My husband asked for a divorce – I was devastated but proud of him

We were walking through Epping Forest in 2017 when my husband told me he wanted a divorce.

It was quiet and damp, early autumn, the trees just beginning to turn golden. There was no drama. No shouting. No public breakdown. Just the slow sound of our footsteps on the leaf mulch, and then the words I had not been expecting to hear. 

I remember turning to him and saying, ‘You are, aren’t you? You’re asking for a divorce.’ He nodded. 

The ground seemed to vanish beneath me. My first thought was: how could he do this now? Our daughter was about to start secondary school. Our son was preparing for his GCSEs.

But my second thought was more difficult to admit. Perhaps he was right. 

From the outside, our marriage looked ideal. We had been together since we were 21, meeting at university in 1991. He proposed two months after we met, dropping the chalk while we were playing pool and bending down to say, ‘While I’m down here, will you marry me?’

It was impulsive and romantic. I said yes straight away.

We stayed engaged for 17 years, which sounds absurd now, but it suited us at the time. I was working, then training, then raising children. We were settled, and marriage felt like something we would get around to eventually.

We had our son in 2001 and our daughter in 2007, and finally married that same year.

People thought we were the golden couple – but the truth was more complicated. 

We hosted yearly parties, people said our home was warm and welcoming, and in many ways, it was. We had built it that way deliberately – because I grew up in chaos.

My parents’ marriage ended when I was seven, after years spent living on a boat, sailing between countries. We were always in motion.

Those early experiences shaped me, and I swore I would create a different life when I married – one that was grounded and reliable. I thought holding a family together was the most important thing a parent could do.

That belief ran so deep, I never questioned it. Not until I had to. 

There had always been problems between my husband and I, of course, even before we married. We argued about ordinary things: Money, pets and parenting.

Looking back, it felt as if we were jockeying for the same space: The sensible one, the person who knew best.

We did not talk well. Our communication was reactive, tense and avoidant. 

We had been to therapy several times over the years, but the sessions never gave us the tools to move forward. We talked about our childhoods as if they explained everything, but nothing helped us listen differently or manage conflict better. 

We thought getting married might help; and it was a wonderful celebration, full of love.

Then we came home, and all the same issues were still waiting at the door.

I was often lonely. We no longer reached for each other – not just physically, but emotionally and conversationally, too. There were evenings when I would speak and he would not look up.

I stopped trying. I busied myself with motherhood, with work, with running the home. 

When he said the word divorce, I was not completely blindsided. I’d had an inkling; I just had not let myself imagine it could be real. I had built my entire sense of worth around staying. Around making it work.

I believed I was the glue. The one holding the shape of the family. I did not realise that being the glue was making me brittle. 

After the conversation in the forest, we walked home in silence and I made tea.

I do not remember if I cried that night. I think I just sat at the kitchen table, stunned. I was heartbroken. I was furious. I felt abandoned, dismissed, undone.

And still, somewhere under the ache, I felt something else too. I felt relief. Like a door had been opened. 

We stayed in the same house for a while. He moved into a flat nearby eventually, but came back twice a week to be with the children. On those days, I made myself disappear. I believed, wrongly, that to protect the children, I had to make everything look effortless. I thought if I just held it all together, they would be safe. 

Mediation failed, becoming tense and defensive; so, eventually, we represented ourselves in family court.

We sat through the entire process to the final hearing, where a judge decided how everything would be divided. It was long, exposing and deeply impersonal. I remember looking at this stranger with our life in his hands thinking, ‘How did this happen to us?’ 

In truth, though, the hardest work happened outside the court. I had to dismantle the story I had been telling myself, that I was the one trying the hardest, that I had been wronged.

It took time, but I began to see my part in things. I saw where I had shut down. Where I had clung to control. Where I had been afraid of truth, even when it was offered gently. 

That walk changed my life. I now work as a divorce and break-up coach, helping people navigate the part of divorce no one prepares you for: The emotional terrain. The part where identity, grief, fear and shame all sit at the table. 

What I know now is that divorce is not the end of your story. It is the beginning of a new chapter. 

My husband told me something I could not say for myself, and now, I’m deeply grateful to him.

He spoke his truth. He said he was unhappy. I could not hear it at the time. Now I see the courage in what he did. 

He was right. We needed to let go in order to grow. 

And we did. 

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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