AIBU to think husbands usually leave because there is someone else?

Literally the one man I know who broke the mould is my DH when he left the mother of his kids.

And I only have his word on it, although they are amicable and he was single for absolutely ages before we got together with no whiff of any other women in his social media, no mentions by family and friends etc. so I do believe him.

Yes, this sums up most of the cases I've known - including my 2nd marriage. I ended the first on finding out he'd been in a parallel relationship for several months.

The others left because the marriages had become intolerable and were ostensibly single afterwards, yet were in a serious new relationship suspiciously quickly. I don't believe that many people go from broken-hearted to dating to engaged in under a year. They must have at least been doing the dating before quitting their marriages!

but! you have provided reasons for them leaving !
the OP’s husband cannot apply any of these justifications
to his situation

I'm not sure you read what I said?

The men I know who have left their wives/partners through their own choice have not had OW lined up. The ones who have left and gone to the OW have all been kicked out by the wife after the affair has come to light.

I know two people who are divorced. One had consistently cheated on his wife for years the just fell head over heels in love with someone. Divorced his wife and married her.

Another his wife has been physically abusing him for years BUT he still only left after forming an emotional attachment to a woman at his local gym. He then went on to marry this woman.

The person who leaves in normally a lot further down the track than the other person they’ve long checked out and moved on before it comes to the separation stage
where the other person it’s a bolt from the blue and seems as though they’ve hopped from one to another

If he wants to leave, and he's not leaving because of some obvious big problem in the marriage, then he wants there to be someone else, even if there is no specific person in the frame.

So if he hasn't given a specific reason that he just can't live with anymore, then it's most likely a simple case of wanting to move on to new things.

I would imagine - another wild guess - that given life expectancy is in the 80s the thought of spending 50-60 years with one person (farts, warts and all) is as attractive as wet sludge. Plenty of folks might just want a second life, and another chance at adventure and happiness.

I'm in my sixties too and most of the men I've known have either left for an affair partner or the marriage has broken up because he had a ons or did something like go to a massage parlour.

I've never known it to happen either.

This seems to happen quite a lot and it’s usually because the couple have stopped investing enough in their relationship as a couple once children came along, or because they didn’t have enough in common to start with and the children were a sort of buffer until they left home.

Was he always as keen to have children as you were or did he need persuading?

Im old enough that many of the couples who's weddings I attended in my 20s are now separated. There certainly does not seem to be any pattern of affairs exclusively carried out by the men. More a mixed bag of growing apart/shitty behaviour across the board by both men an women.

I don't think they generally leave because there is someone else exactly. I think a lot of men won't leave until they have another woman lined up but the cracks in the relationship are generally there before that.

In general, men get more benefit from living with a woman than women get from living with a man, so the cost benefit analysis for leaving is different. Once they've lined up another woman, that changes.

When my exH walked out of our marriage,he swore that there wasn't another woman. Three months later I found out that he had been seeing someone for several months before he left.

I also think this is true. It’s been my experience.

I think most men view having a wife like an appliance- like a hoover or whatever - and they will just replace one for another.

I think men leave because their wives aren’t having sex with them.

Men seem to tolerate all kinds of shit as long as they are having sex. Once the sex stops they start thinking about their exit, which is often the first woman that will have sex with them.

This is one of those weird MN articles of faith that doesn't bear any relation to real life. I don't think leaving for an OW (or OM) is very common at all - not in my social circle anyway.

Most relationships I know of have ended because of a specific life event pulling two people apart (such as one person gets offered a dream job somewhere the other person can't or won't go) or one person realising they want a different sort of lifestyle to the other (travelling vs settling down, city vs country) or just growing apart/incompatibility. All of those things are way, way more common for both men and women than cheating and affairs.

Whenever I read someone saying that in their experience, every time a man has left it's because there's another woman, I just think their experience must be very limited.

Reading comprehension is also very limited on these threads as you'll always get plenty of posters pointing out the number of men they know who've left for a non-OW reason, but STILL others will claim that all men only leave for OW as a blanket rule.

I know of 4 men who have left their wives.

One because he was having an affair
Two because because they caught their wives having an affair
And one because they just weren't getting on any more and he wasn't happy. No new woman turned up for over a year afterwards.

So thats a 75% no new woman rate anecdotally.

Why did he leave the kids if she's so.crazy? I never understand that.

Virtually every time. Range of levels of involvement. That said, same for women I know who left…

He left his kids with a crazy person? That's nice.

Yep. I left my ex when the kids left. Ho abuse, no one else involved. Just boredom.

I had very happy years after that, after meeting the man who would be my second husband, until he died. 👍