Hi there thesilverlining
I read your thread and am thinking of you.
Let me tell you about my situation, although a little different, it might give you some perspective...so sit tight, it's a long one.
My H and I split over a year ago, out of the blue (I have posted on MN before under a different name). I became shamelessly needy, distraught, determined to win him back. He did come back, and also had a fling with someone else 2 weeks after he left, which he only told me about bit by bit and most of it the day before we were due to go away to make a go of it.
Because I wanted it to work soooooo much I accepted it. I say accepted but I was devastated. I spent months feeling anger, hurt, upset, distrust etc. It didn't make things any better. I now realise I was suffering depression due to all of this.
Last December (a year after he initially left) it happened again. He wanted to break up. (No fling this time though). After a couple of months of him sleeping in the spare room, he moved out. He's been gone for two months now.
I've been having counselling for the last two months. I've learnt a few things about myself. One of them being the reason I wanted him back is not just because I loved him but because I didn't want our family to split up, I didn't want bad things to happen to our family, I wanted to control everything to stop awful things happening. I wanted everything to be alright.
I'm a generally anxious person anyway, always worried about what people think, always stopping myself from doing stuff because of the what ifs, generally being overcautious.
As a result (and you'll see my thread on the mental health board), I have recently suffered a pretty major bout of depression and anxiety with a lovely helping of OCD.
This comes from not taking care of myself. By that I mean I spent so many months thinking what could I do to make it better, why doesn't he love me, what if he meets someone else (awful awful feeling, I know), what is he doing at the moment...... Instead of thinking, I need to take care of myself.
In addition, you can't take all the blame for your relationship breakdown. There's two adults involved. Yes you may have not been perfect but no relationship ever is.
You have to ask yourself what man leaves his kids? I know marriage is tough, but when you've made the commitment, you need to work it out. He nay be stressed and exhausted, but so are you. His line of thinking is selfish - like my H. I know it's hard to accept because you love him, and I love my H too, but he didn't really consider what it would be like to leave you raising the kids on your own, did he? He didn't really think about the kids future, did he? I'm not talking about staying together for the sake of the kids, I talking about achieving something amazing by making your relationship work. He's just not interested at present.
That's not to say he'll never be, but at present his mind is elsewhere and he's being an idiot to give excuses.
So please please please take care of yourself. Its awful and hard at present, I've had the worst couple of months ever, but a lot of that is my own fault, by not allowing myself to grieve, by not allowing myself to ask for help from others, trying to control the situation (i.e. by thinking, what can I do to win him back, how can I make it better?) . Now is not the time to be thinking that, now is the time to be taking care of you. Get some counselling. Get some time off.
You might surprise yourself.
If you do that a maintain a friendship (I dont mean agreeing with everything he says or making yourself feel super nice all the time) with your H, then you don't know what will happen - he may just need this time away.
By the way, another thing I learnt was:
Don't suppress your emotions. If you are angry with him, don't hold back. If you are sad, don't hold back. You are entitled to feel however you want to feel. He can't expect everything to be all happy and smiley (my H does). Life's not like that. Don't hold back just because you are worried what they think or because you're worried you will scare him away. I have suffered greatly mentally because of that. You've gone through a great deal..Dont deny it.
If not, you have your dignity. Please don't lose it like I did. My mental health has suffered immensely and I'm taking tiny pigeon steps, trying to reach the old me. Its painful.
I'm sorry if this is a lecture. I know I never wanted this to happen to me, but it has. There's nothing I can do to change his mind or control the situation. The only thing I can do is look after me and change the way I feel.
Hugs x