My Husband Has Left Me and I dont Understand

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TryingHard1

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My husband and I met 7 years ago, both products of previous divorces. He is a cradle Catholic. However, our spirituality was very important to both of us and I enjoyed going to mass with him while dating. I went to RCIA and decided to convert. I love the church. When we married, he had a 2 and 5 year old, I had no children. We have had the most wonderful family. During the last year, his business has been failing badly and his drinking is has gotten bad. He is very hateful to me. All of a sudden he says he does not love me and he has moved out this past weekend. He says he is talking to a Priest from another Parrish to help him deal with all of his issus, he says he does not want to hurt me by being so angry at me all the time. He does not know if he will ever come home. He says there is no other woman. And…I cannot find evidence that there is. My heart is breaking in a thousand pieces. I am also a recovering alcoholic of 13 years, I am not drinking, and have gone back to AA for support, but it seems no matter how hard I pray, I am still falling apart. I just cannot understand it. I am trying to have faith…trying to pray for God;s will…but I cannot believe that God’s will is for this to happen… Can someone offer experience, or advice, or…something? Also, I could certainly use all of your prayers.
 
Ma’am-from one addict to another, I’m praying for you with all my heart.

Give your marriage everything you have-talk to a counselor, a priest, you name it.

Whatever you do, please, please, please STAY AWAY FROM ANY ALCOHOL.

God bless you a thousand times and I’m praying for you.
 
Also in the sober alky club - if you feel like drinking pray. Know that that will solidify your faith when He lifts the desire from you to lift the glass.

As far as anything else - go see a counselor - if he doesn’t want to go - go for yourself. You will need that support. Try to get a Catholic/Christian counselor that believes in marriage and the sanctity of it.

Get those kids away from him. If he is drinking like this than you need to protect those children unless Mom is in the picture to do it.

We never know why God allows evil to happen - sometimes we can figure it out, sometimes we can’t. One thing we cannot do is judge it as that will lead us straight to Pride.

God bless you.
 
I am sorry about your situation.

Please go see a conseler and/or a priest.
 
TryingHard1 said:
My husband and I met 7 years ago, both products of previous divorces. He is a cradle Catholic. However, our spirituality was very important to both of us and I enjoyed going to mass with him while dating. I went to RCIA and decided to convert. I love the church. When we married, he had a 2 and 5 year old, I had no children. We have had the most wonderful family. During the last year, his business has been failing badly and his drinking is has gotten bad. He is very hateful to me. All of a sudden he says he does not love me and he has moved out this past weekend. He says he is talking to a Priest from another Parrish to help him deal with all of his issus, he says he does not want to hurt me by being so angry at me all the time. He does not know if he will ever come home. He says there is no other woman. And…I cannot find evidence that there is. My heart is breaking in a thousand pieces. I am also a recovering alcoholic of 13 years, I am not drinking, and have gone back to AA for support, but it seems no matter how hard I pray, I am still falling apart. I just cannot understand it. I am trying to have faith…trying to pray for God;s will…but I cannot believe that God’s will is for this to happen… Can someone offer experience, or advice, or…something? Also, I could certainly use all of your prayers.
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He could be taking his failing business very personally - too personally. Speaking from experience, he may be too wrapped up in his business/career and may perceive that its’ tanking/failing will mean that HE has failed. Failed to his business, failed as the provider for the family, failed as the father of your kiddos, and finally failed as a husband, and all the humiliation that comes with these things. I’ve been there - as once a CTO to a public company that crashed back in the dot-com days (2000). It took me years to get through it all, but the real progress only came after I put my full trust and faith in God to provide - not just my job, or skills, or ‘connections’. Praying novena’s to St.Joseph, asking his intercession, and following his model is how I was able to see this. Our family went thru some ‘hard’ times (I finally acquiesced to accept whatever job I could find - less than half of my previous career ), but it brought us much closer to God, the church, and our faith. I also learned to ask for help from my fellow brothers in faith - something I would have been too humiliated to to before, back when I thought I could do everything myself. Things are much better now, and I’m doing work that I would never have imagined pursuing as my job, and nearly back to full income levels. My whole family is very active in our local parish, and we pray rosaries together with other families weekly at our homes. I thank God everyday, and completely put my trust in him, whatever he wants to bring me.
 
I am so very sorry. 😦 It sounds to me as if he is trying to protect you and not hurt you, but hurting you nonetheless.

I will pray for you and your marriage, and hopefully somehow this can all get pieced back together for you both, and for your children.

~Liza
 
garyr said:
He could be taking his failing business very personally - too personally. Speaking from experience, he may be too wrapped up in his business/career and may perceive that its’ tanking/failing will mean that HE has failed. Failed to his business, failed as the provider for the family, failed as the father of your kiddos, and finally failed as a husband, and all the humiliation that comes with these things. I’ve been there - as once a CTO to a public company that crashed back in the dot-com days (2000). It took me years to get through it all, but the real progress only came after I put my full trust and faith in God to provide - not just my job, or skills, or ‘connections’. Praying novena’s to St.Joseph, asking his intercession, and following his model is how I was able to see this. Our family went thru some ‘hard’ times (I finally acquiesced to accept whatever job I could find - less than half of my previous career ), but it brought us much closer to God, the church, and our faith. I also learned to ask for help from my fellow brothers in faith - something I would have been too humiliated to to before, back when I thought I could do everything myself. Things are much better now, and I’m doing work that I would never have imagined pursuing as my job, and nearly back to full income levels. My whole family is very active in our local parish, and we pray rosaries together with other families weekly at our homes. I thank God everyday, and completely put my trust in him, whatever he wants to bring me.
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Second that. Pride has been a big problem for me. Many of us grew up thinking that success, success, success and that defined us. Years of reinforcement of this self-image makes change a slow process.
 
Did he take his children with him or were they living with his prior spouse?

I think you should ask to visit the priest he is meeting with together.

I will say a prayer for your family.
 
I am so sorry for the pain you are going through. It sounds like counseling would help you. It is not God’s will for this to be happening…remember, we all have free will.

Another poster mentioned that perhaps you can both go together to the priest your husband is talking to?

If for any reason that can’t work, then please go to a priest by yourself and talk this all out.
 
TryingHard1 said:
Can someone offer experience, or advice, or…something? .
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Emergency measure: breathing
In through the nose evenly for a count of 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8…
hold 1,2,3,4.5,6,7,8…
out through the mouth 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8

Nuns of a century ago used the Hail Mary, silently praying in, breathing in, the first 2/3 on the inbreath, ready? Big even steady breath in through the nose…
Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of they womb Jesus
now breathing out through the mouth:
Holy Mary mother of God pray for us now and at the hour of our death amen

Try it a couple of times, using the numbers or the words. Until you are more practiced, the numbers can be easier to get through without dropping any. The point is to even out, deepen, and slow down your breath.

Why are we doing this? Because you have got a lot of fear wrapped around you, hon.
Fear wraps around you like a fat boa constrictor and tries to squeeze the air right out of you. It leaves you breathing fast and shallow… so that it can get an even tighter grip on you!
The faster and more shallow you breathe… the tighter a grip fear does get on you!
So we must deepen and slow your breathing to break its hold on you.

Using the numbers or the Hail Mary, breathe the air all the way down into your feet (into your feet?) Yes. All the way down into your feet, and all the way up and back out, and your breath will grab that fat boa constrictor of fear by the tail and pull it all the way down to the ground, planting it firmly under your feet where it belongs.
In the old statues, Mary the mother of Christ stands on a snake,you know. Simply breathe in the light of God in gratitude with your breath and your prayers as she does…
and you will drop any snake to the ground in an instant.
It takes just a little patience and a little practice. You’ll get there.

It sounds as though your husband may be going through the Dorothy’s tornado experience. (The Dorothy’s tornado experience?) Well yes, you remember the Wizard of Oz…
continued below…
 
All of us have got old issues and old wounds, and all of us build massive mental, physical, and emotional structures and habits around ourselves in life like a fortress to keep us from ever having to feel, face, process, deal with, or heal those old issues and wounds… and ever having to really change, learn, or grow in life.
Some of those structures and habits work for us and some are pretty dysfunctional, but in either case we tend to get wrapped up in them and trapped in them… and we become like hamsters endlessly spinning on our little habitual hamster wheels rather than truly learning, growing, changing, healing, becoming those people God created us to become.

God didn’t actually put us here to be hamsters on wheels. God put us here to change and heal and learn and grow and become the people God created us to become! But changing, healing, learning and growing are… unfamiliar… scarey…not quite as familiar and comfortable…and so we really don’t like to do it much…
well… maybe someday when we get around to it… maybe
but we just never seem to get around to it…
We know the way we’ve been doing things has never been quite right, and it doesn’t quite work… but we get trapped in it nonetheless…
and so occasionally we are blessed/cursed with the Dorothy’s tornado experience.

It comes as the big doom cloud (accident, illness, failure, strife, loss, etc.) that turns one’s world upside down and rearranges or sometimes even demolishes that fortess of structures and habits and thoughts that we have built around ourselves to keep ourselves too busy hamsterwheeling to…grow. It can even rip that massive pile of bandaids one has spent years and years gluing over one’s childhood wounds right off! OW!
The Dorothy’s tornado experience is terrifying indeed as one’s consciousness gets… rearranged… and once it passes, one is definitely not in Kansas anymore.
The infamous *Dark Night of the Soul *is a Dorothy’s tornado experience of massive spiritual proportions, as is death itself…
and after that one passes, you’re definitely not in Kansas anymore, but face to face with the Light of God.

Ok… so your husband is experiencing terrible fear, loss, risk, failure in business?
and drinking (backup anaesthesia habit to keep fear at bay) didn’t work?
And you noticed it didn’t work because that fear was still there…
because men typically express fear as anger… as rage… (they regard fear as “unmanly” after all…)
and nobody can feel love through fear, absolutely nobody… because one kills the other
(very strong feelings of love will temporarily completely obliterate all feelings of fear (battlefield rescue scenario), just exactly like very strong feelings of fear will temporarily completely obliterate any feelings of love)
And he went running out of the house… for the man cave…or the tree house…
just like a kid nursing childhood wounds. It sure looks like the tornado ripped off a good 30 years of bandaids over those old buried forgotten childhood wounds…
Yup. Sure looks like the Dorothy’s tornado experience all right.
He is not going to be in Kansas anymore after this one.

Tend to the kids, explain to them what is going on, plant flowers, say prayers, breathe in the light of God. Know what you’re dealing with. Know what he is dealing with. The tornado has come to rearrange the structures he has built up around his consciousness and his growth, that’s all. It’s a part of life.

I had a friend once who said “yeah, sure, there’s things in my life that don’t work, but I don’t want to change and I don’t need to change and the only way I’m ever going to change is kicking and screaming, so THERE!”(You know the old expression “from your lips to God’s ears…”?)
A couple of years after that his own personal tornado hit…
… he had specified “kicking and screaming” after all…
but by the time the clouds cleared, what was left standing were all those things in life worth hanging onto… and what the tornado had swept away from his life was everything else that he had thought was all so important, but turned out not to be really all so important at all. It was really something to see.

Blessings!
 
TryingHard1 said:
During the last year, his business has been failing badly and his drinking is has gotten bad. He is very hateful to me. All of a sudden he says he does not love me and he has moved out this past weekend. He says he is talking to a Priest from another Parrish to help him deal with all of his issus, he says he does not want to hurt me by being so angry at me all the time. He does not know if he will ever come home. He says there is no other woman. And…I cannot find evidence that there is.
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Without going into gory details, my dear friend, this voice of experience says – don’t go looking for evidence, because it is so exhausting and degrading to do so, but don’t believe for a minute that there is no other woman.

You are in my prayers.
 
I am praying for you. I also suggest you go to Adoration to see Jesus especially when you feel tempted to drink and just pour your heart out. He will see you through this, just put everything you are in Him. God bless you.
 
My prayers are with you now. Remember Jesus is always with you!:console:
 
IrishAm said:
Without going into gory details, my dear friend, this voice of experience says – don’t go looking for evidence, because it is so exhausting and degrading to do so, but don’t believe for a minute that there is no other woman.

You are in my prayers.
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If she says there is no evidence- that she hasn’t found any, why can’t you just leave it at that? 🤷 Why must you put your voice of experience comment in to muddy the waters? That was your experience. Please try to help her with her experience as she has stated it.
 
Were you married in the Church sacramentally after going through the anullment process or did you marry civilly. If the latter be true the best thing I can tell you is that going through marriage counseling and convalidation after the anullment process and living either seperate or as brother and sister may give you the Grace and time that you both need. If not I apologize for asking.
 
Irishmom2 said:
If she says there is no evidence- that she hasn’t found any, why can’t you just leave it at that? 🤷 Why must you put your voice of experience comment in to muddy the waters? That was your experience. Please try to help her with her experience as she has stated it.
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Just as some men and women will try to hide behind alcohol when the tornado comes, it is a legitimate point that some men and women will indeed try to hide behind women, or men, or drugs (prescription or otherwise) and/or a whole lot of other things…
but it doesn’t work…
none of it works
when the tornado comes.
 
My brother once gave me this advice:

People always tell you to be strong, like an oak tree, when loss occurs! But no!! Be soft like the bamboo. When a typhoon comes, trees are often broken by the extreme winds. But the bamboo, lays down in the water, letting it wash over its leaves, but protected from the strong winds. When the typhoon dies off, the sun comes out, and within a day, the bamboo can be seen rising up, proudly holding itself erect, in the light of the sun; its leaves green and shining bright in the warmth of the day. So, no matter what “other shoe” drops after his leaving, remember to lay down, and be covered with your tears, knowing that IF you can do the “grief work” of loss within your marriage, you, too will stand up tall and smiling, because the sun is finally beginning to shine.

As an addictions counselor, I would encourage you to find your former sponser–or a new one–and keep your “leaves” protected from yet another typhoon. Give yourself an opportunity to rise up after this typhoon, before another one hits. Ask yourself this: Are his actions of leaving you worthy of losing your own sobriety? Of course not! He will have to seek help for his own problems, Do not be the typical co-dependent wife, and try to “fix” him. You cannot, and YOU should know exactly what he needs to do–the way you did it, 15 years earlier. Turn it over to God and wait until the winds die down, and the sun comes out. It will, you know! I will be keeping you in prayer. Bridgid

Just “fall into your faith” and Our Lord will catch you. He always “has our back”!
 
Irishmom2 said:
If she says there is no evidence- that she hasn’t found any, why can’t you just leave it at that? 🤷 Why must you put your voice of experience comment in to muddy the waters? That was your experience. Please try to help her with her experience as she has stated it.
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Because the OP specifically asked for the experiences of others? Otherwise, I would not have commented as I did. Sorry if it upset you, and hope it did not offend the OP.
 
Thank you to all of you wonderful folks who replied. There were so many things said that brought me comfort. The pain is so great at times, I physically hurt. But to my friends in recovery, I know that alcohol will not take it away…so I will not sacrifice my sobriety. I can only turn to God. I know that I have no control over what my husband chooses. I can only pray for him. Please keep praying for me. Your encouragment and kind words are helping in ways you can only imagine.
 
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