TEXT MANIAC
My husband of 17 years dumped me via text for my best pal, I thought that was bad, but how he told my kids was worse
Martin was at work when he sent me the devastating message that would change my life for ever
WHEN Vanessa Feltz revealed the new man she’d been dating had dumped her by text on Best magazine’s Suddenly Single podcast, one woman felt her pain.
Melanie, 52, from Walsall, was stunned when her husband of 17 years broke up with her in the same way – and was shattered when it transpired he was leaving her for her best friend.
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Here, she tells Sarah Morton why she will never forget that message and the effect it had on her life.
I STRUGGLED to catch my breath as I read the message on my phone.
There they were, a few little words that ripped my heart in two: “I don’t love you any more. I’m leaving.”
The text was from my husband, Martin. We’d been married for 17 years and, while things had been tough in our relationship for a while, I’d never expected it to come to this.
And the worst part? I would soon find out he was ditching me for my best friend.
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They had been having an affair behind my back for months.
And now he was leaving me and our two children with nothing but an empty bank account and our hearts full of hurt.
Vanessa Feltz has my complete sympathy. She may not have been dating her mystery man for long, but being dumped by text is one of the worst feelings imaginable.
Martin was at work when he sent me the devastating message that would change my life for ever.
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It was an ordinary afternoon one day in February 2022.
And, despite the fact we’d been like ships in the night over the previous months, and I had become ever more convinced he was being unfaithful to me, my stomach fell to the floor and I dropped to my knees when I read those words.
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Seventeen years of marriage and he couldn’t even face me to end it.
I begged and pleaded with him to come and talk to me about it. He refused.
I then endured a sleepless night in which he didn’t even come home.
But worse was to come.
The next afternoon, my children, Jack, who was 13 at the time, and Grace, who was 11, told me: “Daddy says he’s moving out.”
He’d got them alone when I wasn’t around and told them without consulting me. The kids were utterly heartbroken and confused.
Now my own heartache was replaced with a seething anger.
The fact that he passed a message on via our children was too disgusting to bear.
I realised at that moment my loving husband, a perfect partner for many, many years, had been replaced by a monster.
I’d had my suspicions about him and my friend, Jill, for a while.
Our children know each other and, as a result, we had been friends for a decade.
She was always a good friend, but she was really boring. She’s seven years younger than me, but I’m lively and fun and she was drab.
Looking back, perhaps Martin wanted someone super quiet who wouldn’t ask him too many questions.
‘I feel too betrayed’
Call it women’s intuition, but I just knew something was going on between them.
Our sex life had dwindled and she had started liking more and more of his Facebook posts.
Then I’d heard from other friends that they’d seen them out together, alone, ordering drinks together at a local bar.
When I confronted him the first time, he gaslighted me into thinking I was the problem, that I was insane.
He kept asking me how I could possibly think he’d do that to me.
He wouldn’t come home from work until all hours but, according to him, he was busy working and it was me who was paranoid.
After that fateful text message, I confronted Martin once more — this time at a house he’d started renting — and ripped into him.
He finally admitted everything.
He’d been struggling with a £40,000 debt I didn’t know about over a business deal gone wrong — and Jill was his comfort.
Being with her made him forget his troubles.
He was in love.
Of course, I was raging and I gave him what for, but he didn’t seem to care. He just spitefully told me he was taking the kids and wasn’t going to pay me a penny, and that I would have to take on his debt.
Empty threats
Was I hell. He had no grounds to take the children and my solicitors knew that. They were all empty threats.
In a rage, I took to Facebook and wrote a string of obscenities, which are too rude to repeat, on Jill’s page.
I didn’t want to see her in real life. I couldn’t face it.
So venting on her page was all I had the strength to do.
Unsurprisingly, she didn’t have the guts to reply.
But as a result of the affair, I’ve lost a whole community of people.
Friends that I shared with Jill, I can’t even talk to any more, even though it’s not their fault. I feel too betrayed to be around any of them.
The friend who warned me has since moved on to a new relationship and that’s taken up a lot of her time. So it’s lonely.
Martin and Jill are still together now, and she will have to put up with him.
He doesn’t live with her because my children won’t go near her, and he still sees them, though not as regularly as he should.
Jill’s daughter even told my daughter that her mum’s not a woman’s woman.
When your own child thinks that about you, well, that says a lot.
Dodged a bullet
My kids are in therapy now. Grace has to be homeschooled because she is too anxious to be with other children. She is still in so much pain.
Martin was always such a loving father, but suddenly his priorities changed completely and he didn’t seem to care.
He stopped paying for the kids. I struggled to survive on a single wage, having had the luxury of Martin being the main provider for our entire marriage.
The children and I ended up living on out of date food and relying on food banks.
The divorce cost me £6,000, which my parents lent me.
I had to go through the Child Maintenance Service to get a single penny from him, yet he takes his mistress — sorry, his girlfriend — away all the time.
The injustice of it all is sickening but, in many ways, I am in a better place now.
Martin and Jill are welcome to each other. She’ll soon find out what he is really like.
In the meantime, I get a lot of support from an excellent group on Facebook, who have been wonderful.
I would say to Vanessa that, while the pain of being dumped so callously is unbearable, you will come out of it stronger.
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You’ve dodged a bullet — and a coward.
- Names have been changed.