Dear Prudence,
I left an abusive marriage several months ago. I didn’t tell my husband that I was leaving until I was fully moved out, for my own safety, so only my close friends and family (who were helping me) knew in advance.
My husband and I had mutual friends whom I liked and enjoyed spending time with, but in the immediate aftermath, I was too overwhelmed by the situation to figure out how to talk to them. I was hiding my location from my then-husband; we only communicated through legal counsel, and I didn’t want to put those friends in the middle. So I haven’t spoken to them since before I left, and I’d told them nothing about the problems within my marriage. My soon-to-be ex-husband can be highly manipulative, and for the last couple of years of our relationship, he had a running narrative about how cruel, harmful, and abusive I was that he’d tell me and our marriage counselor. So I assumed that he probably spread the same story to mutual friends after I left and that they no longer wanted anything to do with me.
As the divorce is nearly finalized, I’m feeling stronger and more stable, and I’m thinking more and more about them. Two of these friends are a couple whose wedding I missed last month, and I’m really struggling to think of a way to apologize and explain why I vanished. I have every reason to believe all of these people are still friends with my ex, but I miss them. Is there any way to reach out now?
—Ghost