Hello,
This is my first visit to this forum.
Unfortunately, a very tramatic event is
what has brought me here. I attended a
cousin's wedding in a different state with
my parents two weekends ago. My husband
stayed at home because he had a "review
class" to attend on Saturday morning. I
spoke with him several times while I was
away and he acted as though everything at
home was fine as usual. When my parents
and I arrived to my home on Tuesday
afternoon, he was gone. And I don't just
mean he had packed some clothes for a week
and left. EVERYTHING of his was
gone...from the house, from the attic,
from our storage shed, from the
yard...everything. It was as though he had
never been there. He left a long, robotic
letter, lacking emotion, love or feeling,
and his wedding ring. And he was gone.
Considering that we have had a strong,
happy marriage with few problems, this was
shocking and devasting and at first I
thought I had to be dreaming.
In his letter, he says that he is moving
on for personal reasons. He says the
following things: this decision has
nothing to do with me and that I have been
a wonderful wife and companion. But he
does not want to be married anymore. He
does not want to live in the state in
which we reside any longer. He does not
want to be a lawyer. (He just graduated
from law school in May.) He does not want
children. He wants to live alone where he
can make decisions in an independent
fashion, with no responsibilities or
obligations to anyone else. He does not
want to have to answer to anyone. He is
unreliable and undependable.
The majority of this came as a complete
suprise. The only thing that I had even
known anything about was the part about
the lawyer. (He had told me about two
weeks before that he did not want to be a
lawyer after all and that he had enrolled
in and had been accepted into a master's
of social work program at a local
university because he wants to have a
career in therapy. When I argued with him
about this - due to a heaping amount of
law school loans and a waste of four years
of law school - he told me he was still
going to take the BAR exam and find a
position as a lawyer and go to the social
work classes at night. I was huffy (mostly
because he made a big decision and had
discussed anything with me before doing
it) and then I got over it. The week
before he left, things were fine around
here.
Also...he admits in his letter and in some
emails we exchanged after he left that he
has been lying all summer long. He never
even took the BAR (his lawyer exam) and
had been lying to me all summer long about
studying for it, etc. He did not pay our
mortgage for July along with several other
bills around here...one was even a
delinquent doctor's bill from May! He had
point-blank lied to my face earlier this
summer when I asked if he had paid the
mortgage and several other things. He has
lied, lied, lied. And this is not his
typical character, in the three years that
I have been involved with him.
Aside from the lying and the
irresponsibilities with finances, some
other changes in his personality that I
noticed over the summer include: a change
from being very tidy and neat to being
very sloppy; he took a sudden trip by
himself to Cancun, Mexico and had me under
the impression he had been in Chicago for
his friend's bachelor's weekend; he has
had a very flat mood around here all
summer; he shaved his head out-of-the-blue
in June; he scheduled himself to have a
LASIK eye surgery in June without ever
having discussed it beforehand; he seemed
to lose interest in applying for jobs; his
appetite seems to be less than usual,
including not being very interested in
sweets (he used to have a HUGE sweet
tooth); he used to spend hours in his
garden each day and for the past month, he
has hardly worked on his garden.
From the early into our dating life, over
three years ago, I have know that he takes
antidepressants (currently Effexor) for
seasonal affective disorder/depression. He
had a similar episode about two months
before our wedding when he sent me a long
robotic style letter (very similar to the
one he left this time) and headed back
home 15 hours away, saying he did not want
to live in our state, did not want to
finish law school, did not want to get
married and was going to enter an
alchoholics anonymous program (even though
he is not what I would consider an
alcoholic). From what I understood at the
time, his doctor had changed his medicine
and had not tapered his dosage correctly,
shortly before all of this happened. He
and I managed to work things out and he
came back home about 1 month before our
wedding.
Aside from these two periods of time I
have described, my husband has been a very
conscientous, responsible, loving,
affectionate, even-headed husband. He is a
great person and we have had a happy,
safe, calm marriage. For him to have left
like he has has been a complete shock for
me, my family, his family and all of our
friends.
I have been in contact with him via email
and he still seems robotic and cold. It
doesn't even seem like I am talking to my
husband. He seems insistent that we get a
divorce and he has moved back to the same
apartment complex that he lived in when we
were dating! He left our nice home to move
back to that apartment and go back to
school.
I apologize for the long, long letter, but
there was so much that needed to be
included. And I'm sure I've probably left
some things out. So, does it sound as
though he could be having a bipolar
episode or does it sound like he is just
being a jerk? He has finally agreed to go
with me to therapy on Monday (but I think
in his mind, he is going as a way to bring
our marriage to a close). He has refused
to go at all up until this point.
