My wife has left me after 37 years, for ‘a cult’
DEAR BEL,
MARRIED for 37 years, my wife and I had normal ups and downs. We have three boys, all doing well, and a comfortable lifestyle.
Three or four years ago she told me she didn’t like our life and resented everything associated with being a wife: the daily chores of cooking meals and being at home (she hasn’t worked since our eldest was born).
At the same time she got involved with a group called The Crimson Circle — which (as best I can fathom) is about finding your true self. But I reckon it’s like a potentially divisive (and expensive) cult.
She believes this is the way forward: the focus of her life and raison d’être There’s no talking to her about it. She said she must find her true self and it makes us incompatible, so we must separate.
We did — 12 months ago. Living apart, I’m all for telling myself to get someone else and restart my life, but I do love her and miss the companionship we had. There are no other parties involved — except this group. I cannot fight their indoctrination via webinars etc. And they have seminars which cost about £1,500 to £2,000 a time, that she feels obliged to attend.
She thinks she’s found the solution to her problems and her ‘true friends’ — spending hours listening to their videos. I’m convinced she’s become brainwashed. Her head is elsewhere and I don’t know how to turn it around.
We’ve now talked about divorce as I can’t just limp on. My heart is still with her, as I love her to bits, but my head tells me I’m fighting a losing battle and should just call it a day and walk away.
Tonight she called me about a future family birthday celebration and I realised that we are no longer building projects together, nor planning a retirement together. I feel sad to have come this far with her, only to be defeated by what I see as a big scam. Any advice? JONATHAN
Never having heard of the organisation you mention, I studied its website for a long time. and, used as I am to the study of philosophy and religion, I found it puzzling, to say the least.
even though I’m quite fascinated by New age philosophies, I found myself quickly exhausted by the language. the crimson circle is the name for a group of humans involved on a particular spiritual journey, who are also here as teachers to others on the journey — but that’s about as simple as it gets.
there’s a glossary of strange terms which made me wonder if such mumbo- jumbo ( sorry for the shorthand cliché) is designed to confuse people into believing they are dealing with all- powerful mysteries. to me the whole thing reads and sounds like a mash-up of random beliefs, old and new, about life, death and the self — and feels very egocentric.
but, always open to talk of ‘ the spirit’ and ‘ the soul’, I’m generous about people’s beliefs — as long as they don’t hurt others. the term ‘scam’ is yours; I’m not sufficiently informed to make that judgment.
Naturally you will tell me that your wife’s sudden ‘ conversion’ to this cultish way of thinking/ feeling/ imagining has indeed hurt you very deeply, but I can’t help wondering whether she was in fact looking for a way out of your marriage. and any exit would have sufficed.
I doubt even you know whether your wife’s dissatisfaction with her
role made her search for The Crimson Circle, or whether finding this group turned her against the life she had. she says she is on a journey to find her true self, and whatever she is gaining from all these endless web talks and meetings (the site seems to go on and on) she has decided that marriage — her old life — does not reflect the ‘self’ she is becoming.
And to be honest, after a separation of one year i suspect you have no power to change her mind.
This is about a serious failure of communication and sympathy between you and your wife, and if she is set on a new path away from domesticity nobody can change her mind. What matters now is how you move forward.
it would have been interesting to know what your adult sons think of all this, whether there are any grandchildren, and so on.
i hear the sadness within your letter and sympathise deeply, but i do believe you have to think of your own self.
You feel you have lost a shared future, but perhaps you can teach yourself to value all the past has given you, to respect who you are now, and realise that this has to be the beginning of a new stage. i wish you courage.