Slow divorce
Is Heston’s method the only sane way to end a marriage?
A ‘slowie’ was the only sane way to uncouple from someone I had loved
The final bang of the door, followed shortly afterwards by divorce papers thudding on to the mat… that’s the general perception of how a marriage ends. Because when it’s over and you’re angry, why wait to make it legal? Last year, the average length of time from petition to divorce in the UK was 26 weeks – around the time it takes to plan a fairy-tale wedding.
But increasingly, the brutal, wham-bam “quickie” divorce is becoming less popular – and rather than dancing on a pony keg in Jackson, as the song says, couples are taking a step back from the visceral immediacy of the process, and waiting. This week, Heston Blumenthal, the chef, and his wife Zanna divorced after six years apart.
They were married for 28 years, and divorced on the grounds that the marriage had “irretrievably broken down”. Both have moved on since their split, dating other people, but it seems neither were in any rush to bring the judge’s gavel down on their union.
Six years may be a long time to wait – but two years is eminently sensible, due to the arcane and, some claim, punitive nature of British divorce law. As it stands, to divorce any time before the two year postseparation period is up, the “injured party” must cite either adultery or unreasonable behaviour.
But when a couple is in the throes of break-up, the currency is sobbing, yelling, online stalking and rage. Add to that the legal necessity of proving that the person you once loved enough to marry, and probably co-parent your children, is either unfaithful, unreasonable or both, and it’s no wonder so many marriages go down in acrimonious flames.
Gary Lineker, who recently divorced from his second wife, said: “It’s very easy to get married and very difficult to get divorced. And we know that lawyers try to manipulate it to make you spend more money, and [you] basically end up hating each other.”
By contrast, a slow divorce can give both parties some much-needed breathing space, to reassess the marriage and its ending. Without the rush to court, the finances remain intact, making it easier to buy or rent another place (the divorce process may freeze assets until it’s resolved), and, emotionally, the heat is taken off an already volatile situation. You may be certain that the marriage is over — but waiting to dissolve your union can mean a chance to re-work the relationship and re-fashion it into something new, without being forced into a legal war.
I parted from my husband three years ago, after 14 years of marriage. We had grown apart, the children had left home – neither of us had slept with somebody else, hit each other or broken the law, and though you could argue that any long- term marriage features plenty of unreasonable behaviour, the idea of one of us playingplayin the fall guy seemed both unpleasant and unnecessary. Breaking up was already horrific, in a thousand d different ways, from the morning of day one (waking to a litany of shocked texts, all variations on “Oh my God, tell me it’s not true”) to the long-term loss of people I lovedlove dearly. In the maelstrom of finding somewhere to live, sorting outo the labyrinthine finances, dividing possessions and agreeing custody of the cats, all accompanied by a soundtrack of weeping, having to conjure up legal ways to blame each other so we could get a “quickie divorce” didn’t seem emotionally or practically desirable. The majoritymajor of divorce petitions cite “unreasonable behaviour” purely because there’s no alternative, the government has so far refused to change the law to offer a “no-fault” option – “irreconcilable differences” is an American term, not a British one. After we’dwe’ broken up, before we’d had a properp discussion about divorce,divor I’d lie awake at night wond wondering if my ex was going to say terrible things about me on legal papers that would be filed somewhere forever, whether I could object, ho how we could get round it… When we finallyfi agreed to wait the requisite twotw years for the sunlit uplands of the no-fault, I felt nothing but relief. It’s now almostalm three years since we split, and we’re still slowly going through the formal divorce process, despitedespit both being with other partners and living completely separate lives. But the initial emotion has almost entirely dissipated – time heals all wounds and, as Heston and Zanna may havehav discovered, waiting means there’s a chance of forming a new kind of friendship, without the graveyard stand-off with Voldemort that the quickie divorce process often entails. Because while lawyers and commentators may present divorce as the obviousobviou next step in a split, it isn’t. If marriage is a journey, so is a break-up. But while marriage generally begins in a whirl of passion and confetti and gradually sours, break-up begins in a deep, dark wood and the path gets lighter and easier to navigate as time goes on. A close friend of mine, Alexandra, 43, split from her husband five years ago – and the immediate high-cost, high-stakes divorce nearly tipped her over the edge.
“Being left with our three devastated children was so terrible, I used to wish I wouldn’t wake up,” she says. “Going through the divorce as well, with combative lawyers telling me he was hiding money and making me rake my memory for everything he’d ever done wrong, whether he’d harmed the children, or abused me – it sent me into a depression that lasted for two years.”
Now, she’s with someone else – and the relationship with her ex is stable enough to allow pleasant chats about access arrangements. “I wish we’d waited to get divorced,” she says. “Emotions were running so high, the children overheard things they shouldn’t have and it only deepened the pain. If we had given it more time, it would be 100 per cent more amicable.”
This year, the President of the Family Division of the Court of Appeal, Sir James Munby, described the current law as “based on hypocrisy and lack of intellectual honesty”.
Without the no-fault option, couples are left playing the blame game or inventing an adulterous liaison. The need for examples of “unreasonable behaviour” also leads to a queasy balancing act: not unreasonable enough (“she refused to pass me the pepper”) may mean the court refuses the divorce, too unreasonable may mean the blamed spouse refuses to co-operate any further. Sir James said this often leads to “collusion”; the couple simply makes something up, and hopes for the best.
Yet when your life has been up-ended and the person you once swore to love and cherish till death is in danger of becoming your sworn enemy, the least helpful route is surely embarking on a legal process that requires blame, financial chicanery and enormous lawyer’s fees.
A divorce process that asks the already broken and battered spouses to fling often spurious blame at one another is a toxic brew. Isn’t it better to wait until the heat dies down, until the split is, as Wordsworth said, “emotion recollected in tranquillity”? For me, and many others, getting a slow divorce has been the only sane way to go about uncoupling from somebody I loved.
A break-up is a long journey and throwing a divorce in at the start is like blocking the route with a burning building. Far better to reach that milestone when the initial difficulties have been resolved, there’s at least a chance of friendship, the children have become used to the situation – and, most importantly, so have you.