Divorce, once rare and stigmatised, has become mainstream – 42 per cent of marriages now end this way, meaning nearly half of us can expect to experience it in our lifetime. Just as every marriage is different, so is every divorce. In this column, divorcees reflect on their life-changing experience. Helped by the benefit of hindsight, they’ll share advice and reflections. Interview by Lucy Cavendish.
Five years ago, I started having doubts about my marriage. I had just turned 53 and had been with my husband Mark since the age of 25. We have three children and the last one had gone to university and something in me changed – call it menopause, midlife crisis, an existential questioning – but I woke up one morning and realised that I no longer want to be married.
It seemed a shock back then. I’ve since found out that lots of women in “mid” age feel the way I felt. But I had no idea about that back then. One minute I thought we were basically fine and the next I woke up and realised I wanted to leave.
I’m a very decisive person so I told my husband within a week that I didn’t want to be in a relationship with him anymore. He looked as if he’d been hit by a high-speed train. He asked me if there was someone else. He told me he loved me and he wanted to be married to me.
But after some months of counselling – which I agreed to because I felt I “should” – I knew I was done and I pushed for divorce. I then went off on what I would call my Eat Pray Love journey. Part of it was because I’d always wanted to spend a year away. I’d always been a good girl. I went to university, got my degree, went to work, got married, bought a house, had children and gave up my job to be a “housewife”. But now I was single and “childfree”.
I felt like I wanted time to do what I wanted to do and find out the person I really was underneath the dutiful daughter and “good” wife and mother. My husband couldn’t believe it when I told him I bought a ticket to India. He said I’d never been further than Surrey without him.
But it felt so important to me to go and find out what I wanted to do with my life and to find out who I was.
I started off in Calcutta and worked in a children’s charity. I set it all up before I left so I knew that I had something to do when I got there. As soon as I got off the plane I felt I was in my spiritual home. I was so happy. I felt so moved by the children and the terrible poverty they lived in that I absolutely devoted myself to the job. In fact I worked so hard that I actually ended up burning out and the director of the charity told me to take some time off.
I went off to Jaipur and Jodphur and saw the Taj Mahal. I hung out on a houseboat on a lake. Then I went down to Pondicherry because I love the book The Life of Pi. I studied yoga there for months. Then I went back to Calcutta and continued working.
It was an incredible time. I met a fellow volunteer, 10 years younger than myself, and we started up an easy-going affair.
After a year though, the lack of any mod cons began to bite. I had kept in touch with my now ex-husband – we had got divorced while I was away and it was very amicable and he was very fair and split everything 50/50. He told me he never wanted me to be out of pocket. In fact, he was incredibly supportive throughout my entire time. He would send me messages and little clips of stories and every morning I would wake up to him saying hello and then at night he would say goodnight. As time went on I realised that that level of love is something that’s quite hard to find. I began to think that maybe I had acted hastily.
One night, having had a bit too much to drink, I texted him and told him I missed him. It was the first time in three years I had said anything like that.
Usually he would text directly back but I felt so silly having texted him that I put the phone down and turned it off. The next morning I turned it back on expecting to see a message from him saying he missed me too but there was nothing.
I didn’t have a message from him for the entire day and I started having a very queasy feeling in my stomach. Later on in the day he texted me saying he was hoping I was having a good time but I could sense something had changed.
A month after that, I flew home. Mark met me at the airport. He gave me a warm hug but avoided eye contact. On the way back to the house we had once shared but he had moved out of, he told me he had put the house up for sale as agreed. And then he told me what I had begun to suspect. “I’ve met someone,” he said. “I like her. It’s turning into a serious relationship.”
It was then that I truly understood the meaning of divorce.
Friends had said to me that Mark was a catch, that if I went away and left him and divorced him, he would find someone else but at the time I felt completely fine about it. But now I was facing the realisation of what I had lost and the good man that I had cast aside that some other lucky woman had sensibly picked up, I just couldn’t cope. I completely collapsed. Mark actually looked confused. “But you wanted to get divorced,” he said. I told him yes I did but I was an idiot and while I was away I realised that I still loved him I just needed to re-discover myself. On and on and on I went, blurting everything out.
Finally, once I’d stopped talking, Mark put his hand on my knee and said: “I will always love you but actually I think our relationship was probably dead and you were right to call it. I’ve met someone who I think I’m going to be very happy with and, I’m sorry, but we’re divorced now and that’s how it’s going to remain.”
It’s a year on now from that conversation I would like to say I’m happier but I don’t think I am. I can see he is and that really pains me, although I do want him to be happy because I know I really hurt him. He would like me to be friends with his new partner but I’m nowhere near doing that yet.
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I’ve been on quite a few dates but I have to say very few men match up to my ex-husband.
I don’t regret what’s happened because there’s no point in that but I do wish that maybe I had managed things rather differently and somehow negotiated a sabbatical or suggested to him that we went away together to do something. I just couldn’t see straight at the time. I was so convinced that I had to do a journey into myself and, while that was important, I also lost a very important person in the process.
However – and this is HUGE – I don’t regret my year away or the wonderful affair that I had in India. I keep that very close to my chest and I know that I’m building on that and then at the end I think I will be very happy and content either by myself or with a new wonderful partner.
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