‘Alpine divorce’: Women and experts on why emotional abandonment cuts so deeply

Months later, when she was in an active emotional crisis, she called him again. He was at another event and asked her to wait an hour.

Cherry’s story isn’t about a huge or dramatic betrayal. There was no precipice, cruelty or crime. And yet it contains something that several women across the world have recognised in themselves lately. And that is the loneliness of being left alone in your most vulnerable moment by someone who was supposed to show up.

‘Alpine divorce’ 

The term ‘Alpine divorce’ has an unlikely literary origin. In 1893, when the only legal grounds for ending a marriage were death, cruelty or criminality, Scottish-Canadian novelist Robert Barr wrote a darkly comic short story, An Alpine Divorce, in which a husband plots to push his wife off a Swiss precipice. Barr’s twist, notably ahead of its time: the wife survives, and the husband doesn’t. It was, arguably, a feminist story.

Around 130 years later, the term has returned, not from literature, but from social media platforms like TikTok.

In February 2026, an Austrian court convicted Thomas P of manslaughter after he abandoned his girlfriend on the Grossglockner, the highest peak in the Alps, as per the BBC. A former girlfriend later testified that he had abandoned her on a trail, too.

The case cracked something open online. Women flooded social media with their own ‘Alpine divorce’ stories: partners who had lured them into physically perilous or emotionally overwhelming situations, and then disappeared.

But while the term sounds extreme, what it touches on is something far more ordinary and more insidious. The abandonment most women know doesn’t happen on a mountain. It happens in a marriage, a relationship, a home. And it rarely announces itself.

Lack of interest

Sangita Marda Agarwal, 58, knows this. She describes experiencing a pervasive, systemic absence during her first marriage. Her husband was financially privileged yet showed little interest in supporting her and their two daughters, emotionally or practically.

“I often felt I was carrying the entire weight of the family alone,” she says. “In the early years, I kept hoping things would improve and convinced myself it was anger, stress, or incompatibility. But over time, I realised it was a deeper pattern of control, neglect, and abuse. The absence of care was not occasional. It was systemic.”

When she first heard the phrase ‘Alpine divorce’, something shifted. “It reflects the terrifying realisation that the person you trusted to protect and stand beside you can abandon you in your most vulnerable moments,” she says. “Sometimes that abandonment is not on a mountain. It happens quietly inside a marriage, every single day.”

What these women are describing has a name in clinical psychology, and it begins not with cruelty but with neuroscience. (Source: Pixabay)

When he left without a word

Moni Shandilya, 27, remembers the date. She was serving her notice period at a toxic workplace, her personal life was unravelling, and her partner was the only person she felt safe with, “the only space where I thought I could breathe for a while.”

He broke up with her without explanation. She begged him to stay, something she had never done before.

“Some people make you believe they will always be there for you, but when difficult times actually come, and you need them the most, they leave,” she says.

In the aftermath, she kept herself relentlessly busy by showing up to a new job while mentally and emotionally hollowed out.

More than a year later, she says that she is still doing the same. She has stopped opening up to people. Keeping her feelings to herself, she says, started feeling safer than risking disappointment again.

Why abandonment hits so hard

What these women are describing has a name in clinical psychology, and it begins not with cruelty but with neuroscience.

“Human beings are neurologically wired for attachment,” explains Dr Shachi Patel, a Clinical Psychologist with a fellowship from Stanford School of Medicine’s Brain and Behavioural Neurology programme.

“In intimate relationships, our nervous system begins to associate the partner with emotional regulation, safety, and protection. So when someone emotionally disappears — withdraws during distress, or leaves a person unsupported in vulnerable moments — the brain can interpret it almost like a threat response.”

This is why, she notes, clients often don’t use the word ‘abandoned’. Instead, the experience surfaces as panic, hypervigilance, obsessive overthinking, difficulty sleeping, emotional numbness, or intense self-blame. “Some women describe feeling ‘foolish for expecting support,'” she says, “while others become excessively self-reliant — because depending on someone no longer feels emotionally safe.”

Aarti Belani, a trauma-informed couples therapist and founder of therapist.talks, says, “Proximity is power. The closer and more intimate a connection, the more it shapes not just how we operate, but what we think about ourselves, the safety we feel, how we regulate, and at large, our existence itself.”

Belani says abandonment can resemble withdrawal from a stabilising system for the brain.

The pattern question

One of the trickiest aspects of emotional abandonment is that it rarely arrives fully formed. It accumulates. A partner who disappears during conflict, who is conveniently unavailable during illness or grief, who makes the other person feel ‘too much’ for having needs — these behaviours can be easy to explain away individually and devastating in aggregate.

Both therapists point to John Gottman’s ‘Four Horsemen’ — Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling — as markers of chronic relational dysfunction.

“These aren’t just communication mistakes,” says Belani. “They are relational dynamics that progressively erode emotional safety, attachment security, and trust. When they become chronic, they can create a persistent experience of emotional abandonment even when both partners remain physically present.”

Dr Patel draws a line between situational failure and a pattern. “One isolated incident during high stress does not automatically define a relationship. But clinically concerning patterns repeat themselves across contexts, such as repeatedly disappearing during emotionally important moments, refusing accountability, or shifting blame instead of attempting repair.”

A significant marker, she adds, is when the affected person begins doubting their own expectations: ‘Maybe I’m overreacting.’ ‘At least nothing major happened.’

What the therapists emphasise is repair — the willingness, after rupture, to turn back towards a partner and ask: ‘What do you need to feel safe again?’ (Source: Canva)

Adjustment as a virtue

In India, the cultural weight on women to adjust, endure, and maintain relational harmony makes emotional abandonment especially difficult to identify and to name.

“Many women are raised with messages around adjustment and endurance,” says Dr Patel. “As a result, they may minimise emotional neglect unless it becomes extremely severe. There is also a cultural tendency to evaluate relationships only through visible markers, infidelity, violence, and financial irresponsibility, while overlooking chronic emotional inconsistency, invalidation, or lack of support.”

Many of her clients, she notes, describe feeling profoundly lonely inside otherwise socially ‘stable’ relationships.

Belani points to a structural double-bind: “Patriarchy in our country still says emotional labour goes invisible, yet the load still exists — invisibly, more on one side than the other. We’re meant to give, but wanting to receive equally is still looked at as a demand.” The same system, she adds, harms men differently: they are expected to perform as providers and cannot step back without shame. “Same system, different harm.”

Subtle signs women miss

Both therapists we spoke with agree that the most important shift in assessing a relationship is moving away from the question ‘Is this bad enough?’ towards ‘What pattern does this create between us over time?’

Belani identifies chronic self-surveillance as a key warning sign: constantly monitoring what is safe to say, trying hard not to ‘rock the boat’. Others include: conflict that never fully resolves; affection that arrives only as reward for compliance; feeling lonely in the presence of a partner; carrying a background current of fear or anticipatory anxiety. “You feel physically present with someone, but psychologically unsupported,” she says.

Dr Patel’s list has a similar character: hesitating to ask for support because it feels burdensome, frequently minimising one’s own needs, walking on eggshells, being comforted only when convenient for the partner, and feeling emotionally punished for expressing hurt.

“One thing many clients say in retrospect is: ‘Nothing major happened, but I stopped feeling emotionally safe,'” she says. “That statement is clinically significant. Emotional safety is not built only through grand gestures or crisis management, but through reliability, responsiveness, empathy, and emotional presence over time.”

Moving on

Cherry’s relationship didn’t end after those two nights. After processing both incidents in couples therapy, she and her partner came to a better understanding. He became more aware of the intensity of her emotional world; she, of his limitations.

They are still together. But she is also more guarded now. “It feels emotionally safer to manage myself independently rather than place expectations on someone and risk feeling abandoned or disappointed again,” she says.

She knows this comes from a wounded place. She is working on it.

What the therapists emphasise is repair — the willingness, after rupture, to turn back towards a partner and ask: ‘What do you need to feel safe again?’ It is that turn, Belani says, that distinguishes emotional immaturity from emotional harm. “Repair happens when we consider what the other person needs, not just when we decide we’re done feeling bad about something.”

While Agarwal left her first marriage and Shandilya rebuilt herself, alone, Cherry is still in the complicated, honest work of staying. Each path, the therapists agree, is valid, so long as the person choosing it can see the pattern clearly, and is not simply waiting for a dramatic moment to justify what they already quietly know.