The collapse of a dream marriage
My mood didn’t improve with his next pronouncement: “I just met Paris Hilton!” I had a baby screaming and two others begging for my attention.
Karin Horen lived a glamorous life with her movie star husband Manu Bennett, attending premieres and parties. But, as the Israeli-born mother-of-three reveals in her new book, behind the smiling photos there was trouble in paradise. In this extract Horen, 45, details the birth of her third child, the end of her marriage to the former Shortland Street and Spartacus star and finding out her breast cancer was back.
Ihad contractions all day, most of which was spent on a Swiss ball. I felt laidback about this birth. I knew now about relaxation and visualisation.
“I am going to nail this,” I thought. A friend visited me with her husband, telling me I needed to go to hospital.
“Don’t worry,” I reassured them. “I know what I’m doing. It’s all good.”
By early Saturday morning, the contractions were getting stronger. I nudged Manu in bed. “It’s time”.
Something about being at home made him take control, and in that moment, he was the perfect partner. He called the midwife, turned on the bath, and cleared everything out of the bathroom, laying towels across the floor. He lit candles and put on music. I was so proud of him, I absolutely loved it.
My waters still hadn’t broken when two midwives arrived. One instructed me to lie on the bed, on a pile of towels and plastic sheets, while she did something to me that made my waters burst like a balloon.
“Okay,” she told me. “Now you’re going to have intense contractions.”
I walked from the bedroom to the hallway, stopping every few steps to brace myself for the pain that was coming in waves. When I reached the bathroom, I held the sink.
“It’s coming!” I yelled, grabbing Manu and biting him. “Push, Karin!” he yelled back. Within 30 minutes, Pania was out, delivered by her dad.
I got into the bath with my new baby, her umbilical cord still attached. Huia and Mokoia saw their new sister for the first time at about two or three in the morning — my favourite memory of Pania’s birth.
Manu took photographs of us and cut her cord, while the midwives cleaned up. After a while, I got dressed and put Pania in a Moses basket. We Skyped my sister in Israel and our friend Steve in Sydney, introducing our family’s latest addition.
Eight hours later, Manu was on a plane.
“You’re still going away?” I’d asked him, correctly guessing what his reply would be. He’d packed his suitcase earlier that day, leaving clothes strewn everywhere. He left me with a mess, alone again.
“Welcome to reality,” I said to myself.
Later that week, I was driving to kindergarten with two little kids and a screaming baby, when Manu rang me on my cellphone.
“Can I stay another week?” he asked. “I think I’ve got some work lined up.”
I wasn’t impressed. My mood didn’t improve with his next pronouncement: “I just met Paris Hilton!” I had a baby screaming and two others begging for my attention. Before I could respond, my phone beeped. He’d sent me a video of them both at the Emmy awards.
I was on my own with three children for two weeks, and that video was all I got as consolation. Whenever anyone asked how I was getting on, I told them I was fine. I always wanted to be the hero. I also wanted Manu to achieve his dreams and be the man he wanted to be before he met me: a successful actor.
I believe you should be able to be yourself in a relationship, but if you’ve made a decision to become a parent, you also have to find a balance. You don’t have a choice but to sacrifice some of your own desires, not least because you’ll miss out on precious time with people who mean the most to you.
We both struggled to communicate effectively, and I take responsibility for not saying a lot of things I probably should have. I carried around unspoken concerns until they became an intolerable weight. At that point, they weren’t so much discussed as yelled in the heat of an argument.
Nothing felt stable or secure. But I was in a foreign country, bringing up three kids to the man I loved. That wasn’t something I could just walk away from. I was vulnerable; he was the breadwinner.
The person I once was felt like she was getting smaller and smaller. Whenever anything went wrong in our relationship, I blamed myself. That insecurity kept me from seeing things clearly at the time, spiralling into co-dependency.
There were plenty of indications that Manu was being unfaithful, though I was rarely able to put my finger on exactly what was happening.
I’d see the texts from women, some of which were just photographs of breasts. How was that meant to make me, someone who’d experienced breast cancer, feel? I even got emails, texts and private Facebook messages from women claiming to know him, threatening me, telling me to stay away from him, questioning who I thought I was.
Any trust I’d had in him was totally gone, and my self-esteem was waning, too.
Manu wanted incompatible things: a family, and freedom. I wanted to be his number one, not just the mother of his children. We rarely spent time together as a couple; when we went on trips, he always wanted to bring the girls, too. Occasionally, we’d travel with him to Comic-Cons, enormous conventions attended by tens of thousands of fans all dressed in costume, living their fantasies, meeting their heroes.
I didn’t think it was much fun, sitting for hours while he graciously met with fans, chatting, signing autographs, posing with them for photos. The whole time, he was focused on the job and made sure we were taken care of. I felt sorry for him; those events, though well-paid, were chaotic, dirty and exhausting. All of this work paid the bills but took time and consistency away from our relationship.
I felt neglected, but I feared being alone even more. I was a mother — who was going to want me? Even after our worst arguments, I could find forgiveness in my heart for Manu, and new resolve that we could make our relationship work. We tried coaching sessions and couples therapy. We tried. But I probably tried harder.
Manu’s time on Spartacus was drawing to a close and he was on the hunt for his next big role, travelling frequently to auditions and events overseas. I stayed home with the kids. I had become increasingly involved with the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation and had organised a Pink Ribbon fundraising breakfast at Auckland Museum. Outwardly, the event was a great success. Inside, I had rarely been lower. I’d asked Manu to look after the girls while I ran errands and did some last-minute organising before the big day. He put the kids in the car while he took 40 minutes to get ready. By that time, all the girls were screaming. And we were screaming at each other. I felt like my life had become a constant struggle. It shouldn’t be this way.
“My hands are tied,” I realised. “I don’t get the respect I deserve for doing something I’m passionate about. Why do I need to fight for this?”
Manu attended the event; he was supportive, buying things at the auction. He was proud of me. I was so angry. No one would have ever known.
Things went downhill from there. I packed up the Northcote house and moved out with the kids to an apartment in Takapuna. It was summer; we hit the beach every day, walking down with the youngest kids in a double buggy stacked with towels. I was happy. Manu and I stayed in touch. Then, as seemed to be the trend, he landed another major role. In Canada.
Manu was to play the supervillain Deathstroke in the live-action screen adaptation of DC Comics’ Arrow .He would be overseas for the foreseeable future. He wasn’t sure when he was coming back.
I was used to this kind of development by then. We spent Christmas together as a family; he made sure we’d be taken care of financially. It was no big deal. I thought I would go back to being a shining example of single motherhood, building a new and beautiful life for myself and my kids.
A phone call would bring it all crashing down. It was 4.30pm and I was in the kitchen, making dinner for the kids, when the phone rang. It was Veronica, my GP.
“Hi Karin. Look, can you come in to the clinic now? I want to check out your biopsy area.” In that moment, a wave of cold dread washed over me.
“You don’t want to check the biopsy area,” I said. “You’ve got something to tell me.”
“Well . ..”
“Just give it to me straight. I’ve got three kids here, we’re about to have dinner, I can’t come into the clinic — there’s no one to look after them. Just tell me over the phone.”
“Karin,” Veronica said. “You’ve got breast cancer.” It was the most shocking moment of my life. After being in such an unstable relationship, I finally felt like I was on solid ground. My kids were happy; I was happy. We’d started afresh. Now, the rug had been yanked out from underneath me. I literally lost my balance. It was 2013, fourteen years after my first bout of breast cancer. This couldn’t be happening again.
I rang two friends, Jo and Victoria, one after the other. There was no way I could deal with this alone.
“I’ve just found out the cancer’s back,” I said over the phone, hardly believing my own words. “Can you please come to the house right now?”
I wasn’t crying, but I couldn’t focus on anything: my brain was going 100 miles an hour. I’d been through this before; I knew exactly what I was facing. “What am I going to do? I’ve just moved house! I don’t have room for a nanny . . . ”
The practicalities of being a mother undergoing cancer treatment threatened to overwhelm me.
For years, my doctors in whatever country I happened to be living in had been monitoring three lumps in my left breast — the breast that hadn’t had cancer the first time. “Benign nodules” they’d called them on more than one occasion.
Every time there was something suspicious, they would call me in. Back in Sydney, I had private insurance, so most of my specialist appointments were covered. When they weren’t, I didn’t let the cost put me off going to the best clinics. In those days, I had money; I was independent and I put my health first. I put myself first. I didn’t have a family to look after.
I’d had my annual mammogram at North Shore Hospital breast clinic that November, and felt a twinge of pain, and the same pulling sensation I’d felt on that beach in Tel Aviv when I was 26. I told the radiographer something wasn’t right.
“Don’t worry darling,” one of the nurses told me. “If it hurts, it’s not cancer.”
“Oh really?” I said, sceptical. “Because the first time I had cancer, it hurt.”
I hate it when nurses say such things. Writing this right now, it takes me back to other scenarios where I had to face nurses telling me it was all okay, or that I should not worry, or that I didn’t need a second opinion. How can professionals be so sure? I know they want to make you feel better and less stressed, but come on! They’re not fortune-tellers.
After that, a hospital staff member rang me to say they wanted to make sure one of the nodules was indeed benign. “Come back and have a biopsy.”
I went along to that appointment with my friend Carmit, thinking it was probably nothing, that I was overthinking things. What were the odds I’d have cancer again? I thought I knew everything there was to know about the disease; over the years, I’d read countless articles online and attended seminar after seminar put on by breast cancer organisations in Israel and Sydney.
I was happy, I was healthy; I was fit, and had the abs to prove it. But when the doctor pierced me with the biopsy needle, and struggled to take a sample from that hard little lump, I knew there was something seriously wrong.
The looks on the nurse and specialists’ faces were enough to signal to me what was going on. I didn’t need many words — their body language was enough.
My kids were happy; I was happy. We’d started afresh. Now, the rug had been yanked out from underneath me. I literally lost my balance.