Does her DH have somewhere to land??

[CallMeMessy]

BFF. Been with her DH for 25 years +, we know them both well, seemed really solid but he has suddenly announced he wants to separate with no real reason given. They have 3 DC, youngest is 8. She’s been completely caught unaware by DHs sudden request to call it a day.
Does he have someone else in the picture?? The cynic in me says yes because I don’t know a single couple where the man didn’t have someone else when he was the one to end the relationship. Either having an affair outright or someone waiting in the wings.

YANBU - he’s got someone else in mind/ having an affair

YABU - you’re a cynic! Sometimes it’s just as it seems and he’s got other reasons.

Quite. Women post on here all the time that they are unhappy and want to leave even though their partner is a perfectly nice man who has done nothing wrong, they just no longer “in love”. And they usually get told to leave, life is too short to live like that etc etc.

I know plenty of women who don’t leave a relationship until they’ve got the next one firmly in sight and lined up, and are never single - it’s hardly just men.

So 100% of men are 100% cheating when they leave a marriage? There could be no possibility of anything else at all ever?

So this happens every single time? I would guess 50/50

It is accurate. But only if the people we personally know - anecdotally I’m sure there are other people not doing this but as Insaid in the break ups of people we know/ have meet/ been friends with where the man has ended the relationship there has been an OW.
3 female friends ended it with no affair and several women instigated ending marriage because the men cheated and were caught out.

In the ones we know - yes.

Same.

Lack of sex? A friend's husband left her for this reason. She admitted to me that she no longer wanted sex but never thought he would leave her over it.

Wouldnt be shocked he has someone else lined up.

Would also not be shocked if he has left because he is unhappy with the marriage, he's told his wife the reasons he's unhappy, but she doesnt want to share those reasons with you.

Same.

Often they got together with a new girlfriend very very quickly after the breakup and it later became apparent there had been some overlap. Of course, that wasn’t the reason they gave for leaving, it was always the wife’s fault.

Oh, yes, it’s never done honestly and overtly. But they’re always there, in the wings.

The big promotion seems relevant! Could he be thinking that he 'settled' with your friend and deserves more? Some people have strange ideas about status and what a 'higher status life' should look like.

Is that why you're trying to work it out?

Maybe he's been wanting to leave for ages but has not be able to afford it before without affecting his kids too much financially.

Frankly it's all just idle speculation. I only hope that he carries on being a good dad and that they can both co-parent amicably

It's possible but I'm not sure that convincing her that he is would be helpful without proof as relationships can break down very quickly at the start of divorce/separation (lots of people say they will be amicable at the start). I'm sure a lot will come out over the next month. It's strange he doesn't want to separate first and has gone straight in to ending it permanently.

Why would anyone here have the faintest idea what the situation is? Maybe he's met someone else, maybe he's just sick to death of his wife. I think it's more common for men to be miserable and keep quiet about it until the point of no return than it is for women. A family friend of ours was in your friend's situation and her husband hadn't met someone else - he'd just been silently unhappy for about 15 years of their 25-ish year marriage, apparently, and she had no idea. It's possible your friend's husband has met someone else. It's equally possible he hasn't.

I think that's truly awful for the wife.
To find out that for 15 years of your marriage the person you lived with, loved, shared your life with was miserable but didn't have it in them to discuss that or make changes.

That's almost worse than cheating or no different I suppose - it would definitely make you feel that you had lived a lie & would make you feel just as humiliated really.

This woman is a goddess. Top of her game in every sense… but yeah, he’s deffo the cock of the walk at the moment so I do think that’s part of it.

I 100% think he's got someone else. if he was a genuinely good person who had valued his relatiosnhip, if he was unhappy, he'd have been making some effort ot talk about it with his wife and fix things. In my experience, people who leave because they're genuinely unhappy (men and women) will have, as one of thei rmain complaints, that they have tried to address it and their soon to be ex wife/husband either refused to engage or it simply couldn't be fixed.

Incidentally, in my experience, while the DW is often shocked, the rest of us are that little bit less so because we'd have spotted a few warning signs. So this suggests to me it's a sudden, new relatinoship and he's in LUUURVE.

Oh and to add, I worked int he kind of environment where the correlation between men having affairs/getting divorced with their final promotion to the most senior level in the heirachy, was depressingly high.

YANBU, highly likely he’s got another woman on the sidelines.

😁

Why would anyone here have the faintest idea what the situation is?

Hey remember this is Mumsnet, we're allowed to.make it up as we go along. You can even ignore much of what the OP says if it doesn't fit your scenario.

Update. There is someone in the ‘wings’ - nothings happened etc just made him realise blah blah blah. It’s fucking disappointing.

My divorce lawyer said he'd never had a case where the man left and there wasn't another woman...

I hope that I have better “BFFs” that if my marriage were to end and I were to confide in them about my shock, sorrow, disbelief that it’s over, that they would respect me more than to run to a public forum to discuss it and encourage internet strangers to speculate on what’s going on.

If this story is true (and this is MN, so that’s doubtful…) then please have some compassion for your “BFF” and her children, the youngest who is only 8, who are extremely upset and confused by what’s happening.

If it’s true? Of course, because it’s so far fetched that a man might leave his partner of 20 odd years, and break up his family…
never happens.