YOU BEEN SNAP. RELATIONSHIP NEW'S*

Relationships: How one woman kept her cool when her husband said he wanted to leave*

By Miss FB Lyimo:

After 20 years and two children together, Laura Munson’s husband told her that he wanted to leave their farmhouse home. Laura suppressed the urge to rage at his selfishness – and her restraint had surprising consequences…

Laura remained calm when her husband told her that he didn't love her

Still no sign of husband. I’ve been jet-lagged and restless through the nights, tossing and turning and walking the pearly moonlit rooms of our house. In my waking hour of this third day without him, I ward off thoughts that I should be afraid. I have to believe this is just a temporary low in the long arc of our marriage.
One thing I know he loves is my cooking. Maybe it will summon him home.
And maybe it does.
The children and I are in the kitchen making a glorious gamey mess. They know today could be the day Daddy is coming home from his ‘camping trip’ and they’re excited to impress him with our creation.
We hear a truck in the driveway and the dogs don’t bark, which means one thing: it’s him. I tell myself that he might come through the door with good news. Standing at my kitchen counter, I’m centred and strong. And there he is. Dirty and scruffy and handsome. He sits down in his chair by the hearth like he’s on familiar stomping ground. He hasn’t made any eye contact with me whatsoever.
Our son climbs on to his lap. ‘Daddy, did you catch any fish?’ he says, like he is meeting his superhero (he is).
‘A few, but no keepers,’ he answers, sounding strained. I see pain in his eyes and my heart starts to sink. I look at the copper pot simmering on the stove.
‘I’m making cassoulet,’ I say, too desperately. It seems like all I’ve got. He looks at me as if he has never seen me before. ‘We need to talk,’ I say. He nods.
I am swarming with visceral panic but I take his hand, surprised by its firm grip, and we go out to the screened porch.

Better days: Laura with her husband and children in 2008

He cries. He says he has done a lot of thinking. He feels like he can’t breathe. He needs to follow his instinct. It’s the hardest thing he has ever had to say. Something he never thought he’d say. He doesn’t think he loves me any more. He doesn’t have it in him any more to work at the relationship. Is showing up for dinner and doing the dishes ‘work’? Hunting for the Christmas tree, or building a house for our children where the hearth is warm all winter and the kitchen alive with smells and good food… Is that called ‘work’? He says he knows the children will understand. They’ll see how badly he needs to be happy. He’ll get a place in town.
‘I don’t believe it,’ I say. I don’t scream, ‘I love you!’ I stay calm. My proclamation of love won’t do anything but annoy him. Mine is not the love in question. Instead, I tell him he should go to a third-world country with a backpack like he has always dreamed about. ‘You need an adventure,’ I say like the 20-year-old he once loved. ‘Use some of our savings. It’s an investment in our future. It would be some of the most important money we’ve ever spent.’
He says if he does that then he knows what will happen. He’ll come back knowing he has to leave, or not come back at all.
‘Great,’ I reply trying not to be sarcastic. ‘If that’s your truth.’ Which I doubt, but I don’t say that. Instead I say, ‘How will you know if you don’t try? A trip for yourself will be a lot more imaginable for the kids than a bachelor pad in town. It’s not appropriate to ask them to consider your happiness. They’ll see it as one thing – abandonment.’ I’m trying not to get mean. But it’s hard. In my worst moments I think it would be easier if he had an unfortunate accident and died. Mourning seems infinitely more manageable than abandonment – for all of us he is about to leave behind in the name of ‘happiness’.
He doesn’t think he loves me any more. ‘I don’t believe it,’ I say
I tell my therapist that he wants a place in town. She rolls her eyes. She’s seen nasty divorces and apparently it all starts with a guy getting an apartment in town. She reaches into a file and pulls out a sheet from divorce.com. It’s a list of all the things a couple has to decide while setting up a responsible separation. The list freaks me out. Are we really here? I’ve never even thrown a plate at him. Or packed a suitcase and left for the weekend in a huff.
‘Just show him this list of things he will have to consider if he wants to separate in a responsible way. It’s a strategy.’ She smiles.
I fold the list and put it in my bag. ‘When do I give it to him?’
‘You’ll know.’
Over the next few weeks he comes and goes. Sometimes he sleeps on the sofa. Sometimes he doesn’t call for days, or answer his phone. Then we have another conversation at his office in town.

Laura and her husband (pictured here in 2006) had been happily married for years before his shock announcement rocked their relationship

‘What can we do to give you the distance you need without damaging the family?’ I ask. Notice the ‘we’ (aligning myself with him) and without damaging our family (ie, if you screw up our children’s happy childhoods, I’ll take you down, boy… But I don’t
say that).
‘I can move into town.’
‘And what would that look like?’ In my bag lies my trump card, the list of all of the questions we will have to answer if he moves out.
‘Well,’ he continues, ‘nothing would change, really.
I’d come home every night, have dinner with the family, hang out, tuck them in and go to my place.’
I have to hold back the laughter and I know it’s time. I hand him the list.
‘Jesus, this is ridiculous,’ he shouts as he reads it. ‘You don’t think this would be more damaging to the kids? You’re using them as leverage. You’re threatening me.’
‘No, I am just finding it hard to see how this house in town will give you the distance you need. You’re typically asleep at their bedtime anyway. I get that you need some space, but you are also a father and you have created a whole life which requires you in it.’ Part of me wants to say, ‘Grow up. These are problems of privilege. You’re
lucky to have a family to play around with. A house to want to leave. A wife not to love.’ Instead I say, ‘Take a holiday and go somewhere.’
My instinct says to make more of these spacious, open-minded statements. To get out of his way so he’s stuck with his own thoughts for company. So I start talking in
the first person singular over the next few weeks. ‘I’m taking the children hiking…I’m taking them to the lake.’ Thank God it’s summer and the options are glorious.
My husband comes and goes, a phantom of sorts. He’s going to work less and less. Making eye contact less and less. The children seem to accept it. They see he is acting strangely. I’ve told them it is something to do with work. The family is still intact; still a wellspring of love for them. That’s what I am telling myself. Anything is better than having him here by demand, like a prisoner on the sofa watching sports – my children watching their father resent their mother, the jailer. Or, worse, in a house in town somewhere.
He stays out late two nights in a row, doesn’t call, and on the third morning my son looks out of my bedroom window and says, ‘Oh look, Daddy’s truck is in the drive!’ like he is some kind of star making a cameo appearance. How long can I put up with this? I look closer and see that he has backed into the garden gate, the one he built so proudly. I just want to cry or scream or kick him out for good. But I breathe deeply. These are signs that this is a man in crisis.
My therapist tells me I have choices too. I can decide how long I can take it. It took us 20 years to get here; six months would, for now, be both pragmatic and dignified, I decide.
And it’s like my imagining an end has somehow infiltrated the psychic membrane of the collective ‘we’ of our marriage. Because things…start…changing.
He starts coming home for dinner at 6pm. He calls and tells us where he is. He sleeps in our bed. He makes eye contact. He wants to sit at our well-loved teak table on the stone patio he laid with his own hands.
My husband comes and goes, a phantom of sorts. He’s making eye contact less and less. The children seem to accept it
His beloved sister, who was like his second mother when they were growing up, has been given three to 18 months to live with secondary cancer. I want him to go to her. Help with the children because her husband of almost 30 years has taken off with a 20-something. I want him to feel what it is to be a force of strength in the face of loss. It’s not money that can make or break you, it’s love and death. He scours the internet for new jobs, but he is the family member that lives the closest and has the time to be of comfort to her. He buys an aeroplane ticket to go and see her.
Coping with his sister’s plight has changed him overnight. He’s reliable again. Fixing things that have long been broken. I know he is thinking of his own life, feeling unworthy of his health and all that he has at his table. At his sister’s house he helps with all the heavy-lifting household duties and helps her with her garden vision. He calls to tell me of his progress. And when I call him he answers immediately.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Watching the US Open with everyone.’ He lists his family, all of whom have come to help. He is sitting in a room full of women, some of whom have been devastated by marital abandonment, which seems to me like the perfect place for him to be.
When he comes home I’m relaxing in the hot tub with a cup of jasmine tea. Normally he settles in the bathroom with me when he wants me to talk. But this time I say nothing. I smile and sip my tea, and this time he talks. Calm and vulnerable. ‘You know…being with my sister…who’s fighting for her life – I just…’ he stops and starts again. ‘I just realise what matters. It’s not your job. It’s your relationships.’
He pauses and I am stone still.
‘It’s been great this summer not torturing myself with a dead-end job. I am not going to live the rest of my life hating my job.’ This is good. He is getting it and he hasn’t even had any therapy.
He continues. ‘It’s like I am just waking up to the fact that I am a 42-year-old who wants to be in a 20-year-old’s body, and it’s not working.’
Yeah. It’s called a mid-life crisis.
I am silent. My eyes are closed.
He continues. ‘I can never repay you for what I put you through. It’s just the way I have always done things. I have to hit rock bottom and then when I’m bloody and bruised, I rise up.’
Grace. Finally, his heart in his hand. I open my eyes, reach for the mug, take a sip and say, ‘One thing you might want to look at is your relationship with resentment.’
That’s it. It’s perfectly rational. It doesn’t take sides. And it’s true. I resist the urge to go into a 40-minute dissertation on all that I have learnt in therapy about resentment and how it makes certain that you suffer. Keeps you in victim mode.
His reply astounds me. ‘I’ve given that some thought and I am finished with resentment. I’m at a true crossroads. A true beginning. I just wish that my back didn’t hurt and that we weren’t so broke, that my sister wasn’t dying and that I knew what to do with the rest of my life.’
I think of him at 20. And I think of us as equals. And I say, ‘You can be anything you want to be.’