The last word: He said he was leav­ing. She ignored him.

When Laura Munson’s hus­band asked for a divorce, she ducked instead of fight­ing. He needed to learn, she says, that his unhap­pi­ness wasn’t really about her

Let’s say you have what you believe to be a healthy mar­riage. You’re still friends and lovers after spend­ing more than half of your lives together. The dreams you set out to achieve in your 20s—gazing into each other’s eyes in can­dlelit city bistros, when you were sin­gle and skinny—have for the most part come true.
Two decades later you have the 20 acres of land, the farm­house, the chil­dren, the dogs and horses. You’re the par­ents you said you would be, full of love and guid­ance. You’ve done it all: Dis­ney­land, camp­ing, Hawaii, Mex­ico, city liv­ing, stargaz­ing.
Sure, you have your mar­i­tal issues, but on the whole you feel so self-satisfied about how things have worked out that you would never, in your wildest night­mares, think you would hear these words from your hus­band one fine sum­mer day: “I don’t love you any­more. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m mov­ing out. The kids will under­stand. They’ll want me to be happy.”
But wait. This isn’t the divorce story you think it is. Nei­ther is it a begging-him-to-stay story. It’s a story about hear­ing your hus­band say, “I don’t love you any­more” and decid­ing not to believe him. And what can hap­pen as a result.
Here’s a visual: Child throws a tem­per tantrum. Tries to hit his mother. But the mother doesn’t hit back, lec­ture or pun­ish. Instead, she ducks. Then she tries to go about her busi­ness as if the tantrum isn’t hap­pen­ing. She doesn’t “reward” the tantrum. She sim­ply doesn’t take the tantrum per­son­ally because, after all, it’s not about her.
Let me be clear: I’m not say­ing my hus­band was throw­ing a child’s tantrum. No. He was in the grip of some­thing else—a pro­found and far more trou­bling melt­down that comes not in child­hood but in midlife, when we per­ceive that our per­sonal tra­jec­tory is no longer arc­ing reli­ably upward as it once did. But I decided to respond the same way I’d responded to my children’s tantrums. And I kept respond­ing to it that way. For four months.
“I don’t love you any­more. I’m not sure I ever did.”
His words came at me like a speed­ing fist, like a sucker punch, yet some­how in that moment I was able to duck. And once I recov­ered and com­posed myself, I man­aged to say, “I don’t buy it.” Because I didn’t.
He drew back in sur­prise. Appar­ently he’d expected me to burst into tears, to rage at him, to threaten him with a cus­tody bat­tle. Or beg him to change his mind.
So he turned mean. “I don’t like what you’ve become.”
Gut-wrenching pause. How could he say such a thing? That’s when I really wanted to fight. To rage. To cry. But I didn’t.
Instead, a shroud of calm enveloped me, and I repeated those words: “I don’t buy it.”
You see, I’d recently com­mit­ted to a non-negotiable under­stand­ing with myself. I’d com­mit­ted to “the End of Suf­fer­ing.” I’d finally man­aged to exile the voices in my head that told me my per­sonal hap­pi­ness was only as good as my out­ward suc­cess, rooted in things that were often out­side my con­trol. I’d seen the insan­ity of that equa­tion and decided to take respon­si­bil­ity for my own hap­pi­ness. And I mean all of it.
My hus­band hadn’t yet come to this under­stand­ing with him­self. He had enjoyed many years of hard work, and its rewards had sup­ported our fam­ily of four all along. But his new endeavor hadn’t been going so well, and his abil­ity to be the bread­win­ner was in rapid decline. He’d been mis­er­able about this, felt use­less, was los­ing him­self emo­tion­ally and let­ting him­self go phys­i­cally. And now he wanted out of our mar­riage; to be done with our fam­ily.
But I wasn’t buy­ing it.
I said: “It’s not age-appropriate to expect chil­dren to be con­cerned with their par­ents’ hap­pi­ness. Not unless you want to cre­ate co-dependents who’ll spend their lives in bad rela­tion­ships and ther­apy. There are times in every rela­tion­ship when the par­ties involved need a break. What can we do to give you the dis­tance you need, with­out hurt­ing the fam­ily?”
“Huh?” he said.
“Go trekking in Nepal. Build a yurt in the back meadow. Turn the garage stu­dio into a man-cave. Get that drum set you’ve always wanted. Any­thing but hurt­ing the chil­dren and me with a reck­less move like the one you’re talk­ing about.”
Then I repeated my line, “What can we do to give you the dis­tance you need, with­out hurt­ing the fam­ily?”
“Huh?”
“How can we have a respon­si­ble dis­tance?”
“I don’t want dis­tance,” he said. “I want to move out.”
My mind raced. Was it another woman? Drugs? Uncon­scionable secrets? But I stopped myself. I would not suf­fer.
Instead, I went to my desk, Googled “respon­si­ble sep­a­ra­tion,” and came up with a list. It included things like: Who’s allowed to use what credit cards? Who are the chil­dren allowed to see you with in town? Who’s allowed keys to what?
I looked through the list and passed it on to him.
His response: “Keys? We don’t even have keys to our house.”
I remained stoic. I could see pain in his eyes. Pain I rec­og­nized.
“Oh, I see what you’re doing,” he said. “You’re going to make me go into ther­apy. You’re not going to let me move out. You’re going to use the kids against me.”
“I never said that. I just asked: What can we do to give you the dis­tance you need … ”
“Stop say­ing that!”
Well, he didn’t move out.
Instead, he spent the sum­mer being unre­li­able. He stopped com­ing home at his usual 6 o’clock. He would stay out late and not call. He blew off our entire Fourth of July—the parade, the bar­be­cue, the fireworks—to go to some­one else’s party. When he was at home, he was dis­tant. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. He didn’t even wish me “Happy Birth­day.”
But I didn’t play into it. I walked my line. I told the kids: “Daddy’s hav­ing a hard time, as adults often do. But we’re a fam­ily, no mat­ter what.” I was not going to suf­fer. And nei­ther were they.
My trusted friends were irate on my behalf. “How can you just stand by and accept this behav­ior? Kick him out! Get a lawyer!”
I walked my line with them, too. This man was hurt­ing, yet his prob­lem wasn’t mine to solve. In fact, I needed to get out of his way so he could solve it.
I know what you’re think­ing: I’m a pushover. I’m weak and scared and would put up with any­thing to keep the fam­ily together. I’m prob­a­bly one of those women who would endure phys­i­cal abuse. But I can assure you, I’m not. I load 1,500-pound horses into trail­ers and gal­lop through the high coun­try of Mon­tana all sum­mer. I went through Pitocin-induced nat­ural child­birth. And a Cae­sarean sec­tion with­out follow-up drugs. I am handy with a chain saw.
I sim­ply had come to under­stand that I was not at the root of my husband’s prob­lem. He was. If he could turn his prob­lem into a mar­i­tal fight, he could make it about us. I needed to get out of the way so that wouldn’t hap­pen.
Pri­vately, I decided to give him time. Six months.
I had good days and I had bad days. On the good days, I took the high road. I ignored his lash­ing out, his mer­ci­less jabs. On bad days, I would fes­ter in the August sun while the kids ran through sprin­klers, rag­ing at him in my mind. But I never wavered. Although it may sound ridicu­lous to say, “Don’t take it per­son­ally” when your hus­band tells you he no longer loves you, some­times that’s exactly what you have to do.
Instead of issu­ing ulti­ma­tums, yelling, cry­ing, or beg­ging, I pre­sented him with options. I cre­ated a sum­mer of fun for our fam­ily and wel­comed him to share in it, or not—it was up to him. If he chose not to come along, we would miss him, but we would be just fine, thank you very much. And we were.
And, yeah, you can bet I wanted to sit him down and per­suade him to stay. To love me. To fight for what we’ve cre­ated. You can bet I wanted to.
But I didn’t.
I bar­be­cued. Made lemon­ade. Set the table for four. Loved him from afar.
And one day, there he was, home from work early, mow­ing the lawn. A man doesn’t mow his lawn if he’s going to leave it. Not this man. Then he fixed a door that had been bro­ken for eight years. He made a com­ment about our front porch need­ing paint. Our front porch. He men­tioned need­ing wood for next win­ter. The future. Lit­tle by lit­tle, he started talk­ing about the future.
It was Thanks­giv­ing din­ner that sealed it. My hus­band bowed his head humbly and said, “I’m thank­ful for my fam­ily.”
He was back.
And I saw what had been miss­ing: pride. He’d lost pride in him­self. Maybe that’s what hap­pens when our egos take a hit in midlife and we real­ize we’re not as young and golden any­more.
When life’s knocked us around. And our child­hood myths reveal them­selves to be just that. The truth feels like the biggest sucker-punch of them all: It’s not a spouse, or land, or a job, or money that brings us hap­pi­ness. Those achieve­ments, those rela­tion­ships, can enhance our hap­pi­ness, yes, but hap­pi­ness has to start from within. Rely­ing on any other equa­tion can be lethal.
My hus­band had become lost in the myth. But he found his way out. We’ve since had the hard con­ver­sa­tions. In fact, he encour­aged me to write about our ordeal. To help other cou­ples who arrive at this junc­ture in life. Peo­ple who feel scared and stuck. Who believe their tem­po­rary feel­ings are per­ma­nent. Who see an easy out and think they can escape.
My hus­band tried to strike a deal. Blame me for his pain. Unload his feel­ings of per­sonal dis­grace onto me.
But I ducked. And I waited. And it worked.

Try­ing to give him space…so he can fig­ure out stuff, but also don’t want to give too much space so he thinks I don’t need him at all. But it is a bit awk­ward to have loved some­one for close to 19 years…and feel like you may/may not talk to them. All I know is that it is in God’s hands and I can’t worry about it. I do not need any health issues at this point and pent up hurt and aggres­sion only hurts me. I just pray that God heals our bro­ken fam­ily, because it is a long road of unknown. How can you not end a CLOSE friendship…but you have no trou­ble end­ing a mar­riage? A friend­ship almost 2 decades. Just so confused?!?!?!?!?