But it didn’t turn out that way. My sacrifices and compromises only seemed to create restriction, resentment, and regret. Hoping to fix that, further sacrifice led to sadness, anger, isolation, unfulfilled promises and dreams, more resentment, and so on, until something finally gave. The unit of “us” broke apart and we were forced to navigate our way through separation – a strange process, in itself – and sail off into the long uncharted sea of being… once again alone.
I’d like to say that, after my bathroom epiphany, I marched boldly out of said bathroom and stated my intentions loud and clear, but if you’ve lived through the death throes of a marriage (or any form of deeply committed relationship), you’ll know it didn’t happen that way.
It felt like we were standing at the bedside of a loved one on life support. We both knew there was no hope they were coming back to us. They would never laugh with or love us again. We would never again feel their warm embrace, or hear their sweet words whispered in our ears.
Standing there, we both knew it was too late.
Our marriage was all but dead. The only life running through its veins was being artificially pumped through it with Herculean effort and at great expense.
Yet, we struggled with the decision to end it, to ‘pull the plug’. It was, in fact, several months after the ‘Get divorce, Mumma’ moment that the opportunity presented itself, and I jumped at it.
Andy and I had been out for breakfast, which had turned from a stilted, lifeless encounter to one of simmering, festering annoyance. By the time we got back to our car, we’d exchanged barbs about everything from the waitress’ attitude to the (over/under) scrambled eggs. As we sat in the car…
“Nathy, I can’t do this anymore.”
This was the moment I’d been waiting (hoping and praying) for.
He’d said it. He’d finally said it.
I let the words sink in for a moment.
Why had I waited for him to call the end? Why had I not done it all those weeks, months before? Was I weak? Was I gutless?
Rightly or wrongly, I needed to control the narrative. I knew Andy’s stance had long been for us to stick it out according to our vows, ‘for better or for worse’. He’d told me that on more than one occasion. I knew that if I’d called it, if I’d walked away, then the story that Leo would have been told is that “Your mother tore our family apart.” And from Andy’s perspective, that certainly would have been the truth. But I was thinking about this strategically. I was playing the long game. I was thinking about the story that my son would have to grow up with. And the story I wanted him to understand was this:
“Your dad and I tried really hard, but in the end, we just couldn’t make it work. So, we decided that it would be best for everyone that we separate.”
Does that make me manipulative? I’d like to think it demonstrates my empathy and emotional intelligence, and the capacity to think clearly in times of extreme emotional duress. Either way, I did what I did. You can make up your own mind.
It was time to think of the life we needed to live, the life we owed it to our young son to create. In order to do that, we had to lay a life (in this case our marriage) to rest.
Get Angry, Stay Angry
There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying.” (Robert Evans – American Film Producer)
For a while after my marriage ended, I carried stories with me to keep me safe. Safe in the knowledge (or belief) that my exhusband was a difficult person. Stories like him being negative, passive-aggressive, and insensitive, and that his personality and character flaws really were the primary drivers that broke our relationship and marriage.
If you’ve ever come to the end of a relationship where pain, regret, anger, and resentment are your bedfellows once your partner has departed, you’ll undoubtedly have a wide selection of stories that you will have curated, polished, and perfected (or, hell, even created!) that best illustrate and sum up just why your ex was such a bastard, loser, cheater, control freak, narcissist, bitch… (choose any one, or a combo, or feel free to insert your own descriptors here).
For me, these ‘stories’ were a vital part of my recovery. They helped me channel my emotions, especially the negative ones. Emotions are just energy in motion. They move us. Whether it’s forward or backward or just spinning and whirling in space, it takes energy to create them and keep them alive. And believe me, I was fuelled up and ready to blast off… but was I headed in the right direction?
Because here’s the thing… I’d been there before. This was not the first marriage I had lived to see the end of.
I’d been married once before, while I was living in London in the early 90s.
It was my bad boy phase. A fairly typical start to the tale. Aussie girl heads to London looking for adventure. Sound familiar? Aussie girl beds down firmly in London’s party and club scene, and comes up for air about four years later. Still sound familiar? I spiced up my version of the story by falling in love with and marrying a loveable rogue. With his connections to the London underworld and having fallen foul of the law in his younger years, he had excitement written all over him, and I was up for the adventure.
Leroy’s and my brief marriage was like the journey of Icarus and his wax wings – not designed to fly, but like Icarus, we threw caution to the wind and ran off the edge of the cliff anyway. Fuelled by a diet of youthful exuberance, drugs, alcohol, and partying, we spent most of our short married life pursuing assorted chemical and emotional highs. And like our mythical muse Icarus, we flew and danced through the sky, ignoring the danger signs (and the fact that we weren’t actually birds). By the time we got too close to the sun and our wings melted, the catapult back to earth was as unavoidable as it was speedy and definitive.
The highs gave way to lows, and after I found out that he had strayed, I hit terra firma with a resounding thwack! Emotions cascaded through me like my own Victoria Falls, crushing, twisting, and tumbling my internal world into pulp. They rendered me helpless. I became a victim to them and to the story they created.
A few months after our split, the weekend before I left London to return home to Australia, friends dragged me to an outdoor festival. Gay Pride is London’s annual street and dance party festival, where straight and gay Londoners alike take to the streets and South London’s Brockwell Park to celebrate and party hard.
It was a glorious English summer weekend, the kind where the sun actually shines and everyone strips to the legal minimum amount of clothing; Londoners bare their skin and lap up the generosity of the sun’s warmth. Across the gently rolling grounds, hands waved in the air like a field of daisies dancing in a breeze to the rhythm of thumping dance music. As the crowd of 30,000 revellers frolicked in the sunshine, I turned around to come faceto-face with… my ex.
Clouds gathered and blocked the sun. To this day, I can’t tell you whether he saw me or not. It seemed to me that he looked right at me, right through me, but it was so fleeting. As quick as he was there, he was gone, swallowed by the throng.
The crowd surged around us like waves, moving us both on, but I was rooted to the spot in a frozen panic. I couldn’t find a rock to hide under fast enough. I didn’t know where to turn or what to do. I wandered around in a dither, bleating to anybody who would listen about how my ex’s presence at this (very public and free to attend by anybody) festival had completely stumped me, and was crushing my ability to enjoy my last weekend in London.
This went on for about an hour until, as I was whining to one of my best friends –