Our resident agony aunt Niamh Fitzpatrick was live in studio this morning with her advice for one listener left reeling after her husband walked out.
Dear Neil and Niamh,
A few weeks ago, you were talking about people starting over. I need advice with that very thing with my husband of 3 years. We had been together for 8 years and he walked out a few months ago with no warning. I’d been on meds for fertility treatment for 18 months prior and we’d actually just been to an IVF clinic a week before he walked out. He’d been having an affair. I don’t know how long for. He literally walked out on me and also on all his friends, and he changed his job and he moved away! He has literally reinvented himself and put his old life in a box. I’m at a total loss trying to start over. I’m at an age where everyone I know is in relationships. It’s impossible to understand why he did this and how he did this.
When you got married and exchanged your vows there may well have been a line in there about “for better or for worse”, but even if it wasn’t said that way, getting married is about making a decision to face life’s ups and downs together, as a team. For whatever reason, your husband was unable to face the hard times and he decided instead to turn away from the marriage rather than towards it. That is the reason he did this and it has nothing whatsoever to do with you and everything to do with his own internal decision making. How he did it, is he told himself whatever he needed to in order to give himself permission to do this.
Infertility is tough on any couple; it brings a layer to a relationship that challenges you medically, physically, emotionally, financially, practically.Instead of being able to do what most people can do naturally and without too much thought, a couple with fertility issues find themselves on the journey to parenthood with medics and procedures and tests and schedules on the path with them. This can put huge pressure on a relationship and sometimes a couple can become lost under the weight of expectation, hope and disappointment.
Some people are better equipped to deal with pressure in terms of psychological skillset, they can find a resilience when needed. Your husband may have been struggling with the challenges of fertility treatments; or his feelings for you may have changed regardless of what was going on in your lives. But either way he could have chosen to turn to you and tell you that he wasn’t happy and see if the relationship could be worked on or indeed to separate. Instead he chose to look elsewhere for what he needed and to make a clean sweep in his life. This suggests that he doesn’t currently have the ability to handle the pressure when things are not going well.
So, your first step is to realise that this has everything to do with him and nothing to do with you. There is nothing that you did or didn’t do. In life we have a choice in whatever situation we are in and his choice was exactly that – his. You deserve a man who is capable of handling hard times rather than one who chooses to run away from them – remind yourself of this.
Secondly, this is about setting yourself up to be able to start over. The first thing in this regard is to get professional support, as you have a lot to deal with now – the loss of your marriage and what this means to your dreams of being a mother; also, there may be implications for your home after the marriage breakdown. So, you need to get support as this is a huge amount to handle on your own. See The Psychological Society of Ireland website for psychologists or counsellors in your area. You will be ready in time to look at what you do want in a partner and in life and the support and guidance will help you move towards that.
Thirdly, look at the other ways to set yourself up to move on from here:
- Gather your friends/family around you to support you.
- Be disciplined in your self-care – sleep, exercise, food/hydration, fun….
- Find a project to challenge you.
- Pick things that you have always wanted to do & plan them.
- Outside of this, take each day at a time rather than go too far ahead in your mind.
- Focus on what you can control, letting go of what you cannot.
- Allow yourself to make mistakes. This is huge & there’s no instruction book with it, so be kind to yourself in what you expect.
- Break things down into manageable chunks, dealing with each one at a time.
- Tell yourself that you will be ok, even if you don’t know exactly what ok looks like right now.
For an appointment with Niamh, check her website or if there's something you'd like Niamh to address on air, email problem@todayfm.com or send post to Marconi House, Digges Lane, Dublin 2.
