Moving on from divorce

Not everyone has the courage to rake over the coals of a marriage they once hoped would be ’till death do us part‘. Josephine Brouard meets four women who generously share what they learned from one of the most difficult experiences of their lives.

Natasha Gale, 36

Natasha Gale had been going out with her boyfriend for five years by the time she walked up the aisle with him at the age of 19. By then she already had serious doubts about their prospects.

“I was young and headstrong and thought I knew best,” she explains. “In fact, our marriage was in trouble from day one – my husband had a lot of baggage to deal with; he drank and he was abusive.”

Natasha became pregnant soon after marrying and subsequently had a son who was very ill with coeliac disease (an intestinal intolerance to dietary gluten). “I hardly slept at all for the first year after Michael’s birth. On top of that, my husband was repeatedly abusing me.

He would punch and kick me and tell me I was ‘so unattractive no-one else would have me’. I had an overwhelming sense of failure, but I felt I had made my own bed so now I should lie in it.

“Then on Christmas Day in 1992 – I still remember it so vividly – he’d been drinking again, then he turned violent as usual and trashed our place. I picked up the phone to call the police, and then stopped dead. I remember thinking I didn’t want to be a domestic violence victim and that I was tired of taking care of two children – my son and my husband. I said to myself, ‘I’m better than this’ – and I meant it.”

When Natasha told her husband the following day “just go; it’s time you went”, there must have been something about the way she said it, because her husband left the marital home and separation proceedings began. “I subsequently got a job working for a bank, retrained myself to get better jobs, bought my husband’s share of the house and, to be honest, got my act together. My parents were incredibly supportive – I’d been too frightened to tell them what had been going on, but thankfully I got out of my marriage relatively quickly.”

The next couple of years were rough, by Natasha’s own admission, as she focused on her career and achieving financial independence. “I had no serious relationships – what man would want a 22-year-old with a child and a mortgage? My ex-husband, after a lot of threats and manipulation, eventually disappeared. It was only four years ago he popped up again in Michael’s life. The best thing about all of this, despite all the hard times, is that I took control of my life.

I saw a counsellor and worked through some of my self-esteem issues and finally, four years after the divorce, in 1996, I went overseas alone for the first time – that holiday changed my life!”

After travelling overseas she returned to make a lot of positive changes. She sold her house, moved closer to the city, enrolled in a business management course and began climbing the ladder in a corporate banking environment. She started to feel good about the decisions she was making and opened up sufficiently to start dating again.

Now, 10 years later, she’s remarried to a wonderful man, Brett, whom she considers her best friend. “We went out for nearly eight years before we married 18 months ago. He has two sons from a previous marriage, one of them is the same age as my son, and we have a three-year-old daughter, Grace, so it’s very much a case of ‘yours, mine and ours’. We’ve gone through so much together and still admire and respect each other enormously, so I’m confident – as you can ever be – that, this time, my marriage will go the distance.

“Divorce, frankly, is a terrible, terrible thing and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But if a marriage is destructive – if it’s not good for either of you – my advice is: get out. Do it for the children, do it for yourself and for each other. It’s really easy to focus on the destructive and negative aspects such as blame and self-pity, but you also learn about compassion and humility, and you find a strength that no self-help book will ever give you. I believe I’m a better person for my journey.

“Sometimes it’s hard to admit you made the wrong choice, but if you ask yourself, ‘Is this the best person for me?’ and you cannot honestly answer ‘yes’, then maybe it’s time to move on. I did and I’m glad to say I’ve never looked back. Best of all I’ll never be afraid that I cannot cope on my own because I’ve proved to myself I can.”

 

Photography: Scott Hawkins. Hair & make-up: Jay Jay Rauwenhoff.