My marriage is crumbling.
I’m 60, and my husband is 66. Soon, we’ll be divorced. After 35 years of what I believed was a strong marriage, my world has been turned upside down. I, Elizabeth, and my husband, William, seemed to have found harmony in our quiet life in a small town in Cornwall. But everything changed in an instant, and now I stand on the brink of loneliness, heartbroken and betrayed.
William and I spent over three decades together. It all began on New Year’s Eve. As usual, our children left to celebrate with friends, leaving us with their cat. William, complaining of boredom and the long holiday break, 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 it would mark the beginning of the end.
He returned a week later, but something was different. His gaze was distant, his words clipped. Another week passed before 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, though inside, everything shattered. Later, I learned the truth: a woman he’d known 40 years ago had found him online. They’d been messaging. She lived in the very town he’d visited, and his supposed trip to his sister’s was nothing but a cover to see her.
He spent three days with her. According to him, they clicked instantly. She was a widow—confident, with a three-bedroom flat, a country cottage, and two cars. William confessed he’d poured out his sorrows to her—how unneeded he felt, how his health was failing. She, calling herself a healer, promised to *”cure”* him. Worse, she claimed to practice alternative medicine, insisting she could detect early-stage cancer and communicate with spirits. Her promises were absurd: if William divorced me and married her, she’d give him the cottage and a car, even *”restore”* his health. That’s when the nightmare truly began.
William demanded I sign the divorce papers immediately. I refused, telling him I wouldn’t dance to his tune. So he filed himself. I only discovered the court date by accident when I tried to uncover what was happening. Reading his claims in the court documents left me reeling—he’d written that we hadn’t shared a bed in 15 years, that we’d lived apart for six. It was a blatant lie! I contested every word, and now, as I await trial, I feel the ground giving way beneath me.
His contempt is unbearable. He looks at me as if I’m a stranger. But what do you call this 65-year-old *”healer”* who’s torn apart my family? What has she done to my husband? William told her he drinks a pint of beer every night, despite having only one kidney. She shrugged it off—*”it’s nothing to worry about.”* Madness! When I begged him to reconsider, he snapped that we’d been living like flatmates for years, that our marriage had been dead long ago.
So this is how my marriage ends. At 60, facing life alone is unbearable. For 35 years, I knew William—his habits, our routines. But he never truly valued what we had. Now, I’m left staring into the void, my heart aching with one unanswerable question: *How do I go on when everything I loved has turned to dust?*
