What To Do When Your Husband Leaves

What do you do when your husband leaves? (Besides grabbing him by the throat, yanking him backwards to the dirt and forcing his face into the mess he made of your life.) Here are the things you MUST do and must NOT do.

What to Do:

1. Let him make his own decision of what he wants to do. Control leads to runners.
2. Remain calm. (in public) It’s okay to freak out away from kids and in front of #4 below.
3. Keep your life going & your chin up.  Even when you want to crawl in bed and stay there.
4. Enlist 2-3 friends who love you, support you and will be there as your trusted verbal punching bags to cry to, yell to, and complain.  This isn’t forever.  You will get through it and you will be forever grateful to them.
5. Take Care of yourself – this last one is awful.  I know.  How can I take care of myself when I can’t be out of bed or breathe without bursting into tears.  This last one is a slow one…it comes…but heck it takes awhile.
6. Open your heart to understand, forgive, kindness, compassion and love.  (I know what I’m saying is BEYOND hard and your mouth has probably dropped wide open.  Yet keep reading, this article will help explain what I’m suggesting.  And if you are still having doubts/trouble – my email is at the bottom)

What NOT to Do:

1. Cry.
2. Beg.
3. Come up with reasons as to why he must stay.
4. Throw all his items out the window.  Drama makes you crazy.
5. Threaten him with kids, money, etc.
6. Call his mom, sister, relatives, friends and co-worker to tell them your husband’s crimes.
7. Do Not Let Anger Ruin who you are.  Cause I know you are a good person. We all are.  It’s when bad things happen to us that we become bitter and angry.  DO NOT LET THAT HAPPEN to you.  DO NOT let this destroy the good, kind, loving person you are.

Let’s use Claire as an Example:

Claire was waiting for her husband of 12 years to come home after work.  She worried that he hadn’t called and persistently called him that evening, yet he never answered.

Was he sick?  Was he dead?  Did he abandon her and their 2 young kids?

Funny thing about intuition is that inside, we all really know the truth.

Claire knew.

Claire knew her husband had left her.  And if she was honest with herself, he had been acting strange the past few weeks but she just let it go. Thinking that maybe it was something with his work, his head?

Since she wasn’t working outside the home and taking care of their boys (9 and 6) was her full-time job, she thought it best not to rock any boats.  He was smart.  He’d figure it out.  And if he needed her help or advice, he knew she was there for him at any time.

Didn’t he?

We will never know…

The Reality:

Claire’s husband did leave her.  He called her the next day to tell her he had decided to move in with a male friend in a nearby city while he figured out what he wanted to do with his life.

Claire was mad.  “His life?  When did the world revolve around ‘his’ life? We have a family!  We have children to raise! Together!”

The next few weeks Claire stayed very angry and lashed out at her husband every time he called.  So he stopped calling as often and very soon, they stopped talking at all.  Lawyers were chosen and soon a schedule of visits with the kids was in quick order.

After a year they still haven’t talked more than they had that night after he left.  Claire is still full of anger and her soon to be ex is…well…we’ll never know.

What we do know is that he hasn’t tried to come back to Claire because each time he did reach out to her, she opened the vultures on him. And her anger just proves to him that his reason for leaving was a good one.  Who wants to be, talk with, sit with, live with an angry bitter woman?

No compassion.
No understanding.
No love.

To Claire, her husband did not deserve love, compassion or understanding.  He deserved punishment!  He screwed her over!  He left her and her kids!  What an ass!

The Other Side:

I liken the action of a husband/wife leaving his wife/husband suddenly, to something going on inside the head of the person wanting to leave.  There is some crazy crap happening on inside their heads.  (Our minds control our entire lives.)  A problem?  Turmoil?  War?  They are so stressed and so distraught that they have found no other option or solution but to pack and leave the family they built and created?  Something inside them is hurting them so bad, that they can’t think or feel or do anything else but leave?

From the outside, we can all say: “Well that’s crazy right?”  “That is ridiculous!”  “There are other options!”  “I see no sympathy for the one who left!”

But what if you could?  What if…you could….????

Let’s take a person who is suicidal?  That makes sense right?  You clearly understand why a person would choose to end their life because they have no other options?  Right?  WRONG!  No one understands what makes a human want to kill themselves, yet people do it every day.  Normal people.  Sane people.  Regular people do stupid things every day.  Because they feel trapped.  Stuck.  Unaware of other options which could lead to different endings.  Successful endings.

We all crack once in a while. We are all fragile.  We have all made bad choices.  Even when we think we are doing something that is best for us.

Imagine If:

Let’s pretend a doctor came to you and told you your husband must be sent into a mental hospital.  And had to be committed for 3 years.  EEEK!  Would you freak?  Yell?  Hate him? Or would you be filled with love and compassion for making sure he gets well?

I can’t imagine ever leaving my kids, ever.  For anything.  The only way I could or would is if my mind was mentally unstable.  It hasn’t happened. But it could. And if I did, and I left my husband and kids, I only hope my husband would stand up for me and help me through whatever was going on with me.  Make sense?

Just today on the news there is a story of a doctor, once successful, on TV and widely adored, decided one day to do a drug deal, which then led him to kill his mother and then go on the run.  What?  WTF?  What happened???

What happened is life.  Life is CRAZY.  And people react.  You don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow, or the next day or next year.  To you or your husband or anyone.  Which is why we must figure out how to get to compassion and understanding.

The Angry Wife:

Every time I talk to a wife after her husband has left, she is mad.  Mad.  Angry.  Pissed.  How could he do this to her?  How could he be so callus??  Anger is usually all that comes out of a woman left.  And who can blame her?  I too was mad.  Angry.  Pissed.  WTF!

Imagine if, after a husband left, the wife felt utter compassion?  Understanding?   Love? Like she would feel toward her own son if he suddenly left his wife?  She’d rush to his side to find out what the heck was going on???  With love and compassion. She did not raise him to behave like this.  She raised to him to be respectful, honorable and now this?  Something must be seriously wrong.  And what is it and why hasn’t he spoken up to his wife or to his mom or anyone about it?

Also imagine if the wife did feel this way and when she saw him again, she ran to her husband and hugged him and looked at him with understanding saying, not “where have you been funkin asshole!” but instead saying, “I’m so so sorry you felt you had to leave…how horrible you must feel inside.  Obviously, I’ve done something or missed something that was happening to you and I didn’t notice!  I am so sorry I let you feel you were alone.  I feel horrible.”

Whoooa?  Would you ever say that?  Crazy right?  In-friggin-sane! 

We don’t do that.  No way!  It’s the Me – Me stage we are in now during today’s world.  What about me?  You left me! You didn’t help me!  You are bad!  You are wrong!  You didn’t follow the rules under the marriage commitment we made long ago!

Perspective:

From their POV (point of view) the leaver’s point of view, leaving was the only choice they had.  How horrible sad for them.

Let’s be really clear.  Most of the time – when men leave, you (wife) have nothing to do with their choice to leave.  They left because of their own reasons.  Their own.  Them. Not you.  No one leaves to intentionally hurt another.  They leave to save themselves.  To satisfy their needs. To escape from what they feel they need to escape from.

Cause at the end of every day, all humans want… is for someone to understand them.  If your husband has left you for another woman, it’s not because she doesn’t understand him.  It’s because she DOES.  Or at least he feels understood by her.  “Finally,” he feels. Finally, someone understands him.  Is listening to him. Gets him.  So why would he not what to be with this person?  It makes sense to him.  He’s not trying to hurt you.  He’s just trying to go to a safe happy place.

So considering all of this…if this person, your husband or wife, is really someone you love, wouldn’t you want to understand what they are going through?  Think about it….if you were their friend (not spouse) and sitting down to coffee after they left their spouse, you wouldn’t demand answers, yell at them or even make them feel bad.  Instead you’d offer them a kind ear. A soft landing pad to let them voice their feelings so you could try to understand why they chose to leave their wife and family.

That’s what we spouses forget.

Anger takes over and usually wins.  I know women who have been divorced for 20 plus years who are still angry with their ex-husbands.

Your Sanity:

If you are in this spot – the one that has been ‘left’, I hope you can find your way to a place of love and compassion while continuing to live a fun happy life. Your husband just may see that the grass is not greener.  That you really aren’t the source of his problems (typical of MLC).  And that the decision to leave you for another was one of insanity.

Taking that stand (standing) does work. But it is a very hard and a very long road.  Hard meaning not a physical thing as much as it is mental.  I have one client/woman standing right now and she sends me texts daily on how hard it is.  Love and patience are very hard things to accomplish when you really want to grab their neck and violently shake them back to reality.

Back To Claire:

Claire couldn’t do it.  She was so mad that her husband didn’t love, trust and value their marriage vows enough to come and talk to her, that she completely cut him off.  No talking.  No meeting. Nothing.  No love.  No understanding.  No compassion.  (I believe her words were, “It’s hard to find love in someone when you really want to watch him being eaten alive by crows”)  Had she found a way, perhaps their family would be together today.  Instead he stayed with his affair partner, who is not the nicest of people, and she (his affair partner) has even told me that she thinks if the door was still open with his ex-wife, he’d have gone back to her.

But that door wasn’t open and in the end, the affair partner won.  Although we all know he lost. He lost big.

We all go through mental breakdowns here and there.  Some hidden, some quite obvious to the world.  It’s how we deal with them, and who helps us through, is what gets us back to normal.

The MidLife Crisis:

How strange it is when a doctor tells someone that their spouse needs to go into the hospital for cancer or some other ailment, the spouse does whatever it takes to help.  Yet when a spouse does something so out of character – we still expect (demand) this strange acting person to just be normal?  We just don’t see the parallel?  Some call it a MLC.  A Midlife crisis. And if you don’t think they exist and you are reading this now, it may a real good idea to reconsider your position.

Today Claire and her ex are both living new lives.  Both are fine but their turmoil seemed so sad and senseless.  As neither one of them are any better off than before.  In fact both are probably worse. Beaten by the psychological effects as well as what they lost of their dreams of a future family together.

Maybe one day soon one of them will realize the stupidity of it all and attempt to put their egos aside and reconnect because they still want to be together. Or maybe not.  Ego will play a big role in most marriages leading to divorce.  That’s what Ego does best: Divorce families.

If you are dealing with a husband who has left.  Do not wait. Contact me and we can set you on a path to get him home.  Happy.  And Home.

Double Note to Remember:
You control your destiny.  Not him.  What happens is this: We mirror each other’s behavior.  Because couples mirror each other.  If one is hiding information…the other will feel it and do the same.  If one is lying the other starts.  If one is holding back love, the other starts and the downhill comes quick.  Then the two start the blame game and scorecard appears and tallies are taken.  “I do everything…”  “It’s her fault…”

We get defensive, deny and start the cycle that never seems to end.

Someone has to end the chaos.  The chaos.  Not the marriage.  The drama, the ego, the bull shit.

Cause there is bull shit.  Piles of it.  Staying angry (and defensive and in the blame mode) only adds to the pile.  Then the negative hate-filled destructive thoughts/talk that circles over and over in your head all night long tops the pile.

I help you stop that talk.  I help you move forward to solutions.

Its all about you.  It’s all about what you say to yourself when you are alone with your head.  If you stay positive about your marriage and your husband and have talk going on in your head that is good, you will find hope, peace and love.

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