separated- stopped speaking to me with no warning or reason
So the short end of the backstory is: my husband had a psychotic break in November, got diagnosed with schizophrenia, and has been out of state in a mental health facility since early February (when I moved in with my parents). I was very hopeful at first, but he has contacted me a total of 7 times over the past 5 months (while not having access to a cell phone due to the process of the treatment facility). Late May, he finally lost his job and his parents threatened to sue me, ostensibly to help pay for his treatment, so I made the decision to officially file for divorce so I would no longer be tied to them. I talked to him a couple days after this all went down and explained everything- he was upset, but understood, and we both were very clear that this didn't change anything, we still cared for each other & wanted to be friends, and maybe we would see if we could have a relationship again once he was out of treatment.
It's been 4 weeks since that conversation, which is the longest stretch I'd gone without hearing from him since the first month he was away. Last night, my best friend texted me to say she received a notification from Duolingo that he was active and had started a streak. I started scrambling through his social media, and found one post he had made from late May, and then the real punch to the gut- I pulled up his spotify where it was logged in on the laptop. I saw he had been adding songs to playlists over the past several days, maybe weeks. I saw he was listening right now, and it said specifically on his cell phone. I sent texts, acknowledging that I knew he had his cell, asking him to please, for the sake of whatever we were to each other for 9 years, just tell me why he wouldn't talk to me, asking what changed since the last time we talked, finally just begging him to acknowledge anything at all, just tell me to leave him alone if he wouldn't tell me why. I called, watched the music pause on his spotify, and watched it restart when he didn't answer.
I was and still am basically in shock. I haven't really felt anything about it yet, it's just such a horrible left turn into the worst case scenario, I don't know what to do. I’m sure his parents have poisoned the well to some degree, and more than that, I have to keep reminding myself that, by definition, he's a different man than he was for our entire relationship. Schizophrenia changes your brain completely, and one of the common symptoms is losing interest in maintaining relationships. I know all this, but it's still absolutely gutting me. I told my friend, I can come up with reasons he could decide he never wants to see me again, but what I can't make sense of is the idea that he would be okay with never seeing our pets again. They were his babies, he asked about them more than he asked about me on the rare occasions he'd call. I know it's the illness, I know it's not him as I knew him, but I can't make it make sense in my mind that he would ever in a million years break the ties that would let him see them, even in pictures. I know this isn't personal. I know that it's not about me, it's not something I did. I know he's not making decisions like a sane person, that there's no way to figure out his logic because there isn't any. But it's such a sharp change from every time before now when we've spoken, when it seemed like he thought things were better than they were, like he was still expecting us to be able to be together when he got out.
I can't escape the feeling that, for so long, I did everything I possibly could, sacrificed myself and my needs to no end, to make sure he was never hurt, that I was never the cause of any pain for him. And he can't even tell me why he never wants to speak to me again. I don't know what to do.
Posted Jun 17, 2026, 1:19 PM UTC