My husband left 2 years ago saying he had a midlife crisis but came back after 6 months and just wanted to carry on as before, even though he wasn’t happy. He never let me address any of the previous issues we had, and would stop me whenever I tried to communicate. He would drink heavily but blame his work stresses. He couldn’t see he had a problem but was drinking over 100units of alcohol a week, and it would usually end up in an argument or complete silence.
We started doing more as a couple as our children were young adults, although still living at home, so we had more freedom to ourselves. Life was just as it always had been but he would often want his own space in his “man cave”
Then he decided the night before we were going away for a weekend that it wasn’t right and he chose to leave (when it was convenient to him to start a new part of his job in another town) so we spent 2 months living under the same roof carrying on as husband and wife in most aspects of our relationship. Then he left. He told me he needed to get counselling to sort his head out, the start of my heartbreak but persistent hope that we could sort it all out.
The day he left, he promised he would get help. Later that day he promised me again. After nearly 28 years of being together, I thought he would as we should have been important.
But within 3 weeks he had broken my world again telling me our relationship wasn’t right. I begged for him to get help, begged for us to get help, but he would ignore me.
He owns his own company, has a good pension pot and we own our house with a small mortgage still on it. Having sought legal advice, we should go for a 50/50 split. However, he now says that I won’t get anything from his company as it’s his income and provides a service, but cannot see that it is his asset so I am entitled to half. I have also been advised that he may have to pay a spousal allowance also to help keep me in the lifestyle we were both accustomed to.
He doesn’t want to go through solicitors or
mediation to keep fees to a minimum but I don’t see how he thinks we can when it has become so difficult to communicate.
My children are trying to stay neutral but he is lying to them, telling them that the spilt is mutual, where they know it isn’t and unfortunately they have to see me broken and crying constantly.
I’m finding it so hard to understand my life right now and overwhelmed with everything. How do people do this? How do you move on? I feel like I’ve got a huge hole in my chest and the mental pain manifests in physical pain too. I can’t see any point in any of it.
