Spousal abandonment syndrome is a devastating, painful experience. If you find yourself grappling with your husband’s sudden abandonment of you and your family, you’re not alone. There are resources available to help you through it.
What is Spousal Abandonment Syndrome?
Spousal abandonment syndrome occurs when a husband suddenly leaves the marriage without warning, explanation, or involving his wife in the decision-making process. This leaves the abandoned wife feeling betrayed, confused, and emotionally devastated. It’s important to recognize that such an event isn’t your fault.
Recognizing the Signs Of Spousal Abandonment Syndrome
Signs of spousal abandonment syndrome may include:
- You can’t eat
- Insomnia
- Hair loss
- Achy, stiff muscles
- Replaying conversations in your head
- Re-evaluating memories now that you have more information
Knowing that every woman who has been abandoned by her husband has similar symptoms can help women feel like they’re not going crazy.
The Emotional Impact of Spousal Abandonment Syndrome
The emotional toll of spousal abandonment syndrome can be overwhelming. It’s not really a syndrome, so much as it’s what every woman would go through. It is essential to allow yourself to grieve and process these emotions. Think of the situation like you’re recovering from a serious, serious car accident that wasn’t your fault. You have injuries that need tender care, but you will heal.
Steps to Healing and Recovery
- Seek Support:
- Specialized services like Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions are a safe space to explore your feelings and develop coping strategies. Only seek services from professionals like BTR.ORG who view abandonment as a domestic abuse issue.
- Connect with Supportive Communities:
- Joining the Betrayal Trauma Recovery community, a group of women who offer a sense of belonging and understanding. These spaces allow you to share experiences and receive guidance from those who’ve walked a similar path.
- Focus on Self-Care:
- Prioritize activities that nurture your mind and body. Whether it’s a Betrayal Trauma Recovery meditation or simply going on a walk around the block.
- Educate Yourself:
- Learn more about this type of emotional and psychological abuse. Did you know it’s even a form of physical abuse because it affects your physical circumstances, like your living situation? To learn more, listen to the FREE Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast where women share their stories about how they healed from abandonment.
- Rebuild Your Identity and Independence:
- Engage in activities that redefine who you are outside of the relationship. This can include pursuing new interests, focusing on career growth, or setting personal goals.
Resources To Support You
- Betrayal Trauma Recovery (BTR.ORG) offers Group Sessions and individual coaching for women experiencing emotional and psychological abuse. BTR provides a supportive environment to help you heal and regain control of your life.
- The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Workshop includes 13 meditations that have helped thousands of victims relax and sleep.
Experiencing spousal abandonment syndrome can be incredibly challenging, but recovery is possible.
By seeking support from women who can help, you’ll regain strength and move toward a bright future.
My husband left us again. He’s pack up 3 times. I’m tired of chasing him
I’m so sorry! It makes sense that you’re exhausted. You don’t have spousal abandoment syndrome, so much as you’re just exhausted from all the emotional and psychological abuse. I hope you can find some rest and peace now.
I found this page about spousal abandonment, but I cannot find find stories with it
Hi, I’ll be doing a podcast episode on it in the future. Stay tuned:).
My husband of 23 years told me he is done and wants a divorce. He said we tried . He abandoned me that morning. He was all over asian dating sites the day he moved out. He said je wants a Japanese wife.
There is no infidelity in my part, however he has dating sites and sites where women wearing scant clothes invite him at Instagram. I dont know how long he has had this account.
I just found out when we reconciled this past few months. We wouldn say bad words to each other but often kifs
Would hear me screaming but he screamed at me when it was just us.
Red flag’s throughout our marriage that I ignored as I don’t want to break our marriage with 3 kids. From him refusing to bring me to ER ehrn kids were toddler to him not going to support me on a biopsy to rulr out cancer when we already reconciled. All if these was like poison yo our marriage thr rough out these years. I thought he just needs to mature snd find the follies of his ways. H is an avoidance type so we can seem to communicate to fix our issues so there was always animosity between us witnessed by kids.
However, he just left without
explaining why. It broke me in half. I couldnt stop crying. I feel betrayed. I want to forget him but its hard. Pls tell me how to forget him and move on. My 13yo kid needs me.
It is probably for the better as
I’ve been married almost 19 years . I thought it was a good marriage. Little did I know he never truly and deeply shared his feelings. Recently he said he’s just done. I said done with what? He said, being married. I’m done. I want to be a bachelor and live on my own , do what I want when I want.
He had just got out of the VA mental hospital 2 months prior. He abandoned my son and I,He filed for bankruptcy, and put our house on the market. All within 60 days. I was in the middle of having back surgery, being tested for MS. I haven’t been able to work for years he knows that and he has no remorse or feelings at all for it. He doesn’t even cry. I’m am broken. I’m but a shell that’s who I was.
Does the husband ever come back and can the couple make the relationship work?
I sincerely love my husband and want our marriage to work out. I have been going to counseling since he left
I’m so sorry about what you’re going through! I developed the Living Free Workshop for women in your situation, so you know what’s going on and anticipate what he’s likely to do next.
I have been doing the same. I love my has been dearly and deeply and don’t want anyone else. He says he doesn’t feel the same. He did say he just needed time. But no promises.
My husband left me without any explanation when I was on bed rest pregnant with our son. He then divorced me months later again without warning or conversation. Now it has almost been a year since he moved out and he wants to see me again to explain his “reasons” for leaving. I still feel hurt and betrayed even though I have been working on rebuilding my life for myself and our two small kids (our son is almost a year old and he has never met him) I don’t know what to do. I feel like I want to hear him out but then I don’t. I think if I don’t I will always wonder why. I also do not know what to do he says he wants to talk so we can work on building a relationship again. He also said that I have to be different or he will just leave again. I feel hurt and confused by that because I don’t feel I did anything to warrant being abandoned. I was kind loving open honest I communicated my feelings my needs. I did not accept being lied to or gaslit. I held him accountable and I think that’s where I went “wrong” in his opinion
I’m so so sorry. That he said, you “have to be different or he will just leave again” says it all, in my opinion. However, not knowing you situation, I recommend The Living Free Workshop that will help you see exactly what’s going on and make the right choices. I would recommend that you do the workshop before you decide whether or not to talk to him. It will help clarify everything for you. The workshop only teaches safety principles and doesn’t have any specific answers as to whether or not do do anything – but it will teach you the strategies and principles to help you make the best decision for you. Hugs!
My husband left me while I was away to church. I did not see it coming and he never said anything about leaving. Then he filed for divorce. It was so heart breaking. No explanation to me. No communication except that he wanted a divorce. It was like he planned it and he gave himself time to prepare for it but left me blindsided. I have been praying for him since he left because I do not believe in divorce. He didn’t even try to work things out.
Do not pray for him. Pray for yourself. Let God support you during this time, as well as friends and family. I experienced something similar last July. We were in therapy – married 10 years. I didn’t know that couple therapy isn’t indicated when there’s emotional and psychological abuse (which is what lying is). And he had been having an affair the entire time. I spent 8 months of my life going to couple therapy with a complete liar, and then he abandoned me. I did not want a divorce either. But trying to make him love me almost drove me insane. Letting him go was the most painful thing I ever experienced. Grief, hurt, self-recrimination, though he created all of this. My mistake was being a loving and supportive wife. Prayers to you!
You’re a good soul. You go ahead and pray. Don’t let anybody tell you not to do something you want to do. I pray for my husband all the time. I pray to soften his hardened heart. And that he’ll realize what he has done. And the damage his caused family and myself.
At the 30 yr mark, now 31, we said, there is no leaving, no starting over. The house is big enough that if tensions are too high, we’d sleep in separate rooms and try it agin tomorrow. This seemed to work, until these last few arguments. Recently, one was so verbally hurful that i left and stayed in a hotel for 3 days. Three weeks later, and another argument, my husband left for a 9 week training class without discussion. It’s only been a couple of weeks. He says he needs time to work on himself and prepare for the worst (us divorcing). During this time he’s asked we have no communication (saying that if we can’t talk in person, then he doesn’t want to talk or text over the phone). The few times we have communicated ( i initiated and regreted it), he’s very frustrated and very cold because he asked that we have no communication. But, wants me to know that when he returns, he hopes both of us are in better places (although i’m the only one that he suggests gets counseling/therapy), because he loves me and absolutely wants to live the rest of his life with me (his words before and after he left). Since leaving, he’s said, I’m a great partner, good mother, and a hell of a woman, but he wants and needs someone that he can communicate with. I feel like he has 80%, but is yearning for 20% that he has made bigger in his mind than it shoud be. Although he can be a bit longwinded, i’ve expressed my willingness to accommodate his need, but not at the expense of it turning into an argument which conversations between us have been more frequent). I would love to have long supportive conversations (so long as both of our needs are met) which come to think of it we’ve never sat down and discussed what that looks like, just in the heat of a disagreement we say what the other is doing wrong; what a revolution! Still, I am so hurt, confused and torn about where we stand!
I don’t know if what I went through qualifies as abandonment, but it does in my mind. We were together almost 15 years when he suddenly announced that he was transitioning into a woman. We have a 7 year old, just bought our dream house, planned our wedding, talked about retirement and growing old together. This announcement completely blindsided me and turned everything upside down. I asked how long he had known about these feelings, and he said always. I asked why he was just now telling me this, he said it was never something I necessarily needed to know. Then he went skipping upstairs to do some research on starting hormones and procedures. I was lost in a waves of confusion, anger and pain. I felt as if our entire relationship was built on a lie, a facade. I tried to be supportive, tried to accept it. Tried to bond and connect when I really just didn’t know how. I did her makeup one night for fun as a way for us to bond together. She mocked the way it turned out and told me she could do it waay better. She mocked the way I dressed sometimes, telling me she never really liked my sense of style. She would rifle through my closet and try on my clothes, and when I confronted her about this, she just sneered and told me that I should just give it to her since she looked better in it anyway. She would go to work, come home, and go straight to our room and close the door and be in there for the rest of the night, trying on clothes, putting on makeup, and chatting with strangers from her newfound community online. She shut me out of her world and wasn’t really interested in being a spouse or a parent anymore. She didn’t want to help out with the house, so it fell into disarray ( this had already been an issue before the transition, I had to beg for the bare minimum ) She spent limited time with her son, who’d wait anxiously for her to come home only to be ignored for the majority of the night. I had to watch the person I was so deeply in love with slowly disappear and become someone completely different. I tried to hold on, to make it work, but I was drowning in depression and anxiety, and she was closing me off, tearing down my femininity ( which she clearly felt threatened by ) to build up her own, and ultimately it pushed me away. I didn’t stop loving her, I knew the person I fell in love with was still in there somewhere. But after two years of feeling left out in the cold, I told her I think we should go our separate ways. I tried to move on quickly, but I was still in love with her, so I struggled with those feelings as well as wanting to just let go. She moved on immediately without a care. Now we’re selling the house through a 3rd party “we buy houses” deal ( not my decision ) and will be getting maybe $20000, which she said she’d give it all to me. We’re in the process of packing and will be out in 2/3 months. I am completely devastated. We lost everything we spent so much time building together. I lost the love of my life, our home, our hopes and dreams, our future. I’m worried about how this will affect my son. I’m worried about money and how I’m going to support my son and I long term. I have no skills besides being a mother and a housewife. My head space is also crap right now. I don’t know how long it will take to recover from this. I don’t think I’ll ever move past the anger and feelings of betrayal. She knew, all this time, and chose to keep it from me. Most of our issues throughout the relationship is a direct result of this secret. She chose to keep that part of herself hidden from me. She had many opportunities to be honest and upfront with me, but chose to stonewall me every single time. She didn’t open herself up to me. I don’t think she ever really loved me at all. I think she just used me as a means to an end. She only cared about herself and her needs. I don’t think transitioning in itself is bad. If that’s who you think you are, go for it. But I do think it’s very selfish when you wait until after you’ve made a serious commitment to someone, started a family with them, planned and built your life with them. It’s just not fair to the other person or their children. And I will always resent her for that. I’ll never forgive her or how much pain she caused when she decided to tear our lives apart. I’ll never forgive the gaslighting and manipulation, the verbal, psychological, and financial abuse. She should’ve told me. I could’ve had a different life. She robbed me of getting to make that choice. I’ll never forgive her.
I’m so sorry! Thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re not alone. We’re here for you!
Yeah unfortunately we’re currently still living together but he stepped on me years abandoned over year while here in mentally physically financially emotionally it’s insane and I’m hurt disgusted people why I stay I hv invested everything and every part of me and I have nothing have gained nothing but sexual diseases bacterial infection.
I’m so sorry! We’re available to help you everyday. See our live daily group session schedule at btr.org/group.
My fiance told me we were moving to Texas sold the hour we lived in went ahead to supposedly settle in and get out an apartment for us to live in once we were ready to all go over there once he reached Texas he told me that he no longer wanted to be with me and to figure out where I was going to go with our 9 month baby knowing that I had not place to go no one to stay with he barely calls to check at least if our daughter is ok doesn’t care where we will end up cause he doesn’t ask and gives no financial support I cry all the time
My husband literally abandoned me out the blue. I wasn’t expecting it,a nd it’s been devastating.