Just to echo quitelikely on this...
*There is never another woman involved. It's like they have some sort of crisis due to years of not highlighting their needs and almost always these men were the perfect husband and father. It's almost like they couldn't keep it up any longer.
Once they leave they seem to act out of character in various ways and usually refuse to believe MH issues have contributed to their downfall.
I've never known them wanting to return to their marriage either as they seem to come up with a list of reasons their poor dw was not even aware existed.
I think these type of men are people pleasers, are unable to express themselves or their needs adequately and then boom out of nowhere they up and leave.
It's hard for you because he was so great during the time you were together. I get that but you also need to realise that his needs were t being met as he was unable or unwilling to communicate them to you.
You couldn't change a thing as you just didn't know.*
This happened to me also OP. There was never another woman. My DS was also 10 at the time. He also turned into a complete unrecognisable bastard after he did it.
It transpired long afterwards that he did have MH issues and in fact some months after he left he reached a full breakdown. He never returned to the same person I once knew, that person does not exist anymore and never will again because in the act of abandonment itself he became someone new. Someone neither he nor I ever dreamed he would or could ever be.
What Quitelikely says is exactly what it was.
They are people pleasers. They can't communicate fully and openly (even with themselves). It's not that they are deeply unhappy in the marriage (mine admits now he wasn't at all and has never been as happy since or with anyone else) it's more that they are acting out a role of perfection because they have a deep belief this is required of them to be loved. When they snap, you are left wondering what the fuck just happened.
They ARE the perfect husband, the perfect father...and when you are on the receiving end of this you feel like you are living a real life fairytale and that you are very lucky. The problem is that while it IS real, it IS happening, it's also not based on an equal relationship with a fully healthy person. They are always playing a role, always holding back the bits of themselves they think are unfavourable or won't be loved.
And one day...they just cant do it anymore. And yes, they do lash out like they hate you. Mine also badmouthed me and tore me down. I could barely believe it was happening to me.
Truth was he did not hate me. He hated himself.
My ex did exactly this to me, just disappeared, and being honest years later I look back and almost do not believe it happened. We were just so happy. So in love. I of course miss the person he was, but have come to understand he is no longer that person.
We have talked about it since in detail, in so far as he is able to in his depressed state, but he describes feeling like he was under so much pressure he would explode if he did not run away, so he did. After that point he just no longer gave a fuck. He did not want to sort it or resolve it. He wanted to escape his life, who he was and all his responsibilities which he saw as being to blame for how bad he felt.
His work colleagues, his family, his neighbours, his ex wife....he cared so much about being seen as perfect that he drove himself into a breakdown. He did not understand what marriage really was, and those deep neurosis inside him were hidden from me and from everyone he knew.
Being abandoned unexpectedly is without doubt one of the most incredibly painful and difficult experiences a human being could ever live through. It stays with you, that pain, and I wish I could say it didn't but it does.
What it also does though is brings you unexpected gifts in ways you can't see yet, so please hang on to hope.
I loved my ex more than I could probably find a way to type and what he did honestly did nearly kill me, but after enough time passed I realised i did not want to grow old with someone who could not really be fully in it with me. People like this are broken inside. They need to fix that, and that journey is theirs alone.
What most of them will do is think if they can just escape their wife / kid they can be whoever they want to be. They think they can rewrite themselves. It's a fantasy....just like the fantasy they create in teir head of why they did it. Almost like a form of splitting of the psyche.
My ex is now super friendly to me, providing I never mention what he did. We have to pretend it wasn't that bad or else he blanks me and pretends he didn't hear me. He is quite literally unable to face up to who he became and what he did, and he has no life now. He's a sad and lost man.
I moved on.
I will never stop living my XH but he's dead in my eyes. This "person" is a twisted version of the person I loved.