He Got Away With It! Knowing When to Let Go
Justice is a luxury that most abandoned wives don’t get to enjoy. But rather than letting it consume you, you need to recognize when it's time to accept that you won't get closure from him and give up trying . . .
Here’s something that I often hear from wives who have been left: “How is this fair? He gets to go off and live a great life with his girlfriend and I’m left picking up the pieces. I’m alone with all the responsibility for the house and kids and I have to fight him for any bit of help I need.”
“HOW IS THAT FAIR!?!”
In a desperate attempt for the runaway husband to have to suffer consequences for the emotional damage he’s done to his ex and kids, some wives proclaim that wife abandonment should constitute a crime - an actual legal crime - that can be prosecuted in a court of law.
Wives want justice! When someone harms another, we expect that justice will be served and the offending party will have to pay. That just makes sense!
So when women tell me that they want justice and that’s all they can think about day and night, I tell them this story, that I heard somewhere years ago, in order to encourage them to let go.
The story goes like this. A guy, we’ll call him Mike, was driving his rental car out of his friend’s driveway in L.A. when out of the blue, a Mercedes comes speeding down the street and t-bones him right on the driver’s side, causing his car to spin around twice during which time, he thought he was going to die. His car eventually came to a stop and there was a moment of silence after which he heard the other vehicle go skidding down the road away from the accident.
Twenty minutes later, after the police had assessed what happened, an officer stuck a form in Mike’s face and told him to sign it. He was completely shook up and asked what it was and the cop said, “It’s just to verify that you weren’t hurt” so he signed.
Mike went to the E.R. just to make sure he hadn’t sustained internal injuries and was surprised to learn that the other driver had already been there before him. The doctor, who had also treated the other driver, said that after hitting Mike’s car, the Mercedes guy sped around a corner and hit a tree. The E.R. doctor confirmed that the other driver was drunk and was taken to jail.
A couple weeks later, when he was back home in New York, Mike heard from the rental car company saying that he had been found at fault and had to pay $12,000 to the other driver to repair his Mercedes. Confident that it was a little mix up, Mike contacted the L.A. police to correct the error. Turns out that the officer on the scene that night had gotten mixed up in his identification of the two cars and, on the form that Mike signed that night, had mistakenly written that it was he who had hit the Mercedes.
Mike then spent the next year trying to get justice. The L.A. police wouldn’t even listen to him and he couldn’t find a lawyer to take the case. He became obsessed; it was all he could think and talk about. He didn’t care about the money - he just wanted the truth. He’d exhausted his friends and finally, his girlfriend said she couldn’t take it anymore and was breaking up with him.
It took that for Mike to wake up and realize that his futile attempt to get justice was ruining his life. He gave up the case and paid the guy $12,000.
By pure coincidence, I just watched a stand-up routine on Netflix called “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” by the comedian Mike Birbiglia in which he hilariously recounted this story, which had happened to him. Somehow somewhere, I had heard about it and have used it many times to illustrate a point.
Why do I tell women this story? Because too often, abandoned wives get stuck trying to get emotional justice which never comes. They want their ex to acknowledge what he did. They want their former in-laws to know the truth of what happened. They want to clear their name in the community because people make judgments or their ex circulates a false narrative about the break-up. They desperately want the true story to be told about what he did because he so often unjustly blames her.
My message here is not about whether you should fight for financial justice in the divorce agreement. That's a separate topic and I always believe you need to protect yourself financially. Here I'm talking about the fact that striving to get your ex to acknowledge, apologize, show remorse or set the record straight with the kids takes a lot of emotional energy and keeps women obsessing. I tell the Mike story because sometimes, you just need to pay the metaphorical $12,000 and move on in the service of mental health and emotional peace.
Justice is a luxury that most abandoned wives don’t get to enjoy. But rather than letting it consume you, you need to recognize when it's time to accept that you won't get closure from him and give up trying.
So, in the end, does it feel like your ex committed a crime and got away with it? Maybe. But, that’s not your problem any more. You’ve paid the emotional price - now let it go.
Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.
What You've Lost - What Still Remains
How can you be both authentic and feel your true feelings while, at the same time, work on cultivating the awareness that although you have lost so much, you still have so much left?
We had such an interesting discussion last night at one of the meetings of my online divorce recovery group, Hearts & Minds. One of the women was talking about all she has lost since her husband left. Her son just had his high school prom and, before the event, all the parents were invited to a pre-prom party. When she arrived, all dressed up, she did a quick scan of the room and her heart sank when she realized that she was the only single parent present. All the other women were there with their husbands.
I don’t need to tell you what that feels like. I know you’ve been there. I know I have. That empty feeling, lonely, a bit embarrassed - all the fun drained from the party while you have to keep up a brave face, counting the minutes till you can leave.
At the meeting last night, the other women in the group were empathizing with a communal groan. But I was looking at it a bit differently. Knowing the prom boy’s mom, I thought about what she has lost, but also, everything she has; a secure job, a big support network and three beautiful kids - things that many women in the world would kill to have. So, I brought up that aspect - that in spite of all we lose, we have to keep an eye on all we have.
Earlier in the session, one of the women was talking about gratitude and how what Oprah used to call the Gratitude Attitude is so important to happiness and I talked a bit about that. It’s been a frame of mind that I’ve tried to cultivate in my own life. When I’m miserable about something, I try to fly over it to get a different perspective and remind myself that so many other women have it so much worse. I find that helps me stop feeling so miserable.
But then, a different woman in the group challenged my approach. She said how important it is to really feel your feelings, not to deny or suppress them. It’s okay to let yourself feel the hurt because . . . it hurts! It hurts to be the single woman in the room when last year, you would have been sharing the fun with your husband. It hurts to not have someone to unpack the evening’s events with later in the privacy of your home - to talk about everything that happened and how great your son looked in his suit. That’s a reality too!
Seesaw. Seesaw. How can you be both authentic and feel your true feelings while, at the same time, work on cultivating the awareness that although you have lost so much, you still have so much left? I remember having seen Tony Robbins at a conference a few years back talk about his 90-second rule. He said that when something upsets him, he allows himself only 90 seconds of suffering and then he turns it around and I thought - how do you do that? (Disclaimer: don’t try this at home! LOL)
Perhaps the answer is that it’s a matter of degree. Of course, in the beginning, right after your husband leaves, there’s not much you can do other than to survive. There are only small things that help to lessen the suffering, like disciplining yourself to not check the other woman’s Facebook page if you can, but you’re certainly unable to see anything past the intensity of the pain.
Later on, the work of recovery is to explore ways of managing the suffering so you are not totally helpless in the face of it. One of those ways is to practice that gratitude attitude and develop an awareness of what is left after so much is lost. That doesn’t mean sugar coating the painful times. It means letting yourself feel them but, at the same time, recognizing that blessings remain.
Some women keep a gratitude journal and write down three good things that happened that day each night before bed. No matter how difficult life can be, there’s always something to feel grateful for and by writing it down, even if it’s a struggle to locate anything positive, you’re training yourself to scan your day for little particles of joy. And that’s a good thing!
Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.
Where are my Cakes and Casseroles? How Being Widowed Is Different From Being Abandoned
Why don’t we have a divorce funeral? A rite of passage to acknowledge the end of the marriage rather than what we currently do, which is to slink away in hurt and shame?
I was talking to a client whose husband left after 40 years of an enchanted marriage and she made a comment that I’ve heard many times before. She said that things would be so much easier if he’d just died. We got into a discussion about the difference between being left and being a widow (I’ve been both!) and I thought you’d be interested.
Grief
In both abandonment and widowhood, you suffer crushing grief and a profound sense of loss, but in the case of abandonment, she said, it’s a “dirty grief” - socially not the same thing. Nobody tells a widow, “You’re better off without him” or “I never thought he was right for you.” Widows are permitted space to grieve deeply and for a prolonged period of time, but little room is made for women who’ve been abandoned to experience grief.
That grief is confusing. You’re mourning your loved husband who no longer exists but, at the same time, hurt and angry with the man who is sending you lawyer’s letters. The grief is tainted - not pure. It keeps you in an emotional spin - grieving and then hurt and angry in alternate moments and that makes it hard to resolve the loss.
Memories
Widows tend to remember the happy times they spent together with their husbands. They can bask in the bittersweet glow of special loving moments and when they talk about their departed loves, they highlight the positive. Abandoned wives, however, are stuck remembering the recent traumatic events that triggered the loss. We all repeat in our minds the outrage and shock that lead to the end of the marriage, particularly the moment when it all fell apart. We steer away from remembering the happy times - how can you revel in the happy times when you are stuck seeing him as the liar or coward who hurt you so badly?
Financial stability
Often widows are in a good financial position after their husband dies, especially if he had life insurance, RRSPs or a pension that reverts to them. There’s no question that they will keep the house, cottage and car as well as any savings. Abandoned wives, however, are typically in a weaker financial position than they were before, having to fight for anything that they can get from their ex, while paying astronomical lawyers fees to boot. They often have to split the value of the house and move to a more modest home. They may have to go back to work if they were retired or had been a stay-at-home mom.
Family and friends
One of the topics we often talk about in my Hearts & Minds divorce recovery groups is the painful loss of family and friends. When a husband dies, the whole community rallies around the widow, bringing cakes and casseroles. She’s invited to any family events and remains a part of her late husband’s family. When he leaves her, however, she is often booted out of the family, even if she’d been integrated with them for decades. Her mother-in-law stops calling and even welcomes her ex’s new girlfriend for Thanksgiving dinner. Friends make judgments and take sides and it’s not unusual to lose a certain number in the process.
Privacy
When your husband dies, he takes your secrets with him to the grave. When your husband leaves, nothing is sacred. He’s building a case about why he had to leave to justify his actions and provides evidence to the world of your weaknesses or even secrets that only he knows. You lose control of your version of your story as he proclaims, loud and clear, his version of events.
Children
When your husband dies, you and the kids go through it together. You‘re typically all mourning their dad in harmony. You support each other through special events, like holidays and birthdays, missing him and reminiscing about good times from the past. When your husband leaves, however, your kids are thrown into a profoundly complicated position. They love their dad but may turn against him when they see him in a different light and know the hurt he’s caused you. If they’re young, they may go back and forth to his house with his girlfriend, knowing full well how much that hurts you. You avoid talking about him during special events - they don’t want to hear your pain. You worry about what the loss of the dad they knew will do to them.
Your Future
Finally, another big difference is that, when he dies, your pure feelings about your husband are not tarnished by rejection and betrayal. You smile thinking of him and get to keep the relationship you had with him forever. When a husband dies, it is not his choice. But when he leaves, he purposely did so without any regard for the repercussions. When he dies, you never see him again. But when he leaves, you watch him build a life with someone else.
Divorce Funeral
My client then suggested, why don’t we have a divorce funeral? A rite of passage to acknowledge the end of the marriage rather than what we currently do, which is to slink away in hurt and shame? I would certainly not suggest a bitter diatribe party against the ex but rather, a mindful moment to punctuate this turning point in our lives. We could get together with our friends and family and perhaps recount the story of the marriage, highlighting the growth changes we went through during that stage of our lives.
Light a Candle for Yourself
In my work as a marriage counsellor, there are times when a couple comes to the session wanting to talk about the fact that they’ve decided to separate. I always light a candle during those sessions, to honor the sanctity of their marriage and acknowledge that it meant something important. I ask them to sit with that for a few minutes before jumping into the chaos of separating their lives. That’s because, when you’ve walked a good part of your life with someone and the path comes to an end, either by death or divorce, in spite of all the differences, being married means something that you take with you in your heart.
Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.
Another Father's Day Without My Dad
Now as I approach another Father’s Day without my dad, I wonder if there are others like my sister and I, adult children of runaway husbands trying to figure out why other divorced dads maintain a relationship with their kids, but our dad chooses to stay absent from us and his grandchildren . . .
I received this email from Tiffany Scott, the adult daughter of one of the moms in the Runaway Husbands community. I was so moved by it that I asked her if I could publish it. She wrote back and gave me the green light, but asked that I not publish it anonymously. She felt that after years of hiding, she now wanted to claim her story and share it with you under her name. You can read her blog at www.GoodDadGoneDad.com.
***
I was returning from a business trip and called my mom, as usual, during my commute home. What I expected to be an uneventful call, would instead begin the chain of events that ultimately became the most devastating difficulty of my life. She told me that my dad said he decided he was going to divorce her.
My parents divorcing was unfathomable to me. My parents led the marriage ministry at my church, and had done so for nearly 20 years. Growing up, they were notoriously flirtatious. My dad’s playful nature and affection for my mom was regularly on display. They’d stroll through the mall food court (where my sister and I worked as teenagers) with his hand in the back pocket of my mom’s jeans prompting us to roll our eyes and murmur “ewww gross” as they passed. Even at home, he’d glide over to my mom as she stood over the kitchen sink washing dishes after a nightly family dinner, wrap his arms around her and initiate a dance, sometimes silly and funny, sometimes slow and romantic.
My dad showed his love for my sister and I, too. He was an involved father: coaching our sports teams, teaching us about his outdoors hobbies, using lunch breaks to attend school talent shows, concerts and assemblies. When my sister and I moved away after college, our visits home began with his usual silliness like him picking me up at the airport in a suit and chauffeur’s cap holding a sign with only my last name scrawled on it as though he was working for a private car service or meeting me at his front door of the house doing a short choreographed dance, more than a decade before TikTok, chanting that he was so happy because I was back home. The visits always ended with long hugs, smiles, and an invitation to move back home anytime because he missed us so much.
My dad and I spoke weekly. He spoke with my sister daily who bonded with her on their shared love of our hometown sports teams. Neither of us would have ever, ever, ever guessed that he would ghost us.
In the middle of the morning, my dad went to the elementary school where my mom worked to tell her that he had just moved out of the home they shared for 29 years. A day later he sent my sister and I a text to tell us he left and ask us not to contact him because he would contact us in a few weeks. A year and a half later, he called announcing he was ready to “put this in the past”. He called for two days straight. Despite me reaching out and his impeccable reputation for expeditiously returning calls, we haven’t spoken since. It will be 3 years in September.
Although I am devastated that my dad choses to stay out of my life, my pain was more severe for my mom and the emotional, social, physical, psychological and financial hardships she endured because of my dad’s abandonment. I was relieved to learn that her story is not as unique as it seemed at the time, that there are other runaway husbands who disappear without warning or valid rationale.
Now as I approach another Father’s Day without my dad, I wonder if there are others like my sister and I, adult children of runaway husbands trying to figure out why other divorced dads maintain a relationship with their kids, but our dad chooses to stay absent from us and his grandchildren. Why we find ourselves in a unique place among adult children on Father’s Day.
We are not quite like those who have grown numb to the annual celebration because of decades of disappointment stemming from childhood. Nor can we claim the intense grief and sorrow that I can only imagine comes from a beloved father who has passed away. We are navigating the mix of disappointment and grief by trying to understand why he abandoned us. We assume the reason is shame. He was a man who flagrantly dismissed parents for walking out on their families. Now he is that parent and Father’s Day will never, never, never be the same again.
***
I’m working on providing services to the adult children of dads who left. If you feel your kids may welcome connecting with others who have gone through the same thing or receiving help from me, please email me at vikki@runawayhusbands.com.
Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.
When His Eyes Turn Cold
Although there are many aspects to wife abandonment, the primary one which every woman struggles with is understanding how someone who cared for her so profoundly could just stop loving. How could that light go out of his eye? . . .
My husband left me the day I returned from twenty-three days on the road for a book tour for my first book. I had driven all alone from Boston to Atlanta, across the midwest and then from San Francisco to San Diego, giving readings at bookstores in towns along the way, on the move, day after day after day. It was rough.
When it was over, I took the red eye back from San Diego. My husband picked me up at the airport and I fell in his arms in relief. I remember the softness of his brown leather jacket caressing my cheek as I hugged him tight; secure in his love, I was so happy to see him.
He dropped me off at home and went to work. When he walked in the door that evening, my world as I knew it shattered. He had an odd expression on his face and muttered, “It’s over”. I was mystified. He repeated, “It’s over and I’m leaving you right now for another woman.”
I stared at his face and was shocked to realize that I didn’t recognize it. It was as if his familiar features had rearranged themselves and hardened. The light had gone out of his eyes and instead, they had turned cold. Later, I sat on the bed crying hysterically as he threw his stuff from the closet into plastic bags. He seemed unfazed. He really seemed not to care.
Where had the man I had known gone? The one who grabbed my hand whenever we were walking down the street. The one who showered me with love and affection. Who had written me a card on our anniversary a few months earlier that read, “You are my rock, you are my life!”
That was more than a decade ago and since then, I have dedicated my life to helping women who are going through the same trauma that I experienced. I guide them from ground zero through their painful obsessing, numbness and grief, till they can reach the other side of this nightmare and rebuild their lives.
Although there are many aspects to wife abandonment, the primary one which every woman struggles with is understanding how someone who cared for her so profoundly could just stop loving. How could that light go out of his eye? How could he disconnect so completely? It is very troubling and scary because if someone you felt so close to can turn against you so categorically, how can you trust anyone? It redefines the nature of all relationships and leaves you alone, not only in the physical sense, but also existentially. And that is why Wife Abandonment Syndrome is so devastating.
When I was studying psychology, I learned of an experiment by psychologist Dr. Edward Tronick, director of UMass Boston's Infant-Parent Mental Health Program, called the Still Face Experiment. In the experiment, a mother warmly interacts with her one-year-old baby girl and the baby responds delightedly. Then the mother assumes a still face and no matter what the baby does to engage her, the mother doesn’t respond. The baby becomes more and more agitated, screeching, arching her back and reaching for her mother wildly.
Watching it now moves me profoundly because that baby is us. Our loss of our sense of safety and the security of knowing what to expect from a person we depend on completely who then stops responding and gives us a still face stirs a panic inside. The world temporarily stops making sense.
During those early months post-abandonment, women obsess endlessly about how this could have happened. How could he change and not care? The primary task of recovery is to answer that question for herself. She needs to understand the flaw in the personality of her particular husband that permitted him to have been attached for so long and then so cavalierly detach from her and typically jump to another as if she and the affair partner were interchangeable. He focuses on getting his needs of the moment met without regard for the damage done.
I understand that sometimes marriages fall apart for all sorts of reasons and can accept that men or women feel the need to leave. The unique aspect of Wife Abandonment Syndrome however is that in leaving, the husband turns against his wife with disregard for her distress. His eyes turn cold.
The task then for the wife in recovery is for her to be able to detach eventually but because she doesn’t possess that same internal flaw, for her it is not so easy. Moving on, she will need to find the courage to accept that many other people are capable of making secure lasting attachments even if her husband was not.
Click here to watch the Still Face Experiment and please share with us your own experience of your husband’s eyes turning cold below.
Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.
Don't Blame Yourself if You Didn't See it Coming
When something happens that doesn’t fit the pattern, we don’t let it penetrate. That new odd piece of information just skitters off our brains and we reject it. It takes time for us to be able to let it in, particularly when doing so threatens our sense of security . . .
I’m at the Sedona Retreat and in our workshop yesterday some women were saying that they feel badly that they didn’t see the signs that their husband was thinking of leaving. When they look back, they can recognize the ways in which he was acting differently. He may have been disappearing for periods of time, left a clue in the form of a receipt for lingerie or mentioning some woman at work too often. He may have been avoiding closeness or even being just plain irritable.
In Runaway Husbands, I talk about the hair in the bathtub. When I returned from being on the road for my 23 day book tour, I took a shower and noticed a long dark hair in the bathtub. Now what is a more clear sign that another woman has taken a shower in my bathroom than a hair in the bathtub?!? But it didn’t register. Why?
Because my relationship with my husband was one of blanket trust. It was inconceivable to me that he was having an affair (let alone in my bed). It was completely beyond any expectation that I could have had of his behavior while I was away.
We humans depend on the fact that things continue in the same pattern that we expect. The sun always rises in the east and if, one morning, it seems to be rising in the west, we would assume that we’re reading it wrong. Our expectation that the sun will rise in the east is so powerful that information to the contrary is close to impossible to integrate into our thinking.
When something happens that doesn’t fit the pattern, we don’t let it penetrate. That new odd piece of information just skitters off our brains and we reject it. It takes time for us to be able to let it in, particularly when doing so threatens our sense of security.
We have a primitive need to always protect our sense of security. So if you blame yourself for not seeing it coming, don’t. You were only being human.
Do you blame yourself for not having seen the signs? Share your thoughts below.
Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.
Consumed by anger long after the marriage ends
Many women tell me that they hate feeling so angry all the time but they can't help themselves. They seek revenge and wish they could make their ex-husbands suffer what they’ve been suffering. I was thinking about how to help those women who can’t get out of anger’s grasp . . .
After my husband left, the anger took a long time to come. During the first months, I was hurt, sick and stunned. Anger was nowhere in sight. But later, when the hurt started to subside, the anger filtered in and stuck around for a long time.
Many women tell me that they hate feeling so angry all the time but they can't help themselves. They seek revenge and wish they could make their ex-husbands suffer what they’ve been suffering. They dream up schemes to hurt the guy and the other woman and some even follow through with those plans, but no matter what they do, it never hits the mark. The ex never suffers what you want him to suffer and anyhow, it doesn’t make the anger go away.
I was thinking about how to help those women who can’t get out of anger’s grasp - after all, it’s not a nice feeling - when I happened to read an article in Harper’s Magazine called “Facing the Furies” by Rebecca Solnit and was struck by much of what she wrote.
Solnit referenced the philosopher Martha Nussbaum when she wrote, “The urge to exact revenge derives from our desire for ‘cosmic balance,’ as well as from our attempts to overcome helplessness through displays of power. By this logic, revenge rights the scales, despite doing nothing to restore what was lost or repair what was damaged.”
We long to restore cosmic balance. That rang true to me. We are indignant and outraged that a wrong has been done but helpless to set it right. The world doesn’t seem in balance and the continuing anger is a response to that.
Solnit later writes, “Anger generally arises from a sense of having been wronged.” The world is not the way it should be - OUR world is not the way it should be - and since we can’t correct that, we are left with just the tarry residue of bad feeling in the form of anger.
Interestingly, the author goes on to discuss why anger is so hard to dissolve. “Fury is a renewable resource: though the initial anger may be fleeting, it can be revived and strengthened by telling and retelling yourself the story of the insult or injustice, even over a lifetime.”
By retelling ourselves and others the story of the injustice, we are seeking validation. We need to remind ourselves and need to hear from others, “Yes! You didn’t deserve that! What he did was wrong, wrong, wrong!” It helps us feel a little bit better but keeping the story alive also keeps us trapped. It fuels the unending anger that will turn us bitter.
So how do we break free once and for all from that cycle of retelling ourselves and others the story of the injustice? It comes from finally really knowing that what he did was wrong. Even if you weren’t a perfect wife, he could have left with more kindness and respect. It comes from really knowing that you didn’t deserve to be “kicked to the curb.”
Once you have integrated that truth and really know it deep inside, you won’t have to keep reassuring yourself that it was not your fault and you will no longer need others to do the same. Then it gets easier to open your grasp and let it all go.
Stop replaying all the sordid events in your mind. Stop telling the story to anyone who will listen. Start thinking about your future life and expand the periods of time in which he doesn’t even cross your mind. Fight for that and you’ll watch the anger dribble away. Become a fighter for your happiness and don’t let him turn you into an angry person.
Is anger still a factor in your life? How do you deal with it? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.
Hi! I’m Vikki and I'll be your guide in your recovery process from Wife Abandonment Syndrome. I’m a therapist but also an abandoned wife like yourself and I know what it feels like. I want to help you not only bounce back, but to discover a new you in the process.
