The light switch affect..

HerbEverstanks · 2024-02-22T17:44:13+00:00

I will always remember those words - about "the ending". Luckily I wasn't accused, and just referred to her as the black hole.

l3tsR0LL · 2024-02-19T20:09:22+00:00

It was the hardest thing to understand. But once I had a few people explain it I was confident in responding in a similar way

Classic_Dill · 2024-02-19T15:16:02+00:00

As far as I'm concerned, i think she fell into a really nasty, toxic mid life crisis, were talking abandoning our kids for 2 months (have no fear, dad was there) and basically just became a narcissistic creature, which makes me wonder, why she cried when i told her i was divorcing her, OH! she also cheated, soooo.....i still think 4 years later and shes still nuts, from what i hear anyway, i refuse to speak to her.

FlyingSaucer51 · 2024-02-19T04:43:10+00:00

Oh yea. Where to begin. A summary…

We met.

She instantly loved EVERYTHING I loved. We seemed to be a perfect match. We bonded on almost every level.

The sex was INSANE. She was willing to try anything, do anything, and often.

Sex slowed down about year 4 when I helped her go back to college. She got her Masters degree. Then I helped her through her Doctorate degree.

I was living in my PAID-OFF home on my 2 acres of land.

She graduated and couldn’t find local work. She found a job in Los Angeles. Sold my house and land. We moved from the East Coast to the West Coast.

The work unions were different in the west abd I couldn’t get back in. She started making more money than me.

Surprise - Her company was secretly owned and operated by the Church of Scientology. She wouldn’t join. They framed her and forced her out.

She found a remote job with her very specific degree.

She got sick. Surgery after surgery after surgery. I took care of her around the clock. Did EVERYTHING. Endless cooking, cleaning, shopping, etc.

The pandemic hit. She became sad. She became increasingly paranoid. She pulled away. Things she had known about and was fine with for over a decade started to upset her. She made excuses of me “snoring” to force me to sleep on the sofa.

I begged to understand what was upsetting her. She lied EVERY time and said was happy, everything was fine, and she went about being my “roommate” instead of my loving wife.

The more she pulled away, the harder I tried to understand.

We never fought. Never argued. Never even had a heated debate in 15 years!!! Truly!!!

One day she tells me she has an all day work zoom meeting so I opt to go hiking. I come home and she’s GONE! Moved out! Took half the place and even MY 12 year old cat. Destroyed me. Not a word. The night before we were cuddling on the sofa watching Netflix and eating a dinner I made.

GONE!

I send her the best and ONLY angry text in 15 years. “How the fck can you do this to me! I’m not like an animal you get tired of and just abandon in the woods. I’m your fcking husband!!!” Then I sent a text that said, “This is not how we were supposed to end.”

Two things instantly happened. She ran to the police and said “This is not how we were supposed to end” was a veiled death threat/murder/suicide pact and she feared for her life. WHAT!!!??? Emergency restraining order granted.

Then the ONLY angry text (above) was shown in court and the judge said I sounded angry and used “egregious” and “inappropriate” language (said “How the fck” and “I’m your fcking husband.” Due to this, I was deemed angry and dangerous.

Then she found out that she couldn’t get her name off or apartment lease but she was informed accusing me of domestic violence would allow her to legally break her lease. So, police showed up to arrest me.

After over 150K in court costs to defend myself against all her INSANE and UNTRUE charges (including attempted marital rape!) the charges were dropped due to her inconsistent story.

There are is SO MUCH MORE to this story. I’m tired of even recounting it.

So yea. She flipped. Instantly in the end. Destroyed me. Treated me like a psycho. She has MAJOR mental issues. It was terrifying hearing her lie without concern. She spread rumors. Destroyed friendships. And left me in poverty after putting her through two college degrees, caring for her 24/7 for almost 3 years, and giving up my long standing career to help her achieve her dreams.

I literally ended up homeless and sleeping in my car as she went on vacations and paid for friends to join her.

It has been two years and I’m STILL struggling to survive in this job market.

Later, several psychologist informed me they felt she had “Quiet BPD” from her childhood abuse. I knew she had “Complex PTSD.”

She didn’t just LEAVE her loving husband. She DESTROYED me! She took away EVERYTHING…even my cat!!!

She lied she used the legal system against me. It was so obvious men are ALWAYS assumed guilty and women are ALWAYS assumed truthful. It was disgusting.

After she flipped she oooked at me with such disgust that I can’t even believe she was once (a few days earlier) my loving wife.

It’s a true mind f*ck of epic proportions.

I’m lucky to still be here as For got close to ending it all several times.

Yup. Therapy. Meds. Etc. She did ALL this to me like a cruel child!

Do I sound bitter?!!!

The worst part is, the way she left made NO sense and it was more like she DIED. The person I loved is dead and this selfish, lying, disgusting, cheating, woman is in her place.

Ok_Perception_1836 · 2024-02-19T01:23:53+00:00

As a believer, I believe that the devil got into her head and killed the spirit of the woman I loved and a literal demon moved in. She is not the woman I married.

Thrownaway_marriage · 2024-02-18T23:49:36+00:00

When I confronted mine about her affair, she said, "I think I just got so excited that other men were giving me attention." Never said I didn't give her enough. Told everyone else she was unhappy, but kept telling me she wanted to work on things and that she was happy. You can't fix anything with a person that tells you nothing is wrong while badmouthing you to her friends. Went minimal contact, only about the kids. Hopefully this gets wrapped up soon.

Adventurous_Fact2083 · 2024-02-18T23:27:44+00:00

It’s been 3 weeks since my divorce was finalized and it feels like a bad dream I can’t snap out of. I won the divorce but really no one wins. She had a long affair and put me and the kids in limbo. I filed on her sorry ass and don’t even talk to her. I should’ve gotten rid of her in 2016 when she cheated the first time but learned my lesson. I hope she falls on her face.

funkmonkey · 2024-02-18T18:28:07+00:00

I asked my stbxw about our marriage vows 20 years ago. I said, “Blah, blah, ‘til death do us part…did that mean nothing to you?” Her response: “It did at the time.”

IllustriousCry672 · 2024-02-18T18:10:54+00:00

I think we almost all have.

It's a necessary part for them to move on to the next dick.

Joocewayne · 2024-02-18T17:15:21+00:00

I experienced this crap. What angered me the most was her inability to see her adulterous actions and complete rewrite of history as willful actions to detach from me. They adjust their memories and view of reality, in my opinion, to alleviate guilt and shame over obviously betraying a man who loves them.

She explained that it was ok for her be dating during the time she specifically declared was to have been for restoring the relationship, because was trying to figure out if we were through. She kept all of that a secret from family and church, so obviously she knew it was wrong. When it came to light is when she started throwing around the buzzwords: emotional abuse, narcissism, gaslighting, he invalidates my feelings.

Talk about gaslighting lol. I barely made it out of her grand exit show with my sanity. Good riddance. I deserved way better than that crap. I was a good husband and AM a great dad.

Emotional_Lettuce251 · 2024-02-18T17:09:29+00:00

Yep ... mine totally shut down on me in December 2017. No more hugs. No more kisses. No more "I love you". No more sitting together. No more conversations (unless it was about picking up the kids from something). I held out hope for 6 years that she was "snap out of it". She filed November 2023.

Heavy_Guitar_4848 · 2024-02-18T16:59:30+00:00

Eh I basically had a light switch moment with my stbxw. It turned out to be completely justified and I’m glad it happened.

upandatom85 · 2024-02-18T15:29:33+00:00

This is another cut and paste I stole :

I call this the light-switch effect. And it happens when a woman is no longer attracted to you and is moving on, whether or not she cheated.

It's not that she's discrediting all the past good in the relationship, she actually believes it never existed. Let me expand on that a little, and tie it into what we call Briffault's law.

Women use their emotional state to define reality- we already know this. When a man feels an emotion, he asks, what could have caused this emotion? Is it reasonable and rational? Perhaps it is, or is not, but exploring this line of reasoning is how he determines whether or not his feelings match objective reality. If the facts don't line up, perhaps his reaction was wrong.

When a woman feels an emotion, she uses this as her objective reality. Why would she feel betrayed unless somebody had betrayed her? Why would she feel sad unless somebody or something made her sad?

Therefore the decisions she makes based on her reality may seem like total nonsense to a man (women are crazy, right?), because she has determined her reality based on the only prime truth she knows: her emotional state. If a woman is sad, she tells you "you made me sad." She didn't decide her emotional state, you did. Changing her own emotional state is outside the purview of her control.

So that means the emotional state she is experiencing means that you've done something to create that state, intentionally or not. Since she is sad, you've made her sad. Her objective reality states that you've done something wrong to make her sad. This is where a lot of arguments begin, because the man mistakenly will argue "you've taken what I said the wrong way, of course I didn't mean it that way," and to her, it doesn't matter what is rational or reasonable. She is sad and she wouldn't be sad if there wasn't a reason to be sad. Her sadness defined this reality for her. If you hadn't done something worthy of her being sad about, she simply wouldn't be sad.

So back to the light-switch effect. When you've been with a woman for multiple years, and things start going sour, you experience the revisionist history where she claims to have "never loved you" or that you were "always abusive." Yes, the always/never statements. And what they reflect isn't a reality, rather, they reflect her new reality based on her emotions.

The thought process looks much like this: If true love is permanent and real, and I am not feeling true love for this person, but rather disdain and anger, then I must be feeling this way because of who they are. They make me feel bad, so they cannot be good. And since this person makes me feel bad I could not have loved them, because I would never love somebody who makes me feel bad (the qualities he exhibits now must have been inherent qualities he has always had and the feelings I have now must have always been true). So I must have never loved them. The entire relationship must have been a lie. Real true love would be permanent, and this is not permanent, so it was never real true love.

And just like that, her emotional state defines a new reality, where nothing was ever good and everything was based on a lie. Like a light-switch goes from on to off, everything that you two had built disappears into the off position, as though it had never existed.

Many men at this stage try to bargain. "After all we've been through together, how can you throw this away? We can still salvage this!"

And it's a pointless question. What is she throwing away? Absolutely nothing, in her mind. If there was any value in the relationship, she wouldn't feel this way. Therefore there must not have been value in the relationship.

mateo8888 · 2024-02-18T14:56:26+00:00

I had the opposite. When I finally filed she became “perfect wife and mom”. I was so confused because I was like “where was that person the last 20 years”? She is hoping to work if out but I am scared that it is a trap. I am sure that if I stay low key no energy put into the relationship she will turn back into super b**ch

DaddyNoBux · 2024-02-18T14:34:06+00:00

My stbxw has went full on WW2 style blackout.

It’s actually quite funny to watch it play out

Enough_Youth_4564 · 2024-02-18T14:29:10+00:00

I noticed this from the get go and I was also mind blown by the phenomenon. I am now 1 month into the nasty filing she put and the nastiness she’s been showing and I accepted this phenomenon as a given. She’s a different person than the one I once knew. That’s it. To counter her light switch effect I’m creating in my mind a counter mechanism. I’m calling it the “write her off” mechanism where I view the good times I had with her as fake and unauthentic. They were not real. And having her out of my life is the best thing that could happen to my future self.

WittyBeautiful7654 · 2024-02-18T14:24:53+00:00

It was startling, even after we seperated we still kisses and said I love you. Then one day she stopped even responding to messages

Apprehensive-Cost496 · 2024-02-18T14:02:41+00:00

Yup, I didn't pick up on it right away but the exw all of a sudden changed and wouldn't look at me anymore, started acting funny, on her phone alot. I confronted her and she pulled the "we are like roommates bit". Well, of course that happens when she is having an affair with a coworker. I pulled the plug and the rest is history.

But she turned into an evil alien seemingly overnight. What a waste of 12 years.

2024-02-18T13:28:39+00:00

Hundreds probably thousands of times all seemed well then something said connected with a negative thought or association, and the mood shifted to anger/brooding leaving you wondering what the heck just happened. So yeah, been there done that.

Title	The light switch affect..
Author	Miserable_Ad_1172
Upvotes	27
Comments	87
Date	February 18, 2024 1:14 PM UTC (2 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/Divorce_Men
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/Divorce_Men/comments/1atttmc/the_light_switch_affect/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/Divorce_Men/the-light-switch-affect.1245733 https://theredarchive.com/post/1245733

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