It was a little white lie. But when Kate* heard her husband so easily tell it, she began to question everything in their marriage…
Welcome to the Divorce Diaries. In our past instalments we’ve covered everything from when you’re most likely to divorce to whether they’re contagious to whether being on the contraceptive pill can effect your chances! and have now spoken to dozens of women – including one whose husband announced he was leaving her to have an open relationship with a 19-year-old, another who was quite literally ghosted by her own husband and one who discovered the real reason her husband divorced her was because he had a baby with her SISTER.
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Kate and Gavin had been married for nearly 12 years – and most of those years had been pretty darned good.
“I sometimes look at it [our marriage] like a bell curve,” says Kate. “To be honest, the first few years weren’t our greatest. I’ve heard people say the first year can be the most difficult and it wasn’t great for us – maybe it’s the pressure? I don’t know. I got pregnant during the second year and it wasn’t a good pregnancy – or postpartum period – but then we came out of the haze and things got better. Our marriage got better and better, and then, it started slipping right back down in the final year or two.”
Kate was a bookkeeper and started up her own accounting business a couple of years before she married Gavin. She realised she could make a lot more money if she went out on her own – and have a bit more flexibility in her life.
“It was one of those things that felt terrifying at the time, but once I’d done it, it was like, ‘what was I waiting for? What was I afraid of?’ It was so easy,” she says. “I did struggle though during the pregnancy and when our daughter was little. I thought it would be the perfect job, like I could just cut back during those times – but then it was like, hell, if I give up these clients, am I going to be able to get them back? Those were all terrifying things to think about when you also have all those hormones surging.”
It did add more stress to their marriage, says Kate, but they came out the other side of it – and while she did lose a few clients who never came back, she picked up a few new ones instead when she was ready to be working full time.
“From there, our marriage felt good,” says Kate. “Gavin was a great girl dad – he took her to ballet lessons and birthday parties and to get her hair done. I can’t fault him there.”
But Gavin, who worked as a salesperson, began putting in longer and longer hours at work.
“That was in the last two years of our marriage,” says Kate. “He worked heaps – and late. He’d often be on work calls at home.”
It was a slow creep, she says, until it became quite normal for him to work a portion of the weekend too.
Despite telling herself he wasn’t the kind of guy to be unfaithful, doubts started to also slowly creep into Kate’s mind.
“As soon as you tell people that your husband is all of a sudden working these extra hours, well, when you’re saying it out loud – I don’t know, but as I was listening to myself it sounded like he was probably having an affair,” she says.
She found herself questioning things a lot more.
“I’d call and he’d say he was working late,” she says. “I’d ask, ‘What on?’ And he’d say the exact account, or he had his monthly report due, or he was making a powerpoint for X’. He didn’t miss a beat, he’d say what he was busy doing.”
But Kate still held her worries.
One day she found a receipt when she was doing the washing – it was for two glasses of Champagne and two glasses of wine at a fancy bar.
“I asked him what it was for – he wasn’t defensive, he said it was for his client and told me a bit about what happened at those drinks,” she says.
Then a friend told her that she’s seen Gavin having a drink with a woman and they looked “quite close”.
“When I asked him, without flinching, Gavin said that would be his client, Margo, who had just celebrated 20 years with her husband, but their son had got in serious trouble at school that day and she was really upset, so he was trying to comfort her. And she also increased her spend with him, apparently.”
As the months went by, more little bits and pieces felt like they were coming up – and despite Gavin’s ability to quickly bat them away, Kate couldn’t deny this feeling in her gut that something was wrong.
“Something was off,” she says. “Deep down, I felt like I was being cheated on. Something was just slowly moving in our relationship – we seemed to be getting further apart. Less time spent together – and less quality time.”
And then, for their wedding anniversary, they booked in for dinner at a restaurant they’d read rave reviews about.
The menu looked incredible – everything sounded delicious. But when the waitress came to take their order, Gavin said something that completely threw Kate.
“I asked for the risotto and then she turned to Gavin and he said he’d have the snapper,” she says. “It was the fish of the day and it sounded pretty amazing, but it came with scallops. I know he hates them.
“So then, he says to her, ‘it sounds incredible – but, can I please order it without the scallops? I’m allergic.’”
The waitress asked if he had a shellfish allergy and he said yes, and she said that shouldn’t be a problem because those were cooked separately and only added when plating up the meal, so it would be no problem to omit them, but she would double check and make sure the chef was aware of the allergy.
Kate sat there in stunned silence. Gavin had no such allergy.
“That was the moment our marriage ended, I think,” she says. “The way he so cooly and easily lied to this woman was chilling. He said it just the same way he’d tell me the reason he was working late, or who the woman he was seen having a drink with was.”
As she started to feel hot – quite sure that her neck was beginning to go red, Kate asked Gavin why he had just lied to the waitress.
“He was so cavalier about it, saying it was easier than saying he didn’t like scallops,” she says. “I told him how terrified I suddenly was at how easily he could lie. It was so unnecessary to lie. Just ask if you can get it without scallops. Why all the drama? Just get it with scallops and leave them on the side of your plate.”
It wasn’t immediate, but within a month, Kate and Gavin split up.
“That night changed everything,” she says. “I could see how easily and freely he could lie. I felt like everything he was telling me was a lie.”
Kate says she’s never had it confirmed, but she’s quite sure Gavin had been having an affair. A few months after they broke up he was in a relationship with a new woman – one who happened to look exactly like the woman a friend had seen him with those months earlier.
“There have been some dark times,” she says. “Plenty of times when I’ve questioned what was ever real in our marriage. And, there was a situation lately where my daughter told a lie and I caught her out on it. My mind overreacted – y’know, thinking ‘is she going to be like her father?’ I’m not going to dwell on it – all kids tell fibs – but it something I’m determined to instill in her, that we tell the truth. Lately though, I’m doing better. I’m feeling more optimistic and I’m ready to close that chapter of my life and open a whole new one.”
*names have been changed
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