Wife feels guilty for leaving cheating husband during 'mental crisis.' + Update
"AITAH for divorcing during my husbands mental health crisis"
Thought_Willing
Me (38F) and husband (38M), married since 2009 and we have a preteen daughter. Last 3 years have been really tough on us because of my husbands bad working conditions that started to effect his mental health. I noticed signs of burn-out and depression and brought up these concerns regularly to him. He was very dismissive and refused to see his situation and refused therapy.
He started becoming distant and often isolated himself and was regularly butting heads with our daughter. He eventually told me that he had met a woman at work. Their relationship was not, according to him, physical but he was in love with her and felt that she was his soulmate and best friend.
He said he was very sorry and that he could not decide which woman he would ultimately be happiest with. He spoke out about this at home whilst I was having the toughest time of my life. I cried alone over my dreams and plans, everything we had together.
He also told me that in order to clear his head, he would need to leave the house and spend some time on his own. THAT co-worker had offered him her spare room and he was going to take it.
I asked for his help organizing the rest of the school year as I was commuting and I promised him that as soon as the school year was over, I would look for an apartment closer to my work and me and our daughter will move out and he can have the house to himself for his healing.
I found an apartment almost immediately and we moved. He visited us one weekend a month and brought his chaos with him every time. The new home had become a safe haven that we cherished and he "took it over" as soon as he appeared, and it felt like I wasn't breathing until he finally left.
After 6 months of living like this, I decided I had given things enough time to mend and they had not, I was still hurt and bitter and he was still cagey about what was going on and what his ultimate decision really was.
I told him I was done living like this and that I wanted a divorce. He absolutely lost his shit and left and drove back to our old house in the middle of the night just to get away from me.
A week later he told me the co-worker is pregnant and he was angry that I didn't want to even try to fix our marriage. Since then, he has gotten increasingly more hostile and accusatory in his communication with me.
He blames me for breaking up the marriage and abandoning him during his crisis. He says he was not himself and has no idea why he did the things he did but that I was the one who left.
He claims I was no help when he needed me and that I had clearly mentally abandoned our relationship long before (more than 3 years prior). He tells me I'm cold and calculating and clearly "not the person he thought I was".
I understand that he is not well, he finally did go to therapy. I explained a lot of his actions with that in mind at first. So AITA he claims I have become, taking his daughter away and leaving?
Here were the top rated comments from readers after the OP's initial post:
Beck2010
You attempted to help him multiple times, and multiple times he shut you out. Instead of seeking help or getting a new job, your soon to be ex decided the correct path was an emotional affair that led to a physical affair. There is absolutely no reason to feel guilty about divorcing this guy. NTA.
Stop indulging him. Coordinate his visitation with your daughter through an app. Do not discuss anything else. Keep all communication written. Stop second guessing yourself. You have nothing to feel guilty about.
The OP responded here:
Thought_Willing
Thank you for your answer. I have actually noticed that keeping all our communication in writing has helped me deal with all of this better. I feel like my thoughts stay more structured and I can choose to respond or not respond depending if I feel too insulted or triggered in the moment. Helps me keep civil.
I personally feel like i really tried my best to help him, and I was truly devoted and very much still in love but he sees it very differently and it's hard for me to reconcile between those two completely different stories.
ResurrectionScary
LOL.. so you are supposed to put up with him messing around on you because it's good for his mental health? Is he actually a cartoon villain because that is unhinged.
-TheArtOfTheFart-
NTA, the other woman is the one he wants as a soulmate. he admitted it himself. He took off his mask and told you who he really is. Believe him. You’re just the backup in case things with her don’t work out. You’re also apparently the planned future nanny/child support for their coming kid.
Otherwise he wouldn’t have been so angry that you walked out on him and a pregnant partner. He wouldn’t have said squat about her being pregnant to you unless it benefited him. You DESERVE better. You deserve to be treated better. Hold fast, stay strong. You got this.
Ieatclowns
Are you kidding me? The only mistake you made was letting him stay at your apartment every weekend! NTAH! What a monster he is.
Hungry-hippo12
He wasn't having a mental crisis. He cheated on you moved in with the other woman and tried to bring you along as a back up plan. The only thing you did wrong was not divorcing him sooner.
Five days later, the OP returned with an update.
"UPDATE: divorcing during my husbands mental health crisis"
Thought_Willing
Hello /AITAH, I have been reading all the comments on the original post and tried to answer as many of the questions as I could. The original post can be found through my user page.
I wanted to write an update since my post seemed to raise some questions and also to thank you for your engagement on the post, it has meant a lot to me. You have given me good advice, some really good things to think about and some tough love and criticism I surely needed. Thank you so much.
The divorce is in process, and I have not seen him in person for some 4 months at this point. He mostly keeps radio silence until it seems he has to unload some hurt on me. I’ve kept my contact to him to a minimum, only ever messaging him in things regarding our daughter or requesting him to react to official paperwork or to his electricity bills that I’ve transferred to him.
Due to the circumstances in which we started this separation originally, I paid most of his living expenses, mainly since I have a steady job and get paid double his salary. He is still very much incapacitated by his mental health issues, and I wanted to alleviate some of the practical matters for him.
Now that we are pulling everything apart, he has been (maybe purposefully) making this into a very slow and frustrating process. Currently I still pay for his electricity and he reimburses those bills for me at the end of each month, sometimes he needs “encouraging”.
Usually this leads to him messaging me all day, usually complaints on how I’m now raising our daughter, now that I have made him obsolete (his words). Telling me to “get a new dad” to help me with the job as soon as possible.
He seems to try very hard to push my buttons by saying things like “it must be very hard for you to send your daughter to someone who you loathe and hate so much” and if I make the mistake of losing my temper, even for one curse word, he will turn immediately and tells me to calm down, stop spitting acid and maybe we should continue our discussion when I’m not so wound up.
I have mainly chosen to not engage in these conversations if when they start going off the rails. I have all of his outbursts in writing. I’m also currently under the impression that the co-worker is not interested in a relationship with him anymore.
And all of those who asked: yes, the baby is his by his own word. He still has not told our daughter about any of it. I have chosen to give him an ultimatum on the matter.
I will bring it up one more time when we have our official meeting with our Child Welfare Officer next month (that’s the official route where we live) and if he still refuses I will take it to myself to tell our daughter the truth. So many of you have encouraged me to do this for her sake and for the sake of our relationship and I thank you for sharing your experiences with me.
I have also contacted her school therapist and the curator and informed them of the issues she is facing now and the ones still to come. I’m hoping they will offer her some scheduled help since I know she is shy on telling me everything.
She is the most important thing in my life and as sorry as I am for her having to go through this essentially because of my choices, I refuse to take all the blame now, and I’m ready to shift it where it belongs.
Personally I’m a much happier person these days. I feel bursts of gratefulness and true happiness these days just by watching her eat her dinner and talk to me about her day at the dinner table, in our clean and peaceful home. Even my houseplants are thriving as silly as it sounds :D
I have finally opened up about all of this to some of my friends and my siblings and they have all been super supportive. And my siblings were clearly shocked but both did bring up that they are somehow not surprised it all went this way.
They seem to have seen things a bit more clearly from afar just like this community did. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, I feel like my daughter and me are going to be just fine in the end.
Here were the top rated comments after this latest update:
Separate_Kick3186
Stop paying the electricity bill. Stop being sympathetic or empathetic with him. Do not engage. You need to do this for yourself, you owe that to yourself.
worldbound0514
This mental health crisis sounds like an awfully convenient excuse for a lot of bad choices.
Poor woman. I hope she can find her peace.
Jakyland
A "mental health crisis" where he needs to stay with someone he might leave his wife for and have sex with them ... color me very skeptical.
TwoBionicknees
Use one of the apps that allows all conversations to be recorded and zero messages to be deleted, block him on everything else, have your lawyer tell his lawyer that all future communication.
Every single message goes through that app and that everything that doesn't is considered to have not been received so if he uses other means he's legally considered to have not told you.
That means if he tells you about your kid having an appointment and texts you or sends a letter not on this app then he's at fault. Have all communication recorded and monitored. For that reason alone it will likely be much more business like and skip all the emotion. Cut him out of your life, stop talking to him, stop taking his nonsense.
He was cheating on you, left and expected you to stick around while he both fucked and knocked up his girlfriend and then blamed you for the marriage splitting up. Stop accepting his words, stop communicating with him.
He doesn't have mental health issues, he's just an asshole who wants you to be to blame for him being a horrible person. Cut him as completely out of your life as you are able and know for a fact he's a scumbag.
danuhorus
As soon as he gets verbally smacked down and humiliated by a lawyer or a judge, OP's life is going to be so much more peaceful. She probably can't block him outright for now due to legal and parenting reasons.
But those parenting apps will make the next however many years until her daughter is grown so much easier and there's always the possibility that he'll be a lot more careful about texting her now that he knows every bullshit out of his mouth is a point against him in the courtroom.