Could you take him back after midlife crisis?

[PaisleySheets]

Just what the title says really.

If your otherwise exemplary and lovely husband had a two year hiatus from being a normal human being, where he got depression, was not sure he loved you or ever did and moved out, would you be able to forgive him?

He wasn't having an affair, there's never been anyone else involved. I am not sure why he did what he did. All he will say is that he felt he had to do it.

One minute I feel really sorry for him. We had a terrible debt problem and he'd been my rock for a long time and just couldn't cope. I also feel sorry for him because he made an awful mess of his life, he's had dreadful depression that's crippled him and he's been through a miserable time on his own. I also genuinely believe he loves me and regrets what he did.

One the other hand, during the worst of this "midlife crisis" he treated me like dirt on the street. The first I knew of any problem was an email to say he didn't love me anymore and was never coming home and to move on with my life. I won't bore everyone with all the details of the last two years, but in the first six months he was really about as cruel and unfeeling as a person can be and I got to the point I was calling Samaritans every week.

We had a happy marriage, losing him like that was the worst experience I have ever been through but I fought through it and made a new life for myself 400 miles away and my career took off.

I hoped for so long that he would "get better" and want to come home, but now he does, I don't know what to do. I am just so angry at him!

I know I love him, and before all this happened I couldn't fault him or us and I felt it was everything I'd ever wanted -but everything that's happened since feels so hard to get over.

I don't want to cut off my nose to spite my face though, and part of me feels like working things through with him is my best chance at happiness. I've dated a few great men and none of them make me feel that way that my husband did.

Has anyone ever let a wayward spouse come home after a long period apart or after them doing wrong? How did it go? I feel like I just can't go through being hurt again :(

I tried to keep this short by not including too much detail but I can also point out that we don't have children, we are both late thirties and neither of us filed for divorce.

I have shown myself and him I am perfectly capable of living without him, and I enjoy life and have filled it with fun and friends and travel and new hobbies and dates but I admit that without him I feel a constant void deep down.

No none of the illness was you or your fault.

Depression is a chemical fault in the person that is depressed.

Coffee I've not said anywhere that I intended to behave badly or that I wanted to give him any pain. That would be the opposite of what I want.

If I meet him for my own closure, to discuss and hear his side of it for my own closure and my own future health then as far as I am concerned that's absolutely fair (probably best for us both to have that talk) and I'd not feel like it was behaving badly if I didn't want to give our marriage another chance. Unless I tricked him into meeting on false pretences, which I wouldn't do.

I agree though, I am too angry to think straight right now.

I think you and I though have a very diferrent view of commitment in a marriage and I think the end of one should be a 20 step process during which the married partner absolutely owes it to their spouse to work through those 20 steps instead of skipping them all out and leaving. For me that's the entire point of marriage. I can't see any other point? It's a promise and a vow and that means something. Or it should.

you can't help stopping loving someone or wanting to leave but you CAN talk and explain how you feel and give the spouse some chance to improve things, some knowledge it is happening and some sort of process.

Abandoning out of nowhere is the anti-marriage.

Coffee, you're getting quite close to victim blaming here.

I have to say that I agree with Coffee in that the decision to end a marriage can be one sided and it should be respected.
If someone doesn't want to stay in a marriage, they don't have to give chances or whatever. This is often said (including by me) to both sides in here - to people who wobble about leaving relationships and to people who have been left.
As I wrote earlier, your belief that you could change him and his decision did you no good at all. If they want to go, let them go.

On the other hand, you then have every right to tell the one who left that there is no way back. You don't owe him a chance here, regardless of having it been an illness or his choice alone.
Think of what is best for you. He is only thinking of himself in this, I'm sure.

Yes we do have very different views on commitment

I skipped out and unilaterally an abusive marriage. No way that was going to be a 20 step discussion. My exH has a very different view on my lack of commitment, loyalty and persistence.

Problem with your theory is that all to often the rules are only applied when it suits.

"Abandoning out of nowhere is the anti-marriage." Yes it was

But according to the strict rules of what you "owe" each other in marriage you also "owe" each other in sickness and in health.

He couldn't keep his promise to uphold the relationship. You are struggling with the nasty side of in sickness. Does only breaking one of the vows count? Does one person breaking their vows give licence for the other person to too?

See this is why I am not a fan of marriage and vows that maybe impossible and unhealthy to keep.

Well, we'll have to agree to disagree there. For me marriage is a lifelong commitment, and a commitment to work through hard times and good times which is in the essence of the marriage vows themselves. To work through hard times then both parties should be aware they are rough times.

I think a relationship differs from marriage in that aspect.

What's really relevant anyway is my own an H's idea of what the marriage commitment meant and we were very clear it meant talking about everything, taking the rough with the smooth, working on things if we had problems. And I do think married or not you should keep your own word.

Cinnabar - it's not victim blaming to say just because someone hurt you you don't go and hurt them back

Obviously someone abusing you is completely diferrent.

I think you're twisting a bit of what I am saying here. I am not trying to adhere to "strict rules" , I'm talking about the most basic expectations of marriage - which is probably for your spouse not to shag other people or disappear overnight.

I did try and stick with him in sickness and in health, he ended our marriage, not me.

You're also stating as fact that he "could not" keep his promise to uphold the relationship but if that's the case why does every depressed person not leave and be hateful to their spouse?

Have you considered the possibility that he wasn't depressed? Or that even he was depressed that the depression didn't cause his behaviour?

Maybe he is just an abusive manipulative twat?

He runs up debts. Refuses to deal with them. Then leaves you suddenly to live with his mum. Presumably she ran around after him, doing his cooking, laundry etc. You pay off half the debts even though presumably he had no living expenses but you did. He was NC so didn't have to have the inevitable rows about the debt.

I was really scared, and still am, that something I say or do makes him feel bad and causes him to have a relapse.
You were even walking on eggshells, when actually you should have been having a go at him.

I tried SO hard. I got on my knees at his feet and I begged him just to stay in contact and meet me for an hour a week, and I told him I would wait however long he needed and he ABSOLUTELY insisted the only way to get better was to be completely away from ME.
If he were an abusive manipulative twat that might have made him feel rather good. Little woman begging him to take her back. Two years.

His parents and family grew frosty with me after their initial sympathy and I noticed being "uninvited" to things I would have been invited to before by mutual friends.
Maybe he was telling lies about you. "I fell out of love with her", wouldn't make them frosty. "We ran up massive debts and I can't cope" wouldn't make them frosty.

Call me cynical here, and it's hard for me to even express this thought, but I wonder if I am suddenly a more attrative prospect now we are out of debt, and now I have a really good job?

I mean, I lost weight, got really fit, started seeing friends again, travelling, super successful career.

That does not sound cynical to me at all.

If you hadn't implied that he had a diagnosis of severe depression, I think an awful lot of people here would be calling abusive cocklodger and tell you to stay far far away.

where have I said anywhere I wanted to hurt him?

You haven't said that, Paisley, not once. The only person who has suggested it is Coffee.

All I will say on your post TheLittleOne is that I find that very hard to believe from knowing him. He was kind, unselfish, moralistic etc.

HOWEVER...

The severe depression onset AFTER he left me.

When we were living together I saw some nights of poor sleep, some mild irritability and that was it.

Within 3 days of leaving he was a wreck. Drinking heavily, not going to work, constant crying and this is when the depression became very severe.

So yes, I feel there is some possibility that he felt the stress of the debt was too much, that he felt like moving into his Mum's would get him out of it (no overhead, no responsibility) and that he broke his own heart, gave himself depression and did all that to run away from stress he felt was too much to bear. His life was undeniably simpler without me. As I said I had an elderly relative I was caring for, and I had a low paid job and could not contribute much to the kitty.

Sadly, it is a strong possibility although I would HATE to think that.

His depression by the way, could not have been faked. For the year I was in contact with him it was very, very severe. He lost a huge amount of weight, he appeared physically diminished, he was unable to work on frequent occasions, he was unable to care for himself, he lost interest in any and all activities, he cried sometimes for days without hardly stopping, barely ate. It was like the man I knew disappeared and it was so severe it took a very long period of treatment to even improve much.

To reiterate though, that appeared AFTER he left. Before that he at best was mildly depressed. He never showed any of the symptoms I associate with depression aside from being a bit tired and cranky. Very mildly so, and always at other rather than me.

He seemed perfectly normal until the day before he left when he had a panic attack, the first of his life and we thought he was having a heart attack and took him to A&E.

When he left he was crying, clearly very anxious and agitated and from the day he left he didn't stop crying.

I perceived it that he had some sort of breakdown and left in the midst of it, but it might be the other way round. He might have decided to abandon me and all the blaming and anger and refusal to talk might have been guilt.

No doubt whatsoever though that his depression was extremely severe and life altering.

Marriage is a lifelong commitment. but not if other person messes up because he was sick? Not my idea of marriage.

Ironically out of the two of us it is me who can say categorically however painful it was for me, I could work to try and now save the marriage. without a shadow of a doubt. And I know what I would need to do to have the best chance of making it work.

I know i could Because I have done it with various relationships and those people enrich my life greatly.

Yet you are right I am absolutely not committed to them, I don't owe them anything. I do it because I can, and because they are worth something to me. I do it because I want them in my life.

All in all I think I can do without your idea of commitment.

Coffee, if you can't be supportive and non-judgemental perhaps you could just leave instead?

I have also been miss quoted.

Meeting up with him if your needs preclude his will hurt him however honest you are about it.

I have also said that it will highly likely end up leading to pain for the op. I couldn't be in the same space as someone I loved knowing I was walking away

As I said though he didn't mess up, he ended our marriage years ago and I moved on.

I do respect your personal views of marriage and commitment, but what's really relevant to here because it was not the basis of MY marriage, nor of our views on it as a couple which we discussed at length before making that commitment.

Sometimes promising to stick by someone's side during sickness does not always mean THEIR sickness. Sometimes it means your own.

I will judge people who use the marriage vows only when it suits. Because I am a massive believer in keeping the promises you make

But perhaps read back and see just how much unjudgemeantal advice I have given.

Honestly, I think anyway the reverse is true. I think me refusing to see him will probably torture him worse long term than sitting with me and having the opportunity to apologise to my face, clear his conscience and take my forgiveness with him.

That said, my decision over whether or not to meet him will be based only on what I want or need because he gave up the right to me making decisions for what was best for him or "us" years ago.

But then you have your answer. What happened was unforgivable for you. Walk away.

But don't frame it in nonsense about marriage vows.

And yes you will hurt him. "If I can just see her face to face, touch her hand, hold her hand. I might be able to change her mind". Polite emails maintain your distance. Move on.

I haven't seen him or spoken to him beyond the odd text for a year and what he is asking for is to come and spend a weekend with me so we can talk. He says he is better now and that he made a huge mistake.

I re-read the early parts of your thread, in light of the later information. When I read the above, my immediate thought was:

How very fucking dare he!!!!

He has decided that now is the time for you to forgive him and maybe take him back. How very generous of him.

Did he really suggest a whole frigging weekend?! How exactly did he ask? With entitlement or shame?

I hope your newly found anger serves you well.

That was my first thought too, TheLittleOne.

I certainly agree with Coffee that emails are the way forward.

Non judgemental enough for you Cinnabar?

Coffee, You're assuming he did this entirely because he was depressed but you said yourself no one knows that. If that was a proven fact I'd have no question in my mind that I would want the marriage back. Not because of my vows, but because I love him and want to grow old with him. As you said though, I can't prove that.

I also can't prove what his intentions of meeting me might be. They could be anything ranging from being horny and fancying a shag to being jealous of my new boyfriend to being lonely or being genuinely sorry but I don't know that and neither do you so for that reason I am not going to base my decision of what to do on how he may or may not feel.

It might be that he himself gets closure from a meeting. If he is genuine and this really was all down to illness then he must feel monumentally guilty. I'm not saying I want to meet him, but just that I don't think it would be hurtful to him necessarily to choose that.

To answer you TheLittleOne, he started to text and email a little bit the past few weeks. He was crying and seemed to be very sorry. He just said he wants to talk and says he was very ill and is sorry.

I agree with everyone else though that email is the way forward, but I also don't think I am fit to chat with him even over email until I'm not so angry.

Apologies if I am projecting that anger onto this thread or onto anyone here. I might be paranoid over being attacked but I have felt very blamed and like I wasn't good enough for a long time.