Abandoned in your fifties?

[Mycatandme]

I’ve been divorced for a few years and last year I met a new DP. We are both in our mid fifties with now grown up children. We want to make a proper life together but his XW is so angry and bitter about ‘being abandoned’ that I’m not sure we will be able to. Will this ever get better?

If (I'm really not sure what the current version is) his children are adults with their own homes, if they wanted to see him they would. Their mother wouldn't need to know, if they wanted protect her from the knowledge. If he's telling you she's the reason he doesn't see them he's lying and it's far more likely that they are appalled and hurt themselves by his behaviour. Which as you seem so certian has been fine, suggests you don't know the whole truth.

I agree @FinnyStory there is more to the relationship with the kids than he is letting on. I can see them respecting their mums's wish not to include him in big events to appease her as she's upset. But to not see him at all shows there is a breakdown of their relationship with their dad that is separate to their mum.

Also living with someone you are divorcing seems unnecessary and cruel. I bet she still cooked and cleaned for him during this time. And they probably slept together on occasion.

I reckon there's definitely more to this.

I'm the one who did the 'abandoning' in my marriage. What actually happened was I finally got the courage to leave a relationship that had been truly hideous for years, lonely and abusive, but because my ex wouldn't discuss divorce and could be violent I just left one day and didn't tell him. But I'm 100% certain my ex uses the woe is me version of events to prove his narrative of him as a good husband and me as a treacherous wife and that nothing he ever did was good enough for me.

The phrase 'being abandoned' is ridiculous. The marriage ended and he left her, as he has every right to do, and as lots of women on MN are told they have the right to do without any major reasons.' You wouldn't say they abandoned their husbands. Anyone who is still raging about it years later would be best off getting some professional help rather than shouting at the ex and his new partner.

So I don't think there's anything you can do, some people deal with it well and some people let it ruin their lives for years. Unless she actively seeks help she seems to be the latter category and probably will never change until she has some kind of counselling. My current partners ex is a bit like that and they were only together a couple of years and split 3.5 years ago. I mostly get through it because I feel sorry for her.

[quote Mycatandme]@Notcoolmum I take your points but I’m not being precise enough in my posts. Three months after he moved into the house he bought for himself after selling marital home where he stayed until everything was agreed. Yes I guess right to end she may have thought she could turn things around. He didn’t just pack a suitcase and leave a note, this was a long painful departure.[/quote]
Even if she didn't think she could turn things round - even if she couldn't wait for him to leave - she won't have been able to start processing the split properly until he was gone.

I had to spend quite a while with my exh after it was clear we were going to break up, partly as he refused to leave until he had a nice place, while also stopping me from leaving with the kids, as he said that would be selfish of me to take the kids out of their home. This was all manipulation, of course. I don't know if your partner stayed there as a form of manipulation too, but maybe his wife had some of the experiences I did while living in the middle of separation for months on end.

You get up and rush into the bathroom quickly in case your ex is on the landing. His shampoo and soap are in your shower. You wash and dress behind locked doors, put on makeup as armour. Go into the kitchen - but there he is, occupying it. You can either make your breakfast in horrible silence, or go back to your room and wait for him to go away. You can smell him on the settee, his shoes are in your hall, you can hear his sneezes and coughs, his programmes on the TV as you hide in your room in the evening. Everything is a reminder that you have no private space, even in your own home, in which to grieve the end of your relationship - and technically, it hasn't even ended anyway. He could barge in at any moment, saying something horrible.

You met him 3 months after they broke up. Whether or not he abandoned her is not something for you to judge. It is how she feels.

I wonder at what point the children and exW became aware they were divorcing......

@MaybeDoctor

The answer really is that women must be exactly what is wanted by men at every stage of life.

Sexy high-earning twenty-somethings.
Fertile, domestic thirty-somethings.
High earning, have-it-all forty-somethings.
Ready-to-move-over as fifty-somethings.

But if not required to move over for a newer model:

Carers as sixty-somethings.

Keep up, women. Honestly!

I sadly completely agree with this.

For all his money he stayed in the family home until the divorce went through, when it was HE who wanted the marriage to end?

OP, how exactly was she supposed to work if he was in the big "highly stressful job"?

Was he available for childcare on sick days, pick ups and drop offs?

He wanted her to work AND do it all... while he did his big important job?

It takes a partner who shares the load for two big careers in the home and is very, very rarely achieved.

Have you asked him how involved he was in the day to day details of his children's lives?

Or was he so busy in his big important job that everything else were details fulfilled by the house fairy?
Did he cook, do laundry, shop?
Did he offer?
Or did he expect it all to be done and now is pissed she didn't manage a big career at the same time?

In my experience one partner needs to take the reins if there are children.

I think you have such a self serving version of the truth.

His adult children supporting his wife could be very telling.

Perhaps they see very clearly what happened and are seriously unimpressed with him and how HE has behaved.

I would take what you have been told with a pinch of salt.

It's not 'years later' though is it @Needtogetbackinthesack it's barely a year after a 20-30 year marriage. Where the husband has found himself someone else in a very short space of time. And the ex is left having to reevaluate her life plans in her mid 50s.

She also hasn't been shouting at the new partner.

@Notcoolmum but what you're effectively saying is that it's ok for her to ruin her exH relationship 15 months after he left her.

If a woman posted in here saying she didn't love her H anymore, everyone would say life's too short and she should LTB. If she then came back in 15 months and said he was still shouting at her down the phone because she left him, 99.9% of responses would say he's being unreasonable. I'm a HUGE advocate for women's rights but this seems like a massive double standard. Regardless of how upset she is she shouldn't be shouting at him, it's abusive. It would be understandable for a few weeks - still wrong, but understandable- but 15 months is insane.

Plus if it was a woman who LTB and was dating after 3 months I'm not sure anyone would tell her she was wrong. The fact is if he left her then he probably checked out of the relationship months or years before, I know I did. I haven't been gone 15 months, am not divorced, and am 3 months into a wonderful relationship. You can't put a timeline on when someone else 'should' stay dating.

It's definitely possible this guy is a massive twat, and the exW is 100% entitled to spend the rest of her life feeling however she chooses. What she's not entitled to do is verbally abuse her exH just because he didn't want to stay in a marriage that didn't make him happy.

I don't think anyone is saying that the husband was wrong to start dating after three months. And it is very clear that he had checked out much earlier. No-one's doubting that. We're just pointing out that three months will feel very short to the wife, and that she is very likely only to have started processing it when he left.

We're only emphasising those aspects because OP's comments make it sound as if she hadn't considered those aspects at all. She doesn't need telling how it seems from the man's side, as he has told her all about that.

And when a woman comes on here feeling bad about shouting at her husband, people don't normally assume that she is abusing him, no. I would say that, after the explanation, the response is more usually to reassure her that her anger is understandable and human.

I think all we have asked of the OP is to display some empathy towards the ex. Whilst also point out her new Bf has moved on very quickly and it's likely that tensions will remain high for a while yet. And some questioning of his relationship with his children. As they are adults and likely to have their own reasons for not being in contact or wanting to meet his new gf.

How the ex wife behaves is out of the OP's control. And why EW behaves like that we don't know. But it's kind to assume she is struggling with the loss of her husband and the future she assumed she would have, based on her contribution to the family for 20-30 years. That doesn't mean he was duty bound to stay. But his new gf could have empathy and understand the decisions around working etc were made as a family, before OP's time and are different to the ones made by her and her friends.

I'm also not sure how the EW is impacting on the new relationship. OP hasn't been clear other than overhearing rows on the phone (why is he speaking to his ex on the phone?) and not including the OP at family events.

@Mycatandme

So the phone calls about a children’s family event where she doesn’t want them both to be there as she won’t be in the same room as him.

This is why she was on the phone.

@ravenmum and others thank you again for your comments. Yes I really can see that he checked out long ago and checked into the sort of life he wanted. She is very likely struggling to come to terms with that even though the ending process was going on a while because she hasn’t got there yet. She is angry about her new life, having to move, having to work but hopefully she will calm down. I know that I need to work out is he a terrible man who has bent the truth to suit himself or someone who decided he was so unhappy he wanted to change his life before it was too late to have a new one.

I don't think there's such a clear dichotomy. We all see what we want to see to some extent. When my ex's views came out I was amazed that he remembered things so differently to me. But I think he truly believed a lot of it. (Some was blatant lies, though!) Very hard to make that call. Look at how he treats you very closely.

If a woman came on here and said she'd lived with her partner throughout the divorce she instigated, moved out only once it was pronounced and now three months later wanted advice on whether starting a new relationship was a good idea, I'd tell her to buy a vibrator instead.

Also good that he isn't making her out to be a monster. Watch out for that, and also whether he has anything nice to say about her.

The guy gave 30 years to his wife if he decided it was no longer for him then fine, why should he stay if he's not happy? Why didn't the wife find herself a job when the kids went back to school and help support herself? Times have changed when everything is left to the man to bring home, and I dont think anyone in a long term relationship or marriage can take that for granted now. Communication between them all must have been nil. No wonder divorce rates in your 50s is high these days.

@notcoolmum I don’t think I would have started this thread if I had zero empathy, I’m trying to understand her and any way this could get better, not just for me and DP. It’s completely different to my own experience. I have no obligation to DP and he has none to me so over time I can see if his version of events stacks up with how he behaves. Example that he shared all the domestic work throughout, yes he is a really good cook and his house is always immaculate. He did all maintenance and diy, yes he even tries to do mine (I do my own so he’s been told off). He asked her to return to work to help afford very expensive private school fees and a very affluent lifestyle, yes I really do believe that. He’s slept in his own room and has not even been given a cuddle for over fifteen years, yes I believe that too.

@ravenmum he tells me he is sad that somewhere along the way what they wanted out of life became so different. He let her down because he fell out of love with their lifestyle and then her. He treats me well but we live our own lives and are not interdependent so maybe not fully tested yet.

@snooper22 yes that is exactly how I feel but not a popular view on the thread, so I lack empathy. I do wonder (after reading the thread) if he got his communication right, if he thinks he made his point about her returning to work with enough force and she refused to consider it or if I’m fact she truly didn’t understand how important it was or how I’ll and stressed he was.

What has your DP done to forge relationships with his DC? What reason was given to the DC for the break up? I feel for them being in the middle. They can see how devastated their mum is and are trying to support her, but if they had a good relationship with your DP, surely they should also feel able to invite him to events.

If it's true that they had separate bedrooms for 15 years and that things were bad for several years, she can't have been happy in the marriage either. Which I guess, is why you're saying that she was staying together for the lifestyle, rather than a loving marriage.

I feel the DC could be key to getting things to slowly improve. If their relationship can be strengthened with your partner (has he been honest with them, explained to them his actions etc?), then in time they may be able to show their mum that you can all move forward and that they don't want to have to choose between them. Despite how hurt she may be, I do think it's selfish to make their DC choose. It's putting them in a dreadful position and from experience, is a huge pressure to carry.

@mycatandme I dont think you can stress too much about his past with his ex but you can make your views about the whole situation to him and see how he reacts. If he's not willing to adjust to his new life with you then I think that's your answer. My partner luckily has rebuilt his relationship with his kids after his nasty divorce but it has taken a few years and luckily they accept me being part of his life. If it hadn't have turned out like this I think I would have had to cut my losses tbh. Good luck

The children know that mum and dad did not love each other any more and this wasn’t a surprise, there had been an atmosphere and arguments for a long time. He sees his children on his own at his house if they are in the home town. They are still working through it. The DCs were only asked to choose by XW, we have agreed he will make life as easy as possible and say he is disappointed but understands if he can’t go. I am not invited but say to him that this is fine, I have several children myself so I’m hardly short of invitations. I guess the sad thing for me is if this doesn’t change we can’t have a normal life and move on.