‘People online say I’m breaking my marriage vows, but I don’t have a marriage anymore,’ Amanda Robinson, 39, shares.
For 15 years, Amanda and her husband Matt, 42, lived a picture perfect life together. The high school sweethearts first met in 2003, marrying just two years later and going on to have two sons.
Residing in Prescott, Arizona, Amanda’s career as a nurse meant she was used to witnessing traumatic injuries and pain.
But while there had always been six degrees of separation, that all changed in February 2021, when Matt was involved in a catastrophic accident.
After her husband’s head was ‘crushed’ when his truck was hit by another vehicle, Amanda stepped in to care and look after Matt, watching as his life-changing brain injury began to affect his vision, personality, behaviour, and memory.
After four years of feeding, cleaning, and dressing Matt, Amanda made the extremely difficult decision to admit him into a nearby care home. She still loved Matt, but she needed to regain some kind of semblance of a normal life.
She never expected to fall in love again. But then she met Josh, 38, a country singer who came into her life at just the right time.
The pair first caught eyes during one of Josh’s sets at a local bar in Prescott.
They exchanged numbers and a few weeks later, Amanda attended another of his shows, where she told him about Matt and his brain injury.
She explained: ‘I don’t think he fully understood what I meant, but then I saw him again a few weeks later, and he said he’d looked at my Facebook page, which I used to update friends and family about Matt’s condition, and he said “Matt sounded like a great guy”.’
From there, the couple immediately began growing closer and closer.
And Josh made it clear from the beginning that Matt was also going to be an important part of his life.
A few months after they became a couple, Amanda took Josh with her on one her regular visits to see Matt. Soon, it became part of their routine for Josh to support Amanda in caring for Matt, and for him to develop his own relationship with his partner’s husband.
Amanda notes: ‘I did this all by myself for years, and now I have somebody else right there with me and I’m not doing it all alone.
‘I hadn’t let myself connect with anybody before, because in my mind, I was married and I was dedicated to being a caregiver, and I had just accepted that’s the life I was going to have.
‘I know that if Matt was aware of what was going on, he wouldn’t want me to be his caregiver forever, he’d want me to be happy.’
Of course, Amanda could have never predicted any of this could’ve happened.
Amanda shared: ‘Matt and I had a great relationship. I was with him for more than half my life, I fully understand him. We were so happy. We laughed a lot.’
And, as the mum of two explains, the accident truly came out of nowhere.
Going about her day as usual almost exactly five years ago, Amanda had received a text from an app called Life360, something the couple had used to track each other’s location.
There’s a feature on the app that detects whether someone has been in a car accident, using the movement of their phone.
Matt at the time had been travelling to work in a truck, with two colleagues, when they were hit. The extent of Matt’s injuries were so severe that the family were told to say goodbye to him. But thankfully, he pulled through and spent the next 10 months in hospital recovering.
Amanda shares: ‘When I went to the hospital to see him, I was just in shock. I couldn’t believe it was him, his eyes were black, he had blood coming out of his ears, eyes and nose, his head was all wrapped and bloody.
‘There was literally no sign of life in him.’
When Matt finally returned home in December 2021, he looked physically fine and was able to walk, talk, and eat. However, things soon started to go downhill.
The brain injury started seriously affecting Matt’s ability to retain information and his memory, and this was worsened by the fact that he also ultimately lost his vision: ‘Instead of seeing black, he hallucinates that he’s in a places that he’s not, it can get so confusing for him.
‘In his mind, he’s still living life before the accident. Sometimes he tells me he’s off to work, other times he thinks he still goes to school. His memory is all over the place.
‘The hardest part is having to explain to him where he is and what’s going on.’
The mum of two adds: ‘I used to feel so sad that he lost his career, he lost knowing his kids, he lost friends, he lost everything. He’s just kind of physically here. But then I realised that up until that moment, we had a great life and I don’t think he would regret anything.’
Now, Amanda is proud of her unique family dynamic. She just wants to be happy.
Naturally trolls online have made that somewhat difficult for her: ‘People online say I’m breaking my marriage vows, but I don’t have a marriage anymore.’
Amanda knows that she’s not doing anything wrong, she’s simply pursuing a path which allows her to be loved again the way she deserves.
‘I lost all the same things he did. I lost my career, I lost a lot of time with my kids, I couldn’t do things with friends anymore.
‘I realised that me and my sons needed to be happy too.’
And although it took a while for her two sons to accept Josh into their lives, she shares that they’ve now warmed to him, likely partially due to the fact that Josh has made it clear he’s not trying to replace Matt.
The musician shares: ‘After hearing about who Matt was prior to his accident, I had nothing but utmost respect for the man he still would be today if he could be.
‘I told Amanda that I wish he could miraculously recover so she can have her family back together and that [if] ever that was the case, I would step aside and be so happy for her and her kids.
‘Amanda is a wonderful woman and I am sharing my life with her, Matt and their two kids, I wouldn’t want any of it to change.’