The question Last Christmas, my husband left me. He’d been on a few festive nights out with work and I noticed a change in his behaviour. When I asked what was wrong, he told me that a conversation we’d had a couple of months previously, whereby I talked about divorce, had been playing on his mind. I didn’t want a divorce, but I was just trying to get him to see that I felt he was neglecting me with his obsession over losing weight (which he didn’t need to lose) and exercising. Before the exercise obsession started he was my best friend and supporter, so this was such a shock.
He never grieved for his father – a very difficult man – who died earlier in the year. The day after he left he sent an email saying he couldn’t stop thinking of me talking about divorce and he wanted to separate. I was shattered by this. Where had it come from? No amount of apology from me had any affect.
Eventually, he decided to return home. He was almost like my husband, but he lacked empathy and kept telling me “I don’t know” when asked where our relationship was going. I didn’t know where we were going or what I was doing wrong. Then, I learned he had been seeing a woman from work. So I put his stuff in the garage and he left.
I’m now being ghosted by him. It’s as if I don’t exist. I struggle with how this man has changed from a loving husband who would have done anything for me (I was his world and vice versa) to someone who I do not recognise. I’ve not heard from any of his family.
Our adult children have also been desperately hurt by his behaviour, and have been great to me throughout all this. I need clarity, closure on why this has happened, but I also accept it’s unlikely I’ll ever know.
Philippa’s answer You may never get the clarity you’re seeking from him. Instead, closure might come from accepting that you did your best in a difficult situation and that now it’s time to focus on your own future. However, it is comforting to have a narrative, so I’ll do some guessing and if it fits and makes you feel better, then there’s no harm in speculation.
Your husband’s sudden and drastic change in behaviour may well be deeply rooted in unresolved grief. The loss of his father could have triggered a wave of emotions and memories that he wasn’t prepared to confront. However, I’m rather suspicious about those drinks out with colleagues. Is that when he got off with his work crush? Was it that fling that confused him?
When you mentioned divorce, it may have hit a vulnerable spot for him, becoming a convenient way to channel all his inner turmoil. By fixating on that conversation, he might have found a way to avoid facing the deeper pain associated with the loss of his father. It’s as if that single word became a lightning rod for all the unresolved issues swirling inside him. But I’m more inclined to believe that he just got hold of your mentioning divorce to make all his behaviour your fault rather than admit he had a crush on another woman.
It’s possible your husband was going through some kind of crisis, where the weight of everything he’d been avoiding finally became too much for him to bear. His attempt to gain control through excessively exercising might have been a coping mechanism, a way to avoid feeling powerless in the face of his own emotions. Or it could be that he was trying to be attractive for the new girlfriend.
The man who eventually returned to you was physically present, but emotionally distant, as if a part of him had shut down to protect himself from further pain – but I suspect it was merely that he did not want to confess his secret life to you, because he didn’t want to be the bad guy. He was trying to make you into the bad guy instead.
Give yourself permission to grieve, not just for the end of your marriage, but also for the man you thought you knew and the life you thought you had. This book may help: The Abandonment Recovery Handbook: Embracing the Five Stages of Healing from Abandonment, Loss and Heartbreak for Emotional Resilience and Grief Recovery by Cher Hampton.
This is a time for you to reclaim your life and your sense of self, to start building a future that’s based on your own needs and desires. I’m so glad you’ve got great adult children, to help. From now on, stop trying to work out his behaviour, and certainly erase from your mind that it was anything to do with what you did or said. Concentrate on you.
Every week Philippa Perry addresses a personal problem sent in by a reader. If you would like advice from Philippa, please send your problem to askphilippa@guardian.co.uk. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions
