A year ago, I would have laughed if someone told me I’d leave Anthony. My husband of twelve years, the man I worshipped, the one all my friends would say, “You’re so lucky to have him.” He really was everything to me—loving, dependable, kind, an attentive father. We lived like something out of a fairy tale. Now, I’m staying with my sister in Surrey, with our two boys and the crushing thought that this was the only way to survive.
When we first married, we had the usual struggles—started small, bought a little flat, then Anthony sold it, and we took out a mortgage on a proper three-bedroom house. Renovated it, furnished it, made it comfortable. Two sons, nine and four. I taught art classes at a local school—not for the money, but because I loved it. Anthony brought in a steady income, the heart of our family. We went on holidays, threw birthday parties, lived a truly happy life.
Then, in an instant, everything changed.
One day, I got a call from his office—he’d collapsed at his desk. Ambulance, hospital, tests… The diagnosis: a benign brain tumour. But neglected, grown, untreated. The doctors couldn’t do a simple procedure—it had to be major, complex neurosurgery.
He survived. The doctors called him lucky. But the Anthony I knew was gone. After the surgery, he was a different man. His face twisted from nerve damage, his hearing damaged. Worse were the changes inside. He came home, and hell began.
He quit his job. Just said:
“I’ve done my time. Now you feed us.”
I took on extra work, exhausted myself to the bone. And him? He lay on the sofa all day, glued to his phone, staring at the telly. No help, no effort. Just complaints. And shouting. So much shouting.
He lashed out at everyone—me, the kids. Even our four-year-old. Blamed us for his illness. Said we’d “worn him down.” That we’d “broken” him.
Then came the odd obsessions. Hours watching doomsday shows, stockpiling tinned food, matches, salt. Refused his meds, refused to see a doctor. I begged—he’d scream that I wanted to “lock him in a madhouse,” that I had “other men,” that “all of London cries for me.”
It was like living in a nightmare. Our home became a battleground; the boys flinched at their own father. I couldn’t leave them in that. So I left. Took them and went to my sister’s.
Divorce was inevitable. I couldn’t stay with that man—not because he was ill, but because he refused to get help, refused to fight, refused to be a husband, a father, a decent human being.
Now his family call me selfish. Say I left him when he “needed me most,” that I abandoned him in his worst hour. That I lived off him and ran when things got hard. It hurts. Because no one was there when I lay awake at night, too exhausted to sleep. No one saw my hands shake when he shouted at the boys again. No one helped when I carried the weight of two jobs.
I wouldn’t have left if he’d gone to a psychiatrist. If he’d accepted help. If he’d still been himself. But I couldn’t keep the boys in that fear, that poison. My job was to protect them.
Sometimes I remember the old Anthony—smiling, patient, kind. And it breaks my heart. But I look at my boys and know: I did the right thing. I saved them. And myself. Even if it cost me my marriage and my happiness.
