Hello. I have just joined MN to try and see if anyone has any advice for what I am going through to try and shake me out of my desperation. I see I am not alone. I read posts from drfayray and it so rang an accord. So happily talk to other in the same boat.
I have been married for nearly 20 years ( anniversary tomorrow!) and three weeks ago H left me out of the blue for another W. Leaving me with the 2 kids fortunately not young -17 and 14. We have been growing apart for a number of years.. he spends a lot of time on the internet and is always up to 2-4am and if he were allowed, would not get up to 1pm.
He has hated his job in secondary school teaching ,which I am sure many of you understand, but has done nothing to try and look for something else and increasingly he has been taking time off sick. I was aware that our relationship was not going too well- he just did not seem to want to be in my company much.
I have always been the one with the stable income having worked my way up the local government tree since I was 21. We are both 52. H only started bring in any salary when he was 37.
I asked him to go to counselling last summer with me but he found the process difficult to engage in and he is such a poor communicator. I suppose it became a vicious circle: the more he stopped communicating, the less I tried. I still love him though. Sadly though he also stopped engaging with the kids and hardly ever speaks to DS, which I have been finding very difficult.
He had started to go away for weekend for walks in the lake district etc which I was pleased to see him get out. He said he wanted to have some time on his own.
Any way, three weeks ago on a Friday as he was going away for the weekend to his electronic music group he texted me to say he has had enough and he was going to resign his job today. I left messages all weekend for him to phone me.
He came back yesterday late the Sunday and I tried to talk to him to see what he wanted to do. In short, it came out that he no longer loved me and that he was in a relationship and had been for a while with a women who lives some 60 miles away he had meet on the internet (they have Backgammon in common and much else apparently). He said he loved her. I am devastated. I asked him to see if we could try and work it through and he said no if it meant him stopping seeing this woman. After my crying a lot, he left.
He said he was not going to tell me because he wanted to keep stability for the kids! He kept saying it was up to me, so eventually it forced me to say this was intolerable, which was quite clever really. So from his perspective he did not walk out- I chucked him out. I wanted him to stay and try again, but he said he was not prepared to stop seeing his woman (I do not even know her name). I was content for him to stay to the weekend. Then DD then said she did not want him in the house and he left. He now claims I have turned the kids against him which is very cruel and so not true. DD and I have talked about him many of times on our trips out together over the past year - and it was in concerned terms worried about him. Why was never "with" us? He used to speak to DD a lot but that too has been fizzling out over the last three years and as I say, he never speaks to DS: he does not even like DS, he has told me as much, who is a very shy introverted lad. In a way, looking back over the past months- I should have seen it coming. DD guessed he was having an affair, whilst I said to her that I did not think so
It now admits in a text that he should never have taken up teaching. He has said in a text that after a week of battling with other people's children, he did not feel like engaging with ours.
I thought I was helping him through his depression by trying to keep the home together. But it seems I was not showing him enough affection; but he has been so distance over the last couple of years. It now appears he has built up billions of internet friends over the many, many days he has had off sick from work and in staying up late. I have no friends really- family long dead.
I have done all those things I now hear other women do. I have texted him to say how I missed him. I love him. I begged him to see me /to see a Counsellor with me. To try and sort things. He texted me, refused point blank as there could be no possibility of "us" (his quote marks) being repaired and the meeting could only be in terms of untangling out lives.
He went on to say I had starved him of affection every since DD was born 17 years ago (eh? really horrible and so not true) and how dare I involve his mother (I did not she phoned up and I told her he had left me) Apparently, I should have told her he was out! I had burnt his bridges and how could our relationship recover from that.
I phoned him (I know really stupid) and he was utterly horrible and dragged out what seemed to be a catalogue of my failings going back to our courting days. How one trip, in what must have been 1991 he tried to hold my hand and apparently I pushed him away. I have no memory of this. How he should never have married me. I was cold etc etc. Horrible, horrible stuff. I asked him why he had not communicated then how we felt with me years ago. Later when I said I had tried to be strong for the kids, -this turned out to be another one of my failings, that I should have given our marriage more attention. It was a man talking that was not the husband I thought I knew; he was incredibly cold and unemotional and I found it scary. In short he wants a divorce.
I cried and cried Wednesday night. But I will not contact him now.
If I look at it he has thrown away all his responsibilities: chucked in his job, new woman, new home (he is living with her but I do not know where), new life. I understand they are off in Dublin this weekend (and there was me thinking he going to go there by himself!) So that must all be exciting for him.
I think it is the fear of the unknown and the total shock of it and a huge feeling of isolation/ being suddenly alone that I am finding so frightening. Each morning I wake up with intense anxiety, physically trembling.
But I get up and have been going to work.- plenty of crap there. Christ. But better than sitting at home crying all the time. I have been doing enough of that as it is.
Summer hols so kids now off school. So I try and get home by half 5 etc etc. Be cheerful around them.
But I am seeing a counsellor -second time Friday and he is really good and getting me to try not to be so negative. To stop beating myself up. It takes two. To stop my "if only" inner talk. To start looking after myself. So I am feeling a bit better today. Though V tired. I have lost half a stone in two weeks. I do need to be careful. I must not become a victim. Sorry to have gone on and on.
Any one out there? I feel v lonely. I would like to hear from women who are going/ gone through this to offer mutual support.
I must count my blessings though. I have good health, fit, two lovely children and a job (for the moment).
xxxxxx