Divorce, once rare and stigmatised, has become mainstream – 42 per cent of marriages now end this way, meaning nearly half of us who get married can expect to experience it in our lifetime. Just as every marriage is different, so is every divorce. In this column, divorcees reflect on their life-changing experience. Helped by the benefit of hindsight, they’ll share advice and reflections. Interview by Isabelle Aron
My husband and I were friends first. We met in 1984 at university when I was 23. After graduating, we lived together in a shared house. His sister lived there too, and we were close friends. During that time, he and I got together for a period of six months, but his sister was very angry about it. It ended our friendship.
We broke up but stayed friends and years later, in 1996, we got back together and had a baby. In 2000, we finally got married, I was 39. The decision to get married was my idea. I wanted the security. But it didn’t take him long to come around to the idea.
I’d always said I’d never get married and that it was patriarchal nonsense – I was politically radical in my youth – and that was perhaps one of the reasons it took so long. But through being with someone that I loved very much, who I had known for a long time and with whom I had a child, I discovered that I liked the idea of marriage.