'Your ex-husband did you a favour'

My neighbour thinks divorcing me was the best thing The Ex ever did. And now I can admit it might have been the best thing for him, too

Most of the time, when people find out I’m divorced, they assume that I’m the one who initiated the divorce. Maybe because they are associated with me and therefore subconciously put me on the innocent side of the “blame”. In reality what happened is this: My ex wanted out, I didn’t and so we reached a stalemate until I caved and agreed to him making up a list of irreconcilable differences to satisfy legal requirements. None of them were true, but the fact is, none of us were completely innocent. The old adage that it takes two to tango is right. 

In the years after the split, I was a mess. I cover this up in interviews by saying lightly that ‘I was drunk for about two years!’ Haha. But it wasn’t funny. I was broken; cut up and destroyed and had no training to know how to deal with it. My parents were divorced, yes, but my mum had three children then. Her world revolved around us and keeping us alive and so she kept going. No one needed me so my world revolved around self-destruction. I went round and round and round, surprised and sometimes disappointed that at the end of each day; I was still alive. I can’t speak for my ex but I know he had a tough time too, despite the divorce being his choice.

When I was younger I planned to be married with children in my early 20s. I even took, and excelled at, Home Economics and Child Development in my teens (which my friend who studied Law, laughed at and said it showed I went to a posh school because what on earth do you do with those subjects apart from marry a rich man and set up home?). But I also wanted to be a model and journalist, the latter following in the footsteps of the grandfather I never knew who was a respected newspaper editor in Nigeria.  I was in my early 20s when I met my now ex husband and in the running to appear on Britain’s Next Top Model. I got dropped at the last minute but I then got my foot in the door at a magazine and decided that was God’s choice for me instead. 

My ex was fully supportive of everything I did and always challenged me to do other things, bigger things he knew I wanted. But he wasn’t happy. Unlike me, he didn’t have the freedom of knowing and pursuing the career that would fulfil the longing in his heart. I felt bad for him and I realise now that we were both sinking. Initially buoyed by my general joie de vivre and high energy matched with his love and support, our relationship began to sink when we recognised that I  couldn’t help him, and he couldn’t help himself. It is one of my biggest regrets that I didn’t do more to support him in his faith. I half-heartedly took him along to Alpha a couple of times but when it became a slight inconvenience and we got too busy, I assumed he would work it out himself. But he didn’t and I did nothing about it. We remained close after we separated (although this did make the divorce a lot harder) and often spoke about God and faith. My ex was searching for God in me, and I let him down.

I’ve spent the years since the divorce absorbed in a “poor me” mentality but deep down, I knew we were both really, really hurting. Because we were so close, I used to refer to him as “the love of my life” and a close friend raised her eyebrows at me when I called him that a year or so after the divorce: ‘Come back to me in a few years’, she said, ‘Let me know if you’re still calling him that’. Of course I wasn’t. He stopped being that the second I realised there was Life After Divorce. A beautiful life that involves love, laughter and celebration (with sensible amounts of alcohol) and the chance to forge my own path in this life. And hopefully he has found the same.  

Doll x