My close friend’s husband betrayed her in plain sight. It turned out he’d been seeing her friend behind her back for almost a decade. More than just a sexual affair, less than a full relationship. When she found out, he cried. A full tantrum, in front of her, reverting to a 10-year-old boy.
Then, once he had left, and been predictably and summarily dumped by her friend and most of his own, my friend was overcome with her own anxiety. Is he OK? Can he pay the bills? Is he eating properly? Her main fears weren’t for herself or her own situation at all. As usual, she was last on the list. That image of him sobbing on the floor, doing that deep, juddering, trying-to-catch-his-breath thing, stayed with her, and came into focus every time she worried about his welfare.
Now, it would be easy to say this was her issue: her anxiety, her mothering, her need to fill the role of mum in the relationship. Easy, that is, until you hear the next part.
I remember sitting on her sofa in her new flat (they couldn’t afford to keep the house) when she held out her phone and said, “Look at this. Is this normal?” It had been 11 months since they had split, and there were no children. On the screen was their WhatsApp chat: dozens, hundreds of messages from him. “How do I pay this? What’s our doctor called? Where do I take the car for a service? I can’t iron this f***ing shirt!” Endless, ranging from the banal to the pathetic. How to set up a direct debit is easy to search, but in the rudderless dinghy of his newly adrift singledom, she had become his Google.
This is far from an isolated example. Women, betrayed and otherwise, are still parenting men who discover a complete lack of competence in mid-life.
I give relationship advice to thousands of women and I hear a version of this every week. The ex-husband who still rings to ask when his mother’s birthday is. The one who texts a photo of the boiler’s error code at 10pm. The man who left for someone else, and still forwards her the council tax letters because “you always did that bit”. None of these women are fools. Most of them can see exactly what’s happening. They answer anyway.
Why?
Part of the reason is habit. If you’ve been the one who remembers everything for 20 years – the dentist, the MOT, the passwords, the birthdays – that doesn’t switch off when the marriage does. The knowledge is still sitting there, and he knows it is.
Part of it is guilt, or something close to it. When you’ve seen a grown man you love, or certainly used to, fall apart on your kitchen floor, it’s hard to shake the feeling that if he goes under it’ll be your fault, even when he was the one who walked out.
And part of the more honest and less comfortable side of it is usefulness. Handling the utilities has given you utility for years, and it’s actually pretty hard to just stop. While he still needs you to tell him how to work the washing machine, the marriage isn’t quite over. Each answer is a small thread still tying you together, and cutting the last thread means finally feeling the full weight of the loss.
But look at what it costs. He gets all the practical benefits of a wife, with none of the obligations of a husband. She stays on call for a relationship that’s ended in every way except the one that was so exhausting it contributed to the separation in the first place. Every message lands right where it hurts, pulling her back into his life, their life, just as she’s trying to build her own. How the hell could you begin to grieve a marriage while you’re still doing its admin?
All of this does him no favours either, incidentally. A man of 50 who has never booked his own doctor’s appointment needs to learn, and he won’t while someone else is still doing it for him. The kindest thing for both of them is for him to find out that he can. There’s no one more willing to employ you as an unpaid life admin assistant than a recently single mid-life man.
So, if all this feels familiar what do you do, and how do you stop?
If you have children together, this is where it gets more complicated, and rightly so. You need to talk about school forms, dentist visits and who’s doing which weekend, and that’s shared responsibility. Don’t do his half for him.
Notice what you’re doing. Look back over your messages from the last month and count how many were things he could have found out himself. Most women are shocked by the number. Then stop answering straight away. The urgency is usually his, not yours. Leave it a day, and you’ll often find he’s worked it out on his own, huffily, but done.
When you do reply, point rather than do. Send the link, the phone number, the name of the garage, and let him make the call. And at some point, say it once, kindly and plainly: “I can’t be the person you ask about this any more. You’ll be fine.”
He will be fine. Most men are, eventually, once they realise the safety net just keeps them tethered to their incompetence. And the time and worry she gets back belongs where it should have been all along: with her.
Google, after all, is free: it never closes, and unlike her, it was never his wife.
Harry Hardisty writes about relationships, heartbreak and mid-life at @dadhugsforyoursoul & dadhugsforyoursoul.com
Hence then, the article about how to stop mothering your ex husband was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( How to stop mothering your ex-husband )
Also on site :
- Witney Carson Claps Back at ‘DWTS’ Judge Carrie Ann Inaba, Joining Uproar Over Comments on Guillermo Rodriguez: ‘I Said What I Said’
- Tom DeLonge Was in the Crowd When 43,000 Fans Serenaded Him With His Own Song: ‘He Was Definitely in His Feels’
- James Gunn Responds to ‘Clayface’ Criticism: ‘The Public Voting on What IP They Want to See’ Isn’t ‘the Only Way to Make a Movie’