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.
Normal People. That’s what finally did it. Well, that and a decade of being stuck in a sexless, loveless marriage.
Watching the BBC’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s book in Spring 2020, I spewed with envy over Marianne and Connell’s intensity. I ached to experience that level of connection again. Being in the trenches of a global pandemic made it even more poignant. As a woman who was then in her mid-40s, I realised I’d already wasted half my life. And most of it with the wrong man.
Being reminded of what it was like, albeit through a TV screen, to be truly madly deeply in love, I could no longer bury my head in the sand. Our marriage was dying and one of us needed the balls to do something about it. The very next morning, to save us both from an inevitably slow and torturous demise, I switched off life support by asking for a divorce.
Of course, it wasn’t an overnight decision. I’d been toying with divorce for aeons. But the risks of splitting up seemed to outweigh the risks of staying together. I now know that paying for the highs by going through the lows is better than flatlining in a dead marriage. Back then, though, the prospect of being a singleton in a world made for twos was terrifying. I may not have had “truly madly deeply”, but I had a nice house, nice kids, nice dog. And, ultimately, even though we’d grown far apart, a nice man. The problem was, our niceness could no longer breathe. We were suffocating under years of resentment.
The usual issues were at play: disagreements over what constituted a fair share of invisible and domestic labour, not aligning on how to raise our children and squabbling over money. The main source of resentment, though, was that we hadn’t had sex – nor any other form of intimacy or affection – in nearly a decade. Both products of difficult childhoods, we were avoidant in the extreme.
Having intimacy withdrawn is a death by a thousand cuts. Dragging around the hurt and rejection was exhausting. So, for me, getting divorced gave me a new lease of life. It was utterly liberating. Yet also guilt-inducing. Hand on heart, I have zero regrets about getting divorced, barring one giant exception: it upended our children’s lives. But isn’t growing up in a divorced home better than growing up in an unhappy one?
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Once my ex had gotten over the shock (he would’ve coasted along without disrupting our cosy lives), he too realised splitting up was the right decision. We opted to get divorced as quickly as possible using an appropriately-named app called Amicable. There were no fights about access to the children. From the get-go, we agreed on 50/50. Nor, miraculously, about money. All he wanted was enough to build a new home and a new life. With more equity in the house, I was incredibly privileged that I could oblige with help from an eye-watering remortgage.
It didn’t take long for us to download Hinge. At first, we swiped away on the sofa together, howling at our matches, asking each other for advice. At one point, to much shared hilarity, the algorithm matched us. It was a weird time where we remembered why we’d fallen for each other 20 years earlier. But there was never any question of rekindling those early days. Too much water – and pain – under the bridge.
I got together with the first match I met IRL. Having been affection-starved for years, I fell for him hard. That was difficult for my ex. But I got my comeuppance. The new boyfriend turned out to be a classic narcissist. His initial love-bombing made me feel alive again. And the sex! With a decade’s worth of frustration to unleash, I was like a pubescent teen all over again. It was almost enough to compensate for years of feeling unwanted.
Six months later, I was so bewildered when the new boyfriend’s respect and affection began drying up. He started lying about everything. When he took his kids on holiday, he failed to mention it was with his ex-wife. Although I’m all for people remaining friends with their exes, lying about it is a red flag. Painful though it was to give up on the future I naively thought we had together, I knew I had to end it. Finishing with him, a man I knew for a mere 11 months, was tougher than ending it with the man I’d been with for nearly 20 years. How screwed-up is that?
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Meanwhile, my ex was settling into a new relationship with a woman who wasn’t too keen on us maintaining contact. Ironic, considering I was the one who encouraged him to make a go of it with her. With no single friends to go out and play with, I started relying on dating apps for a social life. At first, it was an absolute blast. Fresh meat for the algorithm, I was served endless thrilling opportunities. And, like a kid in a sweet shop, I made the most of them. I set out with good intentions, vowing to treat everyone with kindness, honesty and respect. But it wasn’t always reciprocated. It didn’t take long for me to join the ranks of bad behaviour. Can’t beat ’em, join ’em, hey? There are two men I’d still like to apologise to, but they made it clear they don’t want to hear from me again.
When the algorithm got bored with me, fun dating became burdensome datemin. Karma at work, my options dwindled into a bunch of middle-aged men as dysfunctional as me. An ensuing series of soul-sapping situationships proved the apps were designed not for true love but repeat business. So I began making peace with my destiny as a perma-single middle-aged woman.
To celebrate my singledom as freedom, I turned child-free weeks into solo travel adventures, kooky retreats and art courses at Central St Martins. It was life-affirming, but not sustainable, neither financially nor physically. Although my post-divorce experience had been a wild ride, I sensed it was time to calm down. I embarked on a period of intense self-reflection and started to see how messed-up I’d become – had always been, in fact. I sought out therapy.
Three years in, therapy has been an absolute game-changer. Even though I’m still a work-in-progress (and always will be), it’s helping me build a healthy new relationship with a kind, funny and patient man from my past. Rather than letting issues fester, I’m learning to recognise my avoidant ways and be more communicative about my feelings. I don’t know what the future holds, but I’m hopeful this one will stick. To borrow from therapy speak, divorce has been “a journey”. A voyage of self-discovery that has helped me see myself more clearly and become what I hope is a better person.
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