Sally* was devastated when her parents split up – she was 13 years old, and believed her mother was to blame for the split. But then, 20 years later she learned a piece of information that changed everything.
Welcome to the Divorce Diaries. In our past instalments over the last year 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.
Sally was 13 when her parents sat her and her younger sister down one otherwise unremarkable Saturday morning to announce they were splitting up and getting a divorce.
“It’s 30 years later and I can still remember it, exactly,” says Sally. “I can remember the lounge suite, the feel of it – everything. I remember there being s bit of one of the seams coming away and fixating on that as my parents were talking. I started picking at it.”
One of the strongest memories she has of that morning was how upset her father was.
“He was not a man who cried,” she says. “I don’t think I’d ever seen him cry and he was crying as he talked to us. His eyes were red, he was using a handkerchief to wipe his eyes and his whole face. He was in a real state. I remember, like, wanting to look at his face, but also having to look away a lot because it felt so overwhelming and intense seeing him crying.”
Her mum didn’t cry. Her voice sounded different, but she kept telling the girls how much she loved them and how everything was going to be okay. She told the girls that unfortunately they had grown apart in the marriage and it was best they didn’t live together.
“I was 13, so really coming into those hormonal times,” says Sally. “Those times can be tough with your mum anyway, but even though they didn’t say much, I decided Mum was to blame. Dad was so upset, Mum wasn’t – I thought she must be the reason for the divorce.”
Sally never confronted her mum about this though, she says she just kept her resentment towards her mother simmering, for years.
“I saw her as the reason they weren’t together,” she says. “Therefore she – and she alone – was the reason that I didn’t have the dream family situation I wanted. None of my friends’ parents were divorced and I hated it. I hated going between their houses, just all the change – I hated it.”
She’d rebel against her mother constantly. After the split they sold the family home – another deep blow – and both parents rented for a while before buying smaller homes. Her mother had the kids for the majority of the time – they spent every other weekend with their dad.
They spent more time with Sally’s wider family than they had before the split – sometimes their aunt or uncle would stay with them. But, adding to the grief for Sally was that her “aunt” Misty was suddenly gone.
“That was Mum’s best friend,” says Sally. “She used to stop by all the time and we just didn’t see her anymore. Whenever we talked about Misty, Mum would just say she was busy, or out of town or sick or something. I figured it was just someone else who my mum had hurt and cut out of her life. I had all these plans of just going to Misty’s house one day and telling her I wanted to live with her. I’d tell Dad that I wanted to live with him.”
Sally says she spent the next two decades, still holding some resentment towards her mother – always holding her at arm’s length.
“When I’ve talked it through in therapy, we came to the conclusion that part of me was always worried that she might one day just want to drop out of my life too – like she had with Dad and Misty,” says Sally. “She’s always been closer with my sister, which I’ve obviously had quite mixed feelings and emotions about.”
But when Sally was 34 and pregnant with her first child, she learned a little piece of information which changed everything.
“Yes, it’s so obvious now – I bet anybody reading this story would be like, ‘how did you not realise this sooner’, but when you’re a child, you see things differently and it’s really difficult to change your perception of things that got implanted in your brain during those years,” she says.
She was at Labtests, waiting for her turn, when she saw a newspaper and picked it up. It was folded up so the death notices were staring back at her.
“It’s spooky, because I never look at them, but I did that day – I straight away saw Misty’s name,” says Sally. “I’d looked her up a few times in the past but had never got in touch with her – it was definitely her and it said she’d passed away after a brief battle with cancer.”
Sally was driving home – a path that took her past her mum’s house, and when she saw her car in the driveway, she decided to stop in.
Her mum’s face lit up when she walked in, unexpectedly. Then Sally told her that she’d just read that Misty had died.
“Mum’s face just crumpled,” she says. “She looked stricken and started crying. I told her about the cancer. She said she felt terrible, because Misty had sent her a letter a couple of months earlier and she hadn’t replied. I was obviously like – classic, Mum, continuing to hurt someone.”
But then her mum said she had written a letter back and was meaning to send it, to tell her that she forgave her, but she hadn’t sent it yet.
“I remember her crying and saying she hated that Misty died without knowing that she forgave her,” she says. “I had no idea what she was talking about, but yes, she accidentally said enough that I worked out that mum wasn’t the reason my parents got a divorce. My dad had been having an affair with Misty, my mum’s best friend.”
To say Sally was shocked, is an understatement.
“I have never had one piece of information change so much about my life,” says Sally. “All these years I had held onto this idea that my mum was the reason my parents divorced – something I’d blame everything else that went wrong in my life on – was the complete opposite of what happened.”
Sally’s mum wasn’t too keen to talk about it – she had thought that Sally by then had found out about the affair, and that’s what she had come to talk about, but she didn’t want to have a conversation that was upsetting while Sally was pregnant.
“Looking at that now – that’s who my mum really is,” she says. “She’s someone who thinks about herself last.”
Her mum knew, obviously, that Sally hadn’t been happy about the divorce, but she thought ‘the right’ thing to do was to not make anyone the villain. They decided not to tell the kids what happened.
“I felt so sick about it,” she says. “Mum must have been absolutely devastated. I can’t believe she lost her husband and her best friend at the same time.”
At the same time as feeling all this compassion and empathy for her mum, she felt a lot of guilt for how she’d blamed her mum, plus there was also a bit of anger there that she had let that happen and not tell the truth. But the most anger – which soon turned into white hot rage – was at her father.
“I was obviously angry that he did this, full stop,” says Sally. “But what made it a million times worse was that he’d stayed quiet about it. I hadn’t said to my mum that I blamed her for the divorce, but I’d certainly said it to my dad. I’d begged to be able to live with him and given him all this sympathy and support – when he’s the one who’d done the dirty, big time.”
When Sally looks back, she realises that her dad was probably so upset because he’d gone from having two women to zero. Misty had broken off the affair when Sally’s mother had learned the truth. Misty was married also, and Sally’s mother wasn’t sure if her husband ever found out – she never talked to him again, but she knew the two of them stayed together.
Sally says she’s spent more time in therapy since learning the truth – and she now has three kids of her own.
“I’ve been able to build a real closeness with my mum in the last decade,” she says. “We can’t make up for lost time, but it’s made me see her in a new light and I’m glad I found out the truth. My relationship with Dad has suffered, but, I continue to love him.”
Sally says she’s gone round in circles in her head about whether she wishes her parents had told the truth or not. She’s unsure of what the best thing to do was.
“If my parents had told me the truth, that would have also been devastating,” she says. “I probably would have never wanted to have seen my dad. I might have bigger trust issues when it comes to men. But, I also wouldn’t have had the unique set of baggage I have had to sort through about the woman being the villain, being afraid of my own potency.”
Whatever the case though, Sally says she hasn’t yet been able to forgive her dad for not putting her straight when she repeatedly told him she was sorry for what her mum did.
“That’s the bit that was wrong,” she says. “Having kids now, I fully understand wanting to hold back that truth from them about the affair, but that bit, was fundamentally wrong. He should have sat me down and said – even if they were holding that line of not saying about the affair – that my mum was a good, wonderful woman and was not to blame for the affair, that she fought hard for that marriage and was a wonderful wife. He shouldn’t have stayed silent.”
__________________________________
About the Author:
