My husband dumped me for my best friend over text, but how he told my kids was even worse

WHEN Vanessa Feltz revealed via text message on Best magazine’s Suddenly Single podcast that the new man she was dating had broken up with her, one woman felt her pain.

Melanie, 52, from Walsall, was stunned when her husband of 17 years split up with her in the same way – and was devastated when it emerged he had left her for her best friend.

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Here she tells Sarah Morton why she will never forget that message and the impact it had on her life.

I could barely breathe when I read the message on my phone.
There they were, a few little words that tore my heart in two: “I don’t love you anymore. I’m leaving.”

The text was from my husband, Martin. We had been married for 17 years and although things had been difficult in our relationship for a while, I never expected it to get to this point.

And the worst part? I would soon find out that he left me for my best friend.

They had been having an affair behind my back for months.

And now he left us and our two children with nothing but an empty bank account and our hearts full of sorrow.

Vanessa Feltz has my full sympathy. She may not have been dating her mystery man for very long, but getting dumped via text is one of the worst feelings imaginable.

Martin was at work when he sent me the devastating message that would change my life forever.

It was an ordinary afternoon on a day in February 2022.

And despite the fact that we had been like ships in the night for the past few months and I was increasingly convinced that he was being unfaithful to me, my stomach dropped and I fell to my knees when I read those words.

After seventeen years of marriage, he didn’t even dare to end it.

I begged and begged him to come and talk to me about it. He refused.

After that I had a sleepless night, during which he didn’t even come home.
But the worst was yet 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 leaving home.”

He only had them when I wasn’t there and told them without consulting me. The kids were completely devastated and confused.

Now my own grief gave way to a boiling anger.

The fact that he was passing on a message through our children was unbearable.

At that moment I realized that my loving husband, who had been a perfect partner to me for many years, had been replaced by a monster.

I had been suspecting him and my friend Jill for a while now.

Our children know each other and we have been friends for ten years.

She was always a good friend, but she was really boring. She is seven years younger than me, but I am lively and fun and she was boring.

In retrospect, maybe Martin wanted someone who was very quiet and wouldn’t ask him too many questions.

‘I feel betrayed’

Call it female intuition, but I just knew there was something going on between them.

Our sex life had declined and she started liking more and more of his Facebook posts.

Then I heard from other friends that they had seen them together, alone, ordering drinks together at a local bar.

When I first confronted him, he tried to make me believe that I was the problem, that I was crazy.

He kept asking me how on earth I could think he would do something like that to me.

He didn’t come home from work until late at night, but according to him he was busy at work and I was the one being paranoid.

After that fateful text message, I confronted Martin again, this time at a house he was renting, and attacked him.

In the end he admitted everything.

He was struggling with a £40,000 debt, which I knew nothing about, from a failed business deal. Jill was his solace.

Being with her made him forget his problems.

He was in love.

Of course I was furious and gave him what he deserved, but he didn’t seem to care. He just told me meanly that he was taking the kids and wouldn’t pay me a dime, and that I would have to take over his debt.

Empty threats

What a hell I was in. He had no reason to take the kids and my lawyers knew that. It was all empty threats.

Furious, I wrote a series of insults, too crude to repeat, on Jill’s Facebook page.

I didn’t want to see her in real life. I couldn’t handle it.

So all I could do was vent my frustration on her page.

Not surprisingly, she didn’t have the courage to answer.

But because of the affair I lost an entire community.

Friends I shared with Jill, I can’t even talk to anymore, even though it’s not their fault. I feel too betrayed to be anywhere near any of them.

The friend who warned me has since moved on to a new relationship and it has taken up a lot of her time. So it is lonely.

Martin and Jill are still together, and she’ll have to make do with him.

He doesn’t live with her because my kids don’t want to be near her. He still sees them but not as often as he should.

Jill’s daughter even told my daughter that her mother is not a ladies’ woman.

If your own child thinks that about you, it says a lot.

Dodged a bullet

My children are in therapy now. Grace has to be homeschooled because she is too anxious to be around other children. She is still in so much pain.

Martin had always been a loving father, but suddenly his priorities changed completely and he seemed to not care anymore.

He stopped paying for the children. I struggled to survive on one salary, as I had the luxury of Martin being the primary breadwinner for our entire marriage.

The children and I ended up living on expired food and relying on food banks.

The divorce cost me £6,000, which my parents lent me.

I was supposed to get a penny from him through the Child Support Agency, but he takes his mistress — sorry, his girlfriend — with him all the time.

It’s disgusting how unfair this all is, but in many ways I’m doing better now.

Martin and Jill are welcome together. She will soon find out what he is really like.

In the meantime, I get a lot of support from a great group on Facebook, who are incredibly kind.

I would like to tell Vanessa that the pain of such a callous dump is unbearable, but that you will come out stronger.

You dodged a bullet – and a coward.