Breaking up is so very hard to do

jackieblack

My husband did the same thing. Announced one day that he wasn't happy, wanted to be on his own and was leaving.

The most difficult thing for me has been wondering how he went from being 'happy together for 24 years' to 'I'm not happy and I'm leaving' without at least discussing it, let alone without giving us a chance to sort out whatever he was (apparently) unhappy about.

He still won't tell me why.
I've had to accept that I may never know, and that is far more difficult than the fact he is gone.

nonnatus

I was married for 10 years when I "suddenly grew enough of a spine to realise I wanted to leave my marriage.

My husband had CHOSEN to be blind about our relationship. He didn't much like ME but he liked being MARRIED. Sex was only when I could get drunk enough (every couple of months). We had separate friends and interests etc.

I started a new job which entailed working closely with some new people who made me realise I was wasting my life. (No other man involved then or ever since btw!)

8 years ago I asked for a divorce and it shocked and surprised my husband. Took him months to adapt, but within a year of the divorce he had re-married. New wife is truly lovely (so no idea what she sees in him!!?) and I think they'll be together forever. The kids live primarily with me but have open access to him and her.

I've never been happier. Follow your heart OP - only YOU know what's right for your situation. You don't need a Counsellor to try to convince you to remain in a relationship that's making you unhappy.....

Pollycat

bubblycrazy wrote: »

I have no idea how to tell him it is definitely over without bringing up past issues and hurting him even more. What a mess.

I agree it's a mess but a mess of your own making.

The posters who say you have been unfair to your partner by allowing him to believe things were fine between you are right - you have been unfair.

Do the decent thing and be honest with him now.

jackieblack

nonnatus wrote: »

You don't need a Counsellor to try to convince you to remain in a relationship that's making you unhappy.....

I don't think anyone has suggested that

But if OP had made the effort to talk to her OH about how she was feeling it wouldn't have come as such a shock to him and his reactions now may have been very different.

If someone can "grow enough of a spine" to leave, why couldn't they "grow enough of a spine" to actually talk to the other person in the relationship? Maybe that takes a bit more of an effort than some people are prepared to bother with.

David301

You should be honest with him, my wife told me that she was unhappy about 2 years ago. I knew she was unhappy on many levels. We both didn't like where we lived, she didn't enjoy working in our business that we had and her unhappiness added to my unhappiness and we just got into a lower and lower state.

We had a discussion, one of the honest kind and came up with a strategy to improve our life. Unfortunately it would have involved a year of putting ourselves in more misery to do it.

She went to visit a friend of hers for a weekend and when she came back it was no longer the situation that was the problem it was me. She booked another trip to her friends and when she came back she announced we were finished. This was mid-december so there was nothing she could do to leave our home until mid-january so we had to live together for about a month.

It was absolute hell. The things she was saying to me were horrible, accusing me of all sorts, using words like manipulative and controlling and so many other things that just were not true. I know my wife well and I knew this was her way of reaffirming to herself she was doing the right thing, but also trying to push me away.

She wouldn't talk to me and I just couldn't be bothered to try any more because she just kept saying things like "the fog has been lifted" and "i can see clearly now" and "I dont even know who you are any more"

It was heartbreaking and it hurt me so badly.

She left mid-January and didn't even say goodbye as she walked out of the door.

I was so hurt and demoralised at this point I was glad she was gone. I tried to pick myself up and chucked myself into the business to numb the pain and started to see an improvement. I did miss her dearly but didnt even attempt to make contact because i knew the rejection would have been another set back to me.

A week after she had gone and she started trying to make contact. I was still so raw and ignored it at first but gradually we started speaking. After about 11 weeks she had been unable to find work and had spent all of the money she had taken and the couple thousand PPI refund which she had received back whilst she was gone. She said she needed to somewhere to stay and came back to live in our home.

I said to her at the time, that I was unsure why she wanted to come and live somewhere that she hated with someone that she apparently hated and she just said because she had no where else to go.

This rocked the boat a bit because I was getting on top of our financial problems and even managed to get some savings.

After a few more months she came into my bedroom in floods of tears asking how I was taking the break up so well because she was a mess. I put it bluntly that she made it quite clear we were over and that she didn't like me so what did she want from me?

We are back together now and our relationship is strong. but the whole thing really affected me. It was horrible and I would never want anyone to go through it the way I did.

If she had been honest at the time, we could have dealt with it in another way, rather than the cruelty and mass upset that occurred.

Being honest lets everyone move on, be it together, or apart. It seems like it will hurt more but it will hurt a so much less than someone living in false hope.

Sorry for the waffle, first time i've written it out and i found it quite therapeutic!

princeofpounds

Agree - if it is truly a surprise then that is your fault. It shouldn't be a game where people should be tested to see if they can pick up signals.


It's something that in my experience is actually quite a British fault to make in a relationship; somehow there is a cultural expectation that people should be telepathic and body-language interpreters rather than discuss things (or argue, or whatever).


To be honest, I'm not quite sure what that means for what you do next. I suppose it depends what the problem is - if they are issues that changes from him could have resolved, then it seems strange to leave without giving an opportunity for change.


If not, then maybe you still have to leave but you have to accept that you never gave it a fair chance. In which case you have to make it clear cut.


That DOESN'T mean you have to be brutal. Tone matters a lot in these circumstances and so often I see people get cold and borderline nasty to their partners, as if to emphasise they really mean it. That's not how to do it, it just poisons things. Better to be brief, straightforward and gently firm.

princeofpounds

It was absolute hell. The things she was saying to me were horrible, accusing me of all sorts, using words like manipulative and controlling and so many other things that just were not true. I know my wife well and I knew this was her way of reaffirming to herself she was doing the right thing, but also trying to push me away.

This is precisely what I was referring to.

pinkandblueshoe

It seems to be all about you. Speaking as someone who was on the receiving end of being broken up with by someone who did it as clinically as it was possible to do, it took me a long time to get over being treated as casually as that by someone I loved. It also affected how I formed other relationships and how much I trusted people in the future.

pinkandblueshoe

Getting back together with him because you were pregnant, I can understand why, but that wasn´t compulsory either, if you didn´t want to be with him then, you didn´t have to be.

Also, it amazes me the number of people who are in so called miserable relationships but still sleep with the person they don´t want to be with.

Maybe you need to take some responsibility for having sent out mixed messages about what you wanted over the years.

gonzo127

i do understand what you mean about it being so hard, as i have just recently split up with my wife, and it was the hardest thing i have ever had to do, made even harder by the fact i have had to leave my daughter.

However i did try talking to her about things months ago and went to counceling to see if things could change, in this case nothing did change, and yes it feels as if we have just prolonged the agony, and that a clean break might have felt easier at the time, but i also do feel that we needed to talk over our problems first to at least give us a chance.

ok so my wife does not feel as if we fought hard enough for us, and has still taken it hard, but i hope that after some time has passed, she will realise, as i did, that we couldnt carry on as we were, as we both had very different ideas on what a marriage should be like