Oh Headwrecked I've been keeping an eye on this thread but didn't want to comment until now. I didn't want to give you another thing to worry about when your first instinct was that he must be hurt, dying, dead, have had a breakdown (which was how I felt when the same happened to me).
Seven years ago my partner disappeared for five days - he called on a Thursday to say he'd be home in 25 minutes but never came home. I have never seen him since.
I spent five days calling hospitals, visiting police stations, having to inform his elderly (and unwell) parents that he was missing.
On the fifth day he turned up at his parent's house. He'd met someone else. He says on the Thursday night, I know it was several months before.
The utter cruelty of his behaviour to me, and to everyone who was looking for him was astonishing it wasn't that he'd left, it was that he allowed us to think he was dead.
I'd always known he was a cold fish, but this made me realise he had genuinely psychopathic tendencies (see the Robert Hare list of psychopathic traits).
There were a few things I did that, I think, helped:
- I spoke to him once on the phone, then never again - that was it for me (only possible because we didn't have DC)
- I behaved absolutely immaculately - I was fair, I didn't scream or shout or act 'crazy' - I knew that he'd try to lay the blame on me, I had to be blameless
- I told everyone, not out of malice, just straight forwardness and with honesty, because I knew I couldn't afford to hide or feel 'ashamed' because it was him who should feel shame
My heart goes out to you, it took a long time to trust again, 2.5 years later I met my now husband, our relationship was tricky at first as I got my head around the fear that one night he just wouldn't come home. We've been married for a year now, I'm pregnant, and my ex is a long distant memory and it doesn't burn like it used to.