Reply to Why would a 70-year-old man leave his wife of 45-plus years?

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

Reply to "Why would a 70-year-old man leave his wife of 45-plus years?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think I’m the first so say this, but men leave their longtime wives after the wives become sick at an alarming rate.[/quote]

Hospice caregiver here, just wanted to affirm this post. Statistically men are much more likely to leave a spouse with chronic or terminal illness than vice versa. They don’t want to be caregivers, something that should be obvious to us by how little most of them pick up the reins in caregiving their own kids and for their aging parents etc. - most of them leave that to the wifey. Yes I know, #notallmen - but I am speaking about the typical, not the unusual.

One of the most heartbreaking things I ever saw in my years of hospice caregiving was a man who sat by his wife’s bedside in the final hours of her life - she was no longer responsive, but as any medical professional will honestly tell you, we don’t know at that stage if people are still conscious of their surroundings and certainly we always encourage family to be with the dying person and speak to them, play music, etc. from the assumption that there is something still going on and that we are easing their transition with our love.

Anyway, he sat by her and engaged the hospice RN, a young pretty divorcee, in a very typical ‘hitting on’ type conversation while his dying wife and mother of his two sons was lying in bed dying just inches away. He related to this pretty RN how his and his wife’s story wasn’t a very romantic one, blah blah blah - minimizing the life they’d shared for decades together.

It still turns my stomach thinking of it now, years later. I was the one holding her hand while he was hitting on the nurse. I was friendly with this woman because I’d been her elderly mother’s caregiver and we communicated extensively over months of coordinating that care. She was a lawyer suffering cancer and I am a lawyer turned caregiver so we had a fair amount of common ground. She also had a very difficult mother and so did I, so more common ground. She had on the surface a perfect life - beautiful house in a tony suburb, wealthy, two gorgeous sons, successful handsome lawyer husband, a life full of elite education and travel and interesting career etc.

And just hours before she died her husband was hitting on another woman in front of her face.

Sorry but at this point in life with all I’ve seen, I have very little respect left for men.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics