Active Now

Element 99
Discussion » Questions » Relationships » In your family’s history, are you aware if anyone ran off with someone or got left by someone in that same manner?
Randy D

In your family’s history, are you aware if anyone ran off with someone or got left by someone in that same manner?

  Both my maternal grandmother and grandfather have been dead for years now (she in the late 1980s or early 1990s and he within the last decade), they married each other when they were both 20 years old, but I found out late in life that shortly after my mother and her younger sister were born to them, my grandmother left my grandfather for another man. She then lived with that second man on and off for a few years until his death from alcoholism. All of this happened before my mother was a teenager. I am not aware that my grandparents ever reunited as a married couple. 

  When I was born, my grandmother was living with another man who took very good care of her. I knew from a young age that he was not my grandfather, and it was sort of a hush-hush yet open secret throughout that they were not married to each other. That was considered scandalous back then, but in truth, it occurred with a lot more people than anyone would readily admit. She and he stayed together for at least 25 years, which is how old I was when my grandmother passed away.
~

Posted - June 10, 2023
Tags : None

Responses


  • 10052
    I'm not sure of the details, but I know that one pair of my maternal great-grandparents and one pair of my paternal great-grandparents divorced. Only the men remarried. My grandpa had a half-brother younger than 2 of his children. All of my great-grandparents had died before I was born. 

    Do you realize you have now revealed your approximate age, saying that you were 25 in the late 80s or early 90s? You're slipping in your old age!  
      June 10, 2023 9:03 AM MDT
    5

  • 53524

     

      You didn’t specify that in addition to divorcing any of them ran off with anyone, that’s the point of the thread. 

      I haven’t revealed anything concrete about my age, and in fact, in anticipation of Nancy Drews like you or any Hardy Boys out there, I purposefully played with certain date-related aspects of my post in order to obfuscate age-specificity. I’m not slipping, I’m becoming more refined. Grrrrrrr.


    ~

      June 11, 2023 12:32 PM MDT
    2

  • 10052
    I know, because as I said, I'm not sure of the details. I suspect there was running off with another woman in both cases. Seems unlikely that they would have left otherwise. You know how men are...

    In other words, you made yourself out to be younger! I'm on to you.

    XO
    Nancy
      June 11, 2023 8:26 PM MDT
    2

  • 53524

     

      Or older. (It could happen, it could happen.)
      ~

      June 12, 2023 2:25 PM MDT
    1

  • 10052


      June 12, 2023 6:47 PM MDT
    1

  • 844
    Yes. I may have mentioned this in a previous post. When our two girls were around 10-12, their father walked out on me with no notice at all. He disappeared without a word (or support of any kind) for three years, even his mother didn't know where he was. Then one day he showed up, again without notice. He had returned in order to get a divorce so he could marry someone else. He and the new wife had two or three children. 

    Ironically, in the mid-nineties, I began a job at our county health department. Unbeknownst to me at the time, wife number two also worked there. I worked on the first floor and she worked on the second floor. I did not know what she looked like and I was careful never to go to the second floor, I'd ask a coworker to run an errand for me.

    Also ironically, about five years ago, my youngest daughter got a job at the oncology unit of a local hospital. One of her half brothers turned out to be a patient there. I know how resentful she was of her father's behavior, but I told her never to pass that negativity on to those children. They had nothing to do with their father's past! She promised that she would not.
      June 10, 2023 7:19 PM MDT
    3

  • 53524

    If you happen to know, we’re were the two or three other children born during his three-year disappearance, or after his reappearance?
    ~















    Self-reported grammar violation. Tell Stu to back off. Grrrrrrr.

    This post was edited by Randy D at June 11, 2023 8:03 PM MDT
      June 11, 2023 12:36 PM MDT
    0

  • 844
    No one that I know of heard from or about him during that three year absence. Since that time, I've never personally investigated. I spent years getting back on my feet to support and care for the family on my own.
      June 11, 2023 4:03 PM MDT
    1

  • 5451
    I only know about one couple in my extended family who did that.  They left their first spouses for each other.  They met at a retreat for restoring marriages in trouble.
      June 11, 2023 12:40 AM MDT
    4

  • 10052
    Oh, the irony! 

    I don't suppose that they'll go to one of those, should they find this marriage in trouble. ;)
      June 11, 2023 8:18 AM MDT
    3

  • 53524

     

      I hear that things like that can potentially cause subsequent generations of offspring to get involved in untoward behavior, including and up to queenpin or kingpin level. Mostly queenpin, though. Wait, all queenpin. Grrrrrrr.



    ~

      June 11, 2023 12:40 PM MDT
    2

  • 5451
    They don’t have kids so I guess it won’t be a problem.
      June 12, 2023 2:01 PM MDT
    1

  • 53524

     

      Then how you end up with did the bad gene? Oh, wait, you probably didn’t inherit your criminal queenpin status, it’s possibly learned behavior. Grrrrrr.


    ~

      June 12, 2023 2:21 PM MDT
    0

  • 34432
     
    Do you mean divorced? Or specifically ran off to another place with or without someone else?

    Many divorces. Nearly all of my elders, from parents to grandparents to aunts and uncles, have been divorced at least once. (4 of 18 did not divorce).

    My grandfather divorced my grandmother and married another woman he met while stationed in Okinawa, Japan. They lived in Okinawa.
    This post was edited by my2cents at June 14, 2023 4:19 PM MDT
      June 11, 2023 7:13 AM MDT
    1

  • 53524

    “Do you mean divorced?”

      Either including a divorce or not. It need not be a marriage either, such as a bride leaving a groom at the altar to run away with someone else, or it could be a boyfriend leaving a girlfriend for someone else. 
      ~

      June 11, 2023 12:17 PM MDT
    0

  • 34432
    The only one I know of that left for another person is my grandfather. 
    And a cousin (not an elder).

    This post was edited by my2cents at June 11, 2023 1:55 PM MDT
      June 11, 2023 1:52 PM MDT
    0

  • 53524
    Nearly all of my elders from parents to Grandparents grandparents to Aunts aunts and Uncle's uncles have been divorced at least once.  (4 of 18 Four out of eighteen did not divorce.)
    [No apostrophe.]

    My Grandfather grandfather divorced my Grandmother grandmother and married another women woman.

      June 11, 2023 12:22 PM MDT
    0

  • 551
    A great-great grandfather on my mother's side, George Mayer, was a bigamist. When he married in 1890, he was already legally married to someone else. I haven't managed to find out the name of the woman he left, or anything else about her. His deception was uncovered - I don't know much about what happened next, except that his son, James, was raised by his grandparents. James passed on the knowledge of his father's crime to his eldest son, John, but concealed it from his daughter Selena (my grandmother). It only became common knowledge within my family after Selena's death.
      June 13, 2023 3:24 PM MDT
    2

  • 3719
    Nothing like that as far as my siblings and surviving cousin know, but when we cleared our parents' home after both had died, we found a letter hinting at some strange upset or rift over something to do with our Dad's cousin's family in America.

    All we knew was that he'd emigrated there (from our native England) at some time before our own existence, married there and we think, raised a family, but died in a plane crash.  The letter merely deepened the puzzle.

    A puzzle best left unsolved!
      June 20, 2023 3:58 PM MDT
    0