Making sense of the last 4 months. Advice/Opinions needed.

[punkertron]

It's a funny old thing, isn't it? Out of sight, out of mind.

Object constancy. Or perhaps the apparent absence of it. The idea that once someone is no longer physically present in your life, it's somehow easier to behave as though they no longer exist. As though four years of shared history, love, commitment, promises and sacrifices can simply disappear because you've decided you no longer want to acknowledge them.

It's fascinating, really, how someone can seemingly become so comfortable with another person's absence that they begin behaving as though their actions no longer have consequences. As though refusing to communicate means the problems cease to exist. As though ignoring someone's pain means they're no longer experiencing it. As though the person you've left behind simply stops being a human being with feelings, vulnerabilities, belongings, financial commitments and an entire life that has been turned upside down.

Imagine if someone you'd loved for four years, someone you'd married and planned your entire future with, suddenly ended your marriage and left you trying to understand how the life you'd built together had changed almost overnight.

* Imagine if your 34yr old wife had been facing jail for a DUI, and you'd supported her through 16 months of the difficulties it caused both of you, only for your marriage to end nine days after you'd paid her court fees. Imagine having stood beside someone throughout that ordeal, helped them through circumstances you genuinely feared could destroy their life, and then finding yourself dealing with the consequences of the separation almost immediately afterwards.
* Imagine if they were still driving the car you'd helped keep on the road, while making no effort to repay the money you'd provided.

* Imagine if they owed you £5,763.17, much of it from your late mother's inheritance. Imagine if your mother had spent four years living with terminal bone cancer, before passing away during COVID, leaving you to endure the devastation of losing her and the heartbreak of a funeral restricted by the pandemic. Imagine then spending years fighting through the courts, at enormous financial and emotional expense, simply to recover what she'd left you.
Imagine if your wife had sat beside you during those very court proceedings, witnessed first hand what you'd endured and understood that the inheritance represented far more than money. Imagine then using some of it to help her through her own serious difficulties because you loved her and believed you were building a future together. And now imagine facing the possibility of another legal battle to recover that money, this time from the very person who'd sat beside you during the first one.

* Imagine if, four months later, not a single penny had been repaid, while you watched that person publicly promote trips, hotels, festivals, an increasingly busy DJ schedule and their OnlyFans. Imagine how difficult it would be to reconcile those displays of activity and expenditure with the complete absence of repayment for money you'd provided during some of the most serious circumstances of their life.

* Imagine if they left you with a goodbye message that was still loving, albeit incredibly sad, filled with reassurances, promises and expressions of care. Imagine holding on to those words because, despite the heartbreak of losing your marriage, you believed that at the very least you could trust the person you'd married to honour them. Now imagine watching every single one of those promises fall apart. Not one upheld.

* Imagine if, within the same 24 hours, your wife told you "I will miss you every day" and "I love you", only for her housemate to tell you "If you fulfil your flight already booked, I'll call the cops." Imagine trying to comprehend how you could go from receiving those loving words to being threatened with police involvement over a flight you'd already arranged. No threats from you. No confrontation. No intention of causing harm. Just an existing flight booking, and suddenly your presence was being treated as something warranting police intervention.

* Imagine if there hadn't been some enormous argument, explosive confrontation or catastrophic falling-out that explained such an extraordinary change. Just an ordinary day, followed by the end of your marriage. Imagine being left trying to reconcile the person who'd expressed love and made promises with the hostility and restrictions that followed, as though something terrible had happened between you when, from your perspective, nothing had occurred that explained such a dramatic transformation.

* Imagine if, 33 days after that goodbye, you were suddenly told you weren't allowed to collect your own belongings in person. Imagine being thousands of miles away, with an entire basement of your possessions, including professional DJ equipment, still at your wife's home. Imagine how disorientating it would feel to go from sharing a home and a marriage to being unable to make straightforward arrangements to retrieve your own property.

* Imagine if, despite being the person whose marriage had ended against your wishes, you repeatedly proposed remote mediation to make the divorce fair, equal, affordable and amicable for BOTH of you. Not trying to take your wife to the cleaners. Not threatening her. Not insulting her. Not attempting to punish her for leaving. Just trying to find the most practical, cost-effective way to resolve a situation that had fundamentally broken your heart, without unnecessarily destroying either person's finances or mental health.

* Imagine if, after exhausting the avenues available to you, you contacted three mutual friends in the hope that someone might help establish communication or encourage a practical resolution. Imagine if these were people you'd met through your wife but had developed your own friendships with, and your attempts to seek help were subsequently presented as something threatening or sinister. Imagine being thousands of miles away, pursuing mediation, while feeling that you were being publicly portrayed as a danger to the very person you were trying to reach an amicable agreement with.

* Imagine if your wife's 23yr old housemate mocked you, adding further humiliation to a separation you were already struggling to comprehend.

* Imagine if you'd spent years actively creating, organising and curating DJ events for both of you, including events you'd specifically developed because you knew they'd make your wife happy. Imagine putting in the work, establishing the connections, making the arrangements and creating opportunities because you were genuinely trying to build a life together in another country. Imagine if she'd initially been too shy or uncomfortable to handle much of the organising herself, so you'd taken on that responsibility, helped her develop her confidence and supported her in becoming a DJ in the first place.
Now imagine your marriage ending and watching her take over those very events, continuing to perform them using your own professional DJ equipment, which remained at her home.
Imagine if, when she left, she'd voluntarily promised to fulfil the existing events, give you the money earned from them and then walk away from DJing.
Did you ask her to give up DJing? No. Did you demand that she abandon the career you'd helped her build? Absolutely not. She made that promise herself.
And did she follow through? No.
Instead, she went on to perform considerably more DJ events than before, building an increasingly busy schedule from opportunities you'd helped create and a career you'd spent years encouraging.
Imagine watching the bookings continue, the performances being promoted and the money apparently coming in, while you still hadn't received a single cent. Not from the events she'd promised to pay you for, and not towards the thousands she already owed you.
Imagine the sheer frustration of knowing that you'd invested your time, your creativity, your professional experience, your connections and your equipment into building something for your shared future, only to find yourself excluded from it while the person who'd promised to walk away was now doing more of it than ever.

* Imagine if they then repurposed the joint DJ Instagram account you'd built together into their own personal DJ profile, leaving you watching another piece of your shared history become something that no longer included you.

* Imagine if they began associating with people they'd previously told you had caused them pain, including people you'd originally introduced them to and others who'd hurt you. Imagine the confusion of watching relationships and loyalties change so dramatically after the separation.

* Imagine if they ignored an email informing them that your seven-year-old cousin had leukaemia. Imagine how that silence would feel when it concerned something so serious, particularly from someone with whom you'd shared years of family life, grief and personal hardship.

* Imagine if they publicly sexualised something deeply personal that you'd spent four years worrying about, turning it into a playful Instagram post after years of conflict over your concerns for their health and wellbeing. Imagine if those concerns had sometimes caused arguments in front of other people, while privately they'd confided in you about the physical consequences they were experiencing. Imagine how upsetting it would feel to see something that had caused you genuine fear for their health presented so casually, when you'd spent years worrying because you loved them.

* Imagine if they then shared a post about DARVO — Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender — on social media, while you were still trying to recover your belongings, resolve the money owed and navigate a divorce you never wanted. Imagine feeling that the post implied you were manipulating the narrative or merely pretending to be a victim, leaving you questioning whether even expressing your hurt was now being portrayed as wrongdoing.

* Imagine if you'd spent years navigating someone else's fears, anxiety and need for reassurance, repeatedly trying to demonstrate your love and loyalty, only to be accused of cheating, wanting to cheat or even thinking about cheating. Imagine how exhausting it would become to constantly defend your commitment, and how hurtful it would feel when your eventual frustration and defensiveness were then treated as further evidence that you were somehow the problem.

* Imagine being the absolute twat who flew between two countries 25 times, gave up enormous parts of your own life, invested years of time, energy and money, and made endless plans for a future together, only to find yourself repeatedly having to defend whether you were faithful. Twenty-five international journeys, four years of commitment and a marriage, yet somehow your loyalty was still being questioned. It genuinely beggars belief.

* Imagine if, almost from the day you met someone, you felt you'd become the person responsible for helping them through one crisis after another. Their emotional support, their reassurance, their protector and, when necessary, their financial safety net. Imagine accepting that responsibility because you loved them, even when it came at considerable personal expense, and gradually finding that your own needs and wellbeing were becoming secondary.

* Imagine if you spent years reassuring someone that they were loved, that they mattered and that you weren't going anywhere. Imagine if they regularly questioned whether anyone truly loved them, and you did everything you could to remind them that they were worthy of love, through your words, your actions and the life you were trying to build together.

* Imagine if, when your own mental health deteriorated and you needed patience, reassurance and emotional support in return, your vulnerabilities suddenly seemed to become a burden. Imagine trusting someone with your deepest insecurities, only to feel that the person who understood those insecurities better than anyone had subsequently hurt you in precisely the places they knew you were most fragile.

* Imagine if, after everything you'd given and endured, you watched that person publicly celebrate their new life in a way that made it feel as though you were someone they needed to escape from. Imagine seeing the very ambitions you'd encouraged and supported presented as part of a new chapter, while your own contributions to the years you'd shared seemed to have disappeared from the story.

* Imagine if the account of your marriage that you felt was emerging seemed to focus entirely on your mistakes, your frustration and your reactions, without the circumstances that contributed to them. Imagine being willing to acknowledge where you'd gone wrong, while feeling that the years of love, support and sacrifice that also defined the relationship were being forgotten.

* Imagine if, after everything you'd experienced, you watched that person seemingly surround themselves with people who appeared perfectly comfortable with how you were being treated. Imagine the ghosting, blocking, broken promises, gaslighting, financial exploitation and mockery seemingly being accepted as perfectly reasonable behaviour. Does nobody stop to consider there's an actual human being on the receiving end of all this? Not some faceless villain or disposable inconvenience, but someone who genuinely loved this woman, celebrated her, supported her through her darkest moments and believed they would spend their lives together. Imagine watching everyone carry on as though none of it mattered, while you're left dealing with the consequences. How does someone become so easily disposable that even the people around them appear to forget they're a human being deserving of basic dignity, compassion and respect?

Imagine spending years trying to prove your love to someone who repeatedly questioned it, only to be left defending whether that love was ever genuine in the first place.

Imagine how humiliating and disorientating it would feel to have your attempts to explain what happened interpreted as deflection, your anger interpreted as aggression and your efforts to obtain accountability treated as evidence that you're somehow the problem.

Imagine being the person who was left, yet finding that the end of the relationship was only the beginning of months of further hurt, financial uncertainty, hostility and unresolved practical consequences.

Ending a marriage is one thing. How you treat another human being while bringing that marriage to an end is another.

This has been my reality this year.

I loved this person enormously. I genuinely believed she was my soulmate, the person I would spend the rest of my life with. And I wasn't alone in believing that. Everyone around us knew how deeply in love I was. Everyone knew how much I adored her, how proudly I celebrated her, how much I encouraged her ambitions and how fiercely I supported her through everything life threw at us.
I gave that relationship everything I knew how to give, sometimes more than I realistically had to give, because I believed in her, I believed in us, and I believed that whatever difficulties we faced, we would face them together.