Simon’s story

When I got married, I thought I was the happiest man in the world. But after a couple of years my wife was really unhappy and so was I. We rowed all the time. I got more and more fed up and I started to find excuses not to go home. I’d go to the pub after work and come back after my wife had gone to bed. At weekends I went out with my mates or back to the pub and just left her.

One day I came home and found my stuff packed up in a few suitcases, My wife said she wanted me out and that I should go to a hotel as she couldn’t stand the sight of me anymore. I argued and said in that case she should leave, but she refused.

In the end I gave up and did what she wanted. I went to a hotel for the night and sat on the bed and cried. I couldn’t understand why my life had got to this point, where I’d been thrown out of my own home. In the morning I went to work and after that I went to my parents. My parents were great. They took me in and I slept in my old room. They looked after me. It was such a relief not to be rowing all the time, and they looked after me because I felt just too tired and exhausted to look after myself. I realised that I’d never really felt at home with my wife, but in my parents’ house, without all the recriminations and nagging, I remembered what it was like to feel at home.

Eventually I got my act together and told my wife I wanted to sit down and discuss the future. She wanted a divorce but she agreed to relationship counselling to sort out what had gone wrong. That helped a lot with the anger and the sadness I felt. We did get divorced, but we were able to do that amicably.

I need to move back out of my parents’ house now. But I’m finding it hard. I don’t want another relationship but I don’t want to live on my own, either. I seem to have lost my confidence. I don’t know whether I can feel at home, on my own.