why i don't regret leaving my unhappy marriage two years later
and chances are neither will you
I remember it clearly: The first time I told my husband I wanted a divorce. Less so the other 267,435 times.
It was a glorious morning in London, late spring. I was standing in the kitchen of our house, the house I now live in alone with our sons. A damp cloth was clenched in my right hand and the kitchen table was covered with wilting elderflower blossoms I’d foraged that morning from the park and planned to boil down into cordial for hostess gifts. (This was back in the days when I was still went to dinner parties.) It must have been a weekday because the boys weren’t around. My husband and I were engaged in some non-sensical argument, the exhausting back-end of a white-knuckle arc that by then was as familiar to me as the scent of my own baby’s scalps. I opened my mouth and heard myself say the words out loud.
‘I don’t want to be in this marriage anymore.’
My voice was quiet and firm. He blinked once, then twice. His face was a void.
‘I’m going to leave you,’ I said unnecessarily, as if clarifying matter for myself. My heart began to pound then because I knew it was true. I would leave him. I was going to get out. The question now wasn’t ‘if’ or ‘when’ but ‘how.’