The mental health nurse started rooting through my wardrobe in a ‘declutter your life’ kind of a way. Eventually, she found the £2,000 Christiana Couture dress I had worn for my country house wedding, 14 years earlier. She somehow thought that throwing away a few unused garments would soothe the tangle in my brain.
‘We won’t be needing that any longer,’ she snapped, ripping my gown from the rail, marching it down the stairs and depositing it next to the bins in the front garden.
Paralysed on a soup of tranquillisers, antidepressants, insomnia and the misery of a shattered marriage, I simply sat and watched. Any hopes of one day handing that beautiful dress onto my daughter, 13 years old at the time, rattled off with the recycling lorry.
It was summer 2015. The mental health nurse had been dispatched from the private psychiatric clinic to try ‘tough love’ on me after their strong medications and a month as an in-patient had failed. Looking back, it was all a fruitless exercise. How could antidepressants and sleeping pills mend a broken heart?
Earlier this month the Office for National Statistics revealed that the number of applications for divorce was back at pre-pandemic levels, with the increase largely driven by women, who instigate the majority of them.
I know all about divorce. But this story has a happy ending. At the age of 57, I have not given up on marriage altogether. Instead, in August, I will be slipping on a different snowy white dress for my second wedding – arm-in-arm with Jeremy, my lovely new partner.
This time, there are no endless fittings at a Chelsea bridal boutique. No longer a sylph-like size 8 but a midlife 14, I snapped up my cotton/linen mix shift on the local High Street when I wandered into the shop looking for something else.
It cost just £65.
At the age of 57, I have not given up on marriage altogether. Instead, in August, I will be slipping on a different snowy white dress for my second wedding
Miranda Levy on her first wedding day
Unlike my ex, Jeremy was confident and outgoing. Most of all, we laughed. Jeremy tolerated my jokes and did not cringe at my stories
True, I have plenty of ‘life miles’ on the clock, but I’m sailing towards our small ceremony with a happiness I truly never thought I would feel again. No: I’ll go further – I have never felt happiness like this before.
I met my ex-husband, let’s call him Richard, at a party two weeks after I turned 29. We became serious quite quickly, possibly because I could already hear the ticking of my biological clock, and married in September 2001, four years after we first met, when I was 33 and he was almost 31.
He was good looking, solvent and had a solid, professional job. I don’t want to let post-divorce cynicism muddy everything: we laughed together and shared certain values – about the importance of hard work and education, and the way we would bring up our children.
But if I’m honest, Richard and I never really gelled in that ‘soulmatey’ kind of way. I have absolutely no doubt Richard would say the same about me.
Where I was extrovert, Richard was quiet. He found my job in women’s magazines trivial; I thought his finance-related work boring. But somehow, our very different genes conspired to make two wonderful children, who came along rapidly one after another. Anyone who has had two babies in two years while both partners work in demanding jobs knows how hard this period can be.
The competitive tiredness, the ‘it’s-your-turn-to-go-to-Sainsbury’s-oh-God-not-chicken-pox’ relentlessness of it all.
Somewhere along the line, Richard took up marathon running. If that isn’t a red flag, I’m not sure what is. His new schedule meant he was out of the house for hours at a time. He started doing long races in foreign cities.
We occasionally slept together, but it felt like something we ‘should’ do.
After his first week-long visit, we carried on a transatlantic relationship for a while, but Jeremy’s trips gradually became longer in duration
I have plenty of ‘life miles’ on the clock, but I’m sailing towards our small ceremony with a happiness I truly never thought I would feel again, writes Miranda Levy
Then came that Friday afternoon in July 2010, when everything changed forever. Our children were seven and five and I was 42. I came back from the shops to find a blinking message on the answerphone.
I pressed it, and an electronic voice came out, detailing the romantic liaisons a woman had been having for the past three years with ‘her sweetheart’: my husband. In those days, you could text a landline, and this is how it sounded. It seemed she had got fed up waiting for him to tell me about this, so she’d decided to do it herself.
The bottom fell out of my world; my stomach swooped to the floor; I felt sick. I knew things would never be the same again.
When Richard got home, I frantically confronted him, but he wouldn’t confirm or deny what was going on. When I demanded he move out, he refused.
I begged him to come for marriage counselling, and he consented to one desultory session where we were asked to mark our marriage out of ten. I gave us a hopeful ‘five’; he gave us a ‘two’. I knew then all hope was lost.
For the rest of the hour, we sat in silence – panicked (me) and angry (him).
Richard by now was in the spare room, but from that first night I was unable to fall asleep. How would I cope as a single mother in a world of married couples and families? Who would look after the pensions and the ISA?
If I’m honest, it was this, rather than any deep love for Richard, that kept me awake. I was tossing and turning the whole of the next night, and the next.
After a couple of agonising nights, I went to see the doctor for sleeping pills: a few weeks later, he prescribed antidepressants.
As the weeks went on and still I was sleepless, I was referred to an NHS psychiatrist, who added in Valium and more antidepressants. I call this period my ‘psychiatric safari’ as I did a tour of pretty much every medication in the British National Formulary, the NHS’s pharmaceutical reference book.
For the next six years, Richard and I were locked in a stalemate, living in the same house. I was too unwell to move and had no money. ‘Hell’ doesn’t begin to cover it – for everyone concerned. At some point, Richard broke up with his girlfriend, but our marriage was beyond repair. I’d lost my job as editor of a parenting magazine quite early on and was unable to work, so Richard stepped up to look after the children, with the help of amazing grandparents on both sides.
At times, I felt suicidal. I spent some time in a psychiatric hospital, first on the NHS, then in a private clinic, funded by my family. Mostly, I was in the loft bedroom, zonked out on a haze of medication.
Thinking back on these precious years missed with my children breaks my heart.
Something had to give, and in 2016, we agreed I would live with my father in Essex. Away from the toxic environment and the stress, I started to recover. Richard finally petitioned for divorce – in this we also bucked a trend, it seems. But I’d been too unwell to even consider seeing a solicitor until now, and I guess a tiny part of me was still in denial.
I hired a lawyer, and felt strong enough to fight, and get a fair settlement. I started to sleep again, and I felt my spirit returning: I was back in the world.
As 2019 dawned, my priority was fixing the broken connection with my children (we’ve since made the most incredible strides). I also picked up with old friends, got my own place, and started to work again as a freelance writer. But the thought of having another relationship after the end of my first marriage had almost destroyed me? Nothing could have been further from my mind.
Dating apps and websites? Please. I had put on a lot of weight because of the medications and felt so self-conscious I didn’t even use a profile picture on social media.
And yet it was social media that now became my window on the world and my lifeline, particularly Twitter (now X). For the first time I became properly interested in politics – this was in the Jeremy Corbyn era when there was a lot of conversation about far-Left politics and anti-Semitism. I’m Jewish: this had never been a big part of my ‘identity’ before, but in this new world, it felt important.
On X one day, I asked an innocuous question about who I should vote for in the upcoming General Election and was hit by a wave of abuse from Lefty types, some of it really quite nasty. But among this tsunami of negativity, a few nice people stepped in to defend me.
One of these was a Jewish, New York-based playwright called Jeremy. Jeremy and I started to correspond – first by direct message, then on Whatsapp – and one day, Jeremy phoned me. Our conversation moved swiftly on from politics to the books and films and music we both liked. ‘What shall I play while cooking my pasta?’ I asked him. (Django Reinhardt, apparently.)
Jeremy was a year younger than me and was also at the end of a long marriage. He had two teenage children, and he was funny and clever. As I wasn’t using a profile picture, he had no idea what I looked like (though he did look very handsome in his). In fact, I didn’t let him see a photo of me for weeks.
Our friendship deepened. We told one another things we had never told others before. Unlike my ex, Jeremy was confident and outgoing. Most of all, we laughed. Jeremy tolerated my jokes and did not cringe at my stories. Eventually, in November 2019, he told me he was flying over to meet me. I told him, don’t be ridiculous, don’t do that. But Jeremy thankfully took no notice.
You might think that, being so bruised after a divorce, I should have worried about this rapid intimacy. But if I had any concerns, I would go to my best friend . . . and Jeremy was my best friend. I could tell him anything.
I told myself I had the choice: to be cautious, and miss out on this darling man, or take a chance. ‘A life lived in fear is a life half lived’, goes the quote from the film Strictly Ballroom.
I decided to take a risk. But just in case things didn’t work out, I booked a hotel for him near my flat. We didn’t use the hotel. Jeremy and I went back to my place, immediately to bed – and our online acquaintance became a passionate love affair as we spent the week eating, drinking and seeing plays. We couldn’t stop kissing.
My friends had been slightly worried about all this, after everything I had been through. But the minute they saw Jeremy and I together, their fears evaporated.
After his first week-long visit, we carried on a transatlantic relationship for a while, but Jeremy’s trips gradually became longer in duration, until he started spending the majority of his time over here, with frequent trips back to the US for his work, and to see his kids.
Our love grew: based on emotional honesty and a refusal to take ourselves as seriously as we perhaps did when we were younger. Five-and-a-half years after our first meeting, Jeremy and I still laugh a lot. The UK/US differences bring a lot of opportunity. The other day, he was driven to hysteria by the phrase ‘she wouldn’t say boo to a goose’ which does not exist across the Atlantic.
Little touches betray our closeness: we still hold hands when we walk down the street. There are no awkward silences like there were with Richard, who I understand married again. Jeremy and I never stop communicating: in fact, the people around us probably pray for a moment’s silence.
When Jeremy’s in the US, we speak six or seven times a day, filling the rest of the time with texts about the things we’ve seen and done. We joke about how, when the time comes, we will annoy everyone in our old people’s home with our incessant chatter.
Even though I’ve been through divorce, I seem to have remained a romantic. Perhaps the figures suggest that women are taking off their rose-tinted spectacles when it comes to marriage – but there’s an old fashioned part of me that loves the idea of a public commitment. I know that Jeremy feels the same.
His wedding proposal – when it came without warning on a Saturday morning this February – was in other ways expected, because we’d discussed it before without drama. I still demanded he go down on one knee, however.
And so we have decided on an intimate ceremony in Central Park next month, not far from Jeremy’s home in New York. It’ll be very different from my black tie party for 140 people a quarter of a century before. For starters, we’ll have our own children in attendance. There will be no string quartets, three course meals and flower arrangements. After we have made our vows, our small party of 20 will wander off for cocktails in a nearby bar.
Jeremy and I are pretty sure this one’s for keeps. But in the unlikely event the marriage doesn’t last? Well, I won’t be collapsing like a deck of like last time. I’m tougher, more resilient, and I know how to run my own finances. Getting through a divorce, buying my flat all by myself: well, you grow up. I don’t need Jeremy to be in my life; but I adore him being there.
If you’re reading this article from the confines of an unhappy marriage, please take steps to fix it before it’s too late. Keep talking, or start talking, if you don’t talk already. Enlist professional help if you need it.
But if the worst happens, and your marriage ends – don’t lose hope. Maybe you can take inspiration from my story. Ten years ago I never thought I’d work or socialise again, let alone fall in love and remarry.
It’s true of course that having a partner isn’t everything – but if you’re feeling lonely and want romance in your life, it can certainly happen for you.
Like me, one day you could be opening your eyes, and starting every new day with your very best friend. I went through hell, but finally found my soulmate.
Not a hopeless ‘two out ten’, or a needy ‘five’ – as marked by the unsuccessful marriage therapist – but a perfect and resounding ten.
