This is a wonderful monologue by the fabulous actress Lesley Manville. In it she voices a lot of emotions most women whose husbands have walked on a long-standing marriage might recognise. She does them with pain, humour and hope.
Enjoy – and if you can donate, please do.
In less than an hour, it will be exactly five years since that morning when my ex came downstairs, while I was making breakfast, and told me our almost 40 year marriage was over. So what would I tell my then 5-year-ago- self about how her life would be 5 years on?
I’d give her a warning that the first 2 years will be hell. Year 1 she will be in such a daze, that 5 years on she’ll be able to remember very little about it. Year 2, when everyone assumes the worst is over, she’ll still be in the middle of ugly legal proceedings, and the reality will set in that, yes, this is how it is going to be for the rest of her life, so she’d better get on with it.
I’d warn her that the man she devoted almost 40 years to will treat her worse than s–t – until he gets what he wants, and then, in e-mails, will start referring to himself by the ‘pet’ name they used when they were still married as if nothing of any real consequence has happened. (Until she tells him not to.)
I’d warn her that her family will never be the same. Her relationship with her kids will change – some for the better, some for the worse – but the family unit she had nurtured and treasured all those years will be irrevocably changed.
I’d warn her that she is going to have some of the worst – and some of the best – days of her life. That although she had lost someone very important in her life, the way would now be free for other wonderful people to show up, people she would never have had the chance to meet if she had still been married. New friends – as well as the old – who will bring colour, and depth and joy, and experiences to her life.
She’ll visit places she has dreamed about for years – decades even – that she would never have got to visit if she’d still been married. She’ll witness sunsets and sunrises, share a bottle of wine in a piazza in Italy with a friend, climb a sacred hill with another, sing along with an inspired musician under a starry November sky, stand atop Masada in Israel alone, climb to a magical Scottish lochan with her daughter and four-month-old grandson.
I’d warn her she will make mistakes along the way. When someone walks out on a marriage, especially when they have another person waiting in the wings, it’s not a spur of the moment decision. Their exit is carefully planned, so they enter divorce proceedings at a huge advantage – clear headed and determined – while she will be reeling from her broken heart. It’ll be like running the most important race of her life against an elite athlete while she is hampered by a broken leg. But… friends, family, and (hopefully – finally ) a good lawyer will help her redress that balance and get her to that finish line one way or another.
I’d warn her that friends and family will finally come clean about what they really thought of her ex. They’ll be saying these things in the hope it will make her feel better, but in actual fact it will have the opposite effect and she will feel stupid, blind and foolish. It they could see those things so clearly, why didn’t she? And the truth will be that, yes, she did see those things too, but she filed them at the back of her subconscious out of love. Love for her ex and her kids.
And love is never something to be ashamed of.
And then, slowly, gradually, she will start learning to love herself. She will amaze herself by the things she does, even in the midst of that pain and grief. She will amaze herself with her courage, whether it’s travelling alone, fighting back in the divorce, going to work for the first time in 40 years, getting up and talking in front of groups of people, setting up her own business, getting that story published… just putting one foot in front of the other day after day after day after day, until one day she will finally look back and see just how far she’s come. It might not have been the path she’d hoped to travel, but it will still be a good solid path. A journey to be proud of.
It has been said that you don’t ‘move on’ after great grief or trauma, you move forward. And so it will be for her. She will carry it with her, but she will move forward. At first the burden will be so heavy and painful that she will sink to her knees and sob into the carpet alone at 2 o’clock in the morning. But then, one morning – 5 years later – she will wake up to a beautiful spring morning, with the birds chirping lustily outside her window, and embrace the knowledge that it’s good to be alive. She’ll have plans for the day – things and people to look forward to.
She will be okay.
You will be okay.
T.S Eliot’s poem claims that ‘April is the cruellest month’, but when it comes to marital break-ups, that title belongs to January. In fact, Family Lawyers refer to January as ‘Divorce Month’ as it’s the busiest month of the year for divorce filings.
Why? Because many spouses hold off for Xmas to be over before they drop the bombshell. And although my husband didn’t leave me until – ironically enough – April, I can now look back and say with certainty that December 27th, 2014 was the day he checked out of our marriage both mentally and emotionally.
With the divorce rate now being 40% in Canada, it’s possible you have found yourself in this situation over what is supposed to be the happiest season of the year.
They say only fools give or accept advice, so what I’m going to offer here is an observation from someone who is almost 5 years down the path in which you might have suddenly found yourself.
Bear with me.
I went out for a New Year’s walk along the river path this afternoon, and what I saw was a perfect metaphor for where you might have unwillingly found yourself. Along with several other spectators, I stood on a bridge and watched as some chunks of ice floated along the river, before smashing into an ice jam. There they lay, stuck, for some time, until one or two broke free and slid under an ice bridge.
We watched. Would they reappear… or would they be trapped under the ice until spring came along to release them?
But no… first one, then another emerged from the ice and continued on their journey.
It still wasn’t smooth sailing. There were more ice jams, more ice bridges to navigate. Sometimes they got caught once more… but they finally broke free and continued down the river.
And that’s what the journey through divorce feels like. Especially in the early stages. You get battered from place to place until there are times when you feel like you are drowning. But then you re-emerge and continue down your path. It’s still not going to be plain sailing, and there’ll be another ice jam. Once again you may get stuck… but once again you WILL break free.
As I headed towards the second bridge which would bring me back across the river, I found it closed off to the public. Structural problems, apparently! So I had to make a detour to a smaller bridge about 100 yards away. This one was decorated in roses, the flowers of summer. And as I made my way across it, I spied 2 pieces of ice floating quite happily down the river. But what they didn’t know, was they were approaching some small rapids. They were in for a bumpy time.
And that made me think about this post-divorce journey. In the beginning, it’s rough, so rough that you feel like you’re drowning in the pain and anger and loss and grief. But, over time, it starts to ease. You go through a smooth patch… and then it gets rocky again. Smooth for longer this time… then you hit some rapids… but then it eases and you float along.
And so it goes.
If you’re on this painful journey, trust me, you’ve got it, girl. You can do it.
This year, you will discover that you are stronger than you ever believed possible.
For the last ten years of my marriage, August 5th, was a date that brought me joy. On August 5th, 2005, after enduring four years of kidney dialysis, my husband was given the generous gift of a cadaver donor kidney.
I remember that day clearly; the lunchtime phone call from the hospital and their inability to contact my husband. (Although he had a cell phone, he refused to carry it.) Even though I was his wife, for reasons of patient confidentiality they couldn’t tell me the reason for their call, but they did answer my question. “Is it time sensitive?” I asked.
The voice on the other line replied, “Yes’.
“How long does he have?” ”
“Thirty minutes.”
Thirty minutes and they’d give the kidney to someone else.
My son and I swung into action. I phoned every person and place I could possibly think of where my husband might be. My son jumped into my car and literally cruised the streets downtown, close to his office, looking for him.
Long story short, they got to the hospital in time and he got the kidney.
I remember that night, seeing him post op, unconscious, his body swollen with all the fluid he’d received. Honestly… he looked so white and awful I was terrified he might die. But he survived and our lives changed. No longer were any of us – but particularly him – tied to the relentless demands of the dialysis machine.
Ten years later, on August 5th, my daughter discovered that the story my husband had fed all of us – that there was no-one else involved in his decision to break up our marriage – was an outright, and deliberate, lie.
Until that moment, I think I’d carried the illusion that our marriage might still be saved. After that moment… after almost 40 years of loving him, I felt irrelevant and worthless. I wasn’t worth being told the truth. What purpose did I have? What meaning did my life have? What meaning or purpose had I ever had?
Over the past few years, the sense of worthlessness has eased. It’s a cliche but true – how someone treats you says nothing about you and everything about them. My meaning and purpose have started to crawl back, but August 5th is never an easy day.
And then, driving to pick up a friend from the airport today, I saw a sign by the side of the road that said, “You matter’.
It turns out it’s one of many signs displayed around our city by the woman depicted in this article. She states, “I believe that someone out there read that sign and it made their day better.”
I don’t know about anyone else, but Ann made my day better. Tomorrow – August 5th – will be much easier.
Thank you, Ann.
Photo by Ju Carvalho.
Gumption: the ability to decide what is the best thing to do in a given situation, and to do it with energy and determination.
After a six-month break, I’ve started writing Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages again. I’ve struggled for a few days getting even two pages written, far less three, so, to make things a bit easier for myself, this morning I used a journalling prompt I found on Pinterest last night.
“What do you need more of in your life?”
The three pages came quick and fast – oh yes, I need a lot more self-discipline, a good dose of self-belief, and a little male company wouldn’t go wrong – but it wasn’t until about halfway down the last page that I finally figured it out. What I need – what I really need more of – in my life is ‘gumption’. Find that, and perhaps the rest will fall into place. Continue reading
A friend sent me this photo off the internet. I don’t know where she found it, so I am unable to give it a correct attribution, and I also hope I’m not breaching anyone’s copyright, but it illustrates everything I have learned about life since my husband left me.
Times will be hard – often achingly so – but this picture reminds me of a lesson Fred Rogers learned as a child. “When I was a boy,” he said, “and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'”
He might have been speaking about major disasters, but divorce is a major disaster in your life. And he is still right. Friends, family, people who support you through this time are your personal helpers. And they will be there. Treasure them. They will lift you up.
I’ve been thinking a lot about subtext recently – when someone says something that doesn’t match up to what they actually think or mean – and it got me thinking about some of the things people said to me in the days, weeks, months, even years, after my husband left me.
“You’re better off without him.”
“Think of it as being released.”
“He was a weight around your neck.”
“I never trusted him.”
“The first time my husband cheated on me would be his last time.”
“You should have walked out years ago.”
I know what my friends and family were trying to do. They were trying to comfort me. Support me. Help me. Love me. I know they were, but sometimes those words of ‘support’ cut me to the core.
Because if you really look at those phrases, and how they can be interpreted by someone who is in emotional pain, it’s not hard to read the subtext behind them. Continue reading
… when I’m sixty-four?
I loved my birthday. As a summer baby, it happened during the holidays, so there was an added magic to it. I felt so sorry for those classmates who had to go to school on their special day.
As a wife and mother I loved it too. My husband and I would either go out for a meal – usually accompanied by a bottle of Dom Perignon – or we’d have all the kids round at the weekend for a family meal.
And then… suddenly I found myself facing my 60th birthday alone. Continue reading
If you had a will written in the year after your husband left you, I suggest you go and look at it now. And I mean NOW!
I had one professionally drawn up within that time period, brought it home, tucked it away safely in my firesafe and have never looked at it since.
Until yesterday, when, due to certain new circumstances in my life, I had a reason to look at it again.
And I was horrified.
I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown when I drew up the will. I clearly wasn’t thinking straight. And although the responsibility for its contents ultimately lies on my shoulders, how on earth did my lawyer allow me to draw up a document like that?!
In short, when it came to bequests, I had put in dollar amounts rather than percentages. It means that if I died today – two years after the final divorce settlement and monies came through – then two of my friends would get more than three times the money left to my kids.
And that is NOT what I want to happen.
So here’s my advice for this weekend.
Haul out your will and read through it. Does it still match your wishes and circumstances?
If it does, that’s great.
If not, get yourself to a lawyer asap and get it changed.
Be very – very – careful of the wording if you are leaving amounts of money in dollar amounts rather than percentages.
Review your will once a year to ensure it matches your current circumstances.
Deciding to change your name is a very personal decision. Although I loved being a wife and (love being) a mother, my feeling was that if my ex didn’t want me, I no longer wanted to carry his name. Embarking on my own Shirley Valentine quest to try and rediscover the me I used to be, I would do it with my ‘own’ name.
One reaction I got from someone who had only ever known me by my married name was very inspiring. They claimed my own name sounded like a character from a Robert Louis Stevenson novel and told me to, “Go out and be the heroine of your own story.”
So what does changing your name actually involve? When I married in the late 70s it was easy. I had one bank account, a driver’s licence and a passport. Done and dusted.
Now, 40 years later, it’s more complicated. Some of it is costly, some of it’s not. So how do you go about it?
No matter where you live, the most important thing to start with is to collect ALL of your ORIGINAL documents; birth certificate, marriage certificate and divorce certificate. (Some people are tempted to dispose of the latter. Don’t!)
After that, it will depend where you live. I live in Canada, so this is how I proceeded.
There are probably other things which I haven’t factored in, but I believe these are the most common. In general, it’s not an expensive undertaking, but it is time-consuming, and here I am, two years after beginning the process, still catching things every so often.
Was it worth it? I have friends who kept their married names and are perfectly happy about their decisions. But for me, changing my name has helped me move forward.
One of the last scenes in Shirley Valentine is when her husband passes her on the beach. She calls out his name and he stops, surprised.
“I didn’t recognise you,” he says.
“I know,” she replies. “I used to be The Mother. I used to be The Wife. Now I’m Shirley Valentine again.”
thegreydivorcee 