We had 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 Hull. Now I sit in the house I helped build, listening to the clock tick away the emptiness. A decade together—how could something so solid just shatter? But it did. Because of him. My father.
Irina and I met, like so many do these days, online. Messages turned into dates, and within months, we married. Life spun fast, dizzying, like something out of a film. I was genuinely happy. A year later, our first son, Oliver, was born. I was weightless with joy, blind to exhaustion, blind to everything but my family.
Back then, we lived with my parents in Manchester. That was my first mistake. My father was a hard worker, but the drink had him. His outbursts grew louder, more frequent. The shouting, the insults—Irina bore it silently. I looked the other way. Pretended we’d get used to it. My mother had long stopped caring, but for Irina, every slur cut deep.
One night, drunk and furious, he grabbed her wrists, screaming nonsense. She pulled free, called me in tears. I rushed home. A row erupted. Screaming. And then—my father threw us out. All of us, with a baby in our arms, onto the street. Irina didn’t argue. We left for her mother’s.
But even there, in Liverpool, there was no peace. Her mother—difficult woman. Always a new man in the house, always noise, arguments. Irina couldn’t settle, and I felt like an intruder. But we had nowhere else. She was pregnant again. Then came Henry—our second boy. Bright-eyed, grinning with his whole face. While Irina stayed home with the boys, I worked two jobs just to keep us fed.
We lasted nearly three years in that flat before her mother kicked us out. Blunt as a hammer: “I don’t like you. Get out.” Irina still chose to stay with me. We rented a place, finally breathed. Just us, no parents, no rules. For the first time, it felt like we were truly a family. Life was hard—money was tight, I carried it all, Irina took odd jobs—but we were together. That was enough.
Then my mother started building a house just outside Chester. A grand home, she said, for all of us. She promised things would be different. We believed her. Invested time, sweat, savings. Two years later, we moved in. Two floors, plenty of room—parents on one, us on the other. For a while, it was calm. Then our third son, George, was born.
The peace didn’t last. Irina’s mother sold her flat, moved to London to live with her brother. Stopped by ours “for a visit.” Never left. Brought another man with her. The nagging started. The whispers, the jabs. Irina frayed at the edges. My father drank harder. Meanwhile, my new job sent me away often—home just twice a month. And in my absence, the house became a warzone.
I came back from one trip to find Irina packing. Crying. “I can’t do this anymore,” she said. “Your father screamed that all I’m good for is popping out kids. Called me a— Where were *you*?”
I stood there, hollow. Then watched my wife walk out with our three boys. Disappearing. Not into nothing—I knew she was going to her mother. The same woman who’d spent years poisoning her against me.
I call every day. Beg her to come back. Sometimes I cry into the phone. Her voice stays cold: “I’m never setting foot in that house again.” I know it’s my fault. I didn’t draw the line. Didn’t shield her. Chose my parents’ roof over her peace.
Now I wonder—should I rent somewhere new? Start over? Bring her and the boys home, just us. Build again, but right this time. No drink. No in-laws. No shouting.
I don’t know if she’ll forgive me. If she’ll ever come back. But I know this—I can’t lose her. Those ten years were my life. Now it’s gone. And in this house, the air left with her.
