Five days before my 39th birthday my husband told me he wanted to seperate. I remember the room spinning a bit and I felt like I'd been lit on fire. I thought I was going to be sick and I just wanted to run away.
I'm not going to pretend that this was a bolt out of the blue, things had not been right for a long time. We had been spending more and more time apart, I'm a home bird but he was staying out until the early hours and coming home drunk more and more frequently. I put it down to a mid-life crisis as he has a big birthday coming and I wanted to give him the space to work through it but I couldn't help sense there was some more going on.
I had confronted him a number of times about it but he just brushed it off even when his behaviour was becoming quite extreme. He was living life like an 18 year old, ignoring his family responsibilities, leaving the house in a state as his drifted in and out and spending most weekends out and leaving me at home with our child.
I now know he was trying to push me into leaving him as he was too cowardly (his words) to talk to me about it. If he treated me badly enough I'd walk away and he could move on with his hands clean, does this sound familiar at all?
I knew deep down this was the case and my anxiety had been getting worse over the last few months as I was waiting for hammer to drop. I tried to ignore it but it was just getting worse. I was isolating myself from friends, family and work so I didn't have to face fact that my marriage was heading down the crapper. But I can tell you now ignorance is not bliss.
It finally happened when I cornered him about our problems and he dropped the news that he didn't want to be with me anymore. He admitted he'd felt like this for a long time but was to weak to admit it. I asked him if there was someone else but he said there wasn't and it was just about him. He wanted to live his life for him, without the responsibilities of a grown-up (well wouldn't we all but we have to live in the real world). He had been living a selfish life for months, leaving me to do the lions share of the housework and childcare, and this was the life he has now chosen for himself.
I asked him to go and see a counseller with me and he agreed. I thought it best that we try and deal with whatever happens next in the most healthy way possible and that would probably best be achieved with some impartial help. We have a family holiday booked to go to Lapland at Christmas and I didn't want to add to my son's inevitable heartbreak by telling him that as well as his parents splitting up he would also not get the holiday he'd had been looking forward to for a year. We both agreed that what ever happened he had to be at the heart of any decisions we made and that he would always come first.
I left the room in a state of shock, I hadn't really processed what had happened. I didn't sleep much and got up in the middle of the night as I didn't want to spend the night staring at the ceiling. I watch TV until it was time to get the family up and I got my son ready for school. I opened up my laptop ready for work and I just broke down. I called my boss and explained what happened and she was very understanding and told me to take a few days. I called my Mum and she came over and comforted me. I felt totally lost, I didn't know what to think or feel or say. I think I sat in silence for most of time my Mum was here, now I know I was in shock. I'd had the rug pulled out from under my life and everyting was about to change but at that time I didn't know that was worst was yet to come.
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