The general definition of abandonment is:
- Giving up or withdrawal of support from something or someone
- The act of leaving or deserting a person or property.
Spousal Abandonment Syndrome is when one of the spouses leaves the marriage without any warning, and—usually–without having shown any signs of unhappiness with the relationship. With spousal abandonment, there is often no outward sign that one of the spouses is frustrated or considering leaving the marriage.
Below is how a woman who had suffered spousal abandonment, and who contacted Midlife Divorce Recovery, described her situation:
I went to visit my parents in another state and when I came home, he had taken all of his stuff and left a note saying he wouldn’t be back. I have no idea where he is. I have received no help with the bills. They are going to foreclose on our house. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I am a stay-at-home mom with three kids. I am so scared!
The real-life pain of spousal abandonment is overwhelming and devastating. The description above is from a woman who knows first hand about the chaos and suffering caused to those who are left behind…usually a wife and children.
This isn’t how most divorces happen, but spousal abandonment cases seem to be growing. Maybe that is because there is now a legal name for abruptly abandoning your wife, your children and your marital commitments. Women and children are forced to fend for themselves with absolutely no warning and often with no resources to fall back on.
Legal Definition: Spousal Desertion – Criminal Abandonment
“Marital desertion (abandonment) refers to a situation in which one spouse severs ties with the family, forsaking his or her responsibilities and duties to the family. Simply moving out of the family home in an attempt to create a temporary or permanent separation is not considered abandonment. The difference is often seen in the person’s refusal to provide necessary support, whether financial or otherwise, with no intention to return, or to fulfill those responsibilities. In most states, the remaining spouse has no financial responsibility to the abandoning spouse.
In an at-fault divorce state, abandonment may be considered grounds for divorce. In these states, the spouse claiming abandonment must prove certain things to the court. She would need to show that the couple had not agreed on the departure of the spouse, that she didn’t cause the departure, and that he hadn’t provided any support during his absence.”
There is also something called constructive abandonment when one spouse, through bad behavior, gives the other spouse no alternative except to leave.
Examples of legal grounds for a victim/spouse to leave the marriage and the home include:
- Physical, mental or emotional abuse
- Infidelity
- Withholding sex
- Refusing to provide financial support.
Criminal Abandonment
Suddenly refusing to provide care, support and protection for minor children, or for a spouse who has serious health problems, is considered criminal abandonment. It is likely the court would consider such an abandoned spouse to be financially dependent on the leaving spouse, and issue an order for continued financial responsibility and care. Abandoning a minor child is, in many cases, considered a crime as well, even if the child has not suffered physical harm as a result of being abandoned.
(Midlife Divorce Recovery cannot provide any legal advice about spousal abandonment, but we can help anyone going through any kind of divorce about how to navigate the grieving and the healing and the rebuilding work that needs to happen especially after traumatic divorces.)
Signs of Spousal Abandonment
Some common traits of those who abandon their spouse, children and marriage commitment:
- Usually men
- May have contemplated leaving for years
- Leaves suddenly with no attempt at fixing the marriage or even discussing their complaints
- Disappears with little or no future contact with ex or with their children
- Exhibits midlife crisis behavior; ie young girlfriend, adapting to her more youthful lifestyle
- Rewrites marital history, blames wife, moves on immediately and never looks back.
Change in Behavior
Often there is little outward change in the spouse who abandons his family. One of my RADiCAL women (women who are Rising Above Divorce In Confidence And Love) recounted how she and her spouse had a wonderful dinner for their anniversary the week before, and had purchased a “retirement home” the year before. In the middle of a regular conversation, he said, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m not happy. I haven’t been happy for many, many years, and I am filing for divorce.”
That kind of punch in the gut and stab in the heart is absolutely devastating for many reasons, but especially because it comes totally out of the blue like a shot in the dark where you are left gasping for breath and wondering if you will survive.
Retreating Emotionally
Some men pull back even further physically and emotionally if they are secretly considering spousal abandonment. They mentally leave the marriage and refuse to share the inner questions they may be having about life with their spouse.
When a wife confronts her husband and says, “You don’t seem like yourself lately. We need to talk. Is there anything going on I need to know about?,” he say “No,” or tunes her out. These questions often drive a husband further into his fantasy world of thinking something outside of himself is going to fix the turmoil that is going on inside of him.
He often mentally makes notes of all the things his wife is doing wrong or falling short of his often unrealistic expectations. (ie – expecting his wife of 20 or 30+ years to have the body or the attitude of a 20 year old.)
Causes/Reasons: Why Is This Happening
Often, men claim to not know why this is happening. According to the women who reach out to us, their ex-husband never talked about what was bothering them. One RADiCAL woman described meeting with a counselor to see if the marriage could be fixed. The husband described a stifling and overwhelming need to get out. This happened when everything on the surface of their marriage and their life seemed to be going just fine.
Lack of Communication
Because men often see baring their souls as a sign of weakness, they sometimes operate on their worst instincts. They bail out. They leave without explaining or trying to fix things. They ignore their obligations and seek fun and freedom!
Men often don’t talk to their friends about this either. It is frustrating to friends and family because we are here to listen, but men refuse to share what they are really feeling. That’s something we need to teach both our sons and our daughters. We all need to be honest and open about difficult and conflicting feelings with our spouses and have a support system of peers and mentors to be accountable to.
Infidelity
Often when men are thinking about fleeing their normal relationships and daily life, there are plenty of dissatisfied women (I call them girlFIENDS!) who are more than willing to be a shoulder to cry on. These women have no qualms about giving midlife crisis men the sex, the teenage-like obsession, the excitement they want, never thinking at all about the devastation they are heaping on the unsuspecting families of the men they hook up with. (Note: most affair partners share thousands of text and phone messages, much like immature adolescents!)
The men who go looking for new sexual partners are often cowards because they don’t end their marriage before they go looking for something better. All of us could have done better in our marriage. We all make mistakes. But infidelity is not the answer. The blame of infidelity is on the man (or woman) who makes that choice — not on their spouse and not on the person they find to seduce and woo to make themselves feel better. Check out our article on the Infidelity Recovery Stages.
Midlife Crisis
Many men who abandon their family show signs of a “midlife crisis,” which I personally think is a term that has been overused as an excuse for bad behavior in response to a normal rethinking of life in your middle years. Every stage of life requires some re-evaluating. Many men, however, use it as a culturally accepted excuse for bad behavior. See my Midlife Crisis Divorce article for more info and on how to recover from a divorce that was a result of your ex-husband’s midlife crisis.
How To Feel Better
Figuring out how to feel better after spousal abandonment is extremely difficult … especially if you’re in the middle of the storm and barely keeping yourself together from morning ‘til night every day. Divorce is overwhelming and exhausting and your emotions are intense and erratic and usually not typical of who you are. We can help you grieve, heal and start rebuilding. It takes time, but we provide a practical agenda to get better. How Do I Get Over A Divorce .
Spousal Abandonment Is Not Your Fault
When something like spousal abandonment rocks our world, we, as women often tend to blame ourselves first. We ask ourselves, “What’s wrong with me? Why didn’t I see this coming? Why wasn’t I more attentive? Why didn’t I work out a little more?”
The truth is, men with skinny, sexy, smart, beautiful, attentive, good, fun wives do this, too. It’s not about you. (Really!) It’s about his insecurities. And many times, the family of the men who do this is like ours was, the kind of family everyone wanted. Spousal abandonment is not your fault.
We all make mistakes through the lifetime of our marriage. If our ex-husband didn’t have the common decency to talk to us about things that were bothering him and either get out with dignity and support or try to fix things, that is on him, not us.
Little did anyone know that simmering behind the men in these marriages there is often a sense of “Is this all there is?” or “I’ve been supporting this family since my late twenties. I’m fifty now. I want out!”
Instead of seeking help and being honest and open with their wife, they often just bail out to avoid all the emotional drama of leaving a long term marriage that seemed to the rest of the family to be strong and solid.
Also, often everyone is amazed that in these spousal abandonment cases, the men move on immediately, often with very little or no further contact with wife or children. They are fully invested in this “new and better” life they think they have found. They often move in immediately with the new woman and don’t look back. That’s heartbreaking to the family they leave behind.
If spousal abandonment has happened to you, there is help! You can’t control anything anyone else is doing, but you can get help yourself. Read our article on divorce recovery and join our group of RADiCAL women who are determined to create the life they want and deserve.
My wife left me after 14 years of marriage and very close to her 50th birthday. She talked to another man on-line right in front of me despite my best efforts to fix our marriage..
Then after a week just took off with this guy, Things fell through between her and this guy, she came back but refused to work on our marriage, turned right around and took off back to the same guy. She took our oldest kids with her and left the two younger kids with me. Long story short, she dragged my heart and the kids hearts through the dirt. Now she making irrational decisions, lying, stealing etc while keeping me in the dark about where she lives. Our separation isn’t court ordered and the kids are torn between mom and myself.. I have tried to talk to her but no luck. My only recourse is divorce and fighting for sole custody. Not what I wanted to happen but what can I do?
My situation is also a bunch of heart ache , pain, confusion. I’ve only been married for 5 years with 3 kids with my husband. After celebrating our oldest 1st birthday several years ago. He kept egging me on that he was ‘promised’ a job with a close friend of his and he promised that if it didn’t work out he’d come back home. Well, he went back to his homestate, moved back in with his mom and he never came back home. He made excuses after excuse, promise after promise. During this time his moms health started to go down so he sorta became her caregiver which I understood so I stood by his side while mentioning that he needed to come home. I’d visit when I could while traveling with our kids ( over the years) or he’d fly over to visit. Now, on and off he’d support the kids but slowly just gave excuses. Now it’s been close to two years with zero support. I asked, pleaded and begged him to come home. I’ve offered for us to go to counseling, therapy, classes. Once his mom got mentally off, his sisters took over so now he was living in her house by himself. I’ve offered to them and he that we could rent the house as long as we were together as a family but his mom hated me so it was a flat out no. I wasn’t even allowed to go into the house to visit him and was forced by his family to stay at a hotel which was wrong. I could understand if I did something wrong but never did. His sisters even threatened that they call the sheriff and cops on one of our visits on me if i entered the house and… Read more »
my name is paul and my spouse left me june 8,2019. I made a conscious decision to be a stay home dad and care for our 4 boys after getting discharge from my military service. that was may 11 2007. i’ve been taken care of my kids since then. my kids ages right now are 28, 17, 12 and 7. my 12 year old paulo is a special need kid. september of 2018 i was diagnosed with heart failure, my heart is only functioning at 18%, my wife would not admit that she has a gambling problem because she does it with the approval of her mother and siblings. they all go gamble in casinos whenever they have the chance with disregard of how i feel about it. her mentality was leave me alone i can support my gambling habit. we’ve been married for 29 years. not even my relatives would seem to understand or show sympathy towards me. i
been homeless for almost a yera now and i do not know what to expect of life anymore. i just wanna go and be gone but my fear of GOD stops me from these hurtful thoughts.
My father kind of did this. My parents were married for a few years. He kept leaving the house “looking for work.” This was partially legitimate. He was going out of state. But then my mother noticed he seemed different and felt he was lying. My uncle (mother’s brother) followed him to another woman’s house not far away. By then, he was staying away for weeks on end. When confronted, he claimed it was not happening. My mother told him to quit or she will get a separation and divorce. He basically ghosted at that point…stayed at the other woman’s home. He did even show up for divorce court. The woman was not younger either. In the divorce, my mother got everything but full custody of me…he had visitation rights. He never came back. My mom tried to maintain all our finances, but went bankrupt a few years later. When I was about 10, we thought we saw him in our hometown and with another younger guy who looked like him…we assumed he might have had a child before he married my mother. I was always ashamed of him and of myself, since they were not just divorced, but he had abandoned both of us. My mother always spoke well of him, but said she decided to not fight to keep him since he apparently was not communicating and would likely be constantly moving on from woman to woman. Yet I feel that she was severely impacted by him…developed a mild hoarding issue afterwards and still continues…30 years later. I found him online about 15-20 years ago. Last year, I reached out since he is nearly 80. I wrote a letter and forgave him. Found out he had a heart attack soon after…really devastated me. He’s fairly well recovered now.… Read more »
My husband just walked away 3 days before our 30 anniversity. He will not see me or talk to me . not even to his own family. left me with all the bill. He was a drinker and said he living with another women to help him stop. It been 4 months. I dont know what to do. Everyone says move on. But its hard and no happening to them. Just dont know what to do
Living with wife as a stepfather, son age 19 live with grandparents. 5min away , perfect marriage ……….. NOT. she treats him like he’s 5 yrs old . Feeds him wash his dirty clothes brop and pickup from work and am shour $$$$ my money. Mom is a stay at home wife i wanted That i never saw my mother work and you no man thing. she had home catering. Business . .with no kids for me. mom calls her son how much times the phone get hot well u no she evon calls me sometimes by his name, lol thinking about relocating to a new house, how ever , she wants me to bye a big size house so we all can be together, 19yrs My wife mother feals *** when her daughter alone with her dad, so i was told by my wife and i can see thing not over looking things but got me thinking about. the relationship They got & why is mom so paranoid . Wife father just about do anything @ mother request got to see to believe. As a husband am in a fift wheel position in this relationship , of lately step son becoming a dictator with attitude, and a hire tone of voice, we had 2 confrontation one to pull his pants up he started to justify why it’s like that with attitude the other same attitude mom was present, she never said anything or help to carm the situation i was left mought open. (5wheel). things happen b4 but their was never a confrontation i believe mom son is her (sonsband) she tells It all, there’s no secrets anymore in my house and i do business, restaurant, rentals, etc. i stonewalled, her about 2weeks going strong for my privacy .… Read more »
I just stumbled upon this and I will say going through this abandonment has tested every core of my being. Unlike most folks who have endured this horror, I don’t feel victimized. I feel vengeful. He left without warning. Secretly moved all the bills in my name. Stopped paying the mortgage hoping my son and I become homeless. Lied about working while cheating. Sent me a message that was intended for one of his concubines. And worst of all, abused our son. Who does what he has done to a child? Does he really think he will get away with this without any answer or care? Every single day I watch the news reel wondering if he became a victim of some horrible crime for the dung show he’s taken our family through. To make matters worse, his abandonment revealed unknown abuse to our young child. He actually showed up for custody court after abusing and abandoning him. He is a sorry existence of breathing humanity. I will say this to anyone who is going through this do NOT rely on the legal system to help or protect your interest…trust God and defend yourself. The legal system is prejudice and protects fools like the one I was with. I sincerely hope he gets hit by a bus for what he has done to my son. Oh and did I say he hid under the church persona? He portrayed himself as a man of god, but he is a demon…so beware of anything that appears to be too good to be true. He abandoned us both but only came to court with hopes to get his claws on my son for visitation. The bastard didn’t even want any kind of custody because he’s a selfish hound. I will wait to see… Read more »
I’ve just found this blog yesterday and it really struck a cord, I’m commenting for the 2nd time; for the first time after 2 months of serious distress I hear things that feel so close to my situation… I hope someone might feel less lonely reading my story as I did reading others’, or someone has suggestions. I’m a younger woman than other ladies here but I definitely feel very similar. my boyfriend and I met at 20 years old, we were both running away from very bad families. We dated for two years, of great love and passion, then moved in together. We spent the following 8 years slowly building our life together, we went through financial difficulties, health problems, Problems with our families of origin and related emotional roller coasters. But we slowly worked everything out, bought out little apartment, always supported each other. He made me feel like a princess every day for all those years, I was 100% sure I found a great man. I hope I did the same for him, loving him without ever even thinking about other men, listening to him, supporting him, taking care of all the house chores while working a full time job; he kept telling me “you’re too good to be true, you’re beautiful, a great home maker, a great lover, I’m so lucky I found you, I can’t wait to grow our family and have children together, you will be a perfect, loving mother; I would never want anyone else to be my partner and the mother of my children”. (If you care to read, forgive me if I write too much, it’s hard to describe a life in a quick message). That was my life, my love, my family for over 10 years. He never mentioned any… Read more »
Dear Nikki, thank you for sharing your experience :( I’m so sorry to hear the pain you also had to go through. I hope you and your children will heal from this… I have started taking sleeping pills but didn’t bring myself to see a therapist yet. Are you finding it useful? I keep thinking back at my whole life…. 11 years ago I was barely more than a teenager, alone in the world, With no money, No job, needed surgery… I lost my mother when I was 10 y due to cancer, my father and his new girlfriend would’ve even talk to me. Then I met this boy, so loving, so caring… he also came from a rough childhood, and it looked like we shared the same hopes and plans for our future…. he was my Prince Charming. We have grown together, rarely argued about anything… I dedicated my life to be a good partner to him, taking care of him and I hoped one day, of our children. He touched my heart when, recently, he suggested in case we had a daughter, to give her my beloved mother’s name…. and knowing all we both went through, how much he meant for me, I can’t believe he would broke my heart like that. I know one’s not supposed to stay in a relationship out of pity , out of mercy for their partner. But nonethelss, I feel like I love him so much, respect him so much, know him so deeply, I would have been merciful enough to him to never put him through so much pain. Even if I ever found myself feeling less “attracted” to him, if I didn’t feel the same passion and excitement one feels in the very beginning of a relationship; even if I… Read more »