Afraid and alone, cant stop crying

[canttypefortears]

Hi

My always loving DH gave me my christmas present by uttering the words 'i dont love you anymore!'. It was straight after our kids had finished opening their pressies do no drink involved.

We were first loves, marrying at 20 years old. We were to celebrate our 15 th wedding anniversary shortlt. We have two beautiful kids and a lovely home. We do OKish financially but manage to do some nice things together.

I have always been content just to be with dh, he was my best friend. Ive had no problem if he wants to socialize with his mates. I thought we were happy.

I thought i coyld read him like a book when he was grumpy we all knew about it!

When he said thosr words i knew instantly he meant it. He wouldnt joke about this. I crumblef and remained a wreck for nearly 2 weeks. I couldnt get out of bed, sleep or eat. The physical pain of heart break is sickening. I managed to keep him at home for a fortnight.

He eventually packed and left two weeks ago. I didnt want him to leave. I asked what i gad done, he said its me not you, i just dont feel anything. I asked why he said he just has nothing left. I just dont understand. I have asked and asked but iv had nothing!

When he left he told the kids, who were beside themselves, packed nearly everything and went to stay at a mates ( although i canr be sure). He never answers his phone or text and im really worried for him and us. He contacts when he wants to see the kids.

He is very distant and has come to me and asked me to sell and divorce. He only told me 'we' had problems 3 weeks earlier! Im in shock and never saw this coming.

My dh is a stranger, its as if he isnt the man i knew. He has started being agressive towards me, as if i caused a problem and flinches if i put my hands on him, almost .like i suddenly repulse him. In reality i had no idea he had problems or was unhappy. He never voiced them if so. The only thing i can think of was he wasnt sleeping well. Ive thought of all scenarios. But maybe i should conclude im unloveable.

We are mediating next week as i cant go on. It is making me ill, stress and not eating ( the weight ive lost in 3 weeks is unbelievable! I need to be my kids mum again.

Any advice would be much appreciated, things have gone too far but i would have him back in a heartbeat.

OW? has that been established?

I don't know if I explained that very well! I'm trying to get you to see what crumbs you're accepting today, believing that they have positive meaning.

If you'd been offered those crumbs and such a bad deal in November, I don't think you'd have thought there was anything positive about it.

It's a strong analogy, but it's like a woman who is used to being beaten up so badly by her husband that she often ends up in hospital, feeling more positive about a beating that only merited a trip to her local physician.

He beat you up metaphorically on Xmas Day and has been kicking you when you're down ever since. Today he has slapped you several times while you were standing up.

So, will he be speaking ongoing treatment for the breakdown? By which I mean examining all the root causes over years?

I have boomeranged and been led a merry dance for years by a poor, dear breakdown sufferer. The first abandonment was awful, the second worse, the third liveable, the fourth and final absolute. I needed to go through that process, sadly, until I genuinely felt his departure like a ray of light and not a kiss of death.

I hope it works out you. I am sure he will seek treatment for the breakdown given that it has hurt you so much.

No there is no suggestion he will come home. He has just slowed everything down, not expecting us to go back to mediation for a month or so. I suppose by then we both may know where we are. He wont rush me. He said he spent the first week away drunk, the second angry and this last week calm. He had thought i had felt the same.sooo not true (obv from thid thread) but we were never loveydovey types in public but i do agree about bedroon activities being a bit of a problem

The holiday was explained. He is taking his sister, he downloaded the confirmation and showed me passenger names. It does make sense.

He has moaned and complained about work/weather etc over the years. But never so much so i knew it was really getting him down. Im not blaming myself as such but feel guilty i missed this unhappiness. I would of tried helping, im that type!

I think its a story of failing one another although i hadnt realised had we actually stopped trying?

I can see both sides of this. I have been the wife desperate for everything to be ok again, but I can see that this would be a very very bad thing for you to do.

So how about this. You set yourself a date when you will decide whether to give your marriage another try. You dont tell him, you dont tell anyone, and you proceed as you would otherwise have done (not being rushed into divorce, mediation etc).

Lets say.....1st September. In that time, you think and you ask him to think. You get counselling for yourself and you ask him to get counselling, on his own, to work out why he did what he did. Tell him that you might consider a reconciliation but only if you feel that he is working through the issues that caused him to behave the way he did.

If during that time he works, he tries hard to show you that he wants it too work out, woos you etc, then you can decide whether or not to give it another go.

But if, in that time, he make demands, switches from Mr Nice to Mr Nasty depending on how you react to his demands, goes from trying to get you into bed to pushing for divorce etc, then you know that this is all just a ploy to get back the comfy life he had and you proceed with the divorce.

Tbh at this stage none of us can say if he definitely has an OW, and if he has, if she has cold feet, or whether he has genuinely lost the plot and realised he may be making a mistake. But his actions over the time period you give yourself will tell you one way or the other.

OW has not been established. I personally feel its likely but he does have an interfering mother who could be behind it.

Cant - did he say sorry? Did he say how he is going to help minimise the trauma he has caused the children? Is he still pushing you to make decisons before you are ready to?

I do know how hard it is, anyone who has been through a rejection like this knows that moment where you see a glimmer of hope and cling to it for dear life - unfortunately more times than not it ends up not being something that is worth clinging to.

No there is no suggestion he will come home.
He isnt implying he intends to come back

You and he are both working on the assumption that this is his choice to make. It isnt.

HE walked away, he doesnt get to just walk back in again. The decision is YOURS now, and I suggest that you think long and hard about whether you want to just brush his awful behaviour under the carpet.

So he's offered you nothing? He neither wants to return or move forward with the separation?

Where are your needs being met here? How can you or your children claw back some stability in a state of nothing more than flux?

He hasn't said he's had a breakdown. You have filled a void with your own excuse for him. Christmas Day, OP, Christmas Day. Your children's memories. Their blueprint for life. Where will your anger and hurt go now?

Why was HE drunk and angry when he caused the problems? Has he even considered what it would have been like if you, the injured party, spent a week drunk then another raging?

Where would your children be then?

Sweetie, you will never get Christmas day back. You will never change the day you had for the day you wish you'd had.

Him coming back will never take away how you felt, what he did, what your children went through.

He did this. You cant change that. What happens now is up to you, not him. If it was a genuine brain fart and not an OW, then there is a chance it could be salvaged but that will take months and months of effort. Him coming home and you both pretending it didnt happen will just put off the inevitable.

Ok. I see you are concerned and looking out for me.

_No OW ever established, very very little evidence to go on (just silly little guesses and odd lost half hr).

He never abused me i any way ever. Not physically anf not emotionally. He never told me i was stupid, called names etc, threatened me and so on. In fact he was entirely the opposite!

Seems the feelings he had gathered pace over the summer whilst his wider family had iissues and i was the resulting collateral damage (he never meant to say anything). Unfortunately the kids are too. He couldnt quite realise the bombshell he had set off and then not being able to retract the statement.

This was heart to heart, it rings true.

You'll be verifying this with his sister then? Easy to change names on flights, either today in preparation for your meeting - or later on. How much time delay was there I wonder in between him realising you'd uncovered the flight expenditure and these tickets being produced?

You worry me.

You didn't fail eachother.

He failed you by not being honest.

I really do wonder how it would be regarded if a mother did this on Xmas Day. Took off and left her children behind and when her husband asked her about the children's welfare, just shrugged? I doubt he or anyone else would be beating him up about failing such a selfish piece of work - and if they did I hope their friends and loved ones would talk him out of it.

Don't get bogged down with the abuse thing either. It was an analogy to show you what a terrible deal you got given today and how previous worse deals have distorted your perception and judgement.

No-one's saying he's abusive.

But he is one cruel schmuck and when a guy goes from being Mr. Sweetie to King Herod in fast-time, there is always another woman involved.

He did realise the bomb he had set off. He saw your face and your reaction on Christmas day. He saw your pain when he left. He heard you crying. He knows of your DCs pain.

He did it anyway.

He had a plan and somewhere it has gone wrong. Whether that plan was an OW, or a fabulous new batchelor life for him is unclear (Still think OW tbh) but he is lining you up as a fall back.

Please please dont do it, or at least, not yet. As I said, give yourself a date many months in the future by which he has to prove himself. Take back some control and some self respect, and FFS dont have sex with him!

You could capitalise on this new spirit of glasnost and take your laptop to the next meeting and ask him for the log-in details to his cellphone account, there and then. I'm guessing he'd refuse to hand them over, or if he did you'd have a confession out of him before you had chance to tap in the details...

chumplady.com/2012/04/the-humiliating-dance-of-pick-me/

This is what you are doing. Whether there is another woman or not, you have been cheated on. He cheated on you by planning another life without you, whether there is someone else physically in that life is debatable, but the fact is that You are dancing the Pick Me Dance.

Cheating isnt necessarily having sex with someone else. It can be having secrets, telling lies, making plans, all behind the back of your spouse.

No we are going to mediate end/feb. So no rush, he realised the speed of any move in this market (2weeks on average in my area) would unsettle the kids.

He has genuinely said sorry about everything, but still hurts. Wish he could just open his trap and say I LOVE you.

The gettig drunk the first week he left was not being able to deal with leaving me,kids and house.
The second week he was angry as he had no where of his own, no way of moving on, living out of a holdall, angry at me when i text to ask if he had paid for dc school dinners (he had). Week 3, tail betweein legs, sorry even, calming down, thinking more fairly.

Ok, i had no such opportunity to go do that, but thats not my style! I worked, cared for my kids, getting them to the right places at the right time, functioning on the meds gp prrscribed, feeding them, cleaning and clothing them etc etc all on NO sleep and No food (lost 2 stone since xmas,size 10 now!).

I think it shows the difference between a mans response to a womans. and responsibility of kids! Oh ive not consumed any alcohol since xmas! Gone off the stuff x

No it shows the difference between an irresponsible parent and a responsible one. But society tolerates this sort of thing far more in men than it does in women. Don't prop that up, whatever you do, by saying that this is explainable because he's a man. It's TOLERATED more in a man and people make more excuses for men who behave this way. Don't be one of them.

You are going to take him back OP arent you?

Remember that when this happens again, or you are confused at the conflict between what he says and what he does, we will be here for you.

I have wept for a friend who did what I think you're in danger of doing.

Her husband left and said no-one else involved. He was cruel, he was dismissive and kept rushing her to get a divorce.

Then he softened and started appreciating her looking a million dollars when he came to see the children. Spick and span house, freshly laundered bed linen and the telltale signs of sussies beneath her skirt.

They took to having passionate sex when he called round when the children were at school.

What she didn't know was that he was still having sex with his secretary and had been for a year before he left. He was getting them to compete, without them knowing it.

My friend feels more angry that she demeaned herself like that, than almost anything else.

He came back at one point, then went flakey again and that time she got investigating - which is how the whole tale got found out.

Please don't do this to yourself.

The main thing to remember is that, at this point, he has said nothing to make you assume that he is considering coming back. All he has said is that he regrets the WAY he left. Not the FACT that he left. Setting aside a possible OW, a meddling MIL, or a midlife crisis, he still wants out, albeit at a more reasonable pace, because of the 'speed of the market'. That says to me that he is still planning on selling the house. Doesn't sound like someone seeking reconciliation, does it?

You need to continue to make plans for a life without him. You still need to be resolved to protect your interests and those of your children. You need to move ahead as if divorce were a certainty. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst!

Of course we are looking out for you.

Here's the thing...I have been where you are. When they want you back (right now your is just hinting but it might progress) you are in such strange mental place because of the shock and rejection that you will want to lap this up. You will want to do anything at all to undo what has been done. To get your life back.

What the ladies here are trying to explain is that you can never ever undo this. If he begged to come home now...you'd be happy for a bit, but mark my words a few weeks or months down the road you would realise that he had changed things with what he did.

Now is the time for you to really understand that. Make this YOUR choice.

It may be just a "brain fart" but if it is, there are still consequences. Make it hard for him. Do not allow him to have any part of you until he has faced and make reparation.

Tell him now that if he has had a breakdown to see a doctor (he has not had a breakdown by the way). Tell him he has shaken you to the core and YOU want SPACE and time alone.

At the very least make him respect you! Then if there is hope of sorting things out, do it in your own time, allowing yourself to think carefully.

He was just saying he had thought about returning home, up until this point it was absolutley no way. But he was concluding that if he did it may well be a disaster. The .love for me seemed to go over night, and he is unsure we can get that back. Even he says i deserve more! I cant take him back if he is not actually coming home! But of course i would if he did. Remember this is early days for me!

Ive got everything set and plans in place for our next mediation visit, which has not yet been booked. Im prepared as i know this iis the most likely path.

"He was just saying he had thought about returning home"

Sorry but this translates to me as "he was feeling horny the other night and got to thinking that DW would probably make a massive effort to please him in the bedroom if she thought it would make him come back."

Where is he living? When will he be seeing the children? Surely a remorseful man could manage a weekly after school and alternate Saturday overnights?

Or is he going to keep making you the sole parent and adult while he decides at the expense of everybody how he is going to control their lives on a whim?