The Case of the Runaway Husband
I remember climbing into bed with my husband for the last time with complete clarity. It was after midnight, a typical late evening in February of 2017. He was already deep asleep, his back and face turned away from mine.
Between our pillows laid his cellphone, unlocked and unbothered. He’d forgotten to plug up his phone — something he rarely ever did. I envisioned him waking up to a zero battery phone and my stomach turned into tiny knots.
He would blame me, even though it was him who fell asleep without plugging it up. I knew he would wake up screaming and throwing things — and it was the last thing I wanted to hear in the morning.
I reached for his phone, which was lying face down, when a feeling overcame me that stopped me dead in my tracks. I hadn’t looked at the screen, I hadn’t even touched the device. Still…intuition bombarded my brain with a singular, overwhelming message:
“If you look at what’s on that phone, your life is never going to be the same.”
Up until that moment, the evening had progressed as usual. I waited at home, taking care of chores and dinner. Biding my time, and wondering exactly where he was.
For those last two years, his absence became a frequent habit. I remember calling him one evening, understandably upset, when this pattern began. I recall standing on the stairs of our empty house, listening to the warmth drain from his voice. He announced that he wasn’t coming home with zest, and told me “not to expect him” anytime soon. I could hear the cruel laughter of his buddies in the background, no doubt egging him on.
It felt like someone had crushed my lungs and heart all at once. I could feel my husband’s words vibrate down to the marrow of my bones — I heard the hollowness of his feelings. I knew this was a cathartic moment in time, and I was far from ready for it. It was early 2015; both of our mothers had died in mid-2014 (only months apart) from cancer. They were both very young. My own mother was only 45 when she was passed away — my MIL was only 48.
I told myself that my husband was going through a quarter-life crisis. Not only had he just lost his mother, the only parent he ever knew, but we’d recently taken in his younger sister as well. A grieving 14-year old girl was added to our childless, traumatized household — this was no tiny change for any of us.
Although I felt fully (slightly naively) prepared to care for her, I knew that my husband was, emotionally, the weaker partner. I soothed my internal fears with reassurances that he was adjusting, that he was grieving in his own way. I focused on raising my sweet sister-in-law and surviving. Getting through to another day.
I started to sleep as many hours as I could, my body trying to escape from its current reality. 16 to 20 hours a day, usually in broken fragments. Still, I never felt relief from the constant exhaustion I felt. Life lost its sweetness and I could gain pleasure from nothing, with the exception of eating. My almost life-long eating disorder flared up and brought me the serotonin boost I couldn’t find elsewhere. My husband had long stopped touching me, even just to hug me goodbye. As someone whose love languages are physical touch and quality time, my body grieved, rampaged, rebelled, and screamed in silence. My physical health began to deteriorate and I gained weight rapidly at this point.
I thought that if I waited long enough, my husband’s distance would naturally rubber band, and draw him back to me. Especially if I didn’t chase him. In my mind, I visualized my patience as a gateway to the life I remembered in the early days of our relationship, when he couldn’t wait to be by my side. When our late night talks ticked into the early mornings — soul spilling sessions that I can only remember now as a hazy blur.
As those two years progressed, whenever he was home, his words became shorter and more sour. When something wasn’t done to his liking, he would explode into emotional rages. He would scream and throw things my way — I remember dodging a frozen water bottle one morning. I had forgotten to take them out of the freezer for him — he preferred them “slushy”, but not “completely frozen”.
He put a large hole in the kitchen wall where my head should have been.
True to the coward that he was, he never put his hands directly on me. Instead he threw airborne projectiles my way — hoping they could make the impact his fist could not.
Frozen water bottles, broken office chairs, plates of food, drinks, and glass mason jars didn’t cut deep enough. Whenever something displeased my husband, however small, he wounded me with insulting words. When that wasn’t enough, he began to withhold all forms of affection. This now included texting and speaking to me for any length of time.
Despite his abuse, he absolutely demanded that I have his laundry completed every week, to his precise wishes. He often set me up to fail, simply so he could direct his rage at me.
During this turmoil, it occurred to me that he was probably provoking me in an effort to get me to leave him.
He didn’t want to be the one to end our 11-year relationship. He was my first love, my first kiss, my only lover. I had saved everything sacred for him. My husband knew the weight of this, and how much these things meant to me.
But if I left him, he could be free of all the guilt that was destroying him. At least in his twisted frame of ethics.
“Take a moment, because this is the last time you’ll ever lay beside him.”
I don’t know if it was God or intuition, but I’ve never had another moment or feeling like it in my life. I still hadn’t looked at his phone at this point, but I just knew. I knew if I looked, nothing would ever be the same.
I could’ve turned over and gone to sleep. I could’ve continued the loveless dance that allowed me to live in splintered, familiar ignorance.
But I couldn’t do it anymore — my strength and patience had been spent. I was so tired of being in pain. My body ached for companionship, my soul longed for genuine, reciprocal love.
I laid back down, my eyes scanning the room. I took in every detail, every sound. I could hear my sister-in-law shuffling around in the other room.
I turned on my side and ran my hand over my husband’s shoulder and back. I tried to memorize the feeling of his skin. I remembered the countless times I had placed feathery kisses upon his arms and shoulders — since he didn’t allow me to touch his torso or chest. Because of this, I could never truly “snuggle” or hold him.
Despite this, I hugged into his back one last time, as carefully as possible. In my soul, I knew for an absolute fact that this would be the last time.
I closed my eyes and breathed in the moment. Memories of the last 11 years played through my head. I thought about the first time we ever met, our first date, the first time we kissed (and I thought my heart would explode).
I recalled the feverish intensity he once had for me during our first year together. For that brief time, it was glorious. I felt like the most wanted, beautiful girl in the entire world.
We even waited six months before we made love for the first time. I naively thought that these “signs” of patience and dedication signaled that love was there, underneath his immaturity and flaws. It was certainly there for me, in the greatest amount of passion, vitality and strength.
But for him?
I think I was nectar to taste, something he thought he wanted, but then he realized that relationships require the work of two people, not just one. There was certainly infatuation for him at the beginning, but genuine love?
In my opinion, I don’t believe he ever really loved me. Sure, we were together for 11 years (married for 6) — but that doesn’t require love. The dedication and loyalty I gifted him carried our relationship — I did the heavy lifting.
He simply reaped the bounty of my devotion.
When I was ready, I sat back up and hit the power button on his phone.
As I’d suspected, a single text message appeared on the lock screen from a contact simply labeled as “Jay”.
I’ll never forget her words.
“Good night dear, I hope you wake up in the morning happy.”
A simple, short line. It reached into my chest and tore me in half.
Dark, bitter thoughts ran through my mind. Cruel words that often lurked in the shadows of my mind. I remembered the last time my husband tried to be intimate with me. I could hear the insults he made about my body, and recalled how he discarded me without even finishing. There wasn’t a sacrosanct boundary too intimate for him to violate.
Ultimately, I was forced to face the truth: I’d wasted eleven years of my life into a failed relationship, into a man who didn’t even respect me, much less love me.
Despite my inner turmoil, I could see the pins tumbling in the lock, slowly aligning to open. Relief and excitement co-mingled with acute sorrow. In the midst of this elated grief, I knew I was getting another chance at a genuine, romantic relationship with someone who was emotionally healthy.
God was throwing me from the cage that I refused to leave.
Calmly, I stood up and turned the light back on, my hands trembling. I gently shook him and showed him the text message.
“ Who is Jay?” I asked him.
He stared at me silently at first, his mind still not fully connecting with what was happening.
“It’s a coworker. You remember Jay, don’t you? He must have just texted me by mistake, he probably meant to text his wife.”
Our eyes connected.
Neither of us spoke for a few moments.
He knew that I knew.
It was over.
“….I love you, but I’m not in love with you anymore….” he muttered sheepishly. He didn’t even manage to make eye contact with me, the woman who had warmed his bed and loved him unconditionally for almost 11 years.
He shamefully admitted his affair, but affirmed that he no longer cared about our relationship, and that there was no chance of saving it.
Like so many women who’d come before me, they often asked or wondered why?
He never told me why he was unhappy. He never told me what was lacking, or what he really wanted. I never denied him a single thing in our relationship. I never starved him of passionate sexual connection, affection, companionship, or emotional support. I worked full-time after we first got married and he scaled back to part-time, so that he could focus on getting his CDL. Every single resume he ever had, I helped create.
Every brick that laid the foundation of his adulthood had my fingerprints all over them. I was the bedrock of support he could always rely on. I was a paragon of fidelity, even at his absolute worst.
Less than a week after catching him cheating, he was gone.
I didn’t beg him to stay. I didn’t cry hysterically and fight to stop him from going out the door.
There’s no point in fighting for scraps of nothingness. You cannot force a person to love you, regardless of how much you may have loved them.
That night we “amicably” split up, not that I had a choice in the matter. Regardless of my array of personal feelings, I knew he wouldn’t consider them. The minute his dirty secret was revealed, his feet were already out of the door.
His younger sister, whom we had custody of, was 17-years-old at the time. I demanded that she, along with our pets, would remain with me.
Period.
He didn’t bother to fight me, or seem interested in doing so.
His sister was overcome with heartbreak when he moved out a few days later; it only inflated her already complex and traumatic sense of abandonment. I remember the day he officially left; she was tie dying shirts on the sidewalk outside, trying to keep her mind off of what was happening.
He finished packing his things, and as he walked to his vehicle for the last time, he leisurely told her “love you, bye” as he got into his vehicle one last time. As if it was a normal day.
He never gave her any comfort, explanation, or support. He stepped out of her life as easily as you would step out of a convenient store.
Throughout the next year, he would try to renege on spousal support payments multiple times. He eventually had us evicted from the house we were renting; all because he didn’t have the nerve to tell our landlord the truth about why we were splitting.
His sister and I faced eviction and homelessness several times due to him abandoning us financially with no warning. Weeks after he left, we discovered that he’d bought his lover a new car, dinners, gifts, and even funded her trip to Florida (this was all prior to our split). He had been putting money away bit by bit into a secret bank account, until our joint account was left bare.
He’d lied and stated that his hours at work had been cut (he drove for a local company) — this is how I accounted for the lack of funds. In truth, he was stashing it away and spending it on his mistress.
During the lowest financial points of this time, we had no working stove, no working fridge, and no washer or dryer. I dragged baskets of clothes to the laundry mat every week, praying I had enough coins to get our clothes completely dry. My grandparents ended up giving us a 15 year-old dorm fridge, so we could keep some cold food in the house. His sister and I cooked what food we could in a microwave.
I was blessed to get a promotion at work about four months after our separation — this honestly saved my life, financially speaking. I’m still recovering monetarily, in some aspects, but I’m no longer in the dire place that I once was.
Even better, I was finally able to experience real romantic love, for the first time in my adult life — and it’s been as beautiful, amorous and elaborate as I imagined it would be.
If you have a lover who has grown distant with time, or who wants to leave, divorce, or perhaps flee with an affair partner, this is my sage advice:
Let them.
Throw off every chain. Pack their bags. Shove them out the door.
You cannot force love to grow inorganically, and it’s unlikely to happen when your partner feels trapped in your arms.
If they cannot appreciate the warmth, support, and safety of your embrace, then send them out into the uncertain chill of the world.
Some will be addicted to the unknown atmosphere and thrive, unlikely to ever return. Others will claim their fill and then begin to miss what they easily took for granted.
During the interim, you should consider if they’re worth even turning the knob for, should they come back, knocking on the proverbial door.
Only you can decide — but remember, share your love, life, and soul carefully.
You’re worth more than you’ll ever estimate in this lifetime.
