I Accidentally Caused Two Couples To Divorce
I can’t complain about being lonely for one weekend.
Tim Samuel, Rachel Claire | Pexels My husband was gone for only about 26 hours, and I had the audacity to find myself feeling lonely.
Every summer, Jack spends three or four nights away from home on camping trips with friends or our kids. This past weekend, Jack took our 14-year-old Catherine and our 9-year-old Eloise out with two of his guy friends and their daughters, leaving me home with 16-year-old Holden and 11-year-old Sylvia from 10 a.m. Saturday morning until about noon the next day.
Holden, being a teenage gamer, tends to sequester himself in his bedroom for much of his summer days. Sylvia was clearly enjoying the lack of sisterly conflict, happily crafting and reading in her own bedroom. I should have been overjoyed with uninterrupted writing time, but with the extroverts of our family out for the day, the energy in our home felt off.
I was surprisingly distracted by the unsettling silence and, most especially, by the knowledge that the night ahead wouldn’t bring the companionship of another adult.
Jack and I have been glued at the hip since we fell in love at age seventeen. We’ve structured our lives to maximize our time together. Even when we worked opposite shifts in an effort to circumvent childcare costs, Jack worked from home, his deep phone voice reminding me of his presence behind his home office’s French doors.
Now, Jack works outside the home, keeping a standard 8–5 hours and rushing home after work. He enters the house boisterous, eager to share quips with our kids. He also likes to keep to an evening routine together, which includes walking our dogs together around 6 p.m. before family snack time and a show at 7:30 p.m. We send the kids to their bedrooms before 8 p.m., and then Jack and I soak in our hot tub or have sex, sometimes both.
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Every evening with Jack is a date, a commitment to optimize all available minutes of our life together.
When Jack is gone for a night, I wish I could sigh with relief at my independence or bask in my solitude. After all, sometimes I get annoyed with Jack’s penchant for routines and scheduling all of our time. But without his pending presence just after 5 p.m., I feel free to the point that I almost flounder.
It’s too easy to grow listless, bored, and unmotivated. Who’s going to stop me if I opt to binge Netflix instead of writing in my journal? Why bother with my hair? Why does all this unstructured time debilitate me instead of liberating me?
With unease, I realized this is how my friend and my sister felt after their divorces. Divorces that I had inadvertently caused.
My friend Tarah had visited us just the day before Jack’s camping trip. She was in good spirits, but she was wistful as she surveyed my family home, kitchen clutter, and endless chatter abounding. “Your house is so full of life,” she sighed. “It’s been hard getting used to being alone.”
Tarah and Ned divorced the year prior, right around the same time that my sister got a divorce as well. In fact, Tarah and Molly divorced their husbands for almost the exact same reason — they realized that they were married to jerks — and they came to their grim realizations about their husbands because of me.
Jack and I were still relatively new to non-monogamy when we formed a relationship with Tarah and Ned. At first, it worked out quite naturally to be a swap situation since Ned and I worked together. He and I developed a friendship and fooled around, but nothing was ever casual or simple. I practically had a nervous breakdown after several interactions with Ned. I never knew where I stood with him, and I felt like there must have been something seriously wrong with me.
Tarah, meanwhile, was watching our relationship unfold with wide eyes. My sudden anxiety was uncannily similar to her own, except that she had been struggling for years, blaming herself. But with our parallel stories starting to overlap, it became clear that Ned was the common denominator.
It also became clear that Ned was a textbook narcissist. Tarah and I started diving into the topic, which was easy to do with the abundance of materials on narcissism now available online.
The universal advice for dealing with a toxic person like Ned was simple enough for me — go no-contact. It wasn’t as simple for Tarah, but she was eager to climb out of the nightmare she’d been living in for years. Ned and Tarah divorced within the year.
Meanwhile, my sister was privy to the Ned stories as they unfolded. She listened to me drone on about narcissism as she struggled in her own marriage. Molly’s husband bore an uncanny resemblance to Ned in terms of his toxic behaviors, from gaslighting to hoovering to manipulation.
We already knew that Antoine had been unfaithful to Molly, perhaps for years, which, according to a 2020 study, is common among narcissists. But now Molly realizes with sickening horror that Antoine will never change. She would never have the love or life she longed for — not with him.
When Molly called me sobbing one night, asking for my unfiltered opinion on Antoine and their marriage, I didn’t hold back.
I encouraged her to leave him, to move on, to find herself, to find someone better, and to find someone deserving of her love and devotion. I encouraged yet another divorce.
And now Tarah and Molly are alone.
Well, they’re not totally alone. Both of them have two children, but children aren’t the same as adult companions, are they?
In the past, I’d schedule visits with friends while Jack was gone. This time, I didn’t bother. I figured that I should spend some quality time with the kids at home instead. Holden declined the invite, but Sylvia was excited about going out to dinner at a nicer restaurant than we normally take our entire family of six.
I love spending time with Sylvia. She’s tiny for a kid going into sixth grade, less than the first percentile on the growth charts — but she eloquently speaks her mind with the boldness of an old lady. She’s extremely inquisitive, which can sometimes be exhausting, but it also makes for interesting conversation.
That said, conversing for an extended time while waiting for our food at the restaurant reminded me that I am awful at leading a conversation, especially with a fellow neurodivergent introvert. Jack is stellar in social situations; clearly, I rely on his skills even with our own children.
Our dinner also reminded me of our age gap and the importance of peer companionship. While I thoroughly enjoyed strolling up Main Street and through the neighborhood with Sylvia after dinner, taking the long way back to our minivan, I found myself again missing the camaraderie of another adult.
I thought of the times that I had encouraged Tarah and Molly as they wrestled with making their decisions. “I wanted a family,” Tarah and Molly had both said at different points in the divorce process. I had tried to comfort both of them by saying what I now see as trite — “Well, you still have your children…”
Children are quite special on their own, of course, but I admit that there’s something even more special about sharing a child with a beloved spouse. Even just going out to dinner that night, there were so many little moments with Sylvia that I wished I could have shared with Jack, too. I tried to bottle them all up to share later, but it wasn’t the same as catching his eye across the table whenever she said something particularly charming or witty.
And the thing is, Tarah and Molly don’t even have their kids full-time. They both share custody of their kids with their ex-husbands. Plus, Tarah’s kids are older and more independent, like mine, and thus, they tend to do their own things even when they’re with her. Molly’s kids, meanwhile, are young and thus needy. It’s not ideal either way.
Sylvia’s body, like mine, craved Jack’s routine even when he was gone. When our show ended, and it was time to clean up the popcorn just before 8:30 p.m., Sylvia didn’t hesitate to head up to her bedroom for reading and rest.
For a moment, I scrolled through Netflix, considering if I should start watching something just for me. After all, I could do whatever I wanted. Jack wouldn’t be pushing me to go to bed before 10 p.m., nor would he be there to rouse me by 6 a.m. the next morning. But nothing looked interesting, and my own body beckoned to keep the routine.
My sister and Tarah both complained about the lack of sex as soon as their divorces were imminent.
They had needs, and of course, I understood that. Jack and I have sex about every other night. I write about the importance of sex and pleasure often, even taking “sex trips” to get further in touch with my sexuality and, thus, my soul.
I also had the nerve to suggest that masturbation could somehow suffice for Tarah and Molly in the absence of a partner. What did I know about partnerless sex? Sure, I’d settled down with a story and a vibrator on several occasions when Jack was out of town, eager to experience the ease of getting one off without “all the hassle” of regular sex. But it was certainly no substitute.
In fact, I recalled it as being ultimately anti-climatic despite the orgasms that come easily to me. I didn’t even consider masturbating when Jack was gone just this past weekend. Instead, I wrote a journal entry and leisurely moved through my nighttime skincare regimen. I was asleep before 10 p.m.
Tarah and Molly both intended to spend some time alone after their divorces, but they found themselves dating again sooner rather than later.
At first, I worried aloud to Jack that they were moving too quickly. I thought that perhaps they should spend some time healing and introspecting, working on self-love, and regrouping with hopes for a better partnership in the future.
But it isn’t up to me who they date or when. Plus, I can’t really talk, can I? I can barely spend one night alone without feeling lonely.
That said, I hope they don’t settle. I hope they find a man like Jack, who cries during foursomes because he finds them so beautiful. Jack may embarrass me with his negotiation skills, especially at car dealerships, but he also brings all the fun into my life.
There’s a reason I’m constantly comparing Jack to a Golden Retriever. He greets me whenever we’ve been separate for more than a half hour, saying, “You’re here! I am so glad to see you! Oooh, I just want to kiss you! Are we going to have sex tonight? Let me tell you all about my day! And when are we going to take a walk? Can we go soon? Can we? I’ll follow you upstairs; I want to watch you change.”
Yes, as Tarah once pointed out to me, he follows me around like a puppy dog. Whenever it gets annoying, I simply remind myself of my privilege of having Jack as a partner. I’m a spoiled princess, and yes, I know it.
I may crave alone time to write or read, but I love that Jack inspires and encourages me to be my best self. I love when we call each other out for spending too much time on our phones. I love our shared love of nutrition and fitness, and I adore the way our entire family interacts together.
Life is simply better with Jack around. And I suppose that’s what people should look for in a partner, right? Someone who makes your life better. Someone you want to spend time with. Someone you completely vibe with, someone you understand and who understands you in return.
Tarah and Molly saw what I had, and they realized that no matter how hard they tried, they weren’t going to get that with the men they were with.
When they asked me for my honest opinion, I gave it. I encouraged them to proceed with their divorces and pursue better partners. And now they spend many of their evenings alone, enduring the quiet, boring calm of a one-adult household.
My loneliness without Jack that Saturday night altered into a mashup of appreciation for my partner and guilt over my involvement in Tarah and Molly’s current situations. I put things in perspective; I got over myself.
I know it isn’t my fault that they married toxic men, nor is it all on me that they compared their miserable marriages with my exceptional ones. Sure, comparison may be the thief of joy, but does it also give others something to aspire to? Tarah and Molly each realized they deserved to be properly loved by their life partners, and their decisions were ultimately just that — theirs.
But that doesn’t mean that I can’t continue to offer them my empathy and support. I know from too much relationship experience over the past years, having dabbled in polyamory and eventually eschewing it for monogam(ish)y, that love takes many forms. As mere humans, we all need social connections and understanding.
I also know that I can’t take Jack for granted. I am lucky to spend my days longing for my hot husband to arrive back home, inevitably greeting me with a compliment and a kiss. I am grateful that I have someone worthy of missing when they’re gone, even if they’re gone for just one night.
Anna Eliza Rose is a writer, librarian, and mom of four. She frequently posts her personal essays to Medium and Substack and is currently working on a follow-up to her memoir, Pretty Kinky for a Love Story.