'AITA for considering divorcing my husband after he left us during a family vacation?' UPDATED
"AITA for considering divorcing my husband after he left us during a family vacation?"
Background details: I am a 40s wife/mom, married over 10 years and together 15 years with husband, 2 kids under 10. We both work relatively demanding jobs outside the home. Our families live 8+ hour drives or 2-4 hour flights away.
Late last year, I planned a trip to see several long-time friends in a shared, rented house over New Year's. I handled all the logistics and financial aspects including booking and obtaining a rental car, scheduling boarding for the family pet, doing laundry and packing items for myself and the kids.
I dealt with paying our family's share of the rental house, and coordinating and communicating with friends we planned to visit. I also did all the driving on the 500+ mile trip, as my husband dislikes driving, let his license expire, and has made no effort to renew it.
On the day of the trip, I was up before dawn to finish getting things together while my husband slept until 8-9am. There were many tasks to handle before we could leave: finish laundry and packing, take out trash, load the car with luggage and snacks, make breakfast for the kids and clean the kitchen, turn off Christmas lights, get the pet in its carrier, etc. before we could hit the road.
Once my husband was awake, he handled his packing and contributed to family breakfast before sitting back while I ran around getting things done. I asked him to handle a few things, which he did reluctantly and with exasperation before heading out to "take a walk."
We finally got on the road for what became a tortuous drive. The normally 8-9 hour drive ended up taking 13 hours due to traffic. It would have been a difficult journey to split between 2 drivers but was even worse because all the driving was on me. It was so awful that I booked one-way flights home (versus driving the rental car back).
The pain of the punishing road trip faded once our weeklong trip with friends got underway. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing people I normally do not see and felt at ease with pretty much everyone except my partner.
While these friends are also my partner's friends of 10-20 years and have been with us for life milestones, he sulked and acted antisocial towards me and others who he has been friendly with on previous occasions.
He expressed on the drive down that he would need to do some work while we were on vacation and brought his laptop. I did not foresee this being an issue because many others we were with also did remote work (including a physician friend doing patient televisits, a creative friend working on a screenplay over Zoom, and a scientist calling in for meetings).
A few days into the vacation, I received an email from the airline I'd booked flights stating there had been a change to the itinerary. It appeared the flights had been changed to leave 3 days earlier than scheduled and from a different airport.
I opened the email as I was sitting on a couch facing 2 friends on an opposite couch and my husband was about 20 feet behind them on the other side of the room. I made a remark about it, thinking there was a glitch of some sort, and my husband said, "Oh, I did that."
"That" = changed his flight and his flight only to leave from the closest airport midway through the week to return home alone. I was blindsided and it showed, to the point that the couple facing me looked at me incredulously and mouthed "WTF." I was in shock that he would make a unilateral decision to leave the kids and me midweek without telling me or making any effort to discuss with me first.
I replied, "Thanks for telling me" to my husband and asked why. He basically said he was leaving to return home for work because he felt the house's internet connection wouldn't be sufficient for his work needs.
I excused myself and immediately called my sister (who is also my best friend) to debrief. She validated that his actions were not appropriate, as did the friends who witnessed the interaction.
As news spread throughout the house, our mutual friends also expressed disbelief over the situation. I didn't feel like I could confront my husband about it because even simple conversations between us can go sideways.
Historically, he is passive and offers minimal responses ("Ok," "Sounds good") or escalates the issue to 11 and shows rage in his eyes and body language. He has never been physically violent with me, but the unpredictability of his rage response has left me feeling like I am walking on eggshells when I need to raise an issue.
A few hours passed and he brought our kids into the house in wet swimsuits. When I finished getting them showered and changed, he appeared in the room we were sharing for a moment.
As he was walking out, I approached him with the wet swimsuits and said assertively and somewhat heatedly, "Can you please take these outside?" He responded, "You could ask me that nicely." I clapped back, "You could have told me you were leaving early. I'm done."
We didn't speak after that, though my older child came to me to tell me they knew he was leaving. This hit me on a deep level, because I am a child of divorced parents who "used" me to deliver information to each other. I found it beyond f-ed up that my husband would talk to a school-aged child about his plans but not their mom/his wife.
Even though there were plenty of kids around, I took our kids to my family's house for New Year's Eve so that we could stay up late and be carefree with friends. I distanced myself from my husband, who got really dr*&k and acted like he had undergone a personality transplant.
I was told he took mushrooms. He left the next day with a simple "goodbye" and didn't bother to tell many others in the house he was on his way out, including one of his best friends from college.
The kids and I were fine for the remainder of the trip. I am used to handling things anyway. However, those who remained and are close to me were disgusted by my husband's behavior and stated that he was selfish (at minimum) or a narcissist (worst case scenario).
Disclosures and side notes: I struggle with ADHD and overwhelm. He often expresses non-verbal annoyance and exasperation towards me but does not verbally communicate it. There is a lot of tension and our relationship hasn't been in a good place for many years now.
We are more like roommates who co-parent and no longer sleep in the same room. Our marriage lacks physical and emotional intimacy and I have long wondered if he is cheating (which he denies) or gay.
Re: driving: We live in a large city and he gets around using mass transit and Uber. It's a point of contention between us because all the driving for kid/family activities falls on me when something happens outside of a transit/Uber convenient area.
The imbalance has also been felt when I have needed to seek medical care; I drove myself to the hospital in labor and had to recruit a relative to fly in and help me because he couldn't be the one to transport me when I needed surgery last year. We often do not see eye to eye on many matters. He can be rigid and immature and seems to lack empathy.
Communication is a major problem in our relationship. Last year, I asked him to begin couples therapy and we had a handful of sessions with a Gottman therapist that were not productive. The main takeaways were that my husband stonewalls and shows contempt and criticism, while I exhibit defensiveness.
The New Year's event came on the heels of me having a lumpectomy late last year. He was not supportive and barely asked me how I was feeling or how he could support me as I went through months of diagnostic visits to determine if I had breast cancer (ultimately, the surgically removed tissue was benign).
My coworkers, immediate family, and close friends were there for me, but it stung that he was so absent and uncaring as I faced a possible cancer diagnosis. I called him out on it during our final session with our previous couples therapist and he said that he didn't ask me about it because he thought the information I provided him was "too clinical."
At that time, he did not apologize when I called him out on a trend of him not stepping up for me when I needed support and instead issued his standard non-apology - "I'm sorry you feel that way."
We are starting discernment therapy this week. I have remained in this marriage mostly to avoid breaking up the family, but it feels like there is no coming back from this. He seems to have no idea that I am considering separation or divorce, and I haven't said anything to him because I am afraid of how he will respond.
I have a therapist who is aware of all of this and is tremendously supportive, but wanted to reach out to others to see if anyone has experienced similar issues and how they handled it. Any words of wisdom?
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP’s post:
You buried the lede. You're afraid he'll turn violent and he offered no support while you were dealing with cancer. Get the hell out, bring the kids with you, and offer no hint of any of it to him until you and the kids are already gone.
The kids' safety is paramount, don't mess around with it. When you see a lawyer ask how to best keep them safe and get your ducks in a row without him knowing. A DV help line can also help you, they would be glad to help prevent violence. Get out. NTA.
THIS! A DV hotline will help you even when the abuse is verbal and emotional. Even though he has not physically hit you, he is using physical intimidation to scare you. They will help you make a plan to get out safely and point you towards financial resources, advice from a lawyer, and therapy for you and you children. Stay safe!
Get a divorce. You’re in a toxic, non-loving and very unhealthy marriage. The kids should not be subjected to this kind of behavior being normalized.
Why would you think any of this is acceptable behavior???
You know you are NTA, hopefully. Your husband sounds useless and selfish at best. When you question if you are doing the right thing, ask yourself if this is the type of relationship you want to model for your children. How would you advise them if someday they were in a similar situation? I’m sure you hope for more for them.
Later OP updated the post with this:
UPDATE: We met with a couples therapist and I shared these concerns. He accused me of character assassination and smearing him when I recounted these events, how they made me feel, and how they were perceived by our friends. We’re getting divorced.
Thanks to everyone for your objective feedback. You collectively galvanized me to move in this difficult but necessary direction.