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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I genuinely think a lot of middle-aged men wildly underestimate how embarrassing it looks to blow up a multi-decade family.

You are not just leaving a wife. You are permanently altering your children’s lives.

You are splitting holidays. Creating two homes. Reducing stability. Weakening trust. Changing the emotional texture of childhood itself. Your kids now have to adapt to transitions, divided traditions, logistical stress, and the grief of watching their family fracture.

And for what, exactly? Validation? Excitement? Novelty? Escape from responsibility? A fantasy that a different woman or different life will fix something internal?

Also, it just looks bad…

A man abandoning a long-term partner and destabilizing his family in midlife rarely comes across as profound or evolved. Most of the time it reads as cliché. Like someone chasing self-reinvention at the expense of the people who built a life with him. Gross.
[/quote]

It's never as cut and dry as people make it out to be. My close male friend in his 50s left his wife in a similar way to OP's but even though everyone might think they were doing great all these years they weren't. I don't think he was a perfect husband but she was constantly belittling him and created a lot of drama. The coworker he left her for is about 7 years younger so not that big of a difference, but she's also a really nice person who is calm and even. She is really pretty too and smart, but I truly think it was more about the fact that she's not the type of person to fly off the handle all the time and say cruel things to him like his wife did sometimes.[/quote]

Belittled him how?

At work?

Or are you calling it belittling when your roommate tells you to pick up after yourself, or be on time, or don’t forget to do things you agreed to do, or don’t break the XYZ again?[/quote]

What my STBX has told his handful of friends and his colleagues has no relationship to reality. I would be skeptical of whatever you hear from a divorced man, even if they’re your bff. [/quote]

The mental case narcs always rewrite the narrative to be the victim.

Initially they’ll say some lame cliche like: we drifted apart, or I worked too much, or she was so difficult to talk with (as if he could even follow a family conversation).[/quote]

[b]Mine told everyone I was “mean” and “controlling”. [/b]

With his work colleagues and his mom (he doesn’t have friends) it is apparent that he didn’t share his secret discontinuation of psychiatric meds, a mental breakdown, and physical abuse.

These aren’t the kinds of things one can casually share with acquaintances in order to correct the record and people are relieved to have a story that doesn’t make them have to rethink what they know about a person, so his narrative stands.

Only my best friends and my children’s closest friends’ parents know the real story and that’s to keep my kids and their kids safe.

I now assume that any cliched explanation about divorce is hiding some pretty dark stuff.[/quote]

Mine said the same thing. And that I was impossible to talk too.

But would give no examples.

Yet everyone knew he wasn’t controlled at all.

He worked non stop, went to tons of work travel conferences, net working events. 
Kept his office and areas of the house totally messy. 
Bought BS in Amazon whenever he wanted. 
Used to overeat and be obese before GLPs. 
Never knew anyone’s life or schedule.
And ignored everyone. Thus everyone eventually ignored him back.

So he made no sense and contradicted his own behaviors right out of the gate. [/quote]

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