My family life has crumbled.
I am 60 years old, and my husband, Geoffrey, is 66. Soon, we will be divorced. After 35 years of what I believed was a strong marriage, my world has been turned upside down. I, Margaret, and my husband, Geoffrey, seemed to have found harmony in our quiet life in a small town in Yorkshire. But everything changed in an instant, and now I stand on the brink of loneliness, my heart shattered by betrayal.
Geoffrey and I had spent over three decades together. It all began over the Christmas holidays. As usual, the children had gone off to celebrate with friends, leaving us with their cat. Geoffrey, claiming he was bored during the long festive break, decided to drive to a nearby town—to visit his parents’ graves and stop by his sister’s, he said. I didn’t object—such trips were routine for him. He left, and I stayed home, unaware it would be the beginning of the end.
A week later, he returned, but something was different. His gaze was distant, his words frosty. Another week passed, and then he dropped the bombshell: he wanted a divorce. *”I can’t go on like this,”* he said. *”There’s a woman who can save me.”* Stunned, I told him it was his choice, but inside, my world collapsed. Later, I learned the truth: a woman he’d known 40 years ago had found him online. They’d begun exchanging messages. She lived in the same town he’d visited, and his supposed “trip to see his sister” had merely been a cover to meet her.
He spent three days with her. According to Geoffrey, they connected instantly. She was a widow—confident, with a three-bedroom flat, a country home, and several cars. He confessed to pouring out his grievances: how he felt unneeded, how his health was failing. She, calling herself a healer, promised to “cure” him. Worse still, she claimed to practice alternative medicine, insisting she could detect early-stage cancer and had mediumistic gifts. Her promises sounded like a fantasy: if Geoffrey divorced me and married her, she’d give him the country house, a car, and restore his health. That’s when the nightmare truly began.
Geoffrey demanded I go straight to the registry office and consent to the divorce. I refused, telling him I wouldn’t dance to his tune. So he filed the papers himself. I only discovered the court hearing by chance when I tried to find out what was happening. At the courthouse, I read his claim—and it left me reeling. He’d written that we hadn’t shared a bed in 15 years, and for the last 6, we hadn’t even lived together. A brazen lie! I contested every word, and now, as I wait for the trial, I feel the ground giving way beneath me.
His behavior has become unbearable. He looks at me with contempt, as though I’m a stranger. But what do you call this 65-year-old “healer” who’s torn our family apart? What has she done to my husband? Geoffrey told her he drinks a double whisky every night—despite having only one kidney. *”It’s fine,”* she told him. Madness! When I begged him to reconsider, he snapped that we’d been living like strangers, that our marriage had been dead for years.
So ends my family life. To be left alone at 60 is unbearable. For 35 years, I grew accustomed to Geoffrey—his habits, our shared routines. And yet, it seems he never valued what we had. Now, I face an uncertain future, my heart aching with one unanswerable question: how do I go on when everything I cherished has turned to dust?
