My cheating husband left me, so why didn’t we divorce for 12 YEARS?
She discovered his affair on their 25th anniversary. But MARION McGILVARY says like so many couples they couldn’t bear to take the final step
MY WEDDING day was May 20, 1983, and exactly 25 years later, to the day, my marriage was over. I intercepted a text message from a younger, thinner, much more intense woman when my husband was clearing away our anniversary dinner, and a few weeks later, we separated.
That was 12 years ago, so you’d think I wouldn’t have been surprised when last week a letter came informing me that I was divorced. But I was surprised — and rather crushed. Like someone I hadn’t seen for a while had died. That felt odd, too, since I’d seen my now ex-husband just the week before.
What a waste, I thought. All those ‘could haves’ and ‘might haves’, all the dreams you had about a future that never happened. While you can’t ever regret your children, we had four, there are so many other things you might wish away.
Divorce is never easy, but after all those years apart, it shouldn’t have come as a shock.
Still, ridiculously, there was a tiny part of me that always thought it wouldn’t happen.
We had waited for so long to divorce, with no prospect of ever getting back together (though there was a time that I hoped we would, followed by a much longer time of praying we wouldn’t), that it seemed we would simply never get around to it.
So why did we wait so long, you might ask?
For a start, neither of us wanted to marry again. (Or so he said. He said he didn’t want any more children either, and yet voila, he now has another daughter, of whom more in a moment.)
We had parted more in sorrow than in anger. And, on a practical note, we had a house together which was inhabited by an everchanging rota of our four kids, moving in and out between school, university and travelling. (The youngest was just 15 at the time we separated.)
That meant selling straight away wasn’t an option, as, in the housing market at the time, there wouldn’t have been anywhere else for them to go.
So we agreed, at the beginning, we wouldn’t sell the house, but would instead keep it as a family home. We also decided, since the house was our only asset, that we wouldn’t get divorced until we could sell it.
He, meanwhile, rented a little bachelor flat which, in more cynical moments, I thought suited him well, since it’s difficult to carry on a love affair with a new woman if you have clunking great, disapproving teenagers sitting around.
On my side of the post-marital fence, I couldn’t make a phone call without several pairs of ears listening to me, let alone sneak any prospective partner up the stairs.
I offered to swap homes with my husband on several occasions, but that idea went down like a lead balloon.
So, I got the house and the family, he got the freedom and the bills. Win-win, really.
We made our arrangements, weird as they might be, both financial and domestic.
He kept his stuff in the house and came back and stayed on occasion.
We remained friends, even close friends, and life went on. And on. And on.
Eventually, he moved with his girlfriend to a little cottage that I admit I envied, and then, at an age when you’d think both of them would have more sense — he 65 and she nearly 50 — along came a child.
I held her on the day she was born. She looked so much like my own babies — hardly surprising, since she has half their genes — and I was entranced.
I had always wanted a grandchild. I just hadn’t imagined it would be my husband who provided it.
Of course, I asked him then if he wanted a divorce so he could re-marry. He said no. Friends were shocked.
‘You’re still married? But he has another baby, for God’s sake.’
I just shrugged my shoulders. It didn’t bother me. It didn’t bother him. And if it bothered his partner, she didn’t say. To me, at least. We became a sort of blended family, albeit one with the tendency to curdle if not carefully tended.
When faced with the prospect of a half- sibling for my kids, one that I had been promised was never going to be on the cards, I realised I had two choices: resent it and put a wedge between me and my kids, who wouldn’t have any option but to accept the baby. Or join in, and be part of it.
I’ve never been much of a joiner, but I signed up.
We began to have the odd dinner all together, and to meet on birthdays and big family occasions.
It wasn’t too hard, and was possibly harder on his new partner, who got more than she bargained for. She thought she was getting a lover, but she got stuck with his kids and wife, too.
There’s some sort of revenge there, but it was unintended. More of a delicious side effect.
Meanwhile, I eventually got the kids out of the house long enough to meet a new man — Valentine’s Day 2012, thanks to online dating. Two years later, he moved in with me. Incidentally, he too was still married. He and his wife had been separated for 15 years but never divorced for the same reasons as us — shared property that was the family home and no wish to re-marry. They were still married when she tragically died two years ago, and he was with her at the end.
The truth is, I think the long goodbye is
4-6 months is the average time it takes to get a divorce in the UK
more common than people realise. If you don’t part on awful terms, for many people there is no rush to get the divorce papers signed.
But I’ll fess up here, and say that, aside from all those mature, sensible justifications, part of me never wanted to divorce for a different reason.
I had spent 25 years of my life with this man, most of them good. We were besotted parents together. We knew each other’s families. We loved each other’s mothers.
We shared so many memories and had an irreplaceable bond. We were no longer together, but in many ways were still wed to each other. We were affectionate, loving, even.
I know him inside out, and he knows me. He is like a beloved brother, the best friend of my youth, the keeper of my secrets.
A divorce would mean there was no longer any formal relationship between us. That would be it, just two separate people with no official bond.
It’s silly, I know. But I liked being related. However, this year, with the kids gone, the house could be sold — and he filed for divorce the day I accepted the offer.
I was slightly offended at the sudden speed.
I decided to move to Oxford and make a new start.
But before I did, my ex-husband and I rode the Tube together to go to the lawyer in the City so we could sign the final documents for the sale of the house. ‘Oh, I’ve got something to tell you,’ he said.
‘What now?’ I blurted, thinking marriage, another baby in his dotage, a health scare.
‘Erm, we’re moving to Oxford too, for the schools.’
What bit of divorce did he not get? I joked.
Today, he lives ten minutes away. His daughter, now six, comes over for craft days. We have family dinners together. And then, the other day, the divorce papers arrived. An hour later, the phone goes — the now ex-husband.
I ask if he’s seen the post this morning. He hasn’t.
He goes to look and phones me back.
‘ I didn’t realise it was all happening so soon? The lawyer didn’t tell me. But you know we will always be together,’ he says. ‘And on that note, I need to ask you something . . . ’
He can’t drive, and wants me to take him up to London so we can see the kids together before he goes on a trip to the U.S.
So this is my first act as a divorced woman. Driving my exhusband with his six-year- old daughter in the back seat, to sunny Willesden, North-West London, singing Beatles songs, to have lunch with our daughter-inlaw and two of our kids.
At one point he gets out his phone and starts examining it.
‘Oi mate,’ I say. ‘We’re divorced now. I’m not wifey any more. The days of me driving you places while you sit there and read, ignoring me, are long gone.
‘Put the damn phone away and talk to me.’
‘Just one minute,’ he says, eyes down, thumb flicking up.
Divorce or not, some things never change.
‘Put the f****** phone down,’ I yell.
‘Marion,’ says his daughter. ‘You said a bad word.’
Indeed I did.