Love, Lunaé

GUEST ESSAY | ANONYMOUS CONTRIBUTOR

Adapted from the personal writings of an anonymous contributor, with her permission.

There comes a time in life when everything you thought you knew about yourself, your relationships, and the future you imagined comes crashing down around you. Sometimes there are warning signs. Sometimes you can feel the foundations shifting beneath your feet long before anything actually falls apart. And sometimes, despite all the years you’ve spent building a life with someone, it takes only a few words to bring the whole fucking thing down. I call these tower moments, those devastating experiences that leave you standing among the ruins of a life you thought was secure, wondering how on earth you’re supposed to begin again.

Mine began when my husband told me he’d been having an affair for the past six months.

There was no dramatic argument leading up to his confession, no screaming match or slammed doors. We were simply sitting together on the couch when he told me. Looking back, I can recognise the signs that something hadn’t been right in the months beforehand. He’d seemed distant and distracted, and I’d questioned him about it more than once. I remember sitting beside him on that same couch, asking whether he was certain it was only work making him so withdrawn. Something felt different between us, though I couldn’t quite explain what it was. He assured me he was simply overwhelmed with work, and because we weren’t constantly arguing and were still physically intimate, I accepted his explanation. After twenty years together, I trusted him. Or perhaps I trusted the life we’d built enough that I couldn’t imagine anything capable of destroying it.

When he finally told me the truth, I didn’t react the way I might have expected. I didn’t scream, burst into tears, or demand to know who she was. Instead, I sat there in a strange state of numbness, as though my brain had temporarily disconnected from the rest of my body. I remember looking at him and saying, quite calmly, that I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to say. And I genuinely wasn’t. How does someone respond when the person they’ve shared almost their entire adult life with announces that he’s been sharing himself with someone else? We sat in silence for what felt like an eternity, although it was probably only ten minutes. I was trying to understand what he’d said, what it meant for our marriage, and what on earth was supposed to happen next. I don’t think I had even begun to comprehend the enormity of it.

Eventually, I asked him what he wanted to do. His answer was that he wished he could have both of us. And just like that, the numbness disappeared. Something hot and unfamiliar rose through my chest, tightening around my throat until I could barely speak. It wasn’t ordinary anger. It was a feeling of absolute loathing, so intense that it frightened me. Here was the man I’d spent twenty years loving, the father of my children, sitting in front of me suggesting that perhaps he could simply continue having two women because choosing between us was apparently too difficult. The sheer fucking audacity of it was almost beyond comprehension. I looked at him and told him, in no uncertain terms, that it wasn’t going to happen. Then I got up from the couch and walked away because I couldn’t bear to sit there looking at him for another second.

Our two young children were asleep, completely unaware that the world they knew was beginning to unravel. Thinking about them brought the first real wave of sadness. I’d grown up in a broken home myself, and one of the things I’d wanted most for my children was the security of parents who stayed together. I’d imagined us growing old, watching our children become adults, perhaps one day sitting together as grandparents and remembering all the years we’d shared. It was an ordinary dream, I suppose, but it had been mine. And yet, even then, some ridiculous part of me believed that he would come to his senses. Surely he’d realise what he was throwing away. Surely he’d choose his wife, his children, and the life we’d spent two decades building. I hadn’t stopped to ask myself whether I would even want him back after what he’d done. I simply assumed that if he chose me, everything could somehow be made right again.

Later that evening, I found myself hoping he would come to comfort me. I wanted him to sit beside me, wrap his arms around me, and tell me that somehow we would work through this. It seems absurd now, expecting comfort from the very person who’d caused the pain, but at that moment he was still the person I’d turned to for most of my adult life. Then I heard the kitchen door open, followed by the familiar rumble of the garage door lifting. I heard his car engine start, and I listened as he drove away. I knew where he was going. He was leaving our home to spend the night with the other woman. When the garage door finally closed, I remember thinking that he’d just closed the door on our marriage as well.

That was when the grief arrived, and it was unlike anything I’d experienced before. People talk about heartbreak as though it’s simply an emotion, but I can tell you it is a very physical thing. There was an ache in my chest, a sickening sensation just beneath my ribs, and a heaviness that seemed to settle through my entire body. I lay awake in the darkness, unable to eat, unable to sleep, and unable to understand how the man who’d promised to share his life with me could leave me lying there while he went to another woman’s bed. It felt as though someone had died. In a way, something had. I was mourning the death of my marriage, but I was also grieving everything that marriage had represented. The future I’d imagined, the memories we would never make, and the certainty I’d carried for years that whatever happened in life, we would face it together. The particularly cruel thing about grieving the end of a marriage is that the person you’re mourning is still alive. They’re still walking around, making decisions, and getting on with their life, while you’re left trying to understand how yours has fallen apart.

When he returned the following day, I could barely look at him. The numbness had disappeared entirely, replaced by a mixture of anger, grief, and guilt that I couldn’t begin to manage. Strangely enough, it wasn’t looking at him that frightened me most. It was looking at my children. Only days earlier, my daughter had been talking about a friend whose parents were getting divorced, and she’d confidently told me that she never needed to worry because her mummy and daddy would never separate. Her little voice kept replaying in my head. She’d said it with such certainty, and I hadn’t known then that the very thing she believed could never happen was already unfolding around us. I couldn’t bear the thought of looking into her innocent face while knowing that everything she’d believed about our family was about to change.

So I did something that, even years later, remains difficult to remember without becoming emotional. I packed a bag and ran the fuck away. I left my husband to care for the children and went to stay with my mother for three days. I didn’t go because I wanted attention or because I expected someone to fix things for me. Quite the opposite. I wanted everyone to leave me alone. I barely ate, hardly spoke, and spent most of those days trapped inside my own thoughts. I couldn’t function properly as a mother, an employee, or even as an adult. I simply needed somewhere I could fall apart without my children having to witness it. Looking back, I still feel the sadness of those days, but I don’t regret leaving. At that moment, it was the only way I knew how to cope.

Eventually, of course, I had to return home. Life doesn’t politely stop and wait for you to recover from having your heart broken. There were children who needed breakfast, school uniforms to organise, and a job I was expected to turn up for. So I did what women so often do when their personal lives are collapsing around them. I got up, got dressed, went to work, and pretended that everything was perfectly normal. I suspect some of the women in my office sensed that something was wrong, but nobody pressed me, and I was grateful for that. I’ve always been a private person when it comes to my emotions, and the thought of explaining what was happening made me feel physically ill. At work, I could pretend to be the woman I’d always been. At home, there was no escaping the reality that our marriage was falling apart.

We tried to maintain some appearance of normality in front of the children, but the tension inside the house was unbearable. My husband was sleeping separately, and on some nights, I’d hear the garage door opening again as he left to spend time with her. Every departure felt like another deliberate reminder that he was choosing to continue the affair while I was struggling to hold myself together. Around the sixth night, something inside me finally erupted. I went into our bedroom, pulled open his drawers, and began removing everything that belonged to him. Clothes, belongings, anything that reminded me he was still occupying a place in our shared life while behaving as though he no longer wanted to be part of it. I dumped everything onto the spare bed in a furious attempt to reclaim some small piece of control over a situation in which I felt completely powerless.

The following morning, he had the audacity to confront me about what I’d done. I remember the anger rising so quickly that I barely recognised myself. I screamed at him to make a fucking choice. I wanted him to stop hiding behind indecision and tell me whether he intended to remain in our marriage or leave it. At one point, I grabbed a painting from the wall and threatened to hit him with it. I didn’t, but I remember seeing him flinch, and that memory still makes me uncomfortable. Instead, I turned my anger on the painting, smashing it repeatedly against the floor until it lay in pieces. I don’t tell that story because I’m proud of my behaviour, nor because I believe anger excuses threatening someone. I tell it because that was how completely overwhelmed I’d become. I’d reached a point where I no longer recognised my own reactions, and when the rage finally exhausted itself, all I could do was look at him and quietly repeat the same words: make a fucking choice.

He said nothing. He simply walked away.

What followed was perhaps the most humiliating part of the entire experience, at least when I look back on it now. My anger eventually gave way to pleading. I wrote him letters reminding him of our twenty years together, of our children, of the memories we’d made and everything I believed our marriage had meant. I wanted him to remember the woman he’d fallen in love with. I wanted him to look at our life and realise that it was worth saving. But beneath all those words was something far more painful. I was begging him to see my worth. I was asking another person to decide whether I was good enough to be chosen, and even now, remembering how desperately I wanted his approval makes my stomach turn. I don’t think there’s anything shameful about wanting to save a marriage, but I hated how small and powerless I felt while trying to convince him that I mattered.

For nearly two weeks, we existed in that miserable limbo. We passed each other in the house, speaking only when necessary, while I continued going to work and maintaining the appearance of an ordinary life. At night, I’d listen to angry music because anger was sometimes easier to tolerate than sadness. I’d find somewhere away from the children, put my headphones in, and let the music give voice to everything I couldn’t seem to express. Meanwhile, he continued moving between our home and the other woman’s life, apparently waiting for something to happen that would relieve him of having to make a decision. Eventually, I realised that was precisely what he was doing. He wasn’t going to choose. He was waiting for me to reach the point where I’d make the decision for him.

And so I did.

I remember looking at him and telling him that I wanted him to get out. There was no screaming this time, no tears, no desperate attempt to remind him of what we once had. I said it so calmly that I frightened myself. The anger that had consumed me for days seemed to have disappeared, replaced by something cold and final. I couldn’t continue living in a house where I was expected to pretend we were still a family while my husband carried on a relationship with someone else. I couldn’t keep waiting for him to decide whether I was worth coming home to. Whatever happened next, I knew that this arrangement was over. Before walking away, I told him one more thing. He would be the one to explain to our children why he was leaving.

Sitting through that conversation was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. We tried to explain that mummy and daddy would no longer be living together, but that we both loved them and that none of it was their fault. We said the things parents say when they’re desperately trying to soften a blow they know they cannot prevent. I sat there trying to maintain my composure, watching their little faces as the world they’d always known began changing in ways they couldn’t possibly understand. I wanted to protect them from every ounce of pain, but there are some things a mother simply cannot protect her children from, no matter how desperately she wants to.

Then came the practical realities of separating two lives that had been joined for twenty years. We had to discuss where the children would live, how we would divide their time, and what would happen to the home we’d shared. When my husband initially suggested that I have the children for most of the fortnight while he saw them only on alternate weekends, I was furious. Whatever had happened between us, he was still their father, and I believed he had an equal responsibility to raise them. I wasn’t interested in using our children to punish him, nor did I want them growing up believing their father had somehow become less important because our marriage had ended. Eventually, we agreed to share their care more equally, an arrangement that would change and settle over the years as we found a routine that worked for them.

Knowing that shared parenting was the right decision didn’t make it any easier when the children first left to stay with their father. I remember standing in the house after they’d gone and feeling a silence unlike anything I’d known before. For years, my life had revolved around being a wife and mother. There had always been someone needing something, a meal to prepare, a school bag to pack, or a hundred little tasks demanding my attention. Suddenly, there was nothing. I cried so hard that I ended up on the kitchen floor, completely overcome by the emptiness of the house. Eventually, exhausted from crying, I made my way to bed and fell asleep. And it wasn’t simply that first week. For a long time, every time the children left, I had to confront that same terrible sense of loss.

There were other wounds I hadn’t anticipated. The woman my husband had been seeing was younger than me, and although I hated admitting it, that knowledge did terrible things to my confidence. I began imagining all the qualities she must possess that I apparently lacked. In my mind, she was younger, prettier, more exciting, and free from the endless responsibilities that had consumed so much of my life. I was a working mother trying to keep a household running, while I imagined her having all the time in the world to be carefree and desirable. I felt old, tired, and used up. It didn’t matter that those comparisons were largely inventions of my own imagination. At the time, they felt painfully real, and they fed the belief that somehow I hadn’t been enough.

As the months passed, the practical business of ending our marriage continued. We put our family home on the market, and much of the responsibility for preparing it fell to me. I found myself sorting through twenty years of belongings and memories, trying to decide what to keep and what to let go. There was something particularly miserable about dismantling a shared life one cupboard at a time. Every object seemed to belong to a version of our future that no longer existed. I worked, cared for the children during my weeks with them, cleaned the house for inspections, and tried to keep everything functioning while we waited for a buyer. It took nearly a year for the house to sell, and during that time I began looking back at our marriage with an honesty I hadn’t previously allowed myself.

I started noticing patterns I’d spent years overlooking. The times I’d asked for help and been made to feel as though I was asking too much. The responsibilities I’d accepted because it seemed easier to do things myself than argue about them. The way I’d gradually become accustomed to putting my own needs somewhere near the bottom of the list. I don’t believe every unhappy moment in a marriage becomes obvious while you’re living it. Sometimes you adapt so thoroughly to the life you’ve built that you stop questioning whether it’s actually the life you want. It was only after my marriage ended that I began to understand how much of myself I’d quietly set aside along the way.

During the weeks when the children were away, I also found myself confronting a question I hadn’t expected to be so difficult. Who was I when I wasn’t being someone’s wife or actively caring for my children? I’d spent most of my adult life as part of an us. I’d been a partner since I was young, then a wife and a mother, and almost every decision I’d made had been shaped by those relationships. Suddenly, I had hours that belonged entirely to me, and I hadn’t the faintest fucking idea what to do with them. At first, the freedom felt less like freedom and more like an enormous empty space.

So I started walking. I took the dog out in the early mornings, partly because I needed something to do and partly because being outside helped quiet the thoughts constantly circling through my head. Eventually, walking became running, and running became something I genuinely looked forward to. A friend encouraged me to join a gym, and although I was nervous about going, I went anyway. At first, exercise was simply a way to cope, something physical I could concentrate on when everything else felt impossible to manage. But gradually, it became something more. I was discovering that I could set myself a challenge, work towards it, and feel proud of what I’d accomplished without needing anyone else’s approval.

The changes didn’t happen overnight, and they certainly didn’t erase the grief. There were still difficult days, moments of loneliness, and memories that caught me off guard. But somewhere among the early mornings, the exhausting workouts, and the unfamiliar experience of making decisions entirely for myself, I began to feel something I hadn’t felt in a very long time. I was becoming interested in my own life again. Not simply in keeping it functioning for everyone else, but in discovering what I enjoyed, what I believed, and what kind of woman I wanted to be.

When the house finally sold, I found somewhere to rent and began the exhausting business of moving twenty years’ worth of belongings into a much smaller home. I hired a truck and enlisted my nephew to help. We hauled furniture, shifted boxes, and wrestled with things that seemed determined never to fit through another doorway. By the end of the day, I was completely exhausted, but there was something wonderfully satisfying about driving that truck and taking charge of the move myself. It was hard work, and I was doing it because I had to, but for once the responsibility didn’t feel like another burden someone had left for me to carry. It felt like something I was choosing.

That evening, I stood in the kitchen of my new home, surrounded by boxes and the general chaos of unpacking an entire life. There was still so much to do, and I knew that financially things weren’t going to be easy. I was now a single mother working full-time, living in a house that would stretch my budget, and facing a future that looked nothing like the one I’d imagined. Yet standing there, looking around at the mess, I felt an extraordinary wave of relief. For the first time in what felt like forever, I was excited. I could make decisions without worrying about whether someone else would approve. I could arrange my home however I wanted, spend my evenings however I pleased, and discover what life might look like when I stopped organising it around another person’s expectations.

I was going to be alone.

And for the first time, that thought didn’t frighten me.

It made me smile.

The end of my marriage had been devastating, and I wouldn’t pretend otherwise. I’d experienced anger that frightened me, grief that left me physically exhausted, and humiliation that took a long time to understand. I’d watched the future I imagined disappear, and I’d struggled with the knowledge that my children would grow up in a family different from the one I’d wanted to give them. None of those things became less real simply because I eventually found happiness again.

But standing in that kitchen, surrounded by the remnants of one life and the beginnings of another, I began to understand that being alone and being lonely weren’t necessarily the same thing. I hadn’t chosen the circumstances that brought me there, but I could choose what happened next. For the first time in twenty years, I had the opportunity to discover who I was outside the roles I’d spent so long fulfilling.

I didn’t have all the answers. In fact, I was only beginning to understand how many questions I’d never thought to ask.

But I was ready to find out.

And that, as it turned out, was the beginning of a whole other fucking adventure.