He’s surprised she’s leaving, but maybe he shouldn’t be.
Few things tug at a therapist’s heartstrings as hard as when we trace the predictable steps to the end of a relationship.
One of the hardest realizations is when a wife enters a marriage hoping for someone to care about her feelings and needs, to be curious about her thoughts, and to share the workload of life and support her, only to discover that her husband wasn’t going to do that. Marriages like this often become victims of ‘Walkaway Wife Syndrome’.
Coined in 1996 by journalist Paul Akers, the term rose to popularity in 2023 and 2024 as women, often motivated by social media postings encouraging women to expect more from the type of male partners referred to as “one of the kids”. Women in marriages where the wife is called a “married single mother“. She may have tried to get him to change, or she may have simply pulled back, emotionally, more every time her needs aren’t met.
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