Wife, 33, dumps her husband on the day he was given just five years to live – and doesn’t regret her decision

PROMISING to love and support one another "until death do us part" is arguably the most important part of your marriage vows.

But for one woman, the moment she found out her husband had just five years to live was when she came to the realisation that had to leave him.

In a shocking personal essay for , the anonymous Australian woman claims her and her husband were living like platonic flatmates and hadn't been intimate in over a year.

She wrote: "By the morning my husband was told he was going to die, our son was two years old and he was the only reason we were still together."

The day started off ordinarily enough - with the couple waking up in separate and her husband going out for several cigarettes.

Although the woman claims her husband always told her he would quit smoking one day, she had to force him to make a GP appointment when he developed a nasty and persistent cough.

A routine doctors appointment later that morning confirmed that her husband was suffering from the lung condition emphysema as a result of his 30 year smoking habit.

Emphysema is a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease which causes breathing difficulties and puts sufferers at risk of heart failure and pneumonia.

After being told that his wife and son would watch him die in the next five years, the man joked: "Oh well, if it's the end - I might as well keep smoking."

The doctor then told the man that he could potentially have more time if he quit smoking now - but the woman angrily watched as her partner's eyes glazed over and "knew he wasn't listening".

Call me selfish, but on the morning my husband was told he was going to die, I firmly believed he’d been incredibly selfish, too

She wrote: "This was my fault. He was getting this news only because I made him hear it. I used to love my husband so very much but that wasn't even something I thought of in that appointment."

Seeing first-hand her husband's unwillingness to kick the habit that was killing him made the woman realise her marriage was over.

"As a mother, I knew in that moment I had to save my son," she wrote. "I was not going to have him growing up, watching me nurse his dad - who chose not to do a goddamn thing to help himself - deteriorating in front of him."

What's more, the woman also admitted that she was "saving herself" from her husband.

She added: "Call me a selfish b**** but I had no intention of looking after a man who didn't care enough about us to even occasionally wake up early for his son, let alone quit smoking so he could be around longer."

It's now been 10 years since her ex-husband received his life-changing diagnosis and the woman confirmed that he can no longer walk, has had organ transplant surgery and has an oxygen tank in his day-to-day life.

But despite this, her father's son is still smoking and has a new girlfriend who cares for him.

Admitting that she feels sorry for them both now that the end is near, the woman added: "Most of all, I feel sorry for my son whose father had the chance to give them more years together and chose not to."

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