What do you do when your husband announces out of the blue that he’s miserable, falls in love with another woman, walks out on you and your two young kids with only a few dollars to his name with no means to send monetary support? And no intentions of sharing 50% custody?
In my case, you go on anti-anxiety meds (that should have happened years ago), drink a lot of wine, and spew off every emotion in the book to any family member or friend who is willing to listen.
Good thing my friends & family (and wine) are plentiful.
Speaking of wine, funny story: My ex started a wine cellar for me on my fortieth birthday. He had all of our family and good friends contribute, so there was a total of forty bottles of wine. What a sweet, thoughtful gift, eh? Then he continued to add to the cellar with each subsequent special occasion – carefully selecting a bottle and writing a poem in which he designated a future occasion on which we were to share the wine.
Let me tell you, it was mighty satisfying to drink every last one of those bottles meant for special occasions all by my damn self on the occasion of him leaving me (not all in one night!). Fiftieth birthday? Christmas 2015? Next anniversary? All gone.
But I digress.
To say being left with children to raise and no money to help is life-changing is a gross understatement. There is absolutely no way to prepare for it. Especially if your husband is (or seemed to be) the most devoted, selfless, genuine, honest person you have ever met.
I am normally a good judge of character, but this time I bombed. Or did he change? The question haunts me daily, but I’ll never know for sure. He claims he put up a front to avoid hurting me. Well, I am living proof that withholding negative feelings for fear of hurting your spouse will always backfire. The truth will come out. And it will hurt worse than if you had just been up front about it to begin with.
So, you find yourself a single parent (in my case, to a then-5-year-old and a -2-year-old ) quite unintentionally, trying to process your husband’s indiscretions and the subsequent end of your marriage, and you wonder, How the hell am I supposed to be a good mom right now?
How on earth do I muster the physical and mental energy necessary to go about life as usual; getting the kids and myself ready in the morning,
making lunches,
getting them dropped off at school/daycare and me to work on time,
making dinners, and, most difficult of all, engaging with them?
Well, those things you can do. Because you have no choice. You do what you have to. You will surprise yourself. People will call you strong, and you’ll come to realize you are.
But maybe you can’t be a good mom to the extent you were before. Good moms don’t berate their husbands in front of their kids (in whispers, of course), drink a little too much (after the kids are asleep, naturally), yell at their kids incessantly, slam doors, let their kids leave the house with food on their faces…the list goes on.
Or do they?
My fellow scorned sisters, we are under a tremendous amount of stress. We can’t compare our current selves to the ones before our husbands lost their minds, and as a result, so did we.
I may not be perfect right now, but if being there for my kids day and night, loving them fiercely, and managing to run their lives (and mine) is the definition of a good mom, then I’m doing just fine. If I lose my patience a little too often, let them watch TV more than usual, feed them prepared meals, it’s all okay. They know they can count on me and that’s what matters.
Perhaps we newly, unexpectedly single moms should lower our standards and not expect perfection in the parenting department. What is perfection anyway?
Divorce is one of the most traumatic events one can endure. Add infidelity to the mix and there’s just too much stacked against you. Let’s be kind to ourselves, friends. The road will be long, but we will get through it. So will our kids. And they will remember who was really there for them.
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It’s been almost 2 years now since my husband of going on 35 years walked out of our marriage (Sept 2013) without a clue to me that he wasn’t happy, and nothing was ever said. The truama and pain of how any one person can infict so much pain on another is beyond me. You feel lost, scared, felt like someone hit you with a brick and the floor beneath you gave way. The first months I couldn’t stop crying, and lost some weight too, but really didn’t need to either, but could barely choke down much food at all because it hurt to chew.
Only 4 months after he left me, I found a book called “Runaway Husbands” by Dr. Vicki Stark, whose own husband left for her 21 year marriage after a for a much younger woman. Dr. Stark dubbed this as Sudden Wife Abandonment Syndrome or SWAS, which takes years to heal from, but finally you recover from it with lots of love from friends, family and counseling too. The “aha” moments I saw while reading her book enlightened me into knowing it was “his’ issues and I was not to blame. Many times, its his mid-life crisis, or feelings of failure that cause these men to run away, but whatever the cause, it hurts a lot.
I am still recovering from this event but must really thank him for leaving me. Knoowing now I wasn’t meant to be with him for more years has allowed me to love myself more, and see just how much I lost my own sense of self during this long-term marriage. The hardest part for me is learning how to trust again especially those of the opposite sex.
I too am in the process of getting divorced from my husband, and can look forward to having a fullfilling rest of my life once more. It is kind-of hard to begin again at age 58, but with time, it will heal all my wounds.
Thank you for your article 🙂
Deborah,
Thank you for your comment. I’m so sorry that you can relate. It’s such a hard road when someone we love and have been with for so long just up and leaves, with little-to-no explanation.
I’m glad you found help in that book (which I intend to check out) and in counseling.
It sounds like you are slowly recovering… me too.
Be good to yourself,
RB
PS Have you read my other article? It might hit home too:
https://divorcedmoms.com/articles/one-year-ago-today-a-letter-to-my-exhusband-on-a-new-anniversary
Runaway Husbands by Vikki Stark
Saved my Sanity!
Its a Tsunami event , one 10 yrs later , i am no closer to wrapping my head around than the day it happened?
” get over it ?” ” move on ?” ” you must have known “?
The most destructive words, to say to someone wbo has gone through!
The Reality is , I decided i would never understand, a person that can flip a switch, seemingly overnite n rewrite history, to justify reinventing themselves .
So ” get over ” no
I did decide to
Just Let It Be
Thank you again for all your support.
Not only did my husband leave, but only 4 months later, I found out I was adopted and never told by my parents with whom my adoptive mother and I fought most of our lives. and my father didn’t tell me either. This really threw me for a loop, questioning who I was, and why this happened to me, especially these events happening so close together. My footing is still unstable right now, but trying to heal from it all.
Best and I will check out your other article.
Oh my gosh, what a road you’ve been on! Wishing you peace & healing.
RB
I love the wine cellar idea. I’ve always wanted to convert a closet into on. Maybe brick lined with an iron gate.
I think sometimes we see things and assume they are without thinking about what makes them possible. A stay at home parent without considering that there is another working to make that possible. I aways saw my ex-sister inlaw as a great parent. She and my brother had very different work schedule (and personalities), but I liked how they seemed to manage 100% coverage for the kids while balancing two successful careers. I wasn’t too suprised when they brokeup, they were very different, but I was shocked when the same parenting pattern didn’t continue. What I didn’t see before was that my brother was enableing it when they were together, but separate, his lifestyle worked and her did not. I always assumed that when people had custody and visitation issues it was due to conflict and it was very likely that one of the two was not putting the kids first and using them to harm the other parent. I never considered that simply pullingout the support system would have the same results.