I’m so hurt my dying husband wants to leave me

DEAR BEL,

ELEVEN years ago my husband ( 79) was diagnosed with prostate cancer, now advanced and progressive. To my shock, he recently announced that he wishes to leave me.

I’m 61. He told me he’d discussed his plan with his oncologist and eldest son (not mine). I’m furious at this betrayal. He doesn’t want a divorce, only to be free of me, because I am too ‘bossy’ and ‘nag’ him to use a walking cane etc.

I have merely made practical ‘suggestions’ — perhaps once too often. We’ve been together for 27 years. Our two children are in their mid-20s. He has two sons from his first marriage, both with children.

He’s dealt with the medical aspects with courage and dignity, but not the emotional aspects. From the moment of diagnosis, he shut down emotionally.

We’ve clashed regularly in the past year. He can be belligerent and rude — but to abandon me at the eleventh hour is plain cruel. I feel I don’t deserve to be treated like this, however much I sympathise with his situation. He says we are simply incompatible — after 27 years.

I am being dumped for trying too hard to be the loyal, caring, supportive wife. His announcement leaves me bewildered, devastated, angry and hurt. He will live in a small property belonging to my stepson, and pay him more rent than I consider he/we can afford.

He says he is leaving me in our home (which we own) with ‘sufficient money’. I feel he is selfish and self-centred, and struggle to see his illness as an excuse. I’ll never forgive him.

It’s as though he wants to punish me for something — his illness? My relative youth? Perhaps he thinks perversely he’s doing me a favour. It’s ridiculous, because I want, need, to be with him to the end — not least because if not, how will I deal with my grief? He doesn’t seem able to empathise.

Our children and my sister and brother have advised me to let him go. They think it’s for the best. They tell me to stop feeling responsible for him.

I’ve tried to open his eyes to the huge mistake he may be making. After all, who is going to look after him, if not me? I cannot force him to stay, so need to be told it’s futile to fight.

ALTHEA

Your original email was four times as long, so I have much detail and insight into your overall tone. It’s distressing to see just how angry and rejected you feel — which is overwhelming everything else.

Your email is a long cry of understandable pain and rage. But I’m wondering what your husband would say about your marriage and how you’ve both coped during these awful years. You admit: ‘We have locked horns many times, as I can be strong-willed, too.’

Let me emphasise my deep sympathy at this time of enormous shock and bewilderment. But having said that, I can’t be any help unless I’m as honest with you as you must be with yourself.

Apart from the sentence just quoted, your full email paints you as a blameless, caring wife who is the victim of a selfish man.

That may be partly true . . . but cannot be the whole story. unless your husband has lost his mind (and he hasn’t), he must have reasons for this drastic course of action. I

believe it will help you deal with this pain and rejection to empathise just a bit more with him — as you wish he would empathise with you.

of course, you’ll protest angrily that this is just what you have been doing. But your email reveals the extent to which resentment has closed you down — just as he closed down emotionally after his diagnosis.

It’s no surprise that a letter to an advice columnist makes this sad situation ‘all about you’, but surely you have to make a leap into the mind of a dying, frightened man — and make it about him, too?

He has told you that he had planned to leave you ‘as soon as your children were financially independent’. So there were large cracks in your marriage which you are now glossing over.

Your husband is 18 years older and (you say) has always known his own mind.

It sounds as if he wants peace — to ready himself for death. So I think your family members are right. It’s unbelievably hurtful, but what choice is there?

Maybe, after a while on his own, your husband will realise he cannot cope without you and beg to come back, so that you can nurse him.

Will you welcome him? Maybe you’ll become glad he made the decision and released you into your own life, with 18 years advantage in years.

But there can be no resolution if you persist in blaming him for depriving you of your right to grieve in the way you expect — as a loving widow who did her best.

Bluntly, if you cling to this lack of forgiveness, you are dooming yourself to even more unhappiness.

Put yourself in control, stop feeling victimised and realise that, even if your marriage has run its course, your future happiness depends on the pity you offer your husband now. You may yet be at his side when he dies.