[verysadlady]

I tried to keep my first post short, but yes, it's clear what led to his breakdown and he's begun to unravel this in therapy although he did come to it all on his own a few weeks after leaving.

He bottles up negative emotions and avoids confrontation. His ex wife cheated on him with his close friend and he gave no reaction to it (over a period of YEARS he knew and did not react). His ex wife now continues to bully him by making access to his son somewhat conditional on her agenda being followed to the tee. She also bullies him financially and took pretty much everything he had when they divorced. He has a lot of anger about this that he didn't express.

He had a job where he was hired to do a project that was the culmination of his life's training and work, but after six years working on it, it was scrapped. To add to that, in the past six months his boss had him bringing home work every night and weekend and he was mentally and physically burned out from sheer exhaustion. Every year he carries over his holiday days as he has no time to take them. He never stands up for himself.

Add on to that, in the space of four months I had a cancer scare and so did his Mother. My son had a very long and protracted illness that made home life very stressful.

In the final month, he was sent away on business and was exhausted and homesick. While he was gone my son got pneumonia. Our rent and electric went up. The car gearbox went. He had two failed job interviews and it finally culminated in us finding a mould problem in our home which meant we had to move (this turned out to be the reason for my son's illness and pneumonia). Complicated by the fact that we could not find anywhere to move to so we were facing having to stay in very expensive temporary accommodation whilst waiting. We were worried we could not afford it.

I collapsed under the strain and developed panic attacks, which were very draining on him because he kept supporting and loving me through it. He hid his own stress from me because he felt I needed protecting and supporting.

It was during this time when we felt we might be left homeless that he left me.

So it was pretty stressful, understandable that he had a breakdown, I almost did myself.