my dh left me a month ago, possibly coming home, anyone experienced this good/bad

[canttypefortears]

Sorry being a bit greedy as I have another thread running.

Backstory goes....DH of 15 years tells me he does not love me anymore on christmas day.for me there was NO warning we were rock solid, at least I thought. He stays for two weeks then leaves me and the kids
without explanation/or good reason. He stayed with a mate for one night but has been sleeping on monster in laws sofa for the past 3 weeks. It took me 2 weeks to drag an address out of him (his mum had just moved, I only knew the town name).

He then goes NC, phone not answered, off, straight to voicemail, no text replied. I panic he has done something stupid. Eventually he contacts me and accuses me of stalking him and madness!

He spent the first week away getting drunk, the second angry at me? And the third calm.

He had scared me with his suggestion of divorce we went straight into mediation.He was calm again in this meeting, I was bewildered.

Since the mediation he has been back round a few times and he got talking of what he is losing and the realisation of his actions. This had been the first occasion weve had the chance since the split without the kids around. I saw glimpses of my DH again for the first time since his revelation.

It has dawned on him what he is losing and the damage it has caused. I have always told him the doors open. He is having a crisis of sorts, feeling life is going in circles as if each day is groundhog day!Any little problems we had have built up in him until he imploded.

He is finally saying he may come home but that it should be for the right reason, his commitment to me. I know his right. Im now left in limbo as hes got to clear his head. Of course I want him back.

Has anybody got any experience if things can go good (or bad) after a situation like this?

My husband and I were close before all this, no ow,despite everything we are still really friendly.

Help I want it to work!

I understand your comments, i honestly do!

At the moment there is no point to him coming home. He wouldnt be coming back for the right reasons. From the last conversation we had he was saying that im still special and we are very good friends , which is true. I think he does know something is still there but we have to work on it and both need to make minor compromises. Now he knows he can only come back for the right reason and thats me.

The DC are very important and so am i, thats why we arent rashly deciding to allow him to move back. He will not come home and do it all over again. He will only come back if we can really make a go of it.

I know my posts sound desperate and all about his needs, rather than my own or the dc. I read them back and can see that. I dont mean to come across like a 'doormat', but can understand the comment. Im just standing by my man who seems to have had a mental collapse. And i do believe that rather than there being an OW.

Please dont despair of me! Im giving him a cooling off period for the time being. Im going to try going out with the kids a bit and have some fun. Then we will see. As i said before i have everything in place if it all goes bad.

Thanks Lilyblossom :)

Does he have unconditional love for you OP? His actions suggest not. If he really wanted to come back for the right reasons, he'd be begging you, and he isn't. You are his plan B. STEP BACK, go cold, say you have been thinking too, keep contact to kids only and se how he responds. You deserve better than this, so do your DC. He told you he was leaving on Christmas Day, FFS.

And how patronising, suggesting you are stalking him for worrying about him, the father of your children when he went AWOL. Smug self satisfied twat.

If you do want to discuss him coming back, You need a dossier of all his appalling behaviour (it's in these threads) and get him to explain himself properly and in full.

This is the way I see it canttypefortears.

I know you want him back. Him acting like a twat won't change it. Nobody is perfect and is he was fab for years before...good luck to you.

However, if you are honest with yourself, you only want him back if you don't have to feel like he will leave again, if you don't have to feel bad about this episode forever and if you can go back to feeling loved and cherished.

If you take him back now, after all this, without first making it bloody clear that there are serious consequences for his behavior you will end up with a horrible relationship where he values you less and you value yourself less too.

If he really loves you, he will come back. If he doesn't, he won't. this honestly is the facts of it.

It has to be on your terms though, with some sort of natural consequences / rebalance of the power he has taken from you.

Dcr

I know your right. At the end of the day i cant make him come back, and yes that would be for all the wrong reasons.

He has gone away to decide whether he can give me what we 'used' to have. He is finally thinking things through. This is fine by me as up until this point he gave no chance.

If his choice is to return home of course we are not going to brush it under the carpet. Alot of talking, repairing, effort is required. I dont want to be constantly worrying over our future together. He knows we and the DC cant go through this ever again. Not a decision taken lightly.

Im not going to be walked over, however i sound at the moment.

I dont know what the future holds, Just wish i had a crystal ball.

If he's having a mental collapse, is he off work? Has he made an appointment to see a doctor, and get a referral for MH services?

From the last conversation we had he was saying that im still special and we are very good friends , which is true.

You seem to see his desire to come back as some sort of vindication of how special you are.

I do not think he is 'thinking things through' in the sense you believe he is.

And with friends like that, who needs enemies?

I know you will become tough later canttype. Right now someone's knocked the wind out of your sails, but later when the time is right make sure you find it. I have a feeling the best thing on earth you could do for yourself it to tell him YOU need time and space and to get him running scared but I know you won't do that.

mathanxiety...having been through this type of rejection I think it's normal to want vindication of being special when you get treated like this. An unfortunate by product of someone telling you they don't love you anymore.

OP have you asked yourself what you would do in this situation if you didn't live with this man and had children with him?

Imagined what you'd do if you still loved him as much as you do, but he'd walked out of your relationship, you were fully financially independent and had no children to consider?

If you would do anything different in those circumstances to what you're doing now, have a good hard think about that.

It's easy to confuse love for what is actually co-dependence.

Scapegoat, I have thought out just that scenario. We have been married 15 years and had a really good relationship. My love for him hasnt just stopped, sure its not like loves young dream anymore, but it does runs far deeper.

I really dont think this is about being co dependant, although I am scared of what the future will bring. Its about all our dreams being shattered, I truly thought we would be together forever! :-(.

He is thinking things through right now and maybe he wont come to the conclusion I want, if thats the case then I will have to move on.

One thing im sure of is he knows ge gas messed up big time!

Erm he has!

In answer to your original question of has anyone experienced this? Yes twice and once it was awful and once it worked.

The awful: I was blinded by love and need, to want him back and swept all difficult issues under the carpet. I hid from friends and tried to pretend it wasn't happening. I felt ashamed. I was terrified of the future without him and just couldn't imagine it. We didn't talk about it much, mainly for fear that difficult questions would make him up and leave again. I don't think he feared losing me once because I was pleading and offering to resolve things. Convinced he had depression, some break down and I was trying to fix it. I worried massively about how he was coping and forgot there was a me and the DC also suffering. I took him back and suffered daily. We eventually split many yrs later and my biggest regret is that I wasted all my years on that relationship

It worked: I told the world and properly split up. No pussyfooting around, I took control and waved goodbye. I made plans for my future and in the space of 4 days had started to get things into place. DP was completely shaken by the reality and speed of things. It made him really think about what he'd lost. I agreed to talk and we did by email. Just to come to terms with what was a shocking event. I was sympathetic and listened and then when he'd poured out his woes I explained that I was sorry that he felt like that but I am who I am and best we part gracefully rather than start to hate each other staying together. Goodbye. He offered to reconsider and I said no because whilst he might wish to, I did not, because the trauma and sadness was too much. I didn't think I could recover from it. We talked a lot more and in the talking it became obvious that there had been a lot of miscommunication. Both of us had a chance to make our points and both had to accept we'd been wrong about some things. We decided to spend time together as friends. I love spending time with him so it worked.

Front forward, good to hear it from both sides. This is the question im really asking here on this thread.

Interestingly i can relate to both stories at the moment, however it is only early days.

We did split for good ( although i didnt want to). We hadnt talked things through. We went straight into mediation. He suddenly realised how quick things are going. He is doubting his decision. We are now talking, and listening. Again miscommunication may have a role to play here to? I dont know how things will pan out.

I still have a glimmer of hope.

A word of warning.
My father did this when I was 12. Came back. Left again when I was 14. Came back. Again came back for 18 months. He finally left for good when I was 16. He left for good because he wasn't allowed to come back.

My mother spent 4 years desperately trying to win him back, please him, make him happy. It was to the detriment of her own health. It certainly wasn't in the best interests of the children. We hated it, and were much happier once she took control and drew a line under the relationship.

My father was being unbelievably selfish. He wanted his freedom, he wanted to see other people, he wanted the comforts of home life. At the time (and even now) he'll tell you how difficult it was for him

My mother was his biggest defender at this time. She would spend hours justifying his actions, and 'the door was always open'.

You sound just like she did. Good luck with that.

*left again after 18 months

I think the overwhelming message here is not It will never work but ... it won't work like this.

You are trying too hard. For it to work he has to. Unless he wishes t, you are setting yourself up for misery ...until he does it again, (by which time it might come as a relief because you've wasted so many days in misery.)

Seriously it's YOU who needs to think about things. I'd get some counselling just for you to help you react more helpfully to this

Second the advice to get some counselling for yourself to help you process your thoughts and feelings about the situation. You sound like a pressure cooker ready to blow and this can't be healthy

I have been through this kind of rejection and I know how normal it is to be desperate for the reassurance, but it is still completely dysfunctional. The person who hurt you by suddenly and brutally turning off their love cannot be the person who heals you.

Someone who can do a thing like that is not the person you think they are despite the history of 15 years. This is now a big part of who he is and denying it won't end well.

If you need his approval or approbation or affection to restore your feeling that all is right in your world, in the face of everything he has done to you (and pulling the rug out from under someone's feet on Christmas Day in a home where there are small children is The Bomb imo) then you are in fact co-dependent, and far too needy, or invested in the relationship in an unhealthy way.

Allowing someone to do something like that and then allowing them back to make you feel better or get your dream back on track is a recipe for disaster.