Has anyone else experienced spousal / loved one abandonment?

[questioninglife]

I am almost 18 months on from my newly married husband just disappearing on me.

I just wanted to know if anyone has ever experienced a loved one just leaving for no reason you can understand?

In my case we were together for three years, married for 5 months and as far as I knew we were not just happy - we were completely happy. I spent months picking over every minute, every email, every moment and can't find anything to indicate it was going to happen. I thought I was his reason for living because he told me I was. All we ever did was have fun and be happy. It's so difficult to understand.

He's not a bastard, he was a perfectly normal man with a normal relationship history who is good friends with all his exes. He comes from a good family. He's intelligent and usually very kind and thoughtful - which was why I married him.

Aside from him being ill with depression I can't come up with anything at all to explain why he did this. His depression was not that severe as far as I know. He only had a couple of weeks of work with it, but I hear from friends he is still being treated for it.

He just left. I mean, literally walked out the door to get some fags and never came back again. The next day after a frantic night he sent a text to say he was sorry, he didn't love me anymore and could not continue.

After that, he acted like I had never existed at all. It was like he erased me and his family erased me too even thought we were all very close. Looking back I don't know how I survived it. I kept thinking it was a joke.

I went through the full rollercoaster at the time. Disbelief, shock, depression of my own, anger. It felt like I cried for a year. He would not even talk to me, would not even really explain.

Eventually I picked myself up and got on with life. I got my dream job. I moved closer to friends. I lost weight and took up the gym. I travel and I have a very fun life. I have even dated people and have liked one or two a lot. I have had counselling and talked it all out with real life friends.

It's just that sometimes I find myself crying for no apparent reason, which happened today. I feel like in order to survive it I had to close off a bit of myself. Almost like I don't remember he ever existed at all to begin with.

I feel like I was denied a "normal" end to a marriage. He just abandoned me. He was supposed to love me more than anyone else in the world, and then he did that.

I just wanted to know if anyone else had ever been through something like this?

Also, worth mentioning, there was no one else involved. He is still single 18 months on. I know that is / was the most obvious explanation but it wasn't why.

18 months ago is still quite recent in terms of grief and it's grief for a relationship that you are feeling

The unfinished and shock aspect must have been so hard and I would really need some closure but I imagine you will not be granted that by him. It doesn't mean you can't have closure. You need to accept that closure will come from something you do. It could be any number of things but a symbolic act might help

You sounds really brave and positive in everything you have done. I wonder if you've given yourself the space to fall apart and grieve.

Oh yes, don't worry. For the first six months I fell completely apart. I quit my job, went home to Mum and Dad, didn't pay my bills and got CCJs, lived on fags and wine, did nothing all day but shake and cry. I literally did not care if I lived or died.

It was just eventually I realised I could either kill myself, or get on with it. Believe me, I did come very close to killing myself. It still feels like it happened to someone else.

What an awful story. To still have no explanation 18 months on must be so hard.

For me, it seems obvious that the depression you mention has made him act so out of character.

It sounds like you have come a long way and are doing as well as you could expect.

Have you tried to contact him more recently for a more in depth reason as to why he did what he did? Maybe you need some sort of closure

Sod closure. He's got problems. Don't make them yours.

You have glued yourself back together, don't even think about letting him be the cause of a bit of new unravelling (to mix a metaphor or two).

That bit of your life is gone, box it up and park it somewhere. But stop picking at it, or like any good scab it will scar.

I have tried so many times to get answers. Both at the time and more recently. I have seen him a few times too. Most times when I see him face to face he tells me he does still love me. He often cried and begged forgiveness at the beginning and said he wanted to get back together even.

The trouble was we could never get any further on from that because right after seeing me and telling me he loved me again I'd get another text or email a few days later to say he had changed his mind.

I gave up after about 8 or 9 months of that becaue I was just re-living the horror over and over.

I don't think he honestly knows the reason himself. He states his reason as depression, but millions of people get depressed and don't do that, so it doesn't feel like an answer to me.

I was sympathetic to his depression, but he didn't want my help. He wanted me to disappear. It was like getting rid of me was getting rid of dead weight - or this was how he made me feel.

I do call once a month or so. He sometimes calls me. Like when I sent him a birthday card or something.

The conversation is always like speaking to a stranger. His overall position is:

1. He does not love me anymore. He does not know when that happened.

1. He is depressed, and he blames me for that at least in part (ouch) and says he is happier without me.

1. He did once love me more than he had ever loved anyone, as much as he said he did, but he just stopped and can't account for why.

So talking to him doesn't help much. It just gives me more questions. Like how does your husband just stop loving you? Don't you need to not get on, or have problems between you for that to happen? And even if he does, can't he at least still care about you? Why cut you off like you'd never existed?

I have moved on in a sense, or "let go". I don't pine for him anymore, I never expect him to come back. I don't even want him to come back.

I just want to understand. I know sometimes you can't reconcile what happens with your perception of how things "should" be, and you just need to accept the bizarre sometimes. It's just not very easy to do it when it happens to you.

I mostly feel like all I ever experience is "now". Like I feel no future or no past in my head.

Happened to me about 8 years ago, been together about 10 years, just bought a house and he phoned one morning (he worked nights) to say he was never coming home. He just went, had some contact a few months later for him to collect his stuff and get house signed over to me. Several months after that his mother contacted me as she could not get in touch with him, she reported him missing, the police traced him, confirmed to his mother he was ok but that was it. I do not know what happened after that as I was no longer interested, however I do think it has made me wary that others will leave out of the blue just like he did. I can say I am happier now than what I was with him, however I did rush into a terrible marriage so would caution about any rebound relationships.

So did you ever find out what happenned to him or why he did it scooby?

No, never did and to be honest I no longer care, I have friends of friends that may know and I bumped into his old best friend a few months back and we chatted and made no mention of him.

So you just found your own acceptance?

Did closure just come with time, or was it a process for you?

Yes, I realised that we were better off apart plus the cowardly way he went around it made any feelings I had for him just die. However even though I'm glad we split it has left its legacy which is, I just have this feeling it will happen again..at moment I'm thinking my boyfriend has dumped me as he hasn't answered my text. Now I know this is unhealthy but at least I have awareness and don't let it show!

Yes, that's how I feel exactly. Like the cowardly way he did it made me not want him back but I still feel ruined. I am completely paranoid. even when friends don't respond to emails I start wondering if they don't like me anymore.

In fact I just broke up with a lovely guy because of this exact reason. Or he broke up with me because I was paranoid.

That's interesting, I'm worried I'll do that and I can't stop checking my phone, he's still not replied

It scares me that you still feel like that after 8 years. I posted this because I don't think anyone understands what it feels like to have someone just leave out of the blue. I know people say "he ended it out of the blue" because they were having problems but felt like they were working on them. In my case - no problems. The opposite was true. Makes me feel like you do - like you can't trust anything, like nothing that seems real is real.

I know a woman who was engaged to be married. They dated awhile, got engaged. One evening they went out to dinner and then he left like normal to go back to his house. Nothing out of the ordinary. And she never heard from him again. About a year later she saw him in a restaurant and as soon as he saw her, he got up a left. They didn't speak. Never have. What a chicken shit.

I knew someone who went to visit friends, phoned her OH to see which train he was catching to join them, and he said he was moving out instead and would be gone when she got back.

He apparently had set himself a deadline of one year after they moved in together to see if it worked, he felt it didn't, so he was moving out. He had given her no inkling of this. She made him go to Relate with her, but didn't get a lot from it except to feel that she'd tried and he was an idiot.

She is now happily married with two kids.

It sounds a bit like they skip the normal part where they discuss any issues they are experiencing in the relationship and then just check out without even discussing it. Then they are too chicken shit to tell you, so they run away.

Funnily enough, with my ex, we were together 3 years and I don't recall him ever raising an issue with me. He clearly had problems talking.

Me!

Two months ago, after 15 years.

I am being divorced because I asked him if he was having an affair, which hurt him, apparently - he's even cited it in the petition. He denies, denies and denies. I am continually stuck between him having a breakdown or having an affair. Nothing adds up.

I find each day so hard, and sad. But I'm determined to be okay. I am determined to be dignified about this as much as I can be. I didn't do anything wrong, I didn't change, I didn't lie and I didn't cheat.

I doubt I will ever get an explanation except that he's a coward.

So sorry this happened to you. I know the first few months were the worst, but it does get better. Little by little is does get better

There have been several books written about this - google "sudden wife abandonment syndrome" and "runaway husbands" (actually think that's for the same book but there is another one). It's a lot more common than you'd think. Two people in my mum's small department at work had this very thing happen to them. I thought it was such an odd story with the first one but didn't think too much more about it but when I heard it had happened to another of her colleagues I googled it and it's surprisingly common. Very sadly. I'm so sorry OP - it must be so difficult.

I did read up on it at the time. Still no closer to understanding why people behave like this. I suppose they must be the worst kind of coward.

I can sympathise with your frustration but if he's not prepared to give you a straight answer the only way forward is almost to pretend he died rather than merely walked out, drop contact and continue on that basis.

I remember reading a science fiction short story "explaining" this very phenomenon (in terms of aliens, of course). Not helpful exactly but using it as a story plot goes to show it's quite common.

What you probably don't appreciate is that, even if you had a concrete reason why he walked out, there is a big chance you would feel just the same way you do now. If you think you have a happy relationship and it ends suddenly & without warning it is extremely disorientating and it throws up hundreds of unanswered questions whether the reasons are known or not.

Don't call him every month. I think all that achieves is to keep him top of mind.