Did you move cities or countries for your runaway husband?

I have recently been remarking on the fact that many of the women I talk with in the Runaway Husbands community have made the sacrifice of relocating to different cities or countries for the sake of their husbands. I wondered if it was a trend and queried it in one of my newsletters and have been hearing from many women who raised their hands and said, me too.

I myself moved with my kids for my runaway husband. I met him in December, we had our first date in January, we were married in April and I moved from New York City to Montreal in December. I gave up my beautiful rent-controlled apartment, left all my friends and family, never having given the slightest thought about moving before I met him. But he wanted to so I didn’t question it - I was so in love. (I’ve been working on that impulsive streak since then!)

As a result of my recent shout-out in the newsletter, Eve sent me this email:

I moved twice for my husband. Each time made the eventual abandonment feel even more painful. Unlike friends who divorced after building a life alongside family and friends, relocating means sacrificing stable jobs, being far from loved ones, and leaving behind best friends and support systems. When the husband walks away, it feels utterly unacceptable — years of sacrifice met with no gratitude.

It highlights a sense of entitlement. People often say I was "happy to move," but in truth, I felt I had no choice. I followed to be supportive, always prioritizing his needs over my own.

Eve then went on to do an analysis (with the lovely help of Chat GPT) of the difference between being left when you have relocated for your husband and being left when you have stayed put:

The experiences of a typical divorcee and someone who moved multiple times for their husband before divorce reveal significant differences in emotional, financial, and social consequences as follows:

1. Emotional Impact:

A person who relocates frequently for their spouse may experience a deeper sense of betrayal and abandonment. The sacrifice of personal goals and social networks can intensify feelings of resentment and isolation.

In contrast, a more traditional divorcee may have stronger ties to family, friends, and familiar surroundings, offering better emotional support during the separation.

2. Financial Consequences:

Frequent relocations often disrupt stable employment and retirement savings, potentially leaving the individual financially disadvantaged after divorce.

A divorcee who maintained long-term employment and stability may be in a better financial position, with greater retirement savings and property investments.

3. Loss of Community and Support:

The moving spouse likely faces the challenge of rebuilding support systems and friendships from scratch after each relocation.

Those who stayed rooted often have a stronger, more established network to lean on during the divorce.

4. Sense of Identity:

The relocating spouse may struggle with a loss of identity, having spent years adapting to new environments and prioritizing their partner's career.

A stationary divorcee may retain a clearer sense of self, anchored by longstanding social roles and routines.

Conclusion:

While divorce is challenging for everyone, those who have made repeated sacrifices for their partner's career or well-being often endure compounded emotional, financial, and social struggles that make the healing process significantly more complex.

Do you have thoughts about this? Please weigh in in the comments below.

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Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.

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Why did it hurt so bad when your husband left?

In the study that I conducted before writing Runaway Husbands, I asked women whose husbands left out-of-the-blue what the moment felt like when he told her it was over and here are their actual words:

• It was like someone had stuck a knife in my stomach and turned it

• I felt like someone had stepped on my chest and emptied my lungs of air

• I felt like someone punched me in the gut

• I felt crushed, steamrollered, and then I felt as if I was falling off a cliff

• If he had ripped my arm out, it wouldn’t have hurt as much

• I felt like I had stepped on a landmine

• I felt like I was hit by a ton of bricks

• I had a strange physical sensation - like my brain had been shot with a stun gun

If we pay close attention to the words describing what it felt like, we understand why it hurts so much - being left in a cold, uncaring way when you had no idea that it was even remotely possible, feels like a physical assault.

In the weeks and months after the husband leaves, the wife obsesses, replaying that moment over and over in an effort to understand how someone who had loved her so much could so casually, but callously hurt her. The fact that she experienced the rupture of the marriage as a physical assault leaves her with pain in her body that she can’t think away because it’s not rational. It touches her on a gut level at some primal place inside.

What factors go into the depth of the pain?

1. Rejection - her husband has decided that she is not what he wants and he’s discarding her, often for someone else. He’s made an assessment of her, the wife he knows so well, and he doesn’t want her anymore.

2. Betrayal - he didn’t let her in on his growing discontent about the marriage. He deprived her of any sense of agency in her own life, making a unilateral decision and then springing it on her when there was nothing she could do about it. He broke the bone deep trust she had built with him.

3. Destruction of her vision of her future - her plans for her future, which she may have been carefully constructing her whole life, are destroyed like a house that’s been hit with a wrecking ball and she’s left unable to envision what her life is going to be like.

Attachment Injury

However, the animal cry we heard in the women’s statements above come from a deeper place, the place of attachment injury. The bond that is built within a long term marriage is more complex than just love - it’s attachment. Imperceptibly, day after day within a marriage, we are melding our identity with our partner, who we turn to in a fundamental way for support and safety like we may have done with our parents in childhood.

If we were lucky enough to have had dedicated, caring parents, we replicate in our intimate relationship the seamless sense of protection we experienced growing up. For many people, there was zero possibility that one day their mother would turn her back and walk away saying, “I don’t care about you anymore.” So when the husband does just that, it’s equally unthinkable.

For those women who grew up in an unstable or unsafe childhood home and then with great courage and hope, allowed themselves to open up and trust their husband and then he leaves, it’s even more damaging. It confirms the fear that people are not safe and not to be trusted, which is a hard way to maneuver through life.

While you’re recovering from the sudden loss of a spouse, you need to recognize that it’s not just a process of thinking and thinking and then eventually figuring out how someone who once loved you could hurt you, so that you can heal and move on. There is a concurrent process going on of soothing the emotional wound of the loss of attachment. That requires that you work towards accepting the fact that your suffering is normal and that having been attached is a good thing. It means you had the courage to let someone into your heart.

As the pain starts to diminish, and it will, you’ll find that you can feel safe and protected even without that other person because you can learn to love and protect yourself. Once you know you can protect yourself, it will be safer for you to attach to someone else because if that person leaves, you now know you will never lose the one you need the most - yourself.

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Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.

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How Can I Trust Again?

Every time I’ve gotten together with abandoned wives for a workshop or retreat since I wrote Runaway Husbands in 2010, the same question comes up: “I’d like to be in a new relationship but how can I ever trust again?”

Almost all of the women in the Runaway Husbands community have been betrayed. They didn’t know that their loving husband was thinking of leaving. They trusted him with all their hearts. They never dreamed that he would have an affair. They felt secure.

But then, one day, out of the clear blue sky, boom! “I can’t do this anymore. It’s over!” What?!?

So how can a woman who couldn’t read the signs in her marriage (because often, there aren’t any) trust that the same thing won’t happen again with another man who may also seem loving and devoted? How can she protect herself from the devastation she went through with her runaway husband?

A crucial question. Some women are not interested in having a subsequent relationship and, of course, that’s fine! But many women in our community would love to have a companion; someone to go out with on the weekend, someone to share life with, someone to love them and for them to love (people need to give love as well as receive), someone with whom to have some delightful sex. 

They want to be in a couple but to get there, they have to open their hearts with no guarantee that this new man can be trusted. It means taking a leap of faith, but also, recognizing that this relationship is inherently very different from your last one.

Most probably, you were very idealistic when you married your runaway husband. You imagined your lifetime future, building together all the lovely parts of home and family. You likely married in your twenties or thirties and the years ahead were spread in front of you like the smorgasbord table at a Pennsylvania Dutch restaurant. You had expectations! Your husband having an affair and leaving you was not one of them.

But now, you’re older and you’ve been through this experience and you know, right from the get-go, that husbands can leave. You’re wiser. You’ll listen carefully when any new man tells you how his previous marriage ended, paying particular attention to how he talks about his ex-wife. Is he mean and diminishing of her? Did he end the marriage? Was there an affair? Good information to know.

Unless you’re still in your thirties or early forties, you probably are not looking to start a family with a new husband. You may already have done that and are at the next stage of your life. The bond you will develop in a new relationship is of a different quality. You’re an independent woman now who can survive on your own. You won’t need to merge your identity with someone in the same way that you did in your first marriage.

You’re actually not as vulnerable as you think you are. You will never again be hurt at the same magnitude as you were when your husband left because you know it’s possible. And you’ve worked on yourself to be comfortable in your own skin. If you meet someone, don’t rush to fall in love. Get to know him gradually. He’s not the man of your dreams - he’s just a man.

You really have two choices. You can close up shop and not risk any new relationship which means that you will be safe but also may miss out on the pleasure of having someone in your life. Or, you can open your heart wisely, taking a chance with no assurances but being willing to expand your life to admit someone else.

Last year at the Sedona Retreat (the yearly divorce recovery retreat I hold in Sedona, Arizona), we spent an afternoon with the Shaman Joseph White Wolf who told us about when he first got to know his wife who had been married before. She traced a big square in the air and told him that she had a map of her life with all the pieces in place in this square, just like she liked them. Her family, her home, her work, her friends - she liked the life she had constructed for herself. Then she said, “Now I see your little nose poking up into the corner of my map. I’ll let you come inside but you need to know, I’m not changing any of it for you. So you’re welcome to come into my life but you have to be a plus because my life is good just as it already is.”

And that is my wish for you. I hope you will be open to trust again, accepting the fact that not all men are dishonest, slowly getting to know someone - no big dreams or expectations. And if his nose is poking up into your life, choose wisely if you will let him in.

Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.

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What You've Lost - What Still Remains

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!

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Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.

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3 Tips to Help You Get Through Thanksgiving Without Too Many Tears

This year, the holidays are going to be a doozie. You not only have to deal with the pain of remembering happy Thanksgivings past when you celebrated with your husband and the family but you also may have to be planning a quiet meal with just the few people allowed in your bubble. No setting a big colorful table for twelve decorated with a paper fan of a turkey as the centerpiece this year!

Add to that the reality that your husband may be off celebrating with someone else - a real slap in the face on a holiday. You probably can’t corral your mind to stop thinking about him slicing turkey in some other woman’s kitchen, imagining that they’re having a jolly good time while you’re home, maybe alone, with the cat.

And, to add insult to injury, for some reason, the holidays are the time of the year when most runaway husbands fly the coop, so you may also be suffering from anniversary syndrome - the sadness that returns at the time each year when you’ve suffered a significant loss.

What a mess! Believe me, I know how much it hurts. But we’re all in this together so we have to come up with a plan to get you through the day without too many tears. What to do?

Here are three tips to help you cope with the challenge of Thanksgiving when your husband has left:

1. Don’t let yourself wallow. No matter how grim you may feel, do something a little bit special with the day. It may be a real effort to call a friend and take a walk or to bake yourself your favorite pecan pie, but just do it, even if it’s minimalist. The effort you put into any act of self-care will have surprisingly expansive results, helping to lift your spirit (even a bit). And you’ll feel proud of yourself.

2. Do something for someone else. Again, it doesn’t have to be big. But that phone call to offer holiday wishes to your elderly uncle or the book you’ve read and enjoyed that you drop off at your neighbor’s will take you out of your own suffering and expand your heart. It will do you good.

3. Remember what Thanksgiving is all about. It celebrates the first harvest after an awfully hard year for the Pilgrims - a time to appreciate what you’ve got. It’s normal to be focused on what you may have lost, but for a short time on the holiday, turn your mind to all the blessings that you have. You’ll realize that there is still so much left.

I’m thinking of you and sending a big hug. You’re not alone! Inspire us below in the comments by telling what you’re planning to do for the holidays to make yourself feel better.

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Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.

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Another Father's Day Without My Dad

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.

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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.

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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.

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Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.

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Don't Blame Yourself if You Didn't See it Coming

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.

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Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.

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Better, Not Bitter: How being abandoned changes you

We had a great session of the Hearts & Minds Recovery Group (an online therapy group) and the conversation shifted to a discussion of how what happened to us has changed us. Penny and Lilly were talking about how they packed up all their husband’s belongings so carefully and thoroughly and then Marianne questioned why we all had to be such good girls in our marriages even as it was dissolving. Lilly said that all the sacrifices make sense if the marriage is ongoing but once it falls apart, they lose their meaning.

Marianne talked about zen acceptance - should we just move on with what life offers us, but Suzanne said that she’s bewildered and anxious. She worked her whole life to get to this stage where she’s retired and has put aside a certain amount of money, and now, she has to split it in half and is looking at the prospect of perhaps needing a mortgage again. It’s just not fair!

I struggled with the conversation because I felt that, of course, everyone needs to air their anger and frustration, but I worry that sometimes women get stuck in bitterness and never again feel happy and free, even in spite of what has happened.

Cherie responded that bitterness is a stage that you have to go through, like the grief and anger. She resents it when people say “Get over it” when they haven’t been through it and don’t know what it’s like. Then she said that we are all going to be changed but who is the person who comes out the other side?

Suzanne shared how she’s changed. She said that she used to be a cardboard cut-out who shut down when anything got too emotional. She was agreeable and avoided conflict and was uncomfortable asking for what she wanted. Since her husband left, she’s been in therapy and is learning to express herself and feel things. It’s a new world for her and she’s happy about the change.

So I suppose the trick is to allow yourself to feel the injustice and anger - to feel the bitterness - but to pass through it eventually and develop that zen acceptance at what life has sent your way. So that, in time, you will heal and end up better, not bitter.

Join in the conversation below and tell us what you think!

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Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.

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Finding Your Feet - Moving Towards Recovery One Step at a Time

I watched a movie last night called Finding Your Feet. It’s a story about an upper class British woman, Sandra, who discovers at her husband’s retirement party that he’s been having a five year affair with her friend. Devastated, she leaves to go stay with her sister, Bif, with whom she’s been estranged for ten years. The husband quickly moves in with his affair partner.

The movie is about Sandra’s transformation. When she arrives at Bif’s messy working class flat, she’s emotionally shut down, crying and depressed. Bif, a free spirit, pushes her to come to her community dance class which Sandra very reluctantly does. After a few times at the class, she can’t help herself and she starts to be swept along by the fun of dancing and being in the group.

She meets a guy there who she initially can’t stand but eventually comes to love. She changes from being an up-tight repressed lady (literally - she’s Lady Sandra) into an alive fun-loving woman. She remembers that she used to love to dance. She finds her feet!

Okay - cliché. Why am I telling you this? Because the message is essential to you - that life begins at the end of your comfort zone. When Sandra’s husband first left, she couldn’t imagine that she could refashion a life for herself with the help of her kooky older sister. But the turning point came when she agreed to go to the first dance class.

She was miserable at that first class and didn’t want to participate. She struggled with herself and couldn’t raise her arms or move her feet and throw herself into the flow of the class. But just by going, miserable and all, she triumphed. She didn’t know it at the time but it was the first step toward her recovery.

A month after my husband left, some friends invited me to their annual Christmas party. I dragged myself there and, sitting among all the couples in a room that I’d been in with my husband the previous year, I was wretched. I left after twenty minutes. I thought it was a failure, but it was really an important step. I'd pushed myself to do something and the next time, it would be easier.

Wherever you are in your recovery, you need to push yourself past your comfort zone. If it’s early in the process, that may just mean getting out of bed, taking a shower, getting dressed and forcing some food down your throat. Later on, it may mean going to your friend’s birthday party or taking a class by yourself. And if you want to, even later on, it may mean taking a leap of faith and dating again.

Each of those little steps is essential to your recovery. You won’t be able to see it now but you need to push past your impulse to retreat, even in small ways and even if it doesn’t feel good. It’s a struggle, it’s a journey and I know you can get there. So stop and think right now of something that you know would be good for you that feels too hard and make up your mind to do it. Like Sandra, you can find your feet again!

Add your comments below. Tell us what that hard thing is, big or small, and how you plan to accomplish it.

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Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.

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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – How He Morphs into an Angry Stranger

We were talking tonight in the Hearts & Minds Recovery Group about how mystifying it is when our husbands change from being the loving man we knew for so long into a critical angry stranger. We were saying that we could all remember those turning point moments right after we learned that our husband was leaving when we were hit with the bizarre terms of our new reality – when he said things and behaved in ways that, in his former incarnation, he would never have done.

For example, my own husband was always very loving, and I was 100% secure that he was protective and wanted the best for me. The night he left, he had told me about his long affair. I referred to his girlfriend in some negative way and he said, “Don’t talk about her like that!” That shocked me. He was protecting her (this stranger) instead of me. It demonstrated that his allegiance had shifted and he was now relating to her like he had related to me for twenty-one years – like a caring, protective husband. That was one of the early moments that indicated to me how radically he’d changed.

In our group tonight, we spent a long time discussing how that happens – how did the old husband (a known quantity) suddenly shape shift into this alien. As we were talking, I had an epiphany that I wanted to share. It focuses on the turning point moment, the rupture, during which he changed. Up until that moment, he was keeping his options open by acting like he had always done. He had not declared that the marriage was over and the potential to remain was still possible.

He had to have had some ambivalence about walking away from his life as he knew it and because runaway husbands by definition are conflict avoiders, he may still have not gotten the courage to take the leap. But once his intention to leave is out in the open, he no longer has to keep up a façade. He has nothing to lose and he is now free to make visible what he had been keeping secret for so long – his rejection of the marriage and the transfer of his loyalty to the other woman, if one is in the picture.

After he has blurted out his intention, he no longer has to keep his options open – that door has closed behind him. It must be a huge relief for him to be able to give up the fiction that he is devoted to you alone. His resentment of the stress that he felt to keep you in the dark erupts (irrationally) in anger towards you. He had all this pressure inside which is now released along with the need to keep acting like he’s someone he’s not.

He resents you for putting him in the position of having to hide and lead a double life (okay – I said it’s not rational!) and that resentment can finally find expression. The guy who loved and protected you is free to morph into an angry stranger when it’s no longer in his interest to keep connected to you just in case he chickens out and doesn’t leave.

He has crossed the bridge from his old life to his new one at that moment of rupture and the landscape is completely different from his point of view. He’s no longer bound by the expectations of his life that existed a few moments earlier.

I hope this helps you understand a little bit more how your husband changed so radically out-of-the-blue. Please add to the conversation by posting your comment below.

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Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.

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The Other Woman

Almost all of us who have experienced Wife Abandonment Syndrome have to come to terms with the fact that there was another woman involved. Unlike the variety of sexual encounters that some men have with other women (on-line in chat rooms, one night stands on business trips, massages with “happy endings”, strip clubs and paid sex, to name a few), most men who run away do so because they are involved with a real flesh and blood woman. They are often having an affair in the classical sense, one that involves secrecy and sex, but also emotional involvement.

Women in our Runaway Husbands community deal with this female intruder in a variety of ways. Some see her as an evil temptress who preyed on a vulnerable man who would never have strayed were he not lured into it. Others see her as a bit player in the drama – it if hadn’t been this particular woman, it would’ve been someone else.

Who the other woman actually is varies from case to case, but the typical one is someone he met at work or knew from high school or is his person trainer – someone you don’t actually know (that was my case). In the atypical and truly awful case, she’s a friend (either yours or a friend of the family) or your daughter’s babysitter or swim coach.

During those months just after your marriage ended when you’re out of your mind, you may become obsessed with her. She’s a huge threat (why did he choose her over you?) and you desperately need to understand her allure. You hate her and blame her and probably want to hurt her somehow. If she’s married, you may be tempted to or actually do contact her husband to screw up her life like yours has been.

Here’s a quote from an abandoned wife on this topic: “I used to spend countless hours wondering how the OW, knowing we had a large loving family, could help push the relationship. I realize now that she didn't think anything. They are so caught up in each other that it justifies their behavior. And who knows what the former husbands have told her. He can tell her anything. She probably thinks she is rescuing him.”

In the early days, you will want to pump your husband for details, needing to know how it happened, where and when they met and how often they saw each other. And then, you probably want to know more – does he love her, what did they do sexually, what are his plans with her (sub-text, will she replace you in his life?) But it’s a double-edged sword because each piece of information pierces your heart and then gets lodged in your brain. The more you know, the worse you feel. Knowing details hurts you more and makes you feel even more betrayed.

You probably can’t help yourself and refer to her as whore or bitch, even if you’re not typically the type of women who talks like that. It helps a tiny bit to lessen the pain. One shocking moment I experienced in the every early days was when I referred to my husband’s girlfriend as a whore and he said, “Don’t talk about her like that. I love her.” OUF! That was rough. I realized the hard way that he was more allied with her than he was with me.

Some wives actually meet with the other woman and regret it. One told me “She just gave me boat loads of more crap to be distressed about.”

A typical question people ask me even now, eleven years after my husband left, is “Are they still together” and frankly, I don’t know. I’m very self disciplined and won’t allow myself to ask the friends we have in common – I don’t want to put them in an uncomfortable position. And as much as I might be interested, I don’t really care. I wrestled the other woman to the ground in my mind early on so she dropped off as an integral part of my drama. This was between my husband and me – she was unimportant.

So what advice do I have for you about the other woman?

1)    Hang on to your dignity and stop using dirty words to refer to her. It feels good for the moment but brings you down in some psychic way (if even to yourself).

2)    Stop asking about the details of the affair. He may be tempted to tell you!

3)    Recognize that most runaway husbands have told the other woman that the marriage is virtually over and his wife knows it. He lies to you and he lies to her too.

4)    Self discipline – as soon as you can manage it, stop checking her Facebook page, stop asking everyone about her, stop stalking her. It makes you look bad and feel badly.

5)    Don’t try to meet with the other woman. There’s nothing good that will come of it.

6)    Turn down the volume on her importance in your life. Unless she was a friend, this is really about you and him.

7)    And be kind to yourself! As a matter of fact, give yourself a hug right now!

I know you have your own story about the role of the Other Woman in your life. Add your comments below!

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Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.

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Consumed by anger long after the marriage ends

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.

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Are you a woman whose husband suddenly left? Click here for more resources to start your healing process.

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