When Vanessa Feltz revealed via text message on Best magazine’s podcast “Suddenly Single” that the new man she was dating had left 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 left her for her best friend.
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Here she tells Sarah Morton why she will never forget this message and what impact it has had on her life.
I had to struggle to catch my breath as I read the message on my phone.
There they were, a few little words that tore my heart apart: “I don’t love you anymore. I’m leaving.”
The text message was from my husband Martin. We had been married for 17 years and although our relationship had been difficult for a while, I never imagined it would come to this.
And the worst part? I soon found out that he was leaving me for my best friend.
They had an affair behind my back for months.
And now he left me and our two children with nothing but an empty bank account and our hearts full of pain.
I have complete sympathy for Vanessa Feltz. She may not have been with her mystery man for long, but being dumped via text message is one of the worst feelings you can imagine.
Martin was at work when he sent me the devastating news that would change my life forever.
It was an ordinary afternoon in February 2022.
And even though 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 heart sank and I sank to my knees when I read those words.
Seventeen years of marriage and he couldn’t even look me in the face to end it.
I begged and pleaded with him to come and talk to me about it. He refused.
Then I had to endure a sleepless night during which he didn’t even come home.
But things got worse.
The next afternoon, my children, Jack, then 13, and Grace, 11, told me, “Daddy says he’s moving out.”
He had caught them alone when I was away and told them without asking me. The children were deeply heartbroken and confused.
Now my own grief had given way to seething anger.
The fact that he was passing on a message about our children was too disgusting to bear.
It was at that moment that I realized that my loving husband, who had been my perfect partner for many, many years, had been replaced by a monster.
I’ve had my suspicions about him and my friend Jill for some time.
Our children know each other and therefore we have been friends for a decade.
She was always a good friend, but she was really boring. She is seven years younger than me, but I am lively and funny and she was boring.
Looking back, maybe Martin wanted someone who was super quiet and wouldn’t ask him too many questions.
“I feel too 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 bar.
When I first confronted him about it, he told me I was the problem and that I was crazy.
He kept asking me how I could possibly think that he would do that to me.
He didn’t come home from work until the early hours of the morning, but according to him, he was busy with work and I was the one who was paranoid.
After that fateful text message, I confronted Martin again – this time in a house he had since rented – and attacked him.
He finally admitted everything.
He was struggling with £40,000 of debt that I didn’t know about because of a business deal gone wrong – and Jill was his comfort.
In her presence he forgot his worries.
He was in love.
Of course I was angry and told him what I thought, but he didn’t seem to care. He just told me maliciously that he would take the children with him and wouldn’t pay me a cent and that I would have to take over his debts.
Empty threats
I was hell. He had no reason to take the children away and my lawyers knew it. They were all empty threats.
Angry, I took to Facebook and wrote on Jill’s page a series of obscenities that are too rude to repeat.
I didn’t want to see her in real life. I couldn’t stand that.
So all I had the strength to do was let off steam on her side.
Not surprisingly, she didn’t have the courage to answer.
But because of the affair, I lost a whole community of people.
I can’t even talk to friends I shared with Jill anymore, even though it’s not her fault. I feel too betrayed to be with any of them.
The friend who warned me has now started a new relationship and that is taking up a lot of her time. She is lonely.
Martin and Jill are still together and she will have to deal with him.
He doesn’t live with her because my children don’t want to be near her, and he still sees her, although not as regularly as he should.
Jill’s daughter even told my daughter that her mother was not a woman’s business.
If your own child thinks that way about you, it says a lot.
Dodged a bullet
My children are in therapy now. Grace has to be homeschooled because she is too scared to be around other children. She is still in so much pain.
Martin was always a very loving father, but suddenly his priorities changed completely and he didn’t seem to care.
He stopped paying for the children. I was struggling to survive on a single salary after having enjoyed the luxury of Martin being the primary breadwinner throughout our marriage.
The children and I lived on expired food and relied on food banks.
The divorce cost me £6,000, which my parents lent me.
I’ve had to go to child support to get a penny from him, and yet he keeps taking away his mistress – sorry, his girlfriend.
The injustice of it all makes me sick, but in many ways I feel better now.
Martin and Jill welcome each other. She will soon find out what he is really like.
In the meantime, I’m getting a lot of support from an excellent group on Facebook which is great.
I would tell Vanessa that while the pain of being dumped so callously is unbearable, you will come out of it stronger.
You dodged a bullet – and a coward.
