How many times have you abruptly left the house for days after a fight?

16 comments

1. Taking space is fine, but leaving for days after every fight avoids the real issue.Healthy relationship require communication not repeated disappearing acts.

2. Zero times in 13 years of marriage (and living together 18 months before that). Multiple times for multiple days in 6 weeks is a massive red flag – you guys need therapy ASAP. We do fight a decent amount (certainly more than I’d like), but on the rare occasion one of us leaves the house afterwards it’s generally for an hour or two. Never overnight. 

3. Having some space even up to one day is okay… but several days? No.

   Your husband seems to be avoiding the issues entirely. What happens when he comes home? Do you act like everything is normal? Or do yall hash things out?

   Unless my husband did unthinkable things like cheating or hitting me… I ain’t leaving. I’ll give him the silent treatment for a few hours… probably go out for a few hours to avoid him but I know we are going to work it out at the end of the day.

4. My ex would do this but by god if I didn’t tell him I had an appointment after work, I would get the cold shoulder for hours or days as punishment. Super sick in the head tbh. I hope it’s not like this for you but leaving for 2-4 days is giving emotionally irresponsible, immature & heartless being that he’s your husband. I hope it gets better for you but he sounds selfish.

5. Married 42 and the worst that ever happened was I went out to the garage for less than a half hour as my stepdaughter was here and I didn’t want to argue or have words in front of her. I needed to cool down emotionally. Neither of us ever left home due to arguments.

6. My husband avoided conflict at the beginning of our marriage. He’d say I don’t want to discuss it, we can discuss it later, I’m done discussing it. I said our marriage will not work if we don’t communicate and resolve differences. We made rules for arguing…no raised voices, no comments hitting below the belt, no throwing out the word divorce, allowing on some things to agree to disagree, no leaving the house, no going to bed angry. Once we had rules for challenge resolution, he felt safe. We would also tell each other in advance if we were feeling cranky that day. His avoidance had been due to his upbringing. He was allowed a voice, to have opinions, etc., in our home and it was freeing for him.

7. Never. I’ve left for a walk… or to go on the back deck to calm down. But I have never stayed away for more than maybe 30 minutes…

8. Never – in almost 21 years of marriage.

9. After almost 14 years I can confidently say I’ve done that zero times cuz mature adults communicate and work out their problems instead of running away, both symbolically and literally

10. Abruptly leaving the house for a short time? Absolutely. But I would not even call it truly abrupt because me and my wife actually have a system in place for this exact thing.

    If an argument stops being productive and starts escalating, sometimes we pause it and cool off. Sometimes we can do that in the same house. Sometimes one of us leaves for a while to decompress.

    Going to a friend’s house for a few hours to get away from the tension? Sure. Staying overnight for days because of fights? I am pretty certain I have never done that in my marriage.

    Now, back when I was dating, yeah, I did have relationships where stuff like that happened. But honestly those relationships were not healthy and probably should have just ended instead.

    I remember one relationship where she would not stop fighting over something after I had already clearly explained my position on it multiple times. Nowadays people would probably call it a “boundary issue.” She had a boundary she wanted enforced, I very clearly did not agree with it and was not going to follow it, and instead of accepting that incompatibility, we just kept fighting about it way longer than we should have.

11. We have been together for 10 years, and we have never done anything like this. The most we’ve done is go into another room for a few hours.

    It sounds like you aren’t really resolving things, like he’s just ignoring them and you until he thinks you’re over it. Which will lead to continued cracks in your foundation.

    I think he needs personal therapy for a while, then y’all need couples counseling to learn conflict resolution. If you want this to work out long term.

12. Leaving for days on end is not healthy, especially for you. He’s taking care of himself while denying you completely. I witnessed this behavior with my uncle when I was a kid, my grandpa, and eventually experienced it with my own husband. My uncle was a substance user; my grandpa was a womanizing, macho pig who’d leave when he felt like it; and I came to learn that my husband was a substance abuser, as well.

    I read on another post that people leave because they are either depressed or on drugs/addicts. I guess in my grandpa’s case, he was just use to doing whatever the hell he wanted.

    I’m genuinely curious: does he seem to start the issues in order to use them as an excuse to leave?

13. Never

14. Never in 28 years of marriage plus 5 years of living together prior have either of us left the house for longer than a couple hours to cool off. And it hasn’t happened in many years; I can’t even remember the last time to be honest. Leaving for 2-4 days isn’t going to calm down and get your head straight. That sounds more like a passive-aggressive punishment or something else going on.

15. The first time my husband decided to leave the house and sleep at his friend’s I would consider the marriage over and start working on the divorce.

16. Married 38 years. Neither of us has ever done this.