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He Said He Found His Soulmate… I Thought It Was Another Woman. I Was So, So Wrong

We were just sitting down for a normal Sunday evening when my dad shattered three decades of marriage with a single sentence. My mom didn’t scream. She didn’t even cry. I begged him to tell us who it was, but he refused. No names. No photos. Just silence. And over the next few weeks, as he packed his bags and disappeared from our lives, I started to realize that the truth wasn’t just painful — it was something I never could have imagined…

When my dad sat us down in the living room that Sunday night, I thought maybe someone had died. He looked pale, jittery. My mom was quiet, her lips pressed into that tight line she wore when she was bracing for something. I remember the way the lamp buzzed beside the couch. The whole house felt suddenly… electric.

“I need to tell you something,” he said, rubbing his hands together like they were freezing. “I’m leaving.”

At first, I genuinely thought I’d misheard him. My parents had been married 30 years. They bickered, sure, but they had matching garden gloves and still watched old reruns of MASH* together. They weren’t perfect, but they weren’t divorce bad. Not even close.

“I’ve met someone,” he added, not meeting our eyes. “It wasn’t planned, but I—I can’t ignore it. This person is… my soulmate.”