40 years on

It is almost a year to the day since he asked for a divorce. A month later - when he told me he had made the biggest mistake of his life, that he still loved me and wanted me back - I said no and walked away. But we had been through so much together over the years, there had been so much love between us. I thought that if there was even the slightest chance we could salvage our marriage, then I should say yes when we met again the following week. The proviso being that we would go into relationship counselling and that he would find a therapist.  

And as I am discovering during our couple’s counselling sessions, it was lockdown that did for us. In retrospect he was in crisis. His life had shrunk. He could not follow many of his interests and his consultancy work had tailed off. He admitted that he did not have the emotional resources to cope with the sadness he was feeling, and he decided I was the cause. I take responsibility for what happened too. Looking back, I can see that we stopped talking properly, we stopped listening to each other, we didn’t plan things to do together. We made assumptions about each other. He is a quiet man, and I mistook his increasing silence for normal behaviour. So by the time we were out of lockdown, when I asked him how he thought our relationship was going he had decided that divorce was the only option. 

After six months apart we are now living together again. Being kind and careful and trying to understand our differences rather than becoming frustrated with them. We are rediscovering spontaneity and realising we can still, after forty years, have fun together. However, I won’t deny how badly my confidence and self-belief have been affected. But when I was telling a friend how I could never feel the same about my husband or my marriage she said incredulously ‘Why on earth would you want to?’. And she’s right. There’s no going back to the old ways now. Next year ask me how we are, and I hope I can tell you we are still together.