In a nutshell, I separated from DH last summer when DD was 12 months. She is now almost 2 and he has been in contract regularly and seen her infrequently. We are on ok terms however he had huge issues which led to the break up and in the end I just could not live with him. It was the most horrific time of my life. On the outside our life looked perfect. Wonderful home, brilliant careers, always doing fun things at weekend etc. When things went wrong they spiralled fast (I don’t want to go into details as it would be outing). It takes two to tango but objectively I know it was essentially his fault for some horrendous behaviour. Ex DH has now moved many many hours away for work - he had no choice in this.
Since the split I am ashamed to say that I lied. I have lied to everyone except my two closest friends and my immediate family. I’ve lied to wider friends, my colleagues, neighbours, you name it. And by lie I mean I’ve said DH is around sometimes, work got busy, etc etc. The lies have consumed me because obviously I’ve had to keep up with them and effectively make up things about our life like we’ve been to the zoo or we’ve had a takeaway. I have cancelled plans where we’ve both been invited and said we are ill or something has come up. My world has become smaller and smaller because of this. Who knows if people suspect, I doubt it as these are people who wouldn’t necessarily have ever seen DH really so it’s been easy to hide away.
DD is now getting to a chatty stage and I know she will say something soon. But that’s not the only reason I want to stop these lies. I absolutely hate living like this. At first I justified it as I couldn’t bear being questioned or even asked about something that had truly broken me. But if I’m honest now, I think I have moved forward enough to be factual and brief about matters. So I have no reason to continue these lies. Sadly a lot of these people are likely to be very judgemental, from traditional upbringings and will almost certainly talk about me being a single parent behind my back.
I don’t know why I am so terrified to just say Dh and I are no longer together. My life feels so horrible as I can’t be me, can’t be myself. I don’t know what I’m asking posting here, maybe how to go about it? What to say if people ask more about it? How to cope knowing I will be talked about?
It’s odd because I told my best friends immediately and I didn’t feel embarrassed or ashamed, I felt supported. But of course not everyone is like that and people do love a gossip, I’ve done it myself. I am a grown woman with a v responsible job and this entire situation is breaking me. Any advice?