**Diary Entry**
We’d been together for ten years, but because of my father, she took the children and left…
I’m thirty-four. And I’m alone. Completely. My wife is gone. She took our three sons and went to stay with her mother in Portsmouth. And here I am, sitting in the house I helped build, listening to the clock tick away the emptiness. A decade together—how could something so solid just crumble? But it did. Because of my father.
Emily and I met online, like so many do these days. Messages turned into dates, and within months, we were married. Everything moved fast, like something out of a film. For the first time, I was truly happy. A year later, Oliver arrived—our first son. I was over the moon. Exhaustion didn’t matter; the struggles didn’t register. My family was everything.
Back then, we lived with my parents in Manchester. That was my first mistake. Dad was a hard worker, but he drank too much. His outbursts became frequent—shouting, insults. Emily bore it in silence. I turned a blind eye, told myself we’d get used to it. Mum had long since given up on him, but for Emily, it was all new and raw.
Then came the night he grabbed her in a drunken rage, screaming nonsense. She pulled free, called me in tears. I rushed home. The row that followed was explosive. And in the end, Dad threw us out—me, Emily, and our baby, onto the street. Emily didn’t argue. We left for her mother’s place.
But peace didn’t last there either. Her mum… difficult woman. Constant arguments, new men drifting in and out. Emily struggled to adjust, and I felt just as out of place. But we had nowhere else to go. Then came William—our second boy. Bright, always grinning. While Emily looked after the boys, I worked two jobs just to keep us afloat.
We stayed there nearly three years before her mum snapped: “I don’t like you. Get out.” Emily left with me. We rented a place, finally breathed. No parents, no drama—just us. For the first time, it felt like we were truly a family. Money was tight, but we managed. It was enough just being together.
Then my mum decided to build a house in the countryside near Guildford. A big home for all of us, she said. Promised things would be different. We believed her. We poured everything into it—time, labour, savings. Two years later, we moved in. A two-story house, plenty of room for everyone. Life settled. Then came Noah, our third.
But the calm didn’t last. Emily’s mum sold her flat and moved to London to live with Emily’s brother. She stopped by ours “for a while.” Never left. Brought another man with her. The jibes started, the whispered complaints. Emily grew tense, snapped at me. Dad started drinking again. Meanwhile, I took a new job—traveling often, home maybe once a fortnight. And while I was gone, things got worse.
Coming back from one trip, I found Emily packing. Crying. “I can’t do this anymore,” she said. “Your father screamed at me, said all I was good for was popping out kids. Called me names. Where were you?”
I stood frozen. Then watched as my wife walked out with our three boys. Gone. Not to nowhere—I knew she was heading to her mother’s, that woman who’d spent years poisoning her against me.
I call every day. Beg her to come back. She answers coldly: “I won’t set foot in that house again.” And I know it’s my fault—for not setting boundaries, for not protecting her, for choosing my parents’ roof over her peace.
Now I wonder—maybe we should rent again. Start over. Just us. No drinking, no parents, no chaos.
I don’t know if she’ll forgive me. If she’ll ever come back. But I do know this: I can’t lose her Ten years—that was my life. And now it’s gone. And with her, so is the air in this house.
