My husband left me for Thailand
DEAR BEL
MY HUSBAND retired a year ago after a busy career. About six months later he changed and became irritable. He took up golf, snooker and tennis, refusing to think about other occupations. He’d always been affectionate but this lessened. We spent ages planning a long trip to visit relations and tour around Australia but he became even more remote.
After I asked repeatedly what was the matter he said there wasn’t anyone else, he just felt he’d missed out on life. He was young when first married — and we got together soon after that ended, 18 years ago.
He said he wanted to experience life before it’s too late. He loved me but he wanted ‘different’.
He went to a counsellor who said if it was in his head it was real. He agreed. He stopped wanting sex as he said he’d ‘betrayed’ me by wanting someone else, even if imaginary.
We left for our trip. He was horrid on the journey, even worse for the first ten days, then decided to leave. So he disappeared, leaving me with a relation and nearly two months to fill.
I was and am totally devastated. He’s gone to Thailand. Said he wouldn’t phone or write but wants to be alone. This is the first time in our marriage we haven’t spoken or seen each other almost every day. I miss him beyond words.
My psychiatrist says it’s a mixture of late-life crisis, male menopause and retirement. He’s behaving as irrationally and horribly as a teenager at puberty but he’s 65! I want my loving, kind, thoughtful husband back. What can I do? LILIAN
OH IT’S terrible to imagine you abandoned so far away, on the dream trip of a lifetime. Your uncut letter tells me you’d even saved up for club class — a heartbreaking detail that suggests how much this eight-week trip meant to you. Your husband treated you with brutal, selfish indifference — and I can’t imagine any wife reading this without wanting to hug you in sympathy and sisterhood.
Your husband’s crisis is not uncommon when men retire. Many women also feel that retirement time yawns emptily.
Many marriages only jog along comfortably because of the distractions of work. Retirement brings a sense of an ending: the awareness that from now on the human journey is towards the grave.
I’m glad you are seeing somebody who can explain your husband’s bad behaviour. His own counsellor sounds less than helpful, in that he or she confirmed him in his self-pity.
A close mate might have told him to get a grip and not be an idiot — and sometimes plain- speaking can bring someone to their senses. (At this point, I beg therapists and counsellors not to write to me in indignant protest. I happen to believe in ‘the talking cure’. But
not always. Sometimes it can do more harm than good.)So your husband is now hanging out in Thailand with no concern for you. He might be having the time of his life — and there you have to face the worst implications.
To be honest, I don’t see what you can do about that. The ‘Shirley Valentine’ resolution would see you follow him out there to enjoy a blissful reunion, but I doubt real life would deliver such a happy ending.
I see two alternatives. First, you could decide unilaterally that enough is enough, gain strength from your psychiatrist and friends, and contact him (I assume you can email or text) to say you want to start a new life too, so will take steps to find a good solicitor for divorce proceedings. Say there’s a limit to waiting.
Could you be brave enough to do that? In my view you have to think about yourself now — and that means being tough and refusing to be the victim of the man you love.
But who is that man? What if he has changed irrevocably? Your old husband gone forever? Once again there’s nothing you can do about that. Nevertheless the alternative is to wait patiently and hope he comes to his senses. You can keep the home fires burning, living in hope all the while.
I’m not sure I would be that faithful — not after such treatment — but wish you strength if you are.