The fabric of my married life has unravelled.
I am sixty, and my husband is sixty-six. Soon, we will divorce. After thirty-five years of what I believed to be a steadfast union, my world has been turned upside down. I, Evelyn, and my husband, Victor, seemed to have found harmony in our quiet existence in a small Yorkshire town. But everything changed in an instant, and now I stand on the brink of solitude, my heart shattered, consumed by betrayal.
Victor and I shared three decades together. It began on New Year’s Eve. As usual, our children had gone to celebrate with friends, leaving their cat in our care. Victor, restless from the long holiday, decided to visit a nearby town—to pay respects at his parents’ graves, he said, and to see his sister. I didn’t object; such trips were routine for him. He left, and I stayed home, unaware that this would mark the beginning of the end.
A week later, he returned—but something was different. His gaze was distant, his words clipped. Another week passed before he delivered the blow: he wanted a divorce. “I can’t go on like this,” he said. “There’s a woman who can save me.” Stunned, I replied that it was his choice, but inside, my world crumbled. Later, I uncovered the truth: a woman he’d known forty years ago had found him online. They’d been messaging. She lived in that very town he’d visited, and his so-called trip to see his sister had been nothing but a ruse to meet her.
He spent three days with her. According to him, they “connected instantly.” She was a confident widow—with a three-bedroom flat, a countryside cottage, and several cars. Victor confessed he’d unburdened himself to her, lamenting how unfulfilled he felt, how his health was failing. She, a self-proclaimed healer, promised to “cure” him. Worse still, she claimed to practice alternative medicine, insisting she could detect early-stage cancer and commune with spirits. Her promises were fantastical: if Victor divorced me and married her, she’d gift him the cottage and a car, and restore his vitality. And so the nightmare began.
Victor demanded I visit the registry office at once and consent to the divorce. I refused, telling him I wouldn’t dance to his tune. So he filed the petition himself. I only learned of the court date by chance when I tried to make sense of his coldness. Reading his claims in the court papers left me reeling—he swore we hadn’t shared a bed in fifteen years, that we’d lived apart for six. A brazen lie! I contested every accusation, and now I await the hearing, feeling the ground slip from beneath me.
His contempt is unbearable. He looks at me as though I’m a stranger. But what of this sixty-five-year-old “healer” who tore our family apart? What has she done to him? Victor told her he drinks a double whisky daily—despite having only one kidney. Her response? “It’s nothing to worry about.” Madness! When I pleaded with him to reconsider, he declared we’d been living like flatmates for years, that our marriage had long been dead.
So ends my life as a wife. At sixty, facing solitude is unbearable. For thirty-five years, I grew accustomed to Victor—his habits, our shared rhythms. Yet it seems he never truly cherished what we had. Now I stand before the unknown, heartbroken, asking: how does one carry on when all that mattered has turned to dust?
