Why I suddenly asked my loyal husband of 10 years for a divorce

Infidelity wasn’t the catalyst for me asking my husband for a divorce. Neither of us had been unfaithful.

He wasn’t lazy, either – he worked hard as an architect and provided well for me and our two children who, at the time, were three and two. And he hadn’t let himself go either; John was as attractive and trim as the day we met.

Indeed, I still loved him, profoundly. Yet, after ten years of marriage, I had become absolutely desperate for a separation.

Much to my husband’s confusion, I announced this after a petty argument about laundry.

What I didn’t tell him was the reason behind my decision. That I loathed motherhood so much – the 24/7 responsibility, crushing boredom and utter exhaustion of constantly caring for young children – that I craved the freedom shared custody would bring.

Put simply, I was so desperate to get away from looking after my children and carve out some ‘me time’ that I believed divorce was the quickest and easiest way to accomplish this.

Before you judge me, I loved my children and still do. Yet I had a hatred of being with them – because I despised the daily, grinding reality of being a mother.

I loathed motherhood so much that I craved the freedom shared custody would bring, writes Emma Miles

Like the majority of mums, it was me, and not my husband, who gave up work to stay at home with the children for the first 18 months until they were both in nursery and, when I returned to work part-time as an HR manager, my youngest was nine months old.

I truncated my working hours to fit around nursery drop-off and pick-up times, at which point I would then clock on to my second, far more gruelling job of looking after young children.

I think most women, if they’re honest, would agree with me about how soul-destroying it can be, and how much they hate at the very least certain elements of being a mother.

The endless demands. The agony of sleepless nights. Exploding nappies, always at the most inconvenient of moments. The baby crying about nothing and then the toddler kicking off too, sometimes over something as maddening as the wrong colour sippy cup.

Even small things, like always having to take a massive bag of kit with me, and never being able to leave the house on a whim without packing for every possible scenario, I just hated. Or sitting down for a moment only to hear ‘Mummy, Mummy!’ immediately and incessantly until I felt I might scream.

One morning, about six months before I told my husband I wanted a divorce, I ignored the children shouting at me from their cots because I couldn’t face yet another day of walking around with pureed toddler food encrusted on my clothes.

Eventually, their shouts turned to wailing cries and, after almost an hour, I went up to their rooms.

Seeing them both hold their little arms up to me made me feel incredibly guilty – and at the same time reinforced the weight of responsibility that motherhood brings. If I’m honest, I did wonder at times if something wasn’t quite right with me. There were moments when the exhaustion blurred into something darker, when I’d feel detached or irrationally overwhelmed.

I can see now that I was maybe experiencing something like postnatal depression. But at the time I didn’t have the language, or perhaps the courage, to admit it, even to myself, let alone a doctor.

My resentment of my husband began to skyrocket. It wasn’t that he was unkind or unwilling, but his life carried on in a way mine simply hadn’t. He still had structure, adult conversation, a sense of purpose outside the home.

Even small things, like always having to take a massive bag of kit with me, and never being able to leave the house on a whim without packing for every possible scenario, I just hated

I resented how easily he seemed to be able to step in and out of parenting, while I felt permanently consumed by it. At the same time, I felt guilty for feeling that way because in many respects he was doing exactly what we had agreed.

The idea of divorcing to get away from the children had come to me a few months previously after I had overheard a conversation between a single dad and his children during a pub lunch near our home in Hampshire. I’ll never forget his words: ‘What would you like to do this weekend before I take you back to your mum’s on Sunday night?’

It sparked something within me. I suddenly realised that if I were single, I’d have at least every other weekend alone while John looked after the children. Time when I could catch up on sleep and errands – and maybe even see my friends and have a social life. I’d be energised and therefore a better mother.

It was a tantalising daydream that gathered momentum the more I thought about it while putting yet another load of washing on. I felt like I was in constant perpetual motion, that there was nothing left of myself for me. Some days, I couldn’t even have a shower until John returned home from work, so relentless were the chores.

Needless to say, our sex life had completely vanished. It got so bad I pretended to be ill for a couple of days, lying to John that the GP had prescribed me bed rest. In reality, I never went to the GP. I convinced myself there was nothing to go for, that I was just tired like every other mum.

Ironically, before I gave birth, I’d had a fairytale view of motherhood. I never thought it would be boring or hard.

John and I had talked of starting a family almost from the moment we went on our first date to a local pizzeria in spring 2011, six months after I started work as an HR manager at the architectural consultancy where he was an associate partner.

Both of us were 33. We married two years later – and at the end of that year, 2013, I was pregnant.

My mum gently tried to warn me that it would be a tough ride, just as it had been for her when she had my two brothers and me – there are very small age gaps between us and we’re all close – but that every bit of the tiredness and boredom had been worth it.

I thought the moment I held my baby, nothing else would matter. And, yes, when baby Hattie arrived in 2014, I did love her enormously from the moment I held her. But I found maternity leave incredibly lonely and dull. My friends worked, as did my mother, so I spent my days alone with my new baby.

There were nights when I might get three or four hours of broken sleep at most, which was exhausting. Breastfeeding was also much harder than I had imagined – painful and relentless. Even when I wasn’t feeding, I was thinking about feeding.

By the time Oscar was born, Hattie was walking and talking, and her nap times, which had been my daily reprieves when I could actually shower or even just nip to the loo in peace, had become a thing of the past. My youngest had colic for a while and would cry inconsolably for hours in an evening, while I would pace the house rocking him and trying not to wake his sister.

There were days I cried on and off from morning until evening through sheer exhaustion. But John had no idea how hard it was because I would purposely pull myself together by the time he got home, so as not to trouble him when he was working all hours. That was another problem. Because John got back after seven in the evening, I did the kids’ dinner, bath and bed routine by myself, every single night.

By then I had been battling constant irritation all day: the same cartoon on repeat over and over until I felt like I was losing my mind. Toys being thrown, food smeared on to the carpet, cups tipped over.

I remember once standing at the kitchen island with one child clinging to my leg and the other yelling my name from the living room and thinking I simply couldn’t do it any more.

Occasionally, I would mention to John that I was tired, bored and felt inadequate. He’d reassure me it would get easier when they weren’t so young, but never seemed to really grasp how isolated I felt.

John’s parents lived further away than mine and, because none of our close friends had children, we felt we couldn’t impose on them for babysitting duties when we couldn’t return the favour.

Then I overheard the man in the pub, painting the picture of what appeared to be having it all: child-time and ring-fenced me-time.

There were days I cried on and off from morning until evening through sheer exhaustion

I became obsessed with divorce as an escape from the humdrum. I even thought that, if I didn’t like being single, and when the kids were older and easier, I could just tell John I had made a mistake and wanted him back.

Then, in June 2017, John came home and I picked a fight with him about some laundry he had left on the floor that morning. I told him enough was enough. I wanted a divorce. He was utterly shellshocked, distraught and kept repeating: ‘I don’t understand, isn’t our marriage and family all we’ve ever wanted?’

When I moved into the spare room that night to emphasise my intention to separate, he was incredibly upset.

I felt a mix of emotions – I’d taken the first steps to my imagined freedom and yet I’d never felt so guilty in my life.

John suggested everything to save our marriage: couples’ counselling, wonderful holidays, even moving house. I remember thinking I had to keep my eye on the prize of that free time after the divorce – I was so focused on it, I couldn’t let myself process how upset John was. Even after I had told him I wanted a divorce, nothing about my daily reality changed, though.

I was still breaking up squabbles, trying to fill the days and counting down the hours until it was the children’s bedtime. The fact that nothing had improved only reinforced my belief that leaving was the only way I would ever get a break.

Then came the ultimate reality check: we had our four-bedroom home valued, and realised whatever little profit we would make from its sale would be swallowed up by solicitor fees and taxes, leaving nothing for any kind of deposit on two new properties, each of which would need at least two bedrooms if we were to share custody.

For a couple of months, we attempted to come up with a Plan B to separate, such as the children and me moving in with my mum – but realistically she lived too far away for joint custody to work then. Slowly, as the weeks passed, I knew it wasn’t going to happen.

I remember saying to him one day: ‘Perhaps the fact that we can’t afford to buy two new homes is a sign we’re meant to stay together.’

Eventually, through a series of tearful conversations, I admitted that I wanted us to be together. John was so happy and relieved and promised to ‘do better’.

There were moments during those conversations where he gently suggested I might just be overwhelmed with the children. But I was so focused on my idea of escape that I couldn’t properly hear what he was saying.

In hindsight, I think he understood far more than I gave him credit for.

Looking back, I’m appalled at how manipulative I was. My secret plotting to get some time alone had come at a huge price to his wellbeing.

I never felt tempted to tell John the real reason because, even then, I knew how awful it sounded – like I was a terrible mother and wife – so I kept it to myself. Getting the marriage back on track was easier than it should have been after what I had done.

I moved back into our bedroom and we carried on, almost as if the previous two months hadn’t happened.

Of course, things improved even more once the children started school. Nothing changed, not in any dramatic, structural way. We didn’t hire help and my husband didn’t reduce his hours.

The day-to-day responsibilities largely stayed the same, and I was still the default parent for most things.

What did change, slowly, was his awareness. He became more intentional about giving me small pockets of time to myself, particularly at weekends, and over time he took on more of the bedtime routines when he could.

It wasn’t a complete transformation, but it was enough to take the edge off and, perhaps more importantly, made me feel seen in a way I hadn’t before.

Intimacy was rare because I was still so tired, but we were affectionate with one another, hugging a lot. It was several months before we had sex again; although things had settled a bit at home and between us, I was still often far too tired for it to feel like a priority.

Meanwhile, my husband made more of an effort to take the children out at weekends, giving me a few hours to myself.

Initially, I had to ask him to do this for me but, after a while, he started suggesting it himself when he realised it made a huge difference to my mood.

When Hattie started school, we booked a day’s annual leave from work midweek and went for lunch and a long walk. It was a lovely, blissful reminder of how we had been when we first started dating.

And because I saw the children less, I was happier when it did come to the evenings or weekends.

Today, my children are 11 and 12, and I enjoy their company enormously. Motherhood is never easy but it’s not as mind-numbing as it used to be. John still doesn’t know why I asked for a divorce.

And I’ll never tell him – after all, what kind of mother would break up their marriage just to get some time alone?

Emma Miles is a pseudonym. Names and identifying details have been changed.

As told to Sadie Nicholas