I suffered a blindside divorce – here’s how I moved on

Claire Macklin, 53, is a divorce coach living in Wiltshire. After 14 years together and seven years married, her first husband suddenly announced that he was leaving her and the kids. Here, she talks about how she slowly built herself back up, got remarried and divorced her second husband. I remember every detail of my husband leaving me. It was 25 March 2008, a Tuesday night, and we were halfway through an episode of Holby City. My husband had come home from work; he’d made dinner, and we’d eaten, put the kids to bed (who were one and three at the time) and sat down on the sofa. He was really quiet, which was unusual, so I asked him if he was alright. He just said: “Not really, I’ve been seeing someone else.“ That same afternoon I’d been to the gym and was talking to a friend of mine about what a great dad he was and how happy we were. For me, it felt like it came completely out of nowhere. I remember the evening in bits after that. I don’t know how I got from seated to standing, but I remember sliding down the wall, collapsing, and thinking, “Oh my god, this doesn’t just happen in movies.” I ended up in the foetal position at the bottom thinking: “F**k, what am I going to do?” Our children were so small, and I’d gone back to work, but only two days a week, at a law firm. I decided to get out of the house because he couldn’t leave if I wasn’t there – the children were asleep upstairs. I went to my neighbours; I was crying and white as a sheet (they later said I looked like someone had died). I stayed there a few hours, then went home. He’d packed a bag, and when I went in the house, he left. And that was that. I was absolutely blindsided. Shorts I remember phoning his sister and she didn’t know anything about it either. I managed to get hold of him the next day but he never did come back to live at home with me. We did a few sessions of counselling but early on he said it was a permanent thing, so that was that. I still don’t really know why it happened other than obviously he wasn’t happy. All I know is how I got through it. The first thing that really lifted me was my support network: my neighbour phoned my mum, who came in the middle of the night with my brother. My lovely friends rallied around and gave me loads of support. My work was fantastic – I was meant to be working the day after and I obviously wasn’t capable, so I phoned in the morning and explained what happened and they were brilliant. I decided early on that I was going to let myself really feel this for three months before I started trying to pick myself back up. I do not remember much about those months, but I created some mantras that I wanted to guide me. One was “dignity at all times”, which I imagined plastered across my forehead. I knew I didn’t want it to define me in a negative way. And the other was “swim, not sink”. I started to look for things that were upsides – even the tiniest things. I realised I could eat with the children and not have to cook again when he got home. My ex-husband really didn’t like ginger but I love it, and now I could cook with it as much as I want. Small things. I focused on what I could control in the situation. I couldn’t control what he was doing, who he was spending time with, or whether he introduced his new girlfriend to the children. But I could wear really nice clothes whenever I handed over the kids. I could control how I responded when something he said made me really angry or upset. I could control what the kids and I did on a daily basis: who we spent time with, where we went. When the children were with him, I started visiting friends who lived in other parts of the country that I hadn’t seen for a while. I started to learn how to dance. I began to do things that would help me take back control over my own life as a person, not just as a mother and caregiver. Within a year, people were asking me how I’d got through it so well. How you tell the story of what happened to you makes such a difference to how people respond to you. I could say “my husband left one night and it was awful, I struggled to cope” and people are then very sympathetic. But within six months, I was telling people: “There are upsides to this. I’ve learned how to mow the lawn, I can cook with ginger, I can make decisions about parenting by myself.” In response, people are telling you that you’ve coped really well and ultimately you start to believe it. There was, of course, anger there. But I knew from early on where I wanted the relationship with my ex-husband to end up. We both agreed that we absolutely did not want our children to suffer – I knew I wanted us all to be able to attend major events and not be a problem. So I reminded myself of that when I felt really angry. It helped me slow down and think about the long run. We just had my oldest son’s graduation; we were both there with our new partners and it was absolutely fine. Being blindsided taught me that I can get through anything. I even pivoted my career because of it – I was made redundant from the law firm in 2017 and decided to start training as a divorce coach.But the one thing that remained broken was my self-esteem. When you’re left so suddenly, and you don’t really know why, it shatters your self-esteem into a million pieces. Within a year of my ex leaving, I was dating again, which was too soon. Looking back, the impact that the first divorce had on me was that I felt really under-confident in myself and I think I was very vulnerable at that point. I was looking for people to choose me rather than looking at what I wanted and choosing them. The pain of the betrayal sits in your chest like a little kernel and impacts you for a long time, longer than you think. You need to go through the process of working out who you are, what’s really important to you, what your values are, who the kind of people you want to spend your time with are, and believing in your own value. To have anyone tell you that you were great or lovely or pretty or clever was such a lovely ego boost that it certainly led me into a relationship that I probably shouldn’t have been in. That first relationship post-divorce wasn’t one where we were well suited or that made me happy. I also don’t think I spent enough time by myself between the end of that first relationship after divorce and meeting my second husband. I met my second husband in 2014 and we got married in 2016. I think that I liked the concept of being married, of being somebody’s important person. I also wanted to have a male role model around the house for the children. Ironically, it was my second husband who fell out with the children and that was one of the main reasons we split up. We were together when I was made redundant and started training, maybe ironically, to be a divorce coach. But by 2021, I knew that I wasn’t happy and I knew that the children weren’t particularly happy. I was supporting people through the process of their own divorces while I was in a marriage that I wasn’t happy in myself. It just didn’t feel right. Knowing how much divorce can hurt, I was really concerned about bringing it up with my second husband. That’s why I was really pro us trying to talk it through in counselling. It wasn’t a decision that I rushed into after an argument one day – it was one taken quite slowly over time and I wanted to be kind and respectful about it. I don’t know whether he would see it as having been blindsided; he might do. I realise now that nobody’s ever going to see you asking for divorce as kind. His relationship with the children had started to break down and I’d always described me and the children as a package: if I ever felt I needed to choose between him and the children, I would always choose them. By the end, I felt that I was in the position where I had to choose. The divorce went through quickly; there was no conflict and we are no longer in contact. I spent quite a lot of time afterwards having some coaching myself, talking through what was really important to me, what my values were, how I wanted to live my life. So by the time I met my current partner, in 2023, I was really sure about who I was. I went into dating this time very much knowing who I was and what I was looking for (we have only just started living together). The kind of person I wanted to meet had to be pretty special. I was choosing this time, instead of waiting to be chosen. I don’t actually have any regrets because I think it has all unfolded as it should have. It’s taken me to where I am now. And I’m in a really fantastic place in my life where everything feels very aligned. I’m doing work that’s important and helping people through a time that can be devastating. My oldest just graduated and the younger one is off on his travels at the moment. I have a lovely partner with whom I’m absolutely myself. I am comfortable, relaxed, not walking on eggshells around him. I can just be who I am and it’s lovely. So actually, life feels very settled, very content. Without all those things I’ve been through, if I’d just stayed married to my first ex-husband, I don’t think I’d be the person I am now at all. I’m very grateful, really.