Husband Left

[BrokenForeverNow]

My husband of 9 years left July 17th, the day of the wedding anniversary with my 1st ex-husband. First that day was painful because it was the anniversary of my first failed marriage, now that day is a million times more painful. My husband has impeccable timing as you’ll see here. This is a tremendously heart breaking story I must get off my chest. This is going to be long, I apologize. I’m going to fill in all the blanks that I have never been able to tell others just because of the length. He seems extremely bitter at me and behaves as though I have no right to be upset. I want to know if he’s right.

 

Back in April of 2017, my husband who weighed over 300lbs at that time, had a mini stroke, which thankfully caused him no permanent damage, but it scared him. He had always tried conventional dieting, he’d lose 50lbs and then his willpower would just give up and he’d put it back on. So he decided to have weight loss surgery, gastric sleeve. I knew I was toast from that moment on. WLS and the divorce rate after the first two years is pretty shocking, this was something that we were warned about within the first 10 minutes of the seminar we had to attend, that’s how serious it is. We talked about our relationship several times after that, he told me we were good, that it only happens to couples with serious problems before surgery and that wasn’t us. It would never happen. I asked him if he ever felt he settled for me, he said no. I was his everything, the love of his life, his best friend, he will always love me. He said he would never leave, he would die without me, I was stuck with him, I’d have to kill him to get him out of my life. I’ve learned now that words like “always” and “never” should not be applied to the future.

 

In December of 2017, 6 months before he had the surgery, he had landed a good job, a job that had huge potential for him where he could work from home, something he never had before. The job he presently had would lay him off a good portion of the year, and the previous jobs he had he would lose pretty quickly. He got this new job through a friend he had met on online game. He travelled to meet that friend and his family where they lived in a neighboring state, did his interview for the job. My insecurities and intuition that he would leave really ramped up after this, I was to learn much later why.

 

He had the surgery in June of 2018, after a year of deciding if he should. I was so very stressed out over the whole thing, I felt in my gut he would either die on the table or he would leave me. I lived with this stress for well over a year and it continued another year after. I still supported his decision because I wanted him to be healthy. I took care of him after the surgery, a few months later he was back in surgery to get his gall bladder removed because he was developing gall stones from the rapid weight loss.

 

Him being overweight never bothered me in any other way, I loved him for him. I accepted him the way he was, I made concessions for him all the time. He was moody, he was socially awkward with my family and friends, he played video games more than he spent time with me, sometimes had a bad temper and could be impatient, he had no conflict resolution skills in arguments that he would escalate instead of trying to resolve it and it was always left to me to end it, he was messy, our sex life was regular but it wasn’t ideally what I wanted as far as variety, and he went through depressive (sometimes suicidal) episodes. One time was so bad I had to pull a gun away from him. But I loved him with all my heart and soul, unconditionally. I wanted to show him the loyalty and love he had never been shown before. I had felt for him because he had a very bad childhood, he lived in a Jehavoh’s Witness household, his mother was bipolar and his father was verbally abusive. He was bullied for being overweight and he just seemed to have the worst luck of anybody I knew. He was no longer in contact with most of his immediate family apart from two sisters, one of which he disowned while we were married. There was a lot of mental illness on his mother’s side. Unfortunately I felt he had issues too but he would never seek help. He didn’t seem bipolar or schizophrenic like his some of his family, but he was suffering from something. I thought he was a good person overall. However after he lost 140lbs, I saw a change in him I didn’t like.

 

In July, I suffered a heart attack, which I knew was coming because heart issues are a problem in my family and after I was diagnosed with high blood pressure a few years ago, I knew it was coming and I think it freaked him out too. He watched my father die, and he looked at me like a deer in the headlights after the high bp diagnosis and said “you’re going to die before me, aren’t you?”. I was also diagnosed with coronary artery ectasia which was never picked up previously because this is something you don’t find until you end up in the cath lab having stents installed, which I had to have 2. This is a pretty rare condition but I was told if I take care of myself I should be fine.

 

I wasn’t even out of the hospital 24 hours and my husband blindsided me that he is leaving to go live closer to his job where he has already rented a room, he doesn’t love me anymore and has already filed for divorce. He said he had unresolved issues with me but now it was too late to fix them. In all those conversations we had about WLS he never mentioned these “issues”, not even once. He said an argument we had the previous December was when he decided he was leaving. So for 7 months he lied to me telling me he still loved me (right after this argument he told me he was still very much in love with me but he just couldn’t deal with the arguing), he was still sleeping with me and telling me everything was fine with us. He acted mostly the same as before, though I must admit there were times when the mask slipped, where he would say or do something out of character. He wasn’t quite as reassuring to me as he had been before. I tried to put it down to him just being tired of my insecurities- which as I found out, I had every right to have. Instead of his normal sweet reassurances, he gaslit me several times, trying to make me feel like I was crazy to think he would leave me, all the while he was planning to. He would say “well I’ve been with you this long” or he would say “hey if I wanted to leave I could go right now”, he said that to me 6 weeks before he left. I admit that many of the arguments we had was down to my being insecure because my gut was telling me something wasn’t right. I chose to trust him though and that was a huge mistake. Ironically he knew I had trust issues left over from my previous marriage because I was lied to a lot so he was not happy that I didn’t trust him 100%, but I was close and getting closer the longer we were together. I trusted him enough to ignore my gut and he proved to me I had every right not to trust him.

 

So his issues... one was arguing, he made it sound like it was constant ... it was not. We argued once or twice a month, some months not at all, but normally I admit it was over stupid things, many of these started because I was stressed from feeling something wasn’t right but he was very good at escalating them to a point they didn’t need to go, even his sister knows what I mean by that because she experienced it herself when they were in conflict at times. We got along 98% of the time. He just completely exaggerated how much that was going on. We lived with my mother and she hardly ever witnessed any fighting between us. She could only recall two occasions of fighting in the 8 years we lived with her. If we were fighting constantly, she would have seen it a lot more than twice.

 

Another was that we lived with my mother and I wasn’t working. Here is the background on that. We met on a chat app back in 2009, we lived 1000 miles apart, I was living with my parents because I had just gone through one divorce, and he was on his way out of a relationship and moving in with a friend. Our relationship developed rather quickly, the I love you’s came fast and we were talking marriage and kids within the first 2 weeks. He had tattoos and I had made a comment that I would love a guy to tattoo my name on him, but I meant after we were married. 6 weeks into our relationship, he got that tattoo, that seemed to tether me to him. We spent hours and hours on the phone every single day and 8 months after meeting online I moved in with him and 3 other roommates in a house. We got married a month later. I got a job that I really liked and we moved into our own apartment 6 months after I got there. 5 months after, he lost his job. He suggested we go live with my parents because I could not support both of us on my salary, even though I was about to get a promotion it still wouldn’t have been enough. At first I tried to talk him out of it. I just knew that once I got back home, it would be hard for us to leave again. I wanted him to try to find another job where we were, but he was afraid he wouldn’t find one quick enough but he could have got unemployment and we probably would have been ok until he found something else, but he seemed to want a change of scenery. I agreed to give up my job, I was offered a transfer to another location but there was not one close enough to where we were going to be living. We drove the 1,000 miles to my parent’s house.

 

We had one car between us, we had just barely made that work in the city we originally lived in. Once we were at my parent’s house, I would have had to get my own car if he was working too because we couldn’t live close enough to our jobs. He chose to be the one to work because he could get better paying jobs than I could. He got a job pretty quickly but within 3 months he lost it. He went on unemployment and decided to train to be a welder. He eventually found a job as a welder but he only had it for a little over a year. During this time we couldn’t afford to live on our own and I wanted to stay with my parents because my father was extremely sick and I knew his time was coming and I didn’t want to leave anyway. My husband found another job and 3 weeks later my father died. Then I was afraid to leave my mother because she relied so much on my dad for 42 years from the age of 18, she didn’t know how to live alone or deal with a lot of things that he normally took care of inside and outside the house. We did a lot for her to start with, but we gradually got her to do things on her own. The new job my husband got was laying him off 6 months out of the year and he was afraid the company would close at some point. He told his online friend who lived a 4 hour drive away about his employment situation and he offered to get him an interview at a place that was contracted to do IT work for his company. He got the job and started working from home. By this time I could have got a job because the car was now available most of the time, but I was not feeling too great physically, I was emotionally stressed over the new job and his WLS, I developed anxiety, to the point I was prescribed Xanax. I thought about getting a job at this point because he was saying we would probably need to move eventually to advance his career, but I felt so awful. I went to the ER several times thinking I was having a heart attack but they were false alarms. As it turns out, after I did have the heart attack, I ended up feeling a lot better so I think the reason I felt so bad is because the heart attack was coming. One other reason I wasn’t in a huge hurry to move out was because I wanted to be sure he was secure in a job before we did it. He lost 3 jobs already and I didn’t want to move out, him lose a job and end up having to move back in with my mother because I couldn’t earn enough to support us. I didn’t want to end up breaking another lease like we did before and having to pay on that for a long time. I had my reasons for not moving out.

 

However, you can bet that if my husband had ever come to me and told me he was extremely unhappy with our living situation and I needed to get a job, I would have done it no matter how bad I felt, or how worried I would have been about job security. He felt I didn’t contribute, but I did in my own way. I did things for my mother so that we never had to pay rent or utilities for 8 years. My father did nice things for him when he was alive, and my mom did even more for him. She always loaned him money when he needed it (he still owes her $1000 that I know he’ll never pay back, money he used to rent an apartment for 2 months to train for his new job), she got better internet for him to play his online games on, he had his own office in the house for privacy to work/play games, she bought an extremely expensive automatic generator so he could still work when the power went out and he didn’t even have to switch it on or off, she bought him a tractor with a snow blower attachment with a cover so he could ride and stay warm with heat so he could be comfortable snow blowing the driveway, she let him install things around the house he wanted, bought him things he specifically wanted for Christmas/Birthdays, she never nagged him or complained to him. She was always very respectful of our privacy, she never bothered us when our door was closed. She let him keep some or all of the money that was made selling things of my father’s after he died. She even gave him my father’s truck that was worth $14,000 that we used towards a new car... the car he ended up taking away with him. My father had bought him a 4 wheeler that he was supposed to pay for in installments but my mother told him not to worry about it. He didn’t treat her as well as he should have, at times he was snarky or rude to her for no reason - and I am ashamed to say that I would make excuses for him. I feel really bad about that now. I should have not let him get away with it. This is first for me, not only did a man screw me over but also my mother!

 

Another issue ... kids. This one I think is what really put the nail in the coffin because I could not fix this one. We started trying for kids as soon as I moved in with him because I was 36 and felt I didn’t have time to waste. I asked him before we even got married if it didn’t happen was it going to be ok because my gut told me it wasn’t going to happen. He said no, he would be ok with that and would never leave me to have kids. After the first year of it not happening, I asked him about it again and very regularly all through our marriage and always assured me he would never leave me to do that. I even gave him an out a couple of times, but wouldn’t take me up on it. He gave me every con in the book as to why it was just as well we didn’t. He didn’t know what kind of father he would be, he didn’t have the energy, too expensive, loss of freedom, afraid the kids would inherit mental illness etc. He even told me that if it did happen and the baby had Down Syndrome he wouldn’t want it because life is hard enough for normal kids! So because he seemed totally uninterested I never went to the doctor to find out what was up. I got pregnant with my first husband when I was 23 but miscarried. It never happened with my second husband, either because I was past my expiration date or it was him, or maybe the combination of us both didn’t work. I think the WLS changed his “energy” situation because when he lost all the weight he said he felt 25 again. So on his way out the door he said he wanted kids. I asked since when? He said he had been trying to convince himself he didn’t but he really did. I asked him why and he said he saw his friend with his kids, the one who got him the new job, and it made him want them too. I remember when he met the kids and he talked about how nice they were, they weren’t like most bratty kids these days - so now I know why my fears ramped up right after he met them. He wouldn’t give me any other reason. I personally don’t think he should have kids. He’s kind of a kid himself even at 40 years old, he’s not tolerant or patient enough. He’s the one going nuts in the middle of Walmart when a kid is screaming not far away. He had no good fatherly type role model growing up. I don’t know if he even understands what a good father is, but he might learn. I don’t want to say that people who had bad parents should not be parents themselves - sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.

 

So as soon as he left, he went on the hunt for a new girlfriend. He went on his first date before he was even gone a week, but it didn’t work out with that one. A month after he left me he got into a relationship with a different one and they are still together. He told me he had to look right away, he only had a finite time to have kids. Well what about me? I can’t now. I’m 46 with a heart issue, I’m not going to be having any and he had the nerve to complain to me about his “finite” time. Fact is he just didn’t want to be alone. Have fun with the rebound.

 

So I did ask him why he never told me any of these issues, he said because he doesn’t give ultimatums. I said that I don’t either, but if my marriage was on the line I would make an exception! He said he shouldn’t have had to threaten me, I said who said anything about threatening? Just TELL me you’re unhappy about A,B and C. That’s all I needed. I admit I did know that he did not find these things ideal as I didn’t either, but I never knew they were deal breakers. We were getting so close to getting out. I had planned by next year we would move closer to his job because I felt my mother was now ready to navigate life without us. Anytime we had those many conversations about WLS and divorce, the times I came to him because I was afraid he would leave me .. he said NOTHING. So I think I know now why. I think he lost the weight and thought he could find better. He’ll find a woman who can have kids and a woman who can make more money than me. I was good enough for him when he was overweight, had crappy jobs or no job, but now that he has a job with potential and is thin, he felt he could do better and just throw me away like garbage. He denies this vehemently, saying the surgery and subsequent weight loss has nothing to do with it, but I don’t buy it. If these things were such a big problem, why didn’t he tell me, or why didn’t he leave 2 years ago? 4, 6 years ago? It’s all BS. He throws in my face that I stopped trying and I didn’t take the marriage seriously. How was I supposed to try when he told me everything was ok?! So because I can’t read his mind I didn’t take the marriage seriously? He knows that is not true, he knew I would have rather died than this happen.

 

Of course I begged him for another chance. At first he seemed open to it, then he wasn’t. Then he drunk texted me one night and actually suggested himself that I get another chance after talking for a while. Once he sobered up though he sabotaged that chance by telling me we should talk and I tried to improve our communication so we could understand each other’s perspectives and he got angry and said forget it.

 

So of course since he left I have tried to be civil and be friends because I’m a nice person. I did not hire lawyers (I know, I should have but I wanted this to go smoothly). I’m still friends with my first ex-husband and he made our amicable divorce the nicest in history and it made it so much better for the both of us. This one won’t do that. He acts like he was the one that was dumped, as though I kicked him out, sarcastically thanking me for him ending up in what he called a s**thole with bugs and paying $600 a month for a room. He absolutely refuses to talk to me on the phone, only text or e-mail. He is cold and only nice to me when I need to understand something that will negatively effect me but any other time he’s a jerk. He has gone back on everything he said he would do. He said we could be friends, that isn’t happening. He can’t even ask me how I or anyone else is doing. He unfriended me on Facebook eventually. He initially offered to pay me money for a year, then he said he couldn’t after the divorce was final. Then he stopped paying me a couple weeks ago and the divorce is not final yet. He said he just couldn’t afford it anymore. He left a lot of his belongings here that he originally said he would come back and get, he won’t do that now. Even things of sentimental value that has nothing to do with me he doesn’t even want.

 

I just don’t understand what I have done to deserve this. I have been there for him for 10 years, but as soon as I needed him most, he deserted me. I know he didn’t mean to leave around the time of the heart attack, it just coincided with when he was leaving anyway - but why couldn’t he be nice to me after he left? Be a friend so that this doesn’t have to be even more painful for me. He risked my life by leaving because stress is to be avoided after a heart attack. I was loyal, so loyal in fact that even the thought of anything romantic or sexual with another person makes me feel sick, I loved him unconditionally, I always had his back even when he was wrong. I never lied to him about anything. I would do anything just to make him happy, I just needed to know about it! I wasn’t verbally or physically abusive to him, I never even once called him a name in a fight. I barely even raised my voice to him because it would have set him off. Why do people do things like this to someone they spent so long with? Why can’t he be nice to me? I’m the one hurting, not him. He obviously doesn’t care about the end of the marriage, he didn’t care enough to even try to save it! Why is he acting so bitter and nasty to me? I would never have done this to him if the shoe were on the other foot. I would have taken care of him if he had ended up paralyzed or in a vegetative state from a stroke, I would never have shipped him off to his sister.

 

So now I’m wondering what is left for me. I’ve tried talking to men, but I just can’t think of anything beyond friendship with them, most don’t want a friendship anyway unless it’s FWB. Number one I don’t think I’m going to be able to trust anybody ever again, my trust issues are totally screwed to hell now. How am I ever going to have a normal relationship after this? Second I don’t even want a relationship as it makes me feel sick to my stomach, I feel way too scared because I do not want to go through this again.

 

And tell me something ... would you start a relationship with a man only a month out of his marriage who left his wife right after she had a heart attack, and treated her like crap ever since? I know I wouldn’t touch that man with a barge pole. Past behavior can be indicative of future behavior, if they can do it once, they can do it again. Either he hasn’t told this woman the truth, or she’s not very bright.

 

I know time will help, but it feels like it’s going to take forever.

[Mr. Lucky]

Quite the first post!

 

BrokenForeverNow, I'm sure it won't be news to you there's two sides to every story. So this may all look different to your ex-husband given all the ups and downs in your relationship. I'm not sure what good any post-mortem does you now, and in fact your fixation with the past seems fairly obsessive.

 

Yes, he was wrong, treated you unfairly, went back on his word and doesn't seem to have much loyalty or integrity. But at some point your life needs to stop being about his misdeeds and start being about your future.

 

You have a choice. This failed marriage can define you, or you can do something worthwhile with the rest of your life. Up to you...

 

Mr. Lucky

[6dGayleMaree]

Hi there,

 

Thank you for taking the time to write. It was brave of you to bare your soul on a public forum. Your story is long and filled with pain. And sometimes it's necessary to vent.

 

Any other version of the story is irrelevant. As you've worked out, how somebody else thinks and feels about your situation really doesn't matter. It's how you feel about it that determines your mood. Give yourself permission to stay there as long as you like.

 

Eventually, you will need to climb out of that hole. Right and wrong doesn't come into it. You being right doesn't make it any better and a thousand people feeling sorry for you, will only keep you stuck.

 

You may not be able to see it yet, but from your story, this guy wasn't right for you. The indicators were there. You felt insecure from the beginning. You had to keep asking for validation. You weren't happy. All of those are indicators. I know those signs. I've been through them myself. I remember as a 22 yo, looking up and wishing upon a star for happiness. I look back now and think, yep that was an indicator.

 

When you find the right relationship, you won't need to look for validation because you'll feel validated. When you are with the right partner, you won't feel insecure, because there's no need to. I know this as well.

 

There is someone special for everyone. But sometimes you don't want to meet them as you are now. The only person you would meet now would be someone the same. There are changes that need to be made. So when you're ready, I have a list for people like you, who are going through this, because as a Counselor I've seen many of them.

 

 

Gayle

Edited October 8, 2019 by a LoveShack.org Moderator
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[schlumpy]

I do hope you feel better.

 

Please get some counseling and focus on how you may contributed to the failure of your two marriages. That's not to say you were at fault but there may be strategies you can adopt that will help you be with someone more worthwhile in the future and tip the odds in you favor.

 

Your only choice now is to shut the door on this part of your life. There are no children so there is no need to contact.

 

You need to refocus on new activities even if it's as simple as taking a 20 minute walk 3 times week. The ability to maintain a schedule is good progress. Don't accept your family history as your own and do what you can to mitigate it.

 

Look for group activities like bicycling. Get active in your church and use them for support. Join the choir. Go back to school. Work a seasonal job at a national park. Move the furniture around where you live to change the atmosphere. Read some great books you never had time for.

 

It really is up to you now.

[mark clemson]

I think your assessment of the situation and his attitudes/actions is essentially correct. It seems like he was never that nice a guy, even from the get-go, but he was your guy and so you stuck with him and clearly were very attached.

 

I think at the end of things many people flip emotionally. This is an unconscious defense mechanism. They get angry and no longer like you at all - that way you can't hurt them. Seems like this was particularly easy for him given his existing personality.

 

I agree that there's not much you can do here except take the bull by the horns and move on. It sounds like you're in your mid 40's?? Life is far from over and if you want someone else they are probably out there for you. Take your time to recover emotionally from this.

 

FWIW, it does sounds like his new insta-GF relationship is unlikely to go well. You never know, but sounds like too much too soon. That probably doesn't mean he's coming back to you, though. Even if he does it would likely be just temporary until he leaves again. Also, this new GF is probably driving even more of a wedge, encouraging him to not give you money, etc.

 

If/when it comes to divorce, suggest you NOT let sentiment prevent you from asking for what's due you. You'll need to find a job soon etc and having due spousal support etc will probably help a lot.

 

GL - you will probably need it for a while, but I suspect that in the end you are likely to come out of this OK and possibly with a much nicer man too.

[confusedinadaze]

Hi! Sorry for everything you are going through. Firstly, concentrate on getting healthy again. Stop dwelling on your husband, he doesn’t love you anymore, so- what’s the point of thinking about him and wondering about him anyway?! Totally pointless IMO.

 

However, what you can do is try and look at the bright side of life, however difficult that might be. Seek counseling. Find a good therapist, one that’s highly rated might not necessarily suit your needs, so you need to look for one that you get along with. Somebody you feel understands you, whose advise you completely trust. This might take some time, be patient.

 

Also, maybe take a vacation in the short future. Getting away from the city you reside in might help in unclogging your brain and healing you emotionally and otherwise.

[LivingWaterPlease]

(((((BrokenForeverNow))))), I read with compassion your story. I'm so very sorry for all you're going through. And I'm so glad you posted about your journey!

 

It sounds as if you loved your husband very much and that you and your family all treated him very well. You will always know that you did your best with him. That is far better than treating him badly and having him leave you. He'll always know you treated him well, too.

 

There is no way of understanding why he left you. But, it's good for you to grieve. Get it out of your system. Know that a person (him) will never find happiness after treating someone else the way he's treated you. It's impossible. As time passes by you will see it.

 

You, OTOH, have an opportunity for happiness as your heart is full of kindness toward him.

 

I don't know of your beliefs but now is a time to pray and draw close to God through reading the Bible and finding comfort in the Psalms, Isaiah chapters 40-50 (approximately) and the book of John in the New Testament. During times of grief God has brought supernatural comfort to folks who have turned to Him though prayer and reading His word.

 

I guarantee you if you do this you will have a happy future. God is amazing and can heal your broken heart and bring joy into your life! He will comfort you as you grieve and He understands exactly what you've been through and how you're feeling. He also knows how to give you hope and a future!

 

Your ex is on a pathway to sorrow. He is going to have to learn some things the hard way, I believe.

 

But, be courageous! Turn to God and trust in Him! He has guided hundreds of thousands through rocky terrain and into pleasant pastures and He knows exactly how to take you there, too!

 

Keep posting, dear one! It will be wonderful to read how you advance into better times! Many hugs to you!