Hi everyone,

I am hoping someone can give me some encouragement to just wait things out or move on. Okay, background.

I'm 43 years old, and my husband of 10 years left on 2/11/17, only two months after I had a major craniotomy for an extremely rare brain disease after four strokes. Luckily, I survived and am doing fairly well. After we came home, I started having serious anxiety problems and was a mess. My old abandonment wounds were seriously triggered. We both threatened divorce every other day. He is a major distancer and RUNS away, leaving for weeks at a time. Literally, he's probably left home at least 15 times over the last 10 years. Once, he left for three months, and the only reason he came back is when I found out he lied about his past, including having a CPA, graduating from college, and the dates of his marriages. I was livid and I contacted his ex-wife no. 2 who told me she wanted to reach out to me before but didn't want to interfere. She said his first wife and he divorced when she found out he was never in medical school. He pretended to go to Emory, but he had never even graduated from college. Wife no. 1 was trying to work things out with him, but he left when he thought she was cheating. Every wife has cheated on him, except for me. Wife no. 2 also claimed he was bisexual, which I don't believe at all. She's really still upset with how things ended. He begged her for a reconciliation, but she said she saw no point. He was married for less than five months to her.

In any case, the lies kept coming up in our marriage, and I truly never forgave him. Had I found this out before we were married, I wouldn't have married him, but he was a father to my children, and they love him. In any case, we were constantly locked in the pursuer/distancer dynamic, and after we weren't intimate for a while, I asked him if he no longer loved me and even cared if I was with anyone else. So, in a self-sabotaging move, I sent myself flowers and put a love letter in it. Of course, I just wanted to test him and after some therapy, I've learned I was trying to abandon him first, which is a very fearful avoidant attachment style, which I'm working on. He left and we had contact a few times for the first week. He told me he was in serious emotional pain and just needed time and space. I felt so guilty and told him what I had done and that I was sorry. He said that he wanted a divorce because I was manipulative and controlling, which I don't disagree, and he immediately stopped contributing to household bills and changed his address. I don't know where he is. His old survival mammalian brain kicked in, and he's in hiding. After I asked him to come home and change the water in the fish tank, he sent me the name of his attorney. I haven't been contacted by him. I've had no contact with him for two weeks, in an effort to give him time and space, since my therapist believes that as long as I give him time and space while he's rubberbanding, I can provide safety to him to re-establish contact. I sent him one final email apologizing for my bad behavior and telling him to freely take all the space he wants/needs, and I would not ask him for anything. 

I had to contact him today because it is a business matter and sent him a special email vetted by my therapist to ask him if he could please continue helping me run my law business. No response, and frankly, I figured such. I will have to spend time finding someone to do the work he was nice enough to do for 8 years. I am running a house, I'm tired, taking care of my kids, running a business and going to court every other day. When he thought I was cheating, he was still sort of texting my kids. He's been their dad for ten years, and they love and miss him.

I am so sad, and I truly believe in my heart that he is my soulmate, and that if I wait, he'll come back. However, I don't know if I'm really in denial. I desperately want him back, but I need to reverse the pursuit/distancer dynamic by giving him space. Am I in serious denial? BTW, every other time he left, he came back, and he was able to talk to me on the phone, but this time, I've seriously triggered his core wounds. Is this caveman/rubberbanding thing really happening for this long? Any advice would be appreciated! I'm so scared about having to go back out to the West Coast for a second surgery in three months, and I need an adult with me. He cried so much when I was sick. I know he's not cheating, and although we were both collecting divorce info, I believe that was a lot of just one foot out the door stuff for both of us. I have really done the no contact (except for business), respecting his space, not taking the blocking on social media too hard, and I have not begged/pleaded/threatened, etc., for two weeks.