HB, I have a question that has been bugging me for some time. If a MLCer leaves a good marriage because of their crisis and they do not face their problems and do not travel the road that will lead to healing (the 6 phases) what will their future look like? If they have turned their back on their spouse/best friend and turned their back on God what will their life look like? Thanks for any insight. I have been reading all I can find about the journey of MLC and LBS but have not found anything about those who choose not to face their demons.
Thanks!!!
I don’t always answer questions like this, because people are often skittish, afraid, and want a solid guarantee that this will resolve–which is something I will NEVER be able to give you. I didn’t have it either, when it was me. This is the biggest test of your Faith you may ever face in your life. Faith isn’t tested in easy situations—it’s tested when a situation becomes uncertain, unstable, and the pain of being tested and tried to see what you’re made of will cause you to cling to God as you never did before.
You come for help to save your marriage–you find out that you are required to save yourself FIRST. There are people here I can truthfully say still have not begun the process of saving their Self first. They’re too busy focusing on their midlife spouse, what they are doing, saying, thinking, being, to even turn the focus onto their Self.
They pray, and pray hoping that God would answer their prayers for a restored marriage, but still aren’t willing to do the work necessary on themselves.
They become angry, when they find out this isn’t going to be just be a few weeks—it’s going to be months, if not years, before their situation MIGHT begin coming back together. And even after/if/when the midlife spouse returns home there is still a long road ahead–because mature reconciliation that involves BOTH people will not occur until the midlife crisis is done and past, and healing has begun in both people.
These are not theories, ideas, or something I just made up to convince people to follow me around. These are facts, based on what I know, have learned, have endured through, and what I have watched in other people’s situations over a long period of time.
I have watched people walk away, making it clear they have no further need of my advice–that they were “fine, good, and everything will be all right.” I tried to tell them before they walked away, that they were not finished, that they would be back, and they did not believe me. I am here to tell you they have shown back up in less than two years, apologizing for not listening to the advice I was trying to give them. I did not need, nor require, those apologies, because they did not hurt me–they hurt themselves.
I don’t give up that easily on people, because it’s more important to me to see if I can help them, than it is to seek to validate myself. I do not need human validation–God is validated through me. I care enough not to give up–my “Do not give up, the Lord will help you,” kind of attitude is what has fueled my blog site writing over the past two years.
The faster you detach, the better off you’re going to be, because everything you do, will definitely affect you in a positive or negative way. If you hold on, you can’t let go, and if you keep your focus on what you can’t control, you’re not going to learn how to control YOU.
I learned these aspects and many more during my time in the crucible, and I’m still learning more as I go forward. Some things haven’t changed, while some things have changed, and brought me a deeper understanding of this trial. The consequences for not facing, resolving, and healing from the crisis in FULL, have NOT changed–they remain the same as they were years ago, when I was teaching about the midlife crisis before. I learned it all from God, who directed me into different resources to study and read, while He increased my knowledge in this area, but some of what I gathered together in knowledge I did not completely understand until years later.
In the beginning of my own trial, God chased me down, and convinced me to Stand, giving me a light of hope, but I still had to walk the harder road to get to the end of this trial. There are twists and turns to this journey that will teach you so much more than just Standing for your marriage. The marriage becomes less important as your journey progresses–or it should become less important, as you learn that you can only create an attractive atmosphere around you, grow up as you were meant to, and let God lead you forward, as you should be doing—instead of trying to get answers to questions that might actually remove your hope, and cause you to decide to take a path GOD did NOT mean for you to take in the first place.
The biggest problem with people as a whole, is the fact they think that being in a marriage, a relationship, being a couple is the best they’re going to get. When that’s lost, because their partner decides they don’t want to be married anymore, they think they’ve lost everything. The key word here is THINK. The journey teaches you that you’ve not lost what you think you’ve lost, and you will find that your gains, will always be greater than what you THINK you lost.
It’s all about changing your own perception of what you THOUGHT you had, but didn’t really have. Why? Because IF both of you were what you were supposed to be in mature thinking, being, and doing, you would not be in this place wanting to know if there is hope for your marriage now. I have been there, too.
There are marriages that should never come back together, because they are PHYSICALLY dangerous. I do not mean just one time of getting slapped, or hit–I mean steady physical abuse that in time, will lead into death.
Other marriages have a fighting chance to come back together, because all both people need is to choose to learn life’s lessons, which include learning how to set boundaries on each other’s disrespectful behavior–because disrespect was present on both sides, BEFORE the midlife crisis ever came forth and disrupted their lives.
Actually, you have read about what happens IF the crisis is not completed in full, but don’t understand what you’ve read, because I have written about it—it’s in one of the articles.
It’s in this one:
https://thestagesandlessonsofmidlife.org/one-mid-life-crisis-different-possibilities/
It might not be as detailed as you might like, but remember that not every situation is the same, and NOT every situation is hopeless. If you think about it, it’s actually disbelieving, faithless PEOPLE who will take your hope and smash it with a stone of discouragement.
I cover the basics in that article, nothing more. I am a optimist who is also a realist. With the help of God, I see hope in every situation I look at, and what I seek to do, is relight the fire of hope within the person who has chosen to come see me, whether directly,(present writings) or indirectly (past writings) for encouragement.
There IS hope–there is ALWAYS hope, as long as there is love in your heart. Marriage is not a “contract”–marriage is a COVENANT, and God will hold people to their vows. As well He should, because He bound them together in good faith, for a lifetime. Oh yes, I know all about the people who seem to think that the answer to every problem is a good divorce attorney–but it’s NOT THEIR MARRIAGE is it? No, it’s not–it’s YOURS, and YOU will make the decisions you feel necessary for yourself.
People can influence you, but they cannot live your life for you. If someone gives you advice that causes your situation to become worse, and they distance themselves from that advice–you had better run away from that person, because they do not care about you at all. All they care about is THEIR validation, THEIR pride, THEIR wanting to be the “go to” for your troubled marital situations–and their advice is mostly the same.
They’ll bash your spouse, the one you still love, in spite of everything, which is the first negative sign of coming bad advice, then they’ll tell you to get a divorce ASAP. I’ve seen it before. THEIR marriages are supposedly reconciled, but they are advising YOU to get a divorce? Something wrong with that picture, and it becomes up to you to figure out that this “friend” isn’t a friend–they’re a “frenemy,” because with friends like them, you don’t need any enemies.
Me, well, I answer a lot of questions on this forum. I don’t tell you to get a divorce, but I do advise you to get your feet onto a journey that is going to benefit YOU. Why? Because you can’t begin learning to deal with any situation, until you learn how to deal with yourself first. I want marriages to make it, so I begin advising in such a way to help the left behind spouse to learn to understand their Self FIRST.
As they learn to understand themselves, the rest falls into place, as it should. If the three realities of Self, Spouse, and Marital Dynamics doesn’t fall into place, it means the left behind spouse is stuck in one of the aspects of the journey, OR, they have become too afraid to face the whole truth of everything in their lives, and they choose to stop walking their journey.
You cannot even begin to know how to handle difficult people, like your midlife spouse if you do not walk the journey designed to teach you how to do it for yourself.
So, what happens if the midlife spouse does not finish their own journey?
The bottom line is that if the crisis isn’t navigated successfully in full, then reoccurring cycles of crisis will begin–and that’s a common sense aspect you should consider. If you don’t take medicine for infection what happens? The infection becomes worse and worse until you finally do what you’re supposed to do–TAKE THE MEDICINE UNTIL IT IS GONE….food for thought.
Whether the midlife spouse finishes their crisis or not, should in time, not matter so much to you..why? Because it’s not about you in the first place–you’ll have your hands full with your own journey, while your midlife spouse has their own struggles to face.
Unfinished and unresolved emotional business that is put on hold for a later, and much worse, time, becomes all about the midlife spouse who is going through serious consequences for the failure to finish their journey in full.
There are also serious emotional consequences for not finishing the Transitional period, and those consequences involve negative emotional cycles that don’t stop–they just keep turning and turning and turning.
The crisis/transition becomes ALL or NOTHING, and the individuals who doesn’t finish, will be subjected to consistent negative cycles of emotional crisis for as long as it takes to fully resolve Self.
I’m speaking the truth, because I have actually seen this with my own eyes in my own situation. That’s why we were in two bouts of midlife crisis, and it lasted 12 years. On my own part, I never lost hope he would finish coming through, and I loved him enough to Stand without Falling, and I had Hope without Expectation.
He finished the six stages in full, but because of a one very painful past issue that he buried during late replay, it returned less than two years later. This issue interrupted the first of the two healing stages–resulting in six additional years in crisis. In the meantime, I was deep in a midlife transition, and it became necessary to physically separate myself from him. Why? Because had I not done that through my job, I would NEVER have finished my transition, and I would NOT be here, now.
Hindsight has shown me that I HAD to finish that transition, in order to return to this work at a time when God needed me to. God orchestrated circumstances early on, so I could have the space, and the time I needed to face, resolve, and heal a 7 1/2 transition within myself.
My husband treated me just like I had once treated him–he tried to hold me back, control my actions, and directly interfered with my journey. In addition, his final issue was wreaking havoc in our lives, and this required me to lay down additional boundaries that included staying clear of him as much as I possibly could.
I had to get completely away from him…do you understand? I HAD TO do it, I was FORCED to do it, I was DRIVEN to do it, and all because he would NOT let go of me, give me space, give me time, and stop pushing me for what HE wanted, when HE wanted it. Sound familiar? You’ve all done the SAME time at a different time in your own marriages, just after the emotional bomb drop that occurs within the stage of Replay.
I intuitively knew something was wrong inside of me, and I also knew that I had my own journey to walk. To my credit, I did complete the Transition I suffered through in full that ONE TIME, because I didn’t want to go through it again. Something in me KNEW if I didn’t get this done, that I’d suffer even more. So, I obeyed God, and set myself on the course that eventually led to the finish line. My husband finished his second bout of crisis two years after I finished my single bout of transition.
Everybody is different in how they choose to navigate this time of life. If people in deep emotional crisis would use their minds as God designed them to, NO ONE would make the kinds of mistakes that the midlife spouse usually makes, because they would use their mental maturity to think through every decision presented and make the moral decision to turn away from sin.
However, because they don’t choose to think with their more mature mind, and choose to think with their immature emotions, major mistakes are made, that lead into major consequences. Including the fact that IF they fail to finish, then they will be recycled back through where they failed to fully resolve the issue they decided to bury for a later time..
Does this give you enough to make an informed decision for yourself? If you THINK it does, you need to consult with the Lord about it, because only the Lord can choose to release you from your vows YOU took, when YOU married.
The midlife spouse took vows, but so did you. Even though they destroy their vows, they do NOT destroy yours. If you don’t honor your side of your marriage, then you have consequences to suffer, too, that will vary according to your situation.
Just like the midlife spouse–if the left behind spouse doesn’t finish their journey toward wholeness and healing, they’ll recycle their lessons, and also be subject to the consistent returning of past unresolved issues that will NEVER go away, and leave them alone.
It’s the SAME consequence for the left behind spouse, as for the midlife spouse, because this journey never stops–it simply continues. We get older, the issues that come with mental, emotional, and physical aging, become more burdensome. If we have not caught up with ourselves, within the aspects of growth we are required to complete, we will find ourselves in a lot of mental and emotional trouble we never planned for. Past issues that are missed, avoided, and even emotionally “buried” will always return to be faced–and each emotional confrontation is worse than the last.
Food for thought.
((HUGS))