It’s summer of 2014 and wife wants to move into her friend’s permanently. She said she’d give me enough money to run the house (it’s paid for so it’s just utilities and a little for food, nothing else.) and I figured I could make some more money from investing but it would not be reliable. Short term trading while you’re broken hearted isn’t the smartest idea. When I agreed her face lit up like a schoolgirl and that was not funny, that just crushed me. Buying this house was my idea, it was my dream house that I’d have in my mind when I thought what that might be. It’s on a protected ravine with a large creek running by it. Here I was in this dream house all alone, my wife had walked out me and I just put my head down on my desk and cried. How could this be happening now after all these years? We were supposed to be selling a rental house and travelling, this was supposed to be my golden years. Even though we had some money we had lived modestly as I wanted to save money for this time, right now.
I pick up my youngest son from University to come home for the weekend so he can do his laundry and get some proper meals. He stays there but it’s only about 20 miles away so an easy trip, I pick him up every other weekend. I tell him about his mom moving out and that now he’ll have two houses to go to, I’m trying to put a positive spin on it. The wife’s old neighborhood is actually closer to him than I am. I text her and tell her I’ve told him and she gets mad saying she planned on coming home every other weekend when he was here. Cake eating and hiding her shame I think it’s called.
After a week or so I asked her to come back and go to MC with me and she agreed. This actually turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes I would make. She told the MC all my faults and I accepted all the blame for her wrongdoing. I wrote her an apology note and read it in front of the MC. I was willing to do and say anything to get her back. When the MC asked if I thought if I’d been different would we be here now, I said I should have been better but I didn’t think it would have made a difference. That didn’t go over well so I changed my tune to say the stuff that they wanted to hear. I know there are veterans on here that would disagree and I don’t want to ruffle any feathers and I’d recommend you take their advice before listing to my rant but from what all I’ve seen and read (and that’s 18 months worth) I disagree, it wouldn’t have made any difference, this could happen to the pope if he was allowed to marry. I think if you look at the timing of most of them in middle age the children have just left home and I think the maternal instincts disappear.
It becomes “me” time now, the selfish gene takes over. That’s what she said over and over, “It’s me time now this is going to be the year of me.” That became her mantra over and over. My psychotherapist said, “She’s looking for new experiences and that can’t possibly be you, she’s known you too long.” That’s also my take on it. I think we’re all chemically or hormone driven for the most part.
I can only speak from what I’ve seen from women my own age, I don’t know why younger women would walk out on a family. So could I have been better? Yes for sure but if the other person wants something new then you’ll still be typing away asking, what did I do wrong? I’m not taking about abusive relationships or alcoholic husbands or drugs. What I am talking about is standing in the kitchen making dinner and having a bomb dropped on you from someone that has just possessed your wife.
