The end of a marriage is rarely “amicable” in any real sense of the term. But on the whole in my experience, it is made much worse by two pernicious groups: lawyers, and Hell-hath-no-fury covens of women. Sadly, in many cases the two feed off each other.

I write this piece as a man, and so must of course accept all the gender-tribalist criticism that is bound to come my way. But what these two catalyst groups in any marital break-up have going against them is that they are, respectively, doing business and waging a war. The first casualty in both those pursuits is empirical analysis. That’s a slightly more academic way of saying that truth doesn’t get so much as a look-in.

What gives them a commonality is the ignorance they apply to the situation. It is as if overnight, every divorce lawyer and ‘friend’ in the land becomes the worst kind of Sun reader. Everything melts down into a love-rat-deserter-shitty-thing-to-do soap opera. The Daily Mail headline is all they need to galvanise them into action: to Hell with the facts, let’s bankrupt the bastard.

Over the last two months, I have had to sit quietly and listen – second or third hand – to what folks I once foolishly counted as friends and even family are saying about my behaviour in deciding to split up from my wife. Frankly, none of them have even the haziest idea WTF they are talking about. But the Sun headline is this: my wife was very ill when I decided enough was enough. And for the wafer-thin characters on my case here, that was more than enough to condemn me to death.

With just one exception (thank you, Mark and Emma) nobody from my wife’s circle of friends has had either the courage or the manners to assume there must be other factors involved and to wish us both well. And to give equal credit to those who have only ever known us as a couple, every last one of them has listened to the circumstances involved and sympathised with both of us. But on the whole – as always in this sick culture we inhabit – the rush to blame, without a moment’s thought for responsibility, is disappointingly evident. Never, ever allow the facts to get in the way of a good argument, whatever you do.

I have absolutely no desire to slag off my estranged wife, who is a woman of enormous courage and kindness. But nevertheless, I do feel some of those on the fringes of our tragedy should just stop, pause, and think over some very simple considerations:

1. Having observed me at close quarters over 15-20 years, do you perhaps think that instead of moralising about how ‘I could do such a thing’, it might have been better to ask why?

2. Having over that period lived outside our front door and beyond our bedroom door, did it ever occur to you that we had a private life – access to which you had no right whatsoever, and about which you know nothing?

3. Having heard about my wife’s illness and – in most cases – not bothered to get in touch, have you ever wondered what the contributory factors to marital breakdown were that came before that illness?

4. Have you ever had to look after a mentally sick person 24/7 for eighteen months? Ever had to battle an uncaring NHS primary care sector? Ever had to fight arrogant (and utterly wrong) consultants while watching your wife crushed under a splitting headache?

5. Have you ever met my mother-in-law?

6. Have you ever been a lone voice trying to explain to prattling sleepwalkers that they should switch off X-Factor or the New Zealand rugby and instead think about how the entire Western world’s culture is turning to shit? Have you ever tried to imagine what the effect on a marriage of six years of doing that might be?

I have been subjected to risible judgement in recent months from people who, quite frankly, I regard now as something of a joke. People I remained non-judgemental about as they bounced through three marriages in nine years. Idle blokes hanging around waiting for their mothers-in-law to die. Wives coming on to me as their husbands extolled their virtues downstairs. Other wives moaning about their husband’s inattentiveness as those men fought tooth and nail to keep a business alive. Women who promised to attend my 60th birthday but then ducked out for a better offer. Men telling me that Tony Blair was a safe pair of hands. Other men driving five children in their care drunk back from a football game. Women declaring their gross anti-Semitic sympathies without a care for anyone else at table. A wife who left her husband twice (but still continues to live off him) telling me how ‘unacceptable’ my actions were. And two men who have leeched off their father for twenty years expressing ignorant opinions offstage about my motives.

What a cavalcade of sad double-standards they represent. How glad I shall be to place them forever in my past. Quick to blame and too thick to think, they typify the pit of self-indulgent sanctimonious incontinence into which Britain has sunk.

Well, pigotry never held any loudmouth back, and now they have all had their say. I can’t have my unalloyed say, because I still respect my estranged wife too much to indulge in that. All I can do is wish all of those now become my naysayers a life without the problems my wife and I endured in the last five years, after thirteen blissful years before that.

Oh, and – being human – to say I am thoroughly disgusted by all of you.