Just Which One Is the Abandoner?

Bill, you were a victim...I would guess that your wife had already emotionally separated herself from you when she refused to even recognize your efforts through therapy. Mine used quilting and reading to emotionally escape from me. There was never one cuddling, loving moment in our marriage - only BEFORE marriage. But the truth is that "victim" doesn't matter at this point. Speaking to myself as well as to you and others here, what we now need to do with our lives now is get on with it. Life is too short to spend much of it on regrets.

I knew my life was in trouble and started therapy for depression and c0-depenfence. I never xould gwt my wife to join in. I wanted her to see what changes were going on in my life, but she took the attitude that it was 'my problem'. I had had numerous health problems. 6 knee operations and 3 heart atacks, so I had gained a good amount of weightr. But when I went to hug her one day, she stepped back and pointed at my stomach and said "You really need to do something about that." Like I didn't KNOW that! But she could NOT have hurt me more than if shw clobbered me upside the head with a badeball bat. After about 10 mminutes, she came back ans said "I guess I hurt your feelings, but that's just the way I feel". THAT was he straw....and at that moment I considered our selved no longer man and wife, We got divorced 3 months later and that's been almost 10 years ago, and I sill havrn'y figured if I'm a victim or not.

My response is to Joyce. I was married for 39 years and some of them happy but many of them lonely and verbally abused. I left at the age of 60 also, and married the love of my life. My question to you is this: How do you let go of the guilt of hurting someone so deeply, even though he was not a very good husband or lover? I dream of him at night. I know I will never be totally happy because I have abandoned him.

How very interesting all these points of view. I have been going through years of back and forth agonizing regarding my relationship whether to and how to end this. My S.O. and I have been together for 10 years and during most of that time I feel that I have only business value to him, that all the "other" attention was only to bind me into thinking that he cared about me personally. The early years were non-stop working on various businesses that he would set up (he's an entrepeneur) and then I was to manage- to his satisfaction of course. Opening one restuarant at 6:30AM and closing down another at 2AM was the norm with somehow I was to do all the bookkeeping on both (because he didn't trust outsiders)and what did I mean by taking a nap in the afternoon. Add my stupidity to financially supporting these enterprises- but I thought I was a full partner in things. I rarely had time for my family (as I see now the jealousy of time spent away from him) and he would always have some crisis in the wings. When my health and mental well-being broke down 5 years later, I returned home only to find that my neglect of my family had made me blind to my mother's cancer and when she died a few weeks later, I was devastated with grief and anger. When he was so totally supportive and nurturing, I got sucked back into his world- pathetic of me. The only and biggest difference now is my gaining back some measure of self-repect. I refuse to live with him and I hold down a full-time job so my finances are finally my own again. I still get 6-8 phone calls a day plus e-mails to help with this letter and that problem. I do visit with him on the weekends (and do the accounting, etc. work). I don't know why I stay but this blog has helped me to catch a glimpse of the tanglement of abandonment- I would be "abandoning" a sense of myself in giving up this relationship, that somehow I wasn't strong enough to be there, loyal enough, etc. This has been very difficult (he has used the suicide ploy on me several times, the I'm going to kick the bucket any time now and other health issues). Do I really want to be responsible for any of these things happening? He requires more of my time and energy than I can give and though I dislike being thought selfish I am so tired.

I feel like that article was written about me. I endured 41 years of marriage to a man who held me at arm's length. He was depressed and angry and I was the brunt of that anger. There were good times and bad for the first 25 years, but once the children were grown and out of the nest, I felt rejected and unloved......sometimes I felt hated. I remember thinking that physcial abuse would have been easier than the emotional abuse I suffered. At age 60, I decided that I didn't want to spend my remaining years feeling that way, so I left. His sense of abandonment was excrutiating. I knew that but I could not return. The freedom from oppression was almost euphoric. He finally got some psychological counseling. He died three years later and I've felt some guilt about that, but I know I had to save myself.

I think Maggie is onto something here. The type of man she is describing fits my husband to a "T." He is almost sterotypically macho in many ways, but though he expects me to be the traditionally subservient wife, he also expects me to bring home the "big bucks" and nurture him, too. One woman cannot fulfill both roles--breadwinner and nurturer, hunter and organizer. He was wonderful the first year we were together, until we became engaged and started living together. Then the criticism and foul moods began and it has slowly gotten worse over time. I am a professional person with multiple degrees and don't need this type of nonsense, and therefore will probably jump ship in the near future. Then I'm sure he will have a major meltdown and tell everyone that yet another wife left him...he can put any type of spin on it he wishes, but the people who know us well will know why I chose to "abandon" him. I'm sure he will feel sorry for himself but I will be happy to have my life back. There are two sides to every "abandonment" story and these posters have illustrated that there is usually ample justification when a partner leaves a longterm relationship.

I understand the mum and dad situation exactly. There does not come some magical time when marriage (or any relationship) does not need nurturing. I left my wife after 38 years of marriage. I now live across town and occasionally help her with those few things that she can't manage. During our married life she usually wasn't so much a nagging bch, as she was just cold and distant, with surges of apparent unfeeling. During the entire 38 years I felt alone and unwanted except for the paycheck, when she would briefly get a sparkle in her eye. Nobody even looked my way unless there was a major problem to handle. It was like her life and our children's lives (now in their 40's and living next door to her) all got too big and important for me. They would all allow me to take care of their odd jobs in return for complete non-recognition and lack of any respect. Yes, I was pretty successful because I worked all the time. Why not? There was not one positive thing to go home to. I gave her everything in the divorce because material things always meant so much to her. I walked away with my pension and my freedom. And to the "behavior specialist"... Yes indeed, any future potential mate will first be scrutinized very closely by me.

It seems that there may be a reason people get "abandoned". My parents were married for 52 years, and my father decided to "abandon" my mother. He left because for most of those 52 years she was a non-emotional, demanding, spiteful woman who had to constantly scream and criticise us all. My brother, sister and I had a miserable childhood, were involved in physical, mental and emotional abuse most nights and weekends from as long as I can remember until we were old enough to leave home. My mother had seen doctors, specialists, psychiatrists, psychologists - the lot - over the years, she was well looked after because we all assumed she had to be ill somehow for her to carry on like that. No medical person could find anything wrong with her. As each of us left home, there were less people in that household for her to target her abuse to, and eventually there was just my father. She kept up her behaviour, which I am sure she viewed as acceptable, my father stood up to her as best he could. Dad stayed there with her after we all left - just the two of them, for 24 years, and it just did not stop. She would put tantrums on in public, at work, wherever. One day, after a really bad episode lasting weeks, dad decided he had had enough. So he gave her everything - the house, her car, all the furniture, the lot and he used his investment to buy himself a small unit at the other end of the town. He was 73 years old when he did this. He said he just could take no more,he had to get out or he would die. He just could not stand it anymore. And when this happened, my mother expected all family and friends to totally abandon my father and went about telling everyone what a terrible thing he had done to her. We have seen my father be taken off all medications he was on, he now goes out and enjoys himself, which he was not allowed to do before, not that he had any motivation anyway and he looks ten years younger. But so does my mother!! Your theory would say thay you would feel more for my mother than my father, and I did too, because she was left on her own, with no-one to abuse anymre. But it was more pity that I felt for her, a pity that has seen her life, her only life, taken up wiht anger, hatred, spite toward those who loved her. And we did love her and we still do. But now, a year on, I feel for my father, because he says she forced him our of his own household and he did not want to go but felt he had no chice. He maintains mum's house for her, takes her on outings, goes to family gatherings, helps her with her finances etc. but will not return to her or her house as he said it will just be the same as before. They did try to address the problem, they have more medical and psycho appointments over the years than anyone I know. Mum may appear to be the abandoned one, but it is beginning to feel, in reality, as if it is really my father.

Kay's story breaks my heart. I lost my Mom last summer (she was 64) and, although we were close, I find myself wishing I could do so much over again. I hope you get more of what you want and suffer less, Kay. I'm sure you didn't raise them that way, the world just programs people for selfishness. I'm 37 and have also been dealing with feelings of rejection and fear of abandonment my whole life. I'm a highly sensitive person who was rejected a lot as a kid in school (mostly because I was shy and anxious), and as an adult is bordering on bitterness toward the world and people in general. But the place where it's the hardest to deal with is romantic relationships. Because I'm so scared of potentially losing a good thing, I think I may put up with more than I should. And then I get really angry. Right now I'm seeing a guy who is long distance, keeps moving back the date when we're going to finally "be together" and can't visit in the meantime--all having to do with some very ambiguous work situation. We've met, so I know it's not due to his own physical shame or anything, and I actually believe that there is something pressing going on. But, he just started waffling again on the time we're supposed to be together (this July, supposedly) and I wrote him a very firm email saying I'm not writing for a while and I don't know if I can accept this. Then, because of my fear of f'ing things up, I regretted it and now am feeling foolish!!! I guess what I'm pointing out is that there's even another side to this abandonment thing: potentially abandoning your own self respect so you don't, God forbid, "lose" someone. Allison New York

This is a new take on the subject for me. And all of you who have responded have variances on the subject. I was married 20 years to a good man when he asked for a divorce. Then he was surprised when I filed first. Then we went through the process, and while I "got on with my life", he went into a tremendous depression. Now he is finally happy but I wonder--should I have tried harder to stay married.

I was in a bad marriage for ten years my ex cheated on me the whole time we were married. One day I had enough and walked out with 2 kids and pregnant with another. He thought if he kept me pregnant I would always be dependent on him and never leave not matter how many women he had. I feel like he abandoned me first by not being there for me being so busy with all his girlfriends although I am the one who was more hurt by the breakup. Truefully he seemed relieved I think we as women give all of ourselves to our partner our family where as men hold themselves back. So I would have to say in most cases we suffer more. The few relationships I have had with men who are divorced and who have been hurt by their exes they put shields up in all there future relationships not out of being hurt but I think from being made to feel like a fool. I think their pride is what hurts more then there heart.

Dear Susan: There are those that are more emotionally sensitive to their environment than others. This person needs to be the woman. If it is the man, he expects attentions needed to birth children to be spent on him. This reverse role relationship has been building in numbers over the past 200 years, but since the 1970s has begun the norm, which is not only harmful to women, but men too, since they are of the species their actions are so inhibiting. What has resulted is a bunch of women trying to self-support (a third of women with children in the house do not have men living with them). The man used to be the harder of the two sexes, more intelligent, less emotional, to order to kill and drag home meat. Now they are, in growing numbers, saying, "Look at me, here I am, look at me!" They have begun to take on the job of the woman that is organizing instead of doing. This entails a sort of selfishness a woman needs to draw resources to herself to have babies and maintain the role of organizer. Daddy thinks he's supposed to get those attentions now, drawing them from her- trying to get them from her at her expense. If she has any self respect she will eventually leave him, if she has any strength left. But what is very alarming is that women are getting used to this reversal in roles and becoming genetically built for the sacrifice. Both feel damaged in a breakup, but the man feels the biggest jolt since his property, his support system, his breadwinner is walking out. The woman feels freed at last when such a relationship is over, because now she only has one kid to raise in stead of two, with the limited resources she can raise alone, cause he doesn't work a whole lot anymore. Maggy Cotherman Behavior Expert