Today I did what I never thought I would have to do: I spoke to a lawyer. A family lawyer. Because maybe our family is going to have to break up.
Tom, the man I have been with for almost half of my life has disappeared, and been replaced by someone I barely know. Someone who is causing me to hurt inside like never before. Right now everything is about him, his job, his balance. And I am to blame for his unhappiness, for his imbalance, for everything that is “wrong” in his life. So here is the picture of the life he is successfully attempting to destroy:
We have three girls: Evie (7 years old), Tilly (3 years old) and baby Mia (just 1 year old) which are the best gift life has given me, I blessed, I am lucky, and I know it.
He has a highly successful career, for which he works hard and sacrifices a lot. He is ambitious and driven and it’s paying off. But there is little or no time for anything else. He is also permanently mildly depressed and has serious anxiety issues which he refuses to address. I have fully supported him, putting aside many of my own projects and ambitions, I’ve changed jobs, moved houses, Countries, left family and friends behind because I loved him. Simply because I loved him.
He bought a house in London. The girls and I live in it right now, because he accepted a position in Italy in 2011 and has been coming home most week ends. The new job within the company was sudden, as usual, and we decided together that this time he would go ahead on his own: Tilly was barely 1 year old and we had lived in the new house for 12 months. He has never been a hands on dad/husband and was barely home before 9 – 10 pm anyway. Truth is our daily life didn’t change much. A few months later I was pregnant with Mia, only to discover down the line that he wasn’t sure about a third child and was relying on it not happening (it took a long time to get pregnant with both the first two).
I am to blame for wanting a house, a third child and for needing stability. Or at least some emotional support. Understanding that it is not easy to accept that the life we live doesn’t belong to me simply because work comes first. His work. I worked until Evie was born, she was barely 3 months old when we moved from Australia to the UK and I didn’t have a job to go back to. I couldn’t face starting over, yet again, knowing that I would be away from my baby and that most likely it would be another job that I would have to give up at some point anyway.
So now I am to blame for everything. I have done a lot of thinking, from my perspective, from his, from the outside, from deep within myself. And I don’t agree. At all. I think I am starting to understand what is going on inside his head, I understand the process but I wIll not take the blame. Especially not after almost 9 months of stonewalling. And sabotaging. And who knows what else.
I know something is very wrong. My gut feeling has been screaming at me for quite a while but I was paralysed, because I still love him, I love the way we were, I love what we created together. I know we’ve fallen into some common traps: we haven’t made time for each other, we’ve been dragged deeper and deeper in separate worlds (cutthroat work for him, babyland for me), we’ve never really made an effort to talk about it giving each other for granted. But that was it. The time had come to reassess the direction to give to our lives. Together. Or so i figured. Until I realised that for the past 9 months I had been trying to “fix” things, find solutions alone.
I am not one who gives up easily or loses hope at the first obstacle, I don’t want a divorce, I don’t want us to break up… but today I had to face the fact that we may not have our happy ending. Simply because it takes two.
Kami's Lost World 
It DOES take two, especially in a marriage. Which is exactly what my sister is dealing with right now…and I want to shake her husband to wake up and get his head in to what should be most important to him. But I guess because I deem it important to me doesn’t mean it will be important to him, right?
Thank you for your blog – I’m starting at the beginning and looking forward to getting some insight as to what my sister is thinking / feeling / dealing with. Thank you for opening up a world that many keep hidden, thank you for helping me – whether you realize you are or not!!
Hi, thank you for reading… and for your kind words. My blog is full of gaps which I will try to fill. I haven’t written in quite a while. To be honest it’s been a roller coaster since August. Lots has happened, to the point where it’s been impossible for me to live it AND write it. Especially since at certain point I chose to try and snap out of the vicious circle triggered by my husband’s behaviour and I am in a much better place right now, but it has sucked the life out of me and I simply didn’t have the energy or the will power to live it all again putting it in words. I will write about the last couple of months, I have more perspective now too. I am so so sorry to hear about your sister and the only advice I wish to share with passion is that she MUST start thinking about herself, herself only. He certainly didn’t think about her when he acted upon his choices, and regardless of what his words may be, he is NOT thinking about her now. He can’t. He is caught up in his own world of lies, of re-written history, of guilt, defiance, wanting to be right, not being able to admit his own actions to himself, of denial and I don’t know what else to add. His actions are to blame on him. Not on your sister. However bad the marriage, whatever the non addressed problems, unmet needs, differences. It’s hard to explain in a few sentences. But it’s easy to understand that cheating is not the way to go about unmet needs … A big hug to you. And to your sister. x
Thank you! Big hug to you as well!!