Being left: "When men separate, the separation usually has a name"

They were abandoned: Five mothers vomit here, who had to explain to the children why their father "wants to change".

Clara, two sons (7 and 11)

"My perfect world broke up on a Friday evening. Suddenly, without any warning. Sometime after I had put the children to bed in the evening and Martin had come home from jogging. Freshly showered, he sat down at our long dining table, looked at me in silence and howled suddenly. I see myself standing in front of him to this day, first worried about him, then stunned by everything he threw at me with sobs. "I can't go on." "We only work side by side." "We're not happy anymore." Again and again these sentences hit me. I couldn't say anything, just silently looked at the man I had been with for twelve years, ten of whom were married – and with whom I had two children the world had set. I could not move, could not think anything. I just felt that suddenly everything was different as he continued to flow.

I don't know after how many "I can't do it anymore" I was finally able to formulate a sentence again. "Tell me, are you just ending our relationship?" I heard myself wondering and already knew the answer. Martin is a lawyer who doesn't say anything he doesn't mean. His "That with us no longer makes sense" finally sealed the end and I knew that it was – with our marriage, our life with four. Above all, the world of our nine and five year old sons, who slept in their beds and had no idea that their father was breaking up everything – our family – was breaking up.

There was another, significantly younger woman and suddenly I felt damn old

It was immediately clear to me that there was another one. Even if he denies it. I knew it anyway. If men to separate, the separation usually also has a name. I had just seen too many marriages and relationships break up around me. I just never thought that it might get me.

We were one of these "we-we-did-it" families: with a chic old building, good jobs, children playing and playing sports and a well-sorted group of friends. I would be lying if I said that we had been happy with each other all the time. In our full life we ​​were closely timed with appointments and commitments, so you don't fall over each other on the kitchen table every night, there is often also Zoff. But we were still a family, always had a good connection, always had something to say to each other.

Martin was suddenly no longer interested in all of this. Even though I begged him to think of the boys, of both of us and what bound us. He had made his decision. I didn't have a chance. The end of it was that he slept on the sofa and I in our bed, in which he never lay afterwards.

I don't remember how I managed the following weeks. I moved like in a fog field, the floor below me was cotton wool. I staggered through the days with the children, in the office, wanted to work, not show anything and ran to the toilet at every opportunity to cry.

Martin and I tried to avoid each other as best we could, although we stayed in the apartment together. We did not speak to the children about the separation for a long time, we only wanted to tell them when we knew how to proceed. We explained to the boys that he was sleeping in the guest room with his nightly snoring. They believed it.

Since then my life has been like a farce. On the outside, I continued to act as the happily married while he was meeting with his girlfriend and at some point I registered with Tinder and chatted with men who were at least ten years younger than me. I had to get out of this swamp of disappointment and humiliation.

I didn't want to see myself for what I was: an abandoned one

Maybe because our separation was for the most common reason ever: a woman twenty years younger than me. When your husband makes out with a girl who could have been his daughter, you suddenly feel damn old.

I hated him for imposing this cliché on me. For what he did to me and the unsuspecting children with his butterflies in his stomach. And I was ashamed of him for being such a ruthless partner and father.

During that time, I only talked to my family and best friends about it. The conversations and appointments saved me from the abyss – and the countless hours in the gym. I struggled with weights almost every day, as if my growing muscles had been able to hide my waning strength.

Martin and I tried to deal with each other calmly, in the interest of the boys. But when they weren't there, we shouted at each other and I slammed words that I had never said to anyone before. I deeply despised him. He disgusted me in his unmistakable infatuation with our broken glass.

At some point we then told the children to have four of us at one of our lying dinners. The little boy immediately started to cry, the big boy just stared at his sausage bread on the plate in front of him and said nothing. I don't remember how the evening went on. I pushed it out, maybe because my pain was nothing compared to hers, because Martin rammed a knife into their hearts.

I wanted to stuff the two of them back in my stomach to protect them from what was done to them: the end of their healthy childhood.

I hated him for what he did to us

At some point it was clear that we could no longer live like this. It eats me up. I moved into a small apartment, which I used on the days when he looked after the children. When I was with the boys, he lived with his girlfriend.

In between I commuted between two lives: one as a mother and one as a sudden single at the age of 43. One week I smeared sandwiches, in the other I often spent the whole night in the office because nothing kept me in the soulless and childless apartment and I headlessly slapped the nights with friends or in clubs.

I was completely beside myself, without any optimism, and yet I realized: it must go on. For me and the kids. I didn't want to be a victim, but above all I wanted the boys to be a particularly good mother, however pathetic that might sound. I talked to them a lot, comforted them, tried to explain what I didn't understand, and cradled my crying children to sleep countless times – and hated Martin.

When I had the boys on weekends, I made appointments with other families, which was not always easy. Separations are frightening and show that the supposedly holy family can quickly collapse. The fear of being infected with this disease has reduced some contact. Fortunately, not everyone.

Today I know that every end also means a beginning

We went on vacation with friends, went on many excursions – I tried to close the gap in our construct with related relatives. That helped us three. Also because Martin and I started to deal with each other again sensibly. We wanted to remain parents together when we could no longer be families.

Two years have passed since our fateful evening. Our apartment is sold, the divorce is on, and the boys commute back and forth between two parents every two weeks. Martin and I manage to celebrate children's birthdays together and to coordinate peacefully with each other. That calms me down and takes away the fear that the boys could end up being emotional zombies because of their parents' broken love. We have all made our peace with the situation.

But the way there was an emotional ordeal that was sometimes unbearable. Martin is still with his girlfriend. And I've had Ben for three months in my life. The story with Martin didn't break me, even if the pain keeps coming up to this day. But since I know Ben, I know that I can still trust, love and be happy again. When he looks at me, I know that every end also means a beginning.

Miriam, a daughter (3)

"At night alone in bed I have fantasies about murder: I want to take revenge for a crime for which there is no word and no punishment: he is happy without me."

What worries me most is that I lost not only my husband, but half the time with my child. I didn't want this separation, he fell in love again, zack, out. But why did we buy a huge family bed for a lot of money two weeks before his lightning move-out so that it didn't get too tight with our little one at night? I will never understand that. In this bed I now lie all alone every other week. Then Maja is with her father. We are so sensible: parents who only want the best with a pendulum child. I deliver folding boxes as if I were the supplier and my child a service, all very professionally. But at night in bed, when I imagine my child cuddling with his dad and the new girl, I have fantasies about murder. I want to take revenge for a crime for which there is no word and no punishment: he is happy without me. And he wants my blessing "so that it may be easier for Maja". I miss her like this: What kind of mother am I in a week when my child is not with me?

Nancy, two daughters (6 and 8)

"He always wants to be there for Mareike and Amelie. I would personally like to do without this lifelong presence that is blooming now. He should just be gone."

Sometimes I wish he was dead. Then at least I could mourn him. Like other women who have lost their husbands. But my ex is doing great, he is now realizing himself with his boss, from whom I had to hear for years what a stupid cow she was. The two start all over again, professionally and privately. And he wants to "always be there for Mareike and Amelie, really always". I would personally like to do without this presence, which is now blooming for life. He should just be gone, that ass. I want the man back I fell in love with. But maybe that never happened. He broke so much – even my joy at Thanksgiving! My family is from Boston. And there we were visiting my parents when he out of the blue told me that it was over. "They'll take care of them and the children," he thought, and rushed to a meeting with the boss. My family will never celebrate Thanksgiving carefree again.

Hanna, twins (8 years)

"I would have robbed him of the joy. A child at all costs – that was not his life's design."

We tried to have a child nine years before I got pregnant: twins, a boy, a girl. I had contractions in the 28th SW. Hospital, three weeks lie, lung maturity treatment. With the CTG, a child suddenly had no heart sounds. Emergency caesarean section. Julia had to be resuscitated shortly after birth. She looked like a dead baby mouse. There was little hope that she could survive it unscathed. I think my ex had already given up on that. And me and our boys too. I didn't realize that at the moment, I was completely off track. But when things were going uphill, and I was more and more alone with both children on my stomach at the kangaroo aftercare, a very dear intensive care nurse, with whom I am still friends, said as a consolation to me: "You are not the first Mother who ends up going out here alone with her children. " And so it came about: I would have robbed him of the joy of having a child at any price – that was not his life's design. He just has no strength left. And then he quickly became a father again. Without me, with his new girlfriend, very naturally and carefree of me and my children Julia and Niklas, who are developing wonderfully by the way.

Elli, two sons (16 and 17)

"My boys are not in an easy phase. They need their father. But he feels old when he's with them. He now has two cute girls."

I never thought we were just that interchangeable. My ex got away when our two boys went to puberty: my big boy never got out of his room, he was just playing games. And the little boy never came home, he just hung around with his stoner friends. Both were terrible. This constant stunk at home was not great for me either, but what kind of a father are you when you say in this situation: "Bye, that pulls me down too much here"? It still makes me so angry and stunned that I think they exchanged it. It can't be the man I once loved and with whom I gave birth to these children. And he loved that too. But on the other hand, he has remained so terribly true that I could throw up and that it is absolutely clear: he must have always been a complete idiot. My ex just started again. New woman, first little girl, second little girl. They did honeymoons in Prague, so he was with me too. And now every summer they go to the holiday home in Denmark that we used to rent. "It was always so nice there with young children …" My boys are still not in an easy phase. They need their father, but they have little contact. He never asks them if they want to go to Denmark or do something with their half sisters. They disturb his image of eternal youth: he is with his new family and thinks how cute these girls are and what a young father he is. And then he sees the boys and sometimes even me and gets a fright because he knows it's all a poor lie.

An article from BRIGITTE MOM

BRIGITTE MOM 02/2019