7.
“Surprisingly, it wasn’t until the day that he filed for divorce. We had issues, but I always thought we would work things out. I was diagnosed with lung cancer at the end of 2022. I had never smoked in my life, so it was a complete shock. He stood by me and supported me through my surgery. After surgery, I had chemo. When I was done with my chemo, he dropped the bomb and said he was filing for divorce. I asked him to please go to marriage counseling with me. He refused. When I asked him why he was divorcing me, he said it was because we never traveled out of the country. I’ve had a terrible fear of flying my entire life, so even though we traveled all the time, it was all road trips. He also brought up some disagreements we had several years ago that I didn’t even remember.”
“Interestingly enough, before I was diagnosed with lung cancer, I was secretly taking classes on how to get over my fear of flying because I was saving up money for a trip to Europe and was going to surprise him with tickets for our 20th anniversary. Come to think of it, when I told him I had lung cancer, he never once said he was sorry I was going through this. We’re going through a divorce now, and since I’ve continued to work and he’s retired, he’s actually trying to get money from me! I found out that he left me because he didn’t want to live with someone whose cancer might come back and he wanted to travel the world.
I have never felt as stressed as the day he told me it was over, right after I stopped chemo. Stress feeds cancer, so it was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I never thought of him as selfish, but he proved he was by leaving me at the worst time in my life. It was also when my daughter was leaving for college. It was a major burden on her. She was already worried about me and my lung cancer, and then she had to go off to college knowing her parents were getting divorced. I am still heartbroken.
-Anonymous