I left the man I loved but could no longer live with

A year after novelist Jane Green and her husband decided to end their relationship, her friends think she’s had a happy divorce. Is such a thing ever really possible, she wonders

- Jane Green

Last week I received an email from my husband informing me that he was no longer my husband. Because I am currently living thousands of miles away from him in Marrakech and he is in our home in Connecticut and because we had handled our divorce remotely, via Zoom mostly, filing our papers with the judicial courts, he had suddenly thought to go online and check our status. He discovered that it was official – our divorce had been signed off by a judge.

He is now my ex-husband. And even though I left him, even though I had been unhappy for some years before our split, even though I remain sure that this is the right decision, that we had grown far enough apart that it felt both impossible and wrong to find our way back, I burst into tears.

I felt no sense of relief; there would be no divorce parties celebrating my newfound freedom. I felt instead only a profound sadness at the death of a dream; the end of a marriage to a man I loved deeply, a man I still love, even though we were making each other miserable.

Some might say we have had a good divorce.

Certainly, I think we have emerged if not friends, then on friendly terms; I do see friendship in our future. I hope that when I next go back to the States, for Thanksgiving with my children, he will join us. He is not the father of my children, but raised them, and was the primary father figure during their formative years.

I had four children, he had two. For much of that time, all six lived with us, under one roof. When they forgot homework, needed lunch dropped off, or had to be ferried to doctors and sports games, he stepped up while I stayed home, writing novels, trying to make enough money to support us all. A decision that worked beautifully when the children were young, when I was making enough money to enable my spouse to be a stay-at-home dad, but didn’t work so well once the children were older, more independent, once my career changed and my income was diminished.