The shock of it happening again, so completely unexpected, was enormous. However, I'm happy to say my first thought was that I knew what not to do, didn't start bawling, and just let him go.
The last time, he pretty much lived in the bedroom down the hall, spent months and lots of $ getting the rental apt fixed up for himself, but only went to his 'new' place a few times, so there were a lot of opportunities to db. He never shut me out completely. It was extremely, extremely difficult to always 'act as if', and I did not initiate R talks, only polite upbeat conversation if we happened to be in the same room. This allowed me to validate a lot of his craziness indirectly. For example, he didn't know that I knew he had looked into plastic surgery but when a TV show was on about it I was able to steer the conversation so that I had an opportunity to say that I thought he was better looking than when I married him.
He was in typical Replay when bomb dropped, and I saw him go thru the next stages over about 9 months, with all of the craziness, crying, depression, and confusion (all his) that is involved, most of which he didn't remember afterwards. I believe he was starting the final stage and was reconnecting with me when he broke his back. This injury consumed his (and my) life until just recently. But during this time our relationship was great. I was still fearful for many months, but felt much more confident after he said while in the hospital, completely out of his head on drugs "I really love you. I don't know how I ever thought of leaving you."
This time, H was out the door so fast my head is still spinning, and we have had no contact since he left last Mon. He has been to the house while I'm at work every day except Wed. He wants to leave everything as it is, but stay over in our rental apt.
In4ride Me 50, H 55, M 17 yrs 1st Bomb Drop 12/7/03 Separated mostly in house Come back together/H breaks back 9/04 Piecing, surgeries, recovery, H retires 2nd Bomb Drop 9/3/07 H moves out 20 min later
