Is this love, p.3
Is This Love?, page 3
Photos done, we boarded a bus that we’d hired to take everyone to the wedding party. It was meant to be a highlight of the afternoon – and it was, in the end, but for reasons we hadn’t anticipated.
The driver had never driven anything bigger than a transit before. He made many valiant attempts to manoeuvre the bus onto the main road but he got the turning angles wrong every time. I think he panicked. I felt for him. I knew what it was to feel the weight of expectation hang heavy on your shoulders.
It didn’t look like we would be going anywhere. Another ten minutes later, and we noticed that two homeless men had got involved. It was them that helped direct the driver out of the tight curve of the town hall drive and onto the highway, at last. There were cheers from passers-by as well as our guests. The photographer loved it, telling us it was part of the day we’d want to remember. Sure enough, shots of the two homeless men made it into our wedding album. The one I burned to a crisp two and a half years later.
It was a good wedding. Everyone said so. We left for our hotel in the small hours, but our friends carried on the party all night. For once, I wasn’t sad to miss it. We were so tired when we got to our room that we barely spoke before we fell asleep in the huge white bed. In the morning, you were grumpy, and hungover, but I insisted we stay there just a bit longer, before going back home to see everyone. I wanted you to myself. I wanted to consummate our union, as I kept saying to you with a grin. You didn’t find it funny.
We began to talk about becoming a family. I had always wanted to have children, and I finally felt I was in a place – in a relationship – where it could be possible. You said you wanted it too, and we thought about timelines and money and space, and how and when we could make it happen. At first you seemed as enthusiastic as I did. But slowly it became a thing on the backburner. A future plan. A maybe, not a definitely.
I felt the hurt of it, but I was busy, too. And I was happy in my life. Our life. I was teaching full time again, and being commissioned to write too. I finally felt like I was getting somewhere. The flat was finished, and we were in a great part of town with friends nearby. I felt lucky. It seemed churlish to keep bringing up the one thing that I didn’t have.
I wonder now if it was this that drove you away. I watched you with our friends’ kids sometimes, and I was always aware of your distance from them. You never really engaged. I would clown about and throw myself into whatever game they wanted to play but you would smile and quickly disentangle yourself, slipping away to sit with the adults while I played entertainer. I didn’t put too much store in it then: it was perfectly reasonable to prefer the company of grown-ups, after all. But while I loved seeing our friends’ children, and my nephews and nieces, you were always aloof around them. I think it annoyed you, sometimes, that I had so much fun with them. You’d make snide comments about my boundaries. You’d remind me they weren’t my children. I didn’t need to go on about how wonderful they were quite so much.
You got a promotion at work, which meant you officially put talk of children on hold. For now, you said. You needed to bed in to your new job, show your team how good a manager you were. You needed to focus on you for a while.
Sure, I said. We have all the time in the world. Not strictly true, but I had faith we’d get back to our plans in time. This was far too big a thing for me – for both of us – to simply shelve. I’d just have to wait, that was all.
But then slowly, almost imperceptibly, things started to change. Looking back on it now, it was like the sunlight went out of things. Did you feel that too? Or was it you that was drawing the blinds across, casting a shadow over what we had made? Did you decide then you wanted out? Why didn’t you tell me?
We began to argue much more often. You’d get annoyed about the smallest things, accusing me of not putting you first if I met up with friends or stayed later at work. You’d confuse me by saying it was fine if I did something for myself – a day out with friends or even just a long run – and then calling me repeatedly to see what time I’d be home. It was like a test that I couldn’t work out the formula for, let alone the solution: I was bound to fail.
You said more and more often that you were glad it was just the two of us. You talked about travelling, a long trip to see the world, or about moving to the coast to be nearer to your mum. I was unsettled: I loved our flat and hadn’t considered leaving it, or leaving London. I didn’t want to. I didn’t understand why you did.
I invited you to a work event, a big-deal public-facing launch where I’d been asked to speak about my work and present some of my ideas. My career was beginning to take off and I was so glad to be part of a team again. You phoned me minutes before I was due to talk, saying you were lost, could I come out to find you. You were furious when I said I couldn’t, that I was literally about to take to the stage. I started my presentation flustered and upset, and was distracted even further by your arrival midway through, whispering loud apologies as you elbowed your way into the room. It felt like you were trying to undermine me, but when I said that to you, you hit the roof. Not everything was about me. You’d been really upset to have been so late. I was an arsehole for making you feel worse.
I played the role of happy spouse when we were in the company of friends or family, but things were uneasy between us. I became insecure, wondering if you had started to go off me. I was more tentative, less sure of myself. I was needier. You were right about that. I hated it.
And you knew it. You held yourself away from me at home, going to bed early and getting up even earlier, crowding out intimacy with your routine of yoga and swimming and reading alone. You would keep your distance from me when we went out in a group, so that I’d have to seek you out when I wanted to leave, asking for your permission, for your company. You started to say no. I think you took pleasure in it, this new way of controlling me. Keeping me at arm’s length so that I was always chasing, always ready to acquiesce to your wishes.
I should have spoken to someone about what was going wrong. I should have been less private, less proud. But I didn’t tell anyone. I hoped that we’d get back on track, slot back into the way we had always been. I didn’t want anyone to think we weren’t the perfect couple. I didn’t want to shatter the illusion, even if the illusion existed only in my own head.
I grew close to a colleague, who jokingly referred to herself as my work wife. We would share lunches and long conversations over our desks, swapping opinions, finding much to agree on. I liked her a lot, but it hadn’t crossed my mind that it was anything other than a friendship. You were frosty around her when we met you for a drink after work, seeing how close we had become. I was glad about it. It encouraged me to think we were just going through a rough patch. You still had feelings, you still wanted me. We’d be OK.
Out of the blue one night, the colleague leaned in and kissed me on the lips while we were standing at a bar waiting to order. The rest of our team were sitting across the other side of the room, and I remember being worried that they’d seen us. Then worried about you. I never worried that anything would come of it. It was unthinkable that I would cheat on you. It hadn’t occurred to me in all the time we’d been together that I could want to be with anyone else. I couldn’t. From the moment I first had you, I had only ever wanted you.
I thought about telling you, but decided it wasn’t worth it. I didn’t like having this secret, but in unburdening myself of it I’d only upset you. I’d give you a reason to be angry with me. I didn’t think you needed any more of them.
So I spoke to the colleague over lunch the following week. She said she was really sorry, she knew about you, but she had just acted on feeling. I blushed, and told her nothing could ever happen. She heard me out as I talked about us, and how much I valued our marriage, even though it wasn’t going well just now. She was really cool, nodding sympathetically and offering to stay out of my way if I wanted her to. We agreed to just forget the whole thing.
It shook me, though. It made me think about what would happen if you found out. Or if it had gone further. What then? Would I be happier if I fell into someone else’s arms? Would I be doing it to make you take notice? Would you leave me? What would become of me without you?
It was an unbearable idea. I resolved to do everything I could to find what had gone missing between us, to relight our spark. I wanted to make you happy again. I wanted us to have fun, to see the light creep back across our marriage. We were having a hard time, sure, but it wasn’t anything that I couldn’t fix, if I just worked hard enough at it. I just had to make a plan, and keep trying.
After all, I would do anything to keep you. Anything at all.
Hendry, Price LLP, Family Law Practice: transcript of first consultation with Michelle Hendry, solicitor
Date of meeting: 31 October
By email
Thank you for coming in to your appointment with me today, it was a pleasure to meet you. I am very sorry to hear of the circumstances of your marriage. You confirmed in our meeting that you have been in a relationship with J for six years, married for two. You explained that the relationship has broken down, and that you are seeking to divorce J. I explained the grounds on which a divorce may be sought, and we went through each in detail. You said that you were worried that J would contest the divorce, or obstruct the process and that you would remain trapped in a marriage in which you were profoundly unhappy. I explained the process of divorce and went through a basic timeline for the dissolution of a marriage.
For the sake of clarity I have detailed the information we discussed regarding the divorce procedure, your finances and the catalogue of abusive and controlling behaviours you detailed to me regarding J. We arranged to meet again in a week by which time you will have told J of your intention to leave the marriage. I reminded you that no one can be compelled to remain in a relationship, especially one that is making them deeply unhappy and in which they feel in danger.
I reminded you that if J shows violence towards you at any time, and in particular if you feel you are under threat, you must immediately call the police. You must not at any time compromise your emotional and physical safety, and must instead rely on the law to protect you.
I have received payment of £500 for our initial consultation and you agreed to put on file a further £5,000 in order to cover the costs of obtaining a divorce using our services, as well as to enable us to begin negotiations concerning your financial separation from J. I am pleased that you have come to us for help, and look forward to working to achieve a positive outcome for you to enable you to start a new, happier life.
Divorce
You explained that you had been given my details by a colleague, on disclosing to her that you were unhappy in your marriage and you felt unable to leave. Your colleague had been sympathetic, and also greatly concerned. You had set out to her some of the background of your relationship with J, including the ‘whirlwind’ courtship at its beginning, and feeling that you were railroaded from very early on into making decisions that suited J. You gave as an example the decision to move in to J’s flat after only a few months of being together, where J was able to control all the financial decision-making as well as dictate things like décor and choices of fixtures and fittings.
You also said that you had disclosed to your colleague that you felt J was controlling. Your colleague had strongly recommended that you also contact a domestic abuse organisation to seek expert advice. You told her that you didn’t feel that was necessary, in particular because you had decided to seek divorce proceedings and felt that this would be the best course of action by which to remove yourself from a very unhappy marriage.
You told me that you were seeking divorce on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour. We went through a number of those behaviours. I explained that the test of unreasonable behaviour is a subjective not an objective one, i.e. you need only give reasons why you can no longer live with J, not ‘prove’ that J’s actions are in any way objectively intolerable. You gave me the following information for the statement of your case:
that J would become jealous if you showed attention to friends or family members and would view this as being excluded, which was not the case. J would become upset and angry on these occasions
that J was controlling of your home environment and dictated the ways in which you lived as a household, which greatly upset you
that J would make inappropriate comments about your mental health, belittling you in front of friends and family
I explained that the divorce petition would be submitted to court, and a copy sent to J who would then have to respond. I further explained that the divorce petition only dealt with the matter of your marriage contract; the more complicated matter would be the separation of your financial commitments with J. You expressed your concerns that J would contest both the divorce and any attempt to split your financial assets. I explained that in terms of the divorce petition, and because of the subjectivity of the unreasonable behaviour clause, it was extremely unlikely that J would be successful in contesting the divorce. Any legal expert would advise against such an attempt. In terms of financial separation, we agreed to work towards an amicable agreement with J, if possible, but to keep in reserve the option of more direct methods of negotiation including, as a last resort, going to court. I advised that court proceedings were very costly, but that we had an excellent team in-house who would be able to deal with all aspects of such work.
I explained that we would write to J in the first instance to set out the particulars of their unreasonable behaviour. We would seek to reach agreement on these before proceeding further, but in the event that J opposed the information on the petition, or ignored our correspondence, we would nonetheless go ahead with submitting the petition to court. It is possible that J could ignore the court forms that will be sent to your home for completion that would entail agreement to the divorce; even in this case, as long as you can prove J has been served with the necessary paperwork, we will be able to proceed to the next stage. The process of divorce brings a legal end to your marriage, and will in total take around six months to complete.
I explained to you that you could seek a share of the costs of petitioning for divorce from J. You told me you wished to make the process as expedient as possible, and did not think that J would respond positively to a request for costs. Your priority was to finalise proceedings with minimum interaction with J. Your primary wish is to be free from your relationship, and to move on with your life as quickly as possible.
When we write to J we will be clear that you do not seek to claim costs and will confirm that you are prepared to pay both the court fee and the costs of the proceedings provided that they go ahead on an undefended basis. If the proceedings are either defended or there is any delay in returning the relevant documents to the court we will reserve the right to seek costs. I advised you that you would be able to change your mind at a later date about the issue of costs. I further advised you that we could begin the process of petitioning for divorce as soon as you indicated you were ready for us to do so.
You agreed to begin proceedings immediately, and said that you would inform J in person of your plans the following week. You explained that you would not do so immediately as you were going away with J for the weekend with a group of friends and did not wish to ruin the event for everyone, which had been long in the planning. You would inform me by telephone when J had been made aware of your plans.
Finances
I explained to you that it is always better to try to reach a financial settlement by consent, as this saves both time and money. If possible, we will achieve this by negotiating with J either directly or through J’s legal team, once one is appointed. You expressed concern that J would be unable to afford legal advice; we would always recommend that such advice is sought in these matters, which would be to J’s benefit as well as to yours. We will remind J in our first correspondence to seek independent legal advice in respect of division of the matrimonial assets.
In order to begin this process, I explained to you that we must first understand exactly what those matrimonial assets are. This will be arrived at through the mutual disclosure of financial information via Form E. We would seek to reach an agreement with J over a division of these assets. Once this had been agreed, we would submit a consent order to court which would become legally binding at the final stage of your divorce.
You explained to me that you were keen to sell your flat – the family home – as soon as possible so that you could buy a new property in the area. You would be frightened to continue living with J once you had broken the news of your wish to separate, and therefore wanted to put the flat to market immediately. I reminded you that you could not be compelled to remain in a relationship that was making you deeply unhappy, as well as compromising your emotional, psychological and physical safety. If you are in fear for your safety at any point, you should contact me immediately or else, and as well, contact the police.
You told me you had already looked at potential properties for purchase. You said that you felt you would be entitled to a great deal more of the share of the family home than J as you had made the larger financial contribution throughout your marriage, having been the main ‘breadwinner’ for most of the period of your cohabitation.
I explained that since you have made a much larger contribution to the purchase of the matrimonial home, you will clearly need to secure most of the equity in the home when it goes to market. We will make this clear in our correspondence with J. Although the starting point for any financial settlement would always be a 50/50 split, this would be altered based on yours and J’s respective needs and resources, and the contributions you have made over the course of your marriage. We will have the opportunity of discussing this in much more detail as things progress, and we receive disclosure of all the assets. We also need to understand the relative costs of the arrangements you hope to achieve once your marriage has been dissolved, in order that we ensure your standard of living is maintained.
