‘Our love ran out’

The fullness of heartbreak empties over the years to something that feels a little like peace.

Last week’s essay on weddings inevitably got me thinking about my marriage. This is something I’ve written about in my book, mentioned in articles and discussed in interviews and podcasts. (If you put my name into the search bar on your podcast platform, you’ll find all the pods I’ve featured on.) And it’s a funny old thing, marriage, because when it’s real, letting go of it can feel like being bereaved even when both of you are still very much alive.

The longest I’ve ever been in therapy is about eight weeks and it was during the separation and months after my then husband (who I call “Fish” in my book), had told me he wanted a divorce. Dear reader, I was spiralling. And not in a s_xy, ‘I’m a hot mess but look how cute I am’ way. I was not a Hollywood mess; I was a real one. I watched Fish struggle to work out his feelings while feeling guilty about mine. He was the one who suggested I see a therapist and emailed me several options which I ignored during my drunken blackouts, until finally he said, ‘look, this one is black, maybe you can relate better.’ Lol. I said ‘sure, whatever’ and he booked her and paid for it all.

That was one of many kind things Fish did for me. He reached out through the sea of pain we were both drowning in and saw something he could do for the woman he still loved. Our baby had just died and with her, the promise of the exciting future we had planned. He was confused; I was angry; he was hurt; I was sad; he was depressed; I was desperate.

During that time it felt as though I was being punched into oblivion. Our baby had died, my body had betrayed me and yet the milk kept flowing and the bleeding wouldn’t stop.

My husband wanted a divorce, my husband told his lawyer he hadn’t wanted a baby (a lie he admitted he only used to push the paperwork through), my husband slept with someone else, my husband didn’t want me anymore.

I was losing my in-laws who I loved as if they were my own dear family and I was losing my home.

Blow after blow after blow.

Babymoon.

I read in the Bible recently that ‘to divorce your wife is to overwhelm her with cruelty.’ And it’s wild how accurate that is. Everything I had tried to do to keep Fish and me together had failed. I told him we didn’t have to try again for another baby (we had agreed to but I wanted to work on us as a couple first), I told him he could go away and find himself for as long as he needed while I kept working and paying the mortgage, I recorded myself doing a s_xy dance (thank you, YouTube) and sent it to him by email (not advised by the way, that still exists out there somewhere). I don’t remember if he replied. In this last attempt I was trying to reconnect through the most basic of human urges… but we were already far too gone for that.

I didn’t cry when I found out Fish had been sleeping with someone else (while still sleeping with me. We were separated but not yet divorced). But I did kind of lose my mind. I broke all the glass in the house leaving deep cuts in my hands and arms. I couldn’t hear myself but I knew I was screaming because Fish was looking at me in a panic and physically trying to restrain me. Apparently pain makes you stronger because his 6’1 gym body couldn’t stop me from trying to dig the glass deeper under my skin. And then as suddenly as I started, I stopped. I slipped down to the floor with my back against the wall and cried and cried and cried as Fish tried to hold me in his arms. He cried too.

Our growing little girl, Annie. I loved how real she looked in all my scan pictures.

Fish was always very generous with me when it came to giving, but the first and most memorable thing he ever bought me was hand cream. I knew he cared about me then because it showed me that he paid attention. All the expensive gifts that came afterwards; lingerie, shoes, bags, dresses - none of those came close to giving me the delight of knowing someone genuinely thought about me and what I needed.

I ran back memories of every time we had said ‘I love you’ and every time our eyes met across a crowded room

He made me feel very safe and, besides being physically stronger - except for during the aforementioned incident - he always prioritised me. When we got into a car accident, the first thing he did was turn to me to make sure I was okay (this was something a previous boyfriend had not done), when I was pregnant and we went to the Dominican Republic, he booked VIP treatment at the airport (which I didn’t appreciate at the time because pregnant or not, his wife wanted to shop lol, but I appreciate the sentiment now), and he ferried me back and forth between work, his house and my mum’s when I was still living at home and not allowed to sleep over.

Both our parents were divorced. We promised we would never do that to each other. How could we? We loved each other too much.

And then one otherwise uneventful November day, it was all over. Rather inconveniently, my lawyer emailed me while I was in a board meeting at work so I couldn’t cry when I first found out.

Afterwards, I ran back memories of every time we had said ‘I love you’ and every time our eyes had met across a crowded room; a silent, ‘Hello you’. I remembered how we wept in hospital when Annie’s tiny little body was put in our arms. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry’ I kept saying to him then, over and over again.

‘I’m sorry’ is what Fish has said many times to me over the years since, in text messages and emails.

I believe him.

I’m sorry too.

Tola x

I’m  the editor and creative director at Premier Woman Alive and co-host of the YouTube show Sisterhood. In 2019, I delivered a TEDx Talk on Debunking the Myth of Success and my first book, 'Still Standing:100 Lessons From An 'Unsuccessful' Life' (SPCK) is out now.

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