Ask Philippa

A reader is anxious and depressed after her husband left. It will take time to mend – but this will happen, says Red ’s agony aunt, psychotherapist Philippa Perry

Our agony aunt tackles your issues

Six months ago, my husband left me. I’m 44 and we’d been together for 20 years. When he left, our daughter had just gone away to university. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I found out he left me for another woman, who he met at work.

My husband hasn’t been to see me or communicated to explain why he did what he did. I cannot understand why he did it and it came as a total shock to me.

I’d thought we were a close and happy family. Not happy all the time, but who is? How could I have been so wrong? I feel as if I was married to a stranger. He hasn’t even tried to speak to our daughter to explain. When I texted him to say she’d like to hear from him, his only reply was that she’s an adult now, not a child. It really upset me that he’s cut her out, too. What he has done has caused me to plunge into severe anxiety and depression and I can’t get out of it. I do have support from my family and good friends, and my daughter, too. But I’m stuck, and can’t seem to move on at all. Name and address withheld

I am really sorry to hear this, it sounds like an awful time for you. You had been together 20 years and this only happened six months ago. You will need more time than this to recover. Feeling anxious and down is a normal reaction to such a shocking event. You will come un-stuck, but it is not a process you can accelerate. You cannot will a wound to stop bleeding before the red blood cells have had a chance to clot and you cannot bypass the pain and the hurt into which this event has hurtled you. It was only a couple of weeks ago that you found out a possible cause of his desertion. Events and information as significant as this take time to settle.

You will move on because it sounds as if you want to. I’m sorry there isn’t a shortcut that can speed up the process. You will have to feel the feelings. Some people are good at putting their feelings in a box, denying them, but invariably by doing this, they become less empathetic towards others. The other thing that happens when we numb one feeling, is we tend to numb the rest of them, too. If you were to kill the pain, you’d kill your own spontaneity with it. So willing yourself to stop feeling is not something I would recommend, even if it was possible. Besides, denied feelings do tend to rise up again and give us a nasty bite. So, although you are hurting, I believe you are doing the right thing by using the support of your family and good friends to work through the inevitable grief. Keep feeling the painful emotions and, through the very act of feeling them, their sting will lessen. If you want to get angry too, I would not hold back.

Your ex-husband appears to be unwilling to unpack what happened with you. So, whatever sense you manage to make of him leaving will be, in part, a fantasy. And I would say this: if you are going to create a fantasy, make it a good one. That is, do not blame yourself in any way. If he was going to run away with no reason, there isn’t anything you could have been or done to prevent it. My favourite explanation for events like this is, “He acted like a dick”.

Be careful not to try and get answers by using your daughter as an intermediary. I don’t know if you were trying to do this by texting him about her but, as you know, she can send her own texts. He says she’s an adult at 18; she may well be, people with childish fathers often have to grow up too fast.

In time, you will see this as an opportunity, a chance for a different, better life, but do not expect that realisation to come for a while yet. You need some more time. Sending you strength.