In the midst of going to couple’s therapy, Renee found that her husband was hiding something from her. It just happened to be written down, tucked between the shirts in his drawers….
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.
If you have a topic you’d like to discuss, share your thoughts, experience or advice about, drop a line to alice@capsulenz.com.
Renee found it as she put away his washing.
It was the weekend and everyone else in her family was out, so Renee put on a true crime podcast and finally folded up everything that was overflowing out of the baskets of clean washing.
She went into her husband’s t-shirt drawer – his white t-shirts were in a neat pile under his black shirts, so she lifted up the black ones to put a few new fresh white shirts underneath.
But as she picked them up, she saw a piece of paper tucked between the shirts. It was folded a few times that clearly had writing on the inside of it.
Should she unfold it and take a peek?
For quite some time, Renee’s marriage hadn’t been its best.
“It’d been a hard slog,” she says. “Things were a blur when our kids were little. It’s crazy when they’re young – you’re juggling everything. And then they get a bit older and then the focus is, how do you juggle school hours? The weekends and evenings become busy with shuttling kids to sports or friends’ houses.”
But then, suddenly Renee’s kids were becoming teenagers. They were making their own plans, becoming more independent, not needing her – or their dad – the way they quite used to.
All of a sudden, for the first time in a long time, Renee had some time on her hands.
“I didn’t expect to become so unnecessary so quickly,” says Renee. “I think one of the times it struck me was I needed to go to the supermarket, and it hadn’t occurred to me that I could just go. The kids didn’t have to come with me – they didn’t want to anyway. I didn’t have to strategise it in – I could just get the keys and yell that I was heading out for an hour.”
Renee says she began feeling a little lost.
“I guess I’d spent so much time looking after other people, that I didn’t know what to do for myself anymore,” she says.
Meanwhile, her husband wasn’t really feeling much different at all.
“I hadn’t really meant to, but we’d fallen into more traditional roles after we had kids, and I’d been their primary care giver,” she says. “Mark is a good dad, and definitely did a lot – but the majority fell to me. I worked, but only school hours and he was the bread winner. I did all the shuttling around after school and weekends. He was often busy on the weekend – doing stuff to the house, the garden, or playing sport and golf.”
Now, Renee felt like a bit of her identity had been taken away.
“I wasn’t the ‘busy mum’ anymore, I wasn’t busy,” she says. “It should have been a relief, but it just felt sad. And it made me realise how much of my time with Mark had been taken up strategizing about our children. It was like they were our business and we were two business partners. I felt quite disconnected from him.”
And time only seemed to show the cracks that had formed in their relationship. They’d both changed since they first met, particularly after becoming parents.
Their bickering had become more intense and their lives seemed to be on quite different tracks.
“We’d been spending less and less time together over the years, and the kids growing up only highlighted that,” she says. “When we could finally spend more time together, it didn’t feel like he wanted to. He was happy with his schedule and life – I felt like I was an extra in the movie of his life, rather than a lead character.”
And so, after a fiery argument, they both agreed to seeing a relationship therapist.
“The first couple of sessions were really awkward,” says Renee. “I dreaded going. But they did improve.”
In fact, things were starting to feel quite positive. Renee says she felt there was a pathway ahead and it felt they were getting back on track.
Which was when Renee found herself in her husband’s drawer, looking at a little note between his shirts.
Curiosity got the better of her, and before she knew it, she’d pulled out the paper and was unfolding it.
“It was a list,” says Renee.
“It was, I think maybe one of the worst feelings of my life.”
As she unfolded it she discovered that it was a pros and cons list.
“It was a list about me,” says Renee. “This whole list of staying with me, staying in this marriage, or leaving. It was… god, I can’t even tell you. I don’t know. It was just horrible. There was stuff on there that I knew he didn’t like about our marriage, or things I did he didn’t like, but there were lots of surprising things. Things about my appearance?! Things about sex life. The way I did things, or reacted to things. The way I’d been after my mother died. It was… I can’t even begin to explain how it felt.”
The sheer volume of grievances her husband had written down, made it feel impossible to get over.
“If there had of been one, or maybe two things on there maybe that were a surprise, I think I could have got over it,” says Renee. “But there were quite a few that were deeply hurtful. Like, my self-esteem went wooosh. It disappeared. I was so embarrassed. So embarrassed.”
More than two years has gone by, and still, every now and then, Renee feels haunted by that list.
“We stuck it out at counselling for a while,” she says. “We actually made an emergency extra appointment after I found that list. It was the greatest amount of shame I have ever felt, handing her that list and then the three of us talking about it.”
Renee says they tried, but the damage was done.
“He said a lot of the things on the list weren’t things that really concerned him, or that he ever worried about, he was just getting everything down like a brainstorm,” says Renee. “But he wrote these hurtful things down. He thought them somewhere in his brain. I felt just ugly and un-loved and I couldn’t go on.”
Renee says she ended up seeing a different counsellor on her own.
“At the first session, I told her I wanted to give her the list, because I couldn’t say it out loud,” she says. “I was crying and shaking and handed her a picture of the list. She asked if she could give me a hug. I wasn’t expecting that, and I think from that moment with her I did start to rebuild.”
Now, a few years down the track, Renee says she’s still triggered by things on that list.
“At one stage I went for a consultation for a nose job,” she says. “Thankfully I had a few wines and told my friends and they all very quickly talked me out of it. They were so, so kind – but I couldn’t bring myself to show them the rest of the list.”
It’s not on her radar right now, but Renee says she’d love to find love again.
“At the moment, the time isn’t right,” she says. “I’ve still got some work to do and need to put the list far behind me before I start dating – that’ll be a big test.”
