back, you could have lost a lot of money because of trusted her blindly and agreed to go on an expensive trip. You had control and ability to say no more than just the dinner. It’s good learofor you since you may not be as luck next time.
Wow! I mean wow! Such great comments May. That also goes for Dawn and butterfly and a few others. Then we have this.
Originally Posted by LH19
You are always saying your exh is a narcissist when statistically speaking it’s highly unlikely. You know what a sure sign of a narcissist is? Thinking they are right and everyone else is wrong. Now that’s something to think about.
Okay just who are you and how did you manage to hack into LHs account? Seriously, great comments dude. My old and now renewed favorite radio physiologist talks about this all the time how labeling people, especially ex husbands has as narcissistic hit epidemic levels and do not come close to matching how few actual true narcissists there really are out there.
Nearly everyone is seeing these topics and the latest Traveler saga the same. Are we all wrong? Really? And again May you nailed it - including the compliments. I’ll just say, “what May said”. It truly is amazing to watch people do the same things over and over again. Just reinforces my belief that people typically don’t change. They are who they are. We either accept them or not. But the first step in changing is admitting there’s a problem.
I read in a book once that if you label someone as a narcissist or that it’s MLC that you don’t have to take responsibility for your part in the breakdown of the relationship.
I said I wouldn’t comment anymore but just wanted to say that I agree May nailed it!
Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mothers on the board!
LH, whoever wrote that book has a point, but hopefully they aren't speaking for the majority of people whose spouses went off the rails into a spiral of MLC insanity. Trust me my friend, I can pinpoint to the day when I screwed up in my marriage, hindsight being 20/20 and all. I couldn't see it in real time, or I would have made a different choice, but I've owned that and am working on forgiving myself for my part in it. No salacious details to share - my part didn't involve anything illicit. It was simply a combination of anger, resentment and fear because of something he did and said which I never addressed because I no longer felt completely safe with my exh emotionally. I had a chance in couples counseling to address it years later, but I wouldn't. I was quite frankly too afraid to do so, and too traumatized to be willing to open myself up to more of the same. I decided at that moment that my resentments and fears were my own problem to solve rather than choosing to tell him how much his words and actions hurt. I was wrong. Resolving that wasn't something I could do alone or even in IC, and it eroded my side of the marriage while allowing him to continue the behaviors which eventually led to his affair and finally to the breakdown of our relationship.
This doesn't negate that fact that my exMIL is, in fact, a true blue Narcissist of the hopeless variety, who caused incredible damage to her exh and her children and if I'm honest, to me as well. In fact, I'm just now unwinding how much personal damage she's caused me, years later, and how much damage she's tried to cause my son.
Does my exh exhibit narcissistic tendencies? Yup, but in his case I wouldn't label him a narcissist; rather he's the very damaged child of one. I've read that it's really almost impossible, especially for a son, to overcome the damage caused by a narcissistic mother. Does this give him a pass on the truly awful choices he's made? No. Was he physically and mentally compromised by his out of control hypothyroidism? Yes. Does this give him a pass on the truly awful choices he's made? No. Did he go through a MLC? He's the poster boy, if I use Michele's book as a guide. I've said it before and will again - her chapter on MLC in Divorce Remedy made me feel like she'd written it from the comfort of my living room, using my exh as her prototypical MLCr. Does this give him a pass on the truly awful choices he's made? Once again, and emphatically, no.
The failure (God, that's still a hard one to type and admit to myself) of my marriage was due to a perfect storm of factors, some my fault, some exh's. I have to live with my mistakes just as he has to live with, and find some way to reconcile within his psyche, his own choices and mistakes.
May nailed it. There's a reason I don't read CW/Traveler's thread. Sorry T, you ask for help then not only don't take it, but justify all the behaviors which continue to hurt you and others. It's not easy to read. After a while, I stopped trying to help because I don't have enough energy to spare for someone who really doesn't seem to want to change their fundamental issues. It gets to a point, for me, when it actually hurts to read the ongoing damage. So I rarely do so any more and frankly, after this latest, I'm not going to follow along at all. The hardest thing we have to face is our own damage, but if we don't face it, acknowledge it, and do our best to heal from it, we will never live the life we could have. What we will have instead is a series of unsatisfying relationships with the common denominator being ourselves and a trail of broken hearts in our wake that we also have to feel guilty about. People who live that way do not have an easy end of life. I've seen it, and I don't want that for myself or anyone else for that matter, but others' life choices are not up to me. The change must come from within, and usually, in my observation, if that change happens for someone, it's because the fear of change hurts a lot less than repeating the ssdd.
LH, you talked a few posts back about honor and it so resonated with me. If we aren't honorable in word as well as deed, then what are we, really, and what do we have to offer the people in our lives? Maybe it's the writer in me, but I believe words have incredible power. If one says ILY, then one d@mn sure better back that up with action, not run when things come up which make one uncomfortable, or strike a nerve or trigger point.
Maybe I'm naive, a romantic fool, or immature or something because until reading all of this I never really considered that ILY meant such divergent things to some people. I took it at face value that ILY meant at the least a commitment to each other and the relationship, not something that one says lightly. Thanks. I'm wiser now. The kernel of hope for me in all of this is that the majority of people posting on the subject agree with my definition of ILY, so the odds are in my favor that the next time someone says those words to me there's a better than 50/50 chance they mean the same thing I do when I say ILY.
The question at the beginning of KMLs thread was about saying ILY, timeframes and dealbreakers. I find it so frustrating that someone would try to apply left brain ideas to love, of all emotions! We're not talking about how many sprockets fit into a box. It's love. People since the dawn of time have tried to describe it and cannot. For me, I don't say ILY lightly. Keeping score, it's been 25 years for LH since he said that and for me it's been since 1989. ILY implies 'in love' rather than what our Greek friends called Agape. There's a different expectation when one hears ILY, and there's an implicit obligation on the part of the one saying it that they will work hard to keep the object of their affection's heart safe.
Timeframes, really? Good luck with that. Timeframes are as individual as the relationships themselves.
Deal breakers. We all have them, but when I say ILY I don't mean "ILY unless you do/say/act/believe thus and such, then I'm out of here faster than you can say Jack Robinson." If that's your definition of love, I hope you find someone with the same definition, so fewer hearts will be broken. Do I have dealbreakers? Yes. It's why I never pursued anything with either A or K, but those guys were kept in the friend zone for a long time while I sussed out whether or not I wanted to pursue what they had to offer. Do dealbreakers come up after ILYs are said and if so, how do you handle that? Again, that's as individual as the people responding.
M 20+ T25+ S ~15.5 (BD) BD 4/6/15 D 12/23/16
"Someone I loved once gave me A box full of darkness. It took me years to understand, That this too, was a gift." ~ Mary Oliver
Last edited by job; 05/09/2206:44 PM. Reason: added link to new thread
Sit quietly, the answers will reveal themselves when you least expect them to. The past is gone, the present is a gift and you need to focus on today, allow the future to reveal itself when it is ready.
