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At the age of fifty-one, after a thirty-year relationship and early retirement from an academic career in conjunction with moving to a new country, I was suddenly dumped for a much younger woman. It took me nearly six months to actually absorb the reality of what was happening. This was complicated by the fact that my husband refused to move out, saying that there was no reason that we should not remain friends and continue to share a household even though the marriage was over. He argued that the house was big enough for all of us and that it would be “better for the children” if he didn’t leave right away. Neither did he want to incur the additional costs of a third household. We already owned an expensive apartment in Manhattan which he used as his base for business abroad, and, as I now discovered, various other activities. For the sake of good will and the children, I did what I suppose I usually did. I repressed my natural instincts and my anger, and tried to be accommodating . He was traveling abroad more and more frequently, but when he was home he attempted to maintain the semblance of a normal family life. Although we were sleeping separately, he persisted in continuing a social life with me. I am embarrassed to admit that, confused and devastated, I allowed it. He pressured me into maintaining the status quo “for the sake of the children ,” but it became increasingly bizarre and painful. When I finally had the strength to insist that his unusual divorce agenda was untenable, requesting that he move out sooner rather than later, he became very nasty and flew into a rage, screaming, “I knew you would be like this.” “Be like what?” I asked him Dear Harry Unsent E-mails to an Ex SUSAN BECKER Dear Harry 1 2 1 quite innocently. “You know. Get angry. Refuse to be friends just because I left you,” he yelled indignantly. My mouth is still hanging open. I was beginning to see my abandoning spouse in a whole new light, not to mention myself. A few months after his announcement, before he moved out, I was cruising the bookstore for pop books on relationships and divorce and I came across an interesting study on emotional and verbal abuse by Patricia Evans titled The Verbally Abusive Relationship. I wasn’t even sure why I picked it up, but it stopped me in my tracks. I stood reading in the bookstore for some time and was shocked to find that I could identify so closely with the author’s case studies . Her descriptions of the experiences of emotionally abused women conveyed a perfect depiction of my own marriage, even though I had never thought of myself in this way. It was such an overwhelming realization that I became dizzy and nearly fainted in the Barnes and Noble. Suddenly I understood that I had been married to an uncaring, hostile control freak. What was worse, the abuse was continuing during the separation. Of course, this too should have come as no surprise, as my therapist later explained. “We should not expect someone to be different in the divorce than they were in the marriage ,” she told me toward the end of our therapy, hoping to prepare me for the difficult work ahead. I also learned that divorce may end the marriage, but it does not end the relationship. Even though my husband no longer wanted to be married to me, he continued to be controlling and invasive in my personal and professional life. Other than sleeping in a separate room, he offered me little privacy in my own home, barging into my study when I was visiting with friends or working and entering the bathroom when I was already there. When I complained about the latter, he responded with “What’s your problem? I’ve seen you naked for years.” I was beginning to feel invisible in my own house. Maybe I always had been. Finally, some six months after D-day, he moved to an apartment just two blocks away, presumably to be close to the children. He left most of his personal effects in the family house, claiming that his new apartment was too small to receive them, and giving him a convenient justification to reenter the family home on a regular basis. He refused to return his key. I knew that had I gone to the expense...

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