After the divorce rates in China soared following Coronavirus self-isolation last March, many worried that the UK would follow suit, with law firms across the country bracing for a rise in enquiries. Indeed, the UK's top divorce lawyer, Ayesha Vardag, saw a steady stream of women approach her firm Vardags since lockdown. As we head into our third national lockdown, divorce enquiries are booming. British law firm Stewarts logged a 122% increase in enquiries between July and October, compared with the same period last year, while charity Citizen’s Advice has seen a spike in people seeking advice online about ending a relationship. Here, one of those women shares her anonymous account of what it's like to decide to divorce your partner while self-isolating together, plus Ayesha shares her tips to get things back on track if you're struggling in a marriage.
I first contacted Vardags a week into lockdown. My husband and I had been spending less and less time together for years and that distance had become a way of dealing with what had gone wrong in our relationship. I found him angry and controlling, but he was out at work such a lot I could live with it. While he pursued his high-flying career, I was left at home to look after our children, dedicating any spare moment to my own freelance job. We didn’t talk any more. When we did, it was about basic things like what I was cooking for dinner. We were like strangers, but it kept his bad temper at bay.
But when we went into lockdown, it all started to change. Suddenly I was forced to be with him all the time. He started being able to control everything I was doing – and everything the children and I did annoyed him. He hated how loudly I talked; he hated the fact that the boys made noises while they were chewing at the dinner table; he hated it when they dropped a fork. One time he flew into a rage when he felt our seven-year-old son had banged a glass down on the table too loudly, and he screamed at him, grabbed the glass and banged it on the table so hard that it broke, terrifying the boys and me.
He hated me eating more than usual in lockdown and not being quite as skinny as he expected me to be. He saw a photo on Facebook of me when I was 20 and said, “that was back then when you were hot”. I said it was hard to keep that up after having two of his children and he said, “tell that to Gwyneth Paltrow”. I started to feel ugly and ashamed of my body. I started to speak less – more quietly, even to the children – because he made me feel loud and embarrassing. I made myself smaller and smaller. I longed to get away from him and eventually, it was all could think about.
Having made the mental leap to explore escape routes, the practical realities were the next obstacle. In a three-bedroom flat in London, with all of us around each other all day, just trying to contact a divorce lawyer was really hard. I read on the internet that I could reach Vardags via Whatsapp so that's how I started talking to my lawyer – while my husband and I were sitting together in the evenings watching TV, I’d be typing away to my lawyer on my phone under cover of chatting on social media.
I fixed up my first call with my lawyer for when I was going to the supermarket. It felt so secretive, almost naughty, like having an affair. I felt massively guilty about talking to anyone about my unhappiness in the marriage or about potentially wanting to get out of it. But at the same time it was such a relief. Before, I had felt incredibly alone, but now someone was taking an interest in my situation, supporting me and helping me to understand that I didn’t deserve to feel like his and that it wasn’t all my fault. For the first time in years, I was able to share the pain and increasing sense of hopelessness; to assess how I was living and, more importantly, how I wanted my children to live in the future.
One consequence of the lockdown, however, made me waver. With the almost complete shutdown of the economy, my freelance job as a marketing copywriter, my only outlet, was suddenly at risk. The bottom had dropped out of my professional world – my clients just weren’t spending the money and my commissions stopped coming. The removal of this little bit of financial independence made me question my new resolve. I had always been financially vulnerable – my husband was the major earner and he controlled our few ISAs, our mortgage and so on. He transferred money each month into a joint account for housekeeping, and I had to ask for anything beyond the usual groceries. With the removal of my independent earnings, this vulnerability increased.
My lawyers explained I was entitled to a broadly equal share of everything my husband I built up during the marriage, even though he was earning most of it and I was making us a home, and they organised funding to pay for my divorce costs until I could get my settlement. Knowing that I can go out of this with my fair share of what I have spent ten years building, and can give my children a decent home and quality of life without having to live with him, feels almost miraculous.
But I don’t want to try to force him out of our home in the middle of a lockdown, yet equally I don’t want to carry on living with him after launching a divorce, in such a compressed space.
In order to avoid just asking him to leave, my lawyer and I have been constructing a concrete plan we can offer my husband, which will enable us to live apart as we undertake the process of separating our lives properly. Services like Airbnb aren't really an option at the moment so we’re looking at rental properties or even getting a knockdown deal on a long-term hotel stay. At worst, we wait until lockdown is over, but I can’t carry on too long like this.
My divorce petition has been drafted and filed at court so we’re ready to go as soon as I give the green light on telling my husband. Dealing with the practical arrangements is challenging, but at least I’m not doing it alone. I know we’re going to work out a plan that gets me out of this, so I can go back to being the positive, confident, happy person I used to be – and that I need to be again, for my children and for myself.
These are challenging times for all relationships. Here, Ayesha shares her advice for making sure lockdown strengthens you as a couple, rather than forces you apart...
Open up
This is the time to let your partner in. Don’t shut down, be passive aggressive or put on a front at the end of a tiring day. Tell your partner the truth about what’s worrying you, so they can share it with you, support you and understand your stress. They may be worried too, but understanding the threats is so much better than just knowing they’re out there. Simply respecting them enough to value their opinion and allowing yourself to be vulnerable can completely shift the dynamic of a relationship. And the relief of not carrying everything alone can be immense.Be positive
At the same time as being honest with your partner, make yourself be positive for those around you. Don’t revel in every next bit of negative news. Don’t become a harbinger of doom and gloom. People are attracted to positivity. They need that to lean on; to draw strength from. Your steady optimism will affect everyone in your family and make it a happy home. Putting aside the selfishness that makes us wallow in negativity, being absolutely determined to find the happiness in everything – that is what will bring laughter and fun back into your family's lives.Carve out your roles
You may be working, home-schooling and running a household without any help. Agree a plan for how you’re all going to divide up your responsibilities and stick to it. This avoids nagging, complaining, shirking and freeloading. Approach the tasks in hand like a management project and be respectful and realistic about how you’re going to share them. Including the kids so they feel invested in the plan you’ve made together will reduce aggro.Divide up your space
If you can, agree who’s going to be where in your home, especially where your own space is concerned. Knowing you have somewhere quiet where you can shut the door at least at certain times avoids that horrible feeling of being completely invaded.Avoid excessive drinking
It's trite to say, 'don’t be abusive to your partner; don’t take abuse from your partner'. But already in lockdown, we as a firm are having a lot more domestic violence calls. It’s a very real threat and the truth is, domestic abuse happens much less when people aren’t drinking. So if your family has alcohol issues, then now is a good time to cut down. Shaking alcohol dependency can totally transform relationships. You might go through a transition period of depression and/ or irritability, but when you come out of that, you'll likely find you’re back to being yourself.Be the person your partner fell in love with
Things change over the course of a long relationship. You work hard for the family and other pursuits slide. You stop being surprising or impressive to each other. Bizarrely, this is a great time to get that back. Find your passions again; just being interested in something makes you more interesting. Of course, it’s hard to do that with demanding children, but these are the times to drive your maximum positive energy, to make a structure, to make fun, to connect with each other. Bond over a silly board game, try an online salsa class as a family, plan an adventurous holiday for when this is all over.Remember to have sex
It sounds obvious, but I can tell you that 'not having sex anymore' is the common thread in most of the divorces I see. People become too busy, too tired, too disappointed and resentful, too bored of each other, and they just can’t be bothered any more. They may remain committed to the project of the marriage, but they lose their intimate connection with the person they’re sharing it with. Yes, a relationship is more than sex, but sex is like a bonding agent, that generates hormones that make us love each other, that breaks tension and brings us closer together.Get yourself a good lawyer
And if you’ve thought everything through and genuinely tried to find ways to fix your relationship and be happy, but you think you might be nearing the end of the road, then reach out, get yourself a damned good lawyer, and figure out your options, so you can build a more positive future.
Ayesha Vardag
