I can appreciate how you'd feel used and discarded. Almost sounds like the type of 'fella that would have been planning this all along, and once the kids are all grown up, plot his stepping away. And of course you were devastated!! If he wasn't happy before, at some point he needed to be man enough to confront you! I'm so sorry, it's like here you are in the years of you life, that I'd imagine you'd envisioned entering a new phase in your life, and he just runs, runs, runs away.