1. It Was Never Meant to Happen
My marriage and life imploded early one Saturday morning suddenly, traumatically, and tragically. It truly could have been anyone’s typical weekend morning. My husband took my 5-year-old son to his early soccer game, my 11-year-old son was asleep and I was in bed recovering from appendix surgery. Suddenly my husband burst through the door after the game arguing with my youngest son about his wanting to watch TV. And then came the explosion.
2. ‘The Fight’ Only Lasted 10 Mins
Sensing my husband was ‘hangry’ (tired and hungry), I jumped out of bed to diffuse the situation and started making scrambled eggs as I knew he hadn’t eaten breakfast or had a coffee. In hindsight, my husband who was working for a stressful start-up wasn’t mentally well. He was overworked, had undiagnosed ADHD, wasn’t sleeping properly, and was out of his mind. Still, I couldn’t have predicted what would happen in that kitchen.
3. It Was Like Being Hit Over the Head with a Hammer
As I frantically made the breakfast my husband followed me into the kitchen, determined to pick a fight, and launched into a five-minute verbal attack. It felt like being hit over a hammer as he criticized my parenting, told me I was a loser who couldn’t hold down a job, and called me every name under the sun. Everyone talks about domestic violence but no one ever talks about the damage inflicted by emotional abuse, which is every bit as harmful and I would argue even more so.
4. I Snapped
At the time, I was between jobs after being laid off due to budget cuts from a major fashion magazine where I held a very senior position and was respected. During my career, I always worked while taking on the lion’s share of the kids so they weren’t raised by nannies. I also managed every detail of our day-to-day life while my husband was physically and emotionally absent. So this unfair, unprovoked, and personal attack was like a pot boiling over, fueled by 20 years of over-giving and resentment I lost it. I threw the eggs on the floor smashing the plate and screamed like a wild animal, “Stoooooop!” And I learned later— because I don’t even recall doing it—I reached for the TV remote control and hurled it at him.
5. He Put The Blame On Me
As was always his way, my husband who I learned was a master gaslighter, used my explosion to paint me as the bad guy. The kids hadn’t heard the abuse he subjected me to in the kitchen, all they heard was their mum screaming, and the plate smashing and saw their father coming running into their room, trying to “protect” them. “Look mum’s lost it,” he said, as he so often did.
6. The Kids Were Terrorized
My husband barricaded the children in the bedroom to “protect” them from me as I cried and screamed “Enough!” Unbeknown to me, they were terrified, cowering under the bed, and given the loud, scary fight and the fact we lived in a small apartment in a large apartment building someone must have called the police.
7. The Ambulance Arrived First
When EMS arrived, I was taken down into an ambulance. I was still recovering from major stomach surgery and given my distressed state, they wanted to check I was physically OK. They asked what happened and I stayed silent as they warned, “When the police arrive this is going to go to a whole other level”.
8. Taken Out in Handcuffs
I was taken to the hospital to be observed and it was there two officers arrived and told me (yes me), that I was under arrest. My husband had given a version of events painting me as the perpetrator and the police saw the mark on his neck from the TV remote. When I was handcuffed to a hospital bed insisting it wasn’t my fault and sharing my story, my husband was also arrested at the apartment and taken through the lobby of our building in handcuffs.
9. We Needed Crisis Support Not Jail
We both spent the next 24 hours in a cell. I totally disassociated from reality to survive it. We were a “normal” family, we were in crisis, this was a tragic event and what we needed was help and support. Family protection services were called as is mandatory when a domestic incident happens in front of the children. Had we not had friends who rushed to take our kids they could have been placed in family custody. I also later learned the representative from Family Services made this comment to my children, “There is no excuse for hitting someone” referring to the TV remote. How dare they make such an ignorant and damaging remark without knowing us, the situation, or acknowledging the impact of emotional abuse, which is domestic violence.
10. Marriage is Hard but Divorce is 10 Times Harder
After 18 years together, two kids, and having only moved to New York City two years prior from Australia for “an adventure” my marriage and life as I knew it was over in the blink of an eye. My husband left our home that day and never returned and while the event that was the catalyst for our demise was horrific, I was in no way prepared for what came next.
11. The Chaos and Carnage
Suddenly on the other side of the world with no family support, I was a single mother in NYC one of the most expensive cities in the world. I didn’t have a stable job, myself and the kids were completely traumatized and even if I wanted to go “home” I couldn’t leave the country with the kids. Amid all the chaos, uncertainty, loss of identity, and security that comes with being loved and someone’s wife, I was grieving the loss of the man I had loved deeply for almost 20 years and been with since I was 24.
12. My Childhood Trauma Reared Its Ugly Head
To try to survive the trauma I was experiencing I did what I had learned to do as a child who was subjected to emotional and physical violence by an alcoholic, workaholic father. I disassociated and I put on my tough girl act. No one and nothing could hurt me and I would not come across as a victim. I moved to an apartment I couldn’t afford, surrounded myself with friends, put a smile on my face, and played the happy, social butterfly, carrying on like nothing had happened. I couldn’t have imagined what would come next…
13. This Was Worse Than Death
Despite the horrific circumstances of our breakup, I loved my husband and tried to keep him close and rebuild a sense of family and stability for myself and my kids. We hadn’t always had an easy relationship but there was deep love and bond between us and one I never thought could be broken. 18 months into our forced separation I was picking something up at his apartment with the kids when I discovered something that forced the tough girl facade that had protected me for some long to come shattering down like that plate of eggs.
14. Then I Found the Black Lingerie
I truly never thought, even though I knew we needed time and help, we would not find our way back. Then I found the lingerie. As I collected some things the kids needed from my husband’s apartment (that was the sort of relationship we had) I went around the side of his bed and saw some black sexy lingerie. It was like being sucker punched. I died a thousand deaths as I tried to process what I was seeing and the reality that our marriage was really over and he was with someone else. It felt like death it was the most unimaginable pain that set me on a five-year journey and led to a full-blown nervous breakdown.
15. I Became Very Sick
The reality that my husband wasn’t coming back, and the discovery that he had started sleeping with a 29-year-old woman (don’t they all just do the cliche younger woman thing) was too much to bear. I fell apart. Catastrophically. I started smoking cigarettes, lighting one off the other, drinking, and was unable to eat, sleep, or function. My poor children were witness to this and for their sake, along with my own sanity and knowing I couldn’t survive another day like this I checked myself into hospital and was transferred to a pysch ward. I was diagnosed with acute stress disorder, complex childhood trauma, and PTSD, and learned about ACOA (being an adult child of an alcoholic), and the traits you take on to survive abuse and trauma.
16. The Grief Was Never Ending
In falling apart, in many ways, I was set free. I learned about my childhood trauma and how it played out in my marriage. I owned my stuff and started doing the work. I owed it to myself and my kids to process, heal, and recover and the journey took me on a six-week stint to a mental health facility. Here I learned about the runner-chaser dynamic in a relationship, and my tendency to overgive but perhaps the biggest gift was awareness. I was finally awake and I realized that there is strength and beauty in vulnerability. Through all that, however, the grief of losing my husband, family, and the life I had wanted so badly since childhood was overwhelming. I cried for the next three years.
17. Moving On
One of the toughest and most painful parts of all this was how cold my husband acted toward me. Someone who had always loved and adored me (believe it or not) for so long completely shut me out. I realize now that was his way of surviving and he hadn’t started his own journey toward awareness and healing but seven years down the road I’m thrilled to say he finally has. His relationship with the millennial ended (surprise surprise) because she wanted a husband and kids (though she swore in the beginning she didn’t). He’s left finally putting me and the kids first. More importantly, he is putting himself first. He recognizes how his childhood shaped his patterns and behaviors and how through fear he was never fully able to commit himself to me and our marriage. We may not be together in a traditional sense but we are closer than ever, forgive each other, and are even grateful that the “accident” as we call it happened. Otherwise, we’d still be asleep. I know now things have to fall apart to come together.