Stephanie had been with her husband for 12 years when he asked for a divorce – she couldn’t make sense of it until she made a horrifying discovery – her husband cheated with the school teacher of their young son…
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.
Stephanie was starting to get used to her new life. It had been six months since she and her husband had separated – quite suddenly – just after Christmas.
“Our relationship hadn’t been perfect for a few months, but, we’d been married for seven years and together for 12,” she says. “We had times when we were tighter and times when we weren’t and I didn’t really obsess over it. It still felt like a bolt from the blue when he said he wanted a divorce.”
What added to the shock, says Stephanie, was that it was very final – he didn’t want to go to therapy, or do anything to try to make it work. “We were done,” she says. “That was that. He wanted to move out immediately.”
The first few weeks and months had been a blur, but now, six months on, Stephanie was understanding that this was real. They really were separated. Her marriage really was over.
“It was heartbreaking,” she says, “but also a turning point in that I could process it all more. I was still so angry and confused, but I wasn’t numb anymore.”
When her husband left, she discovered that actually, her greatest fear was not being able to see their seven-year-old son. So, she was relieved when they worked out an agreement that saw her have custody of him every week, with her ex-husband having him every second weekend.
“Those weekends were the worst,” she says. “Coming home to a dark, quiet, empty home broke my heart all over again every time.”
She’d found some of the ‘first’ new moments with her son difficult too – dropping him off for his first day back at school had been hard, as had the first meet and greet with the new teachers. She’d been dreading it, but midway through the year, there was a parent/teacher meeting that they’d both agreed they would be at together, along with their son.
“I tried to be as normal as I could for our son,” says Stephanie. “I didn’t want it to be weird or awkward. It was exhausting.”
When it finished, she bundled her son up and under her umbrella as they ran to the car, during a torrential downpour. But, once they were inside and she was helping her son out of his wet jacket, she realised that she’d left her jacket hanging on the back of the chair. Not wanting her son to have to go outside in the cold rain, she got back out of the car, locked it and quickly ran to retrieve her coat.
She was about to cut through the staff carpark to get there when she noticed her ex-husband’s car was parked in it. A second later she realised her son’s teacher from the year prior was running through the carpark. She was about to wave her hand up to say hi, when she realised something…
“She was headed for my husband’s car,” says Stephanie. “It happened in slow motion. I saw her jump in the passenger side and they leaned over to kiss. It felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. Or run over.”
A million thoughts when through Stephanie’s mind.
“One was, ‘how long has this been going on?’ but in my heart I already knew the answer – longer than six months, I bet,” she says. “’She is way too young’ was another. She is though. She was 24 when she taught my son, the year before. I’m 44 and my husband is 46. ‘Is this illegal?’ was another thought.”
For the record, no, it’s not strictly against any rules to date a pupil’s parent – but, it is strongly frowned upon.
“They clearly knew that it would be a problem anyway,” says Stephanie. “It feels like the timing of our breakup is very convenient when you consider that it came just after my son was no longer in her class.”
In shock, Stephanie ended up running back to the car without her coat. Once her son was in bed, she called her ex-husband and asked for an explanation for what she’d just seen.
“He said a real cliché, like he was really sorry that this is how I’d found out, but that yes, he had recently started dating her,” says Stephanie. “He didn’t want to get into specifics of how they re-met and when – and when I said I knew he’d had an affair and had been seeing her while we were still married, he denied that. But I know it.”
Stephanie says it made for a very difficult rest of the school year – she was always worried about seeing the teacher, or was sure that her son’s current teacher knew and it all made her feel very awkward.
Then, on the last day of school, she took a present for her son’s teacher.
“When I gave it to her, I mumbled something about how I knew it had been awkward with everything that had been going on with my ex-husband and who his girlfriend was,” she says.
And then, the teacher said something very surprising.
“She said something like, ‘good they got their karma and it didn’t work out though, huh?’” says Stephanie.
When she looked surprised, the teacher apologized for saying something, but clarified that yes, they’d broken up. Stephanie played along that she knew for certain that the relationship had started when they were still together, and said that yes, that’s what you get for cheating on your wife.
“She said she was sorry about it all and that she’d wanted to tell me on the first day that she wasn’t friends with that teacher and hated what had happened, but didn’t think it was a professional thing to do.”
Stephanie’s husband, of course, has continued to deny that the relationship began while he was still married.
“In a way though, it’s made it easier to get over him,” she says. “He’s behaved like a total scumbag. A lying scumbag. I don’t want to be married to that.”
