My husband confessed his affair 48 hours before we were due to adopt

Divorce, once rare and stigmatised, has become mainstream – 42 per cent of marriages now end this way, meaning nearly half of us who get married can expect to experience it in our lifetime. Just as every marriage is different, so is every divorce. In this column, divorcees reflect on their life-changing experience. Helped by the benefit of hindsight, they share advice and reflections. Here Morgan* shares how her marriage was impacted by miscarriages and affairs. My husband and I met through mutual friends. Everyone always spoke very highly of him, saying how much fun he was. In some ways, we were quite different. I’m very creative and Simon* had worked in education all his life, but we shared a love of travel and he seemed like a good person. We got together and a year later, out of the blue, he proposed to me. We then got married and began trying for a baby. I was 40 by then so we knew it wouldn’t be easy. We talked about adoption too and agreed we would consider that if I couldn’t conceive. I did fall pregnant but had a miscarriage six weeks in. I was devastated. Then the following year I fell pregnant again but lost the baby before the 12-week scan. One of the nurses in the hospital told me bluntly “you shouldn’t try again”, meaning the risks were too high because of my age. That hurt, but I knew she had a point. Shorts Simon was very upset about the miscarriages too, so when I suggested now going down the adoption route, he agreed. In his work, he’d come across lots of different types of families so knew a fair bit about adoption. We knew there were lots of children out there who needed parents and that we could give them a loving home. I was 44 when we started the process and it involved two years of intensive assessment. We were interviewed separately and together, and attended lots of training weekends. It was like a full interrogation into our personalities, with us trying to prove we were “good enough” to adopt. Finally, the board approved us and our social worker began sending me hundreds of profiles of children who needed adopting. I found it disturbing reading their stories. I was shown pictures of cute babies, then our social worker would say, “her parents were drug addicts, so she may well have some brain issues”. It was heart-breaking. Simon was always fully on board and showed no signs of having any doubts. He really wanted a girl and a boy, and eventually our social worker showed us the details of a three-year-old girl and her 18-month-old brother. I loved the descriptions. The little girl was creative, like me, and she liked to paint and go trampolining. Weirdly, the little boy looked exactly like my husband at that age. Reading about their parents’ difficulties was quite traumatic; I didn’t know anything about that kind of world. The next hurdle was for both sets of social workers to approve the match and I was thrilled when they did. They shared a photo of the children and looking at the picture, I cried tears of joy. I knew they were my children. “Oh my god, we’ve found them!” I thought. The final stage to plan was for us to stay near the children’s foster home for a week, so we could meet them each day and get to know them before going home together the following week. Their foster mum sent me a photo of the girl all excited, reading a book I’d made for her about her new life saying things like: “Mummy and Daddy are going to take you to the seaside.” In mid-August, Simon went away on a two-week work trip. It was an exchange organised with another school that had been set up the year before, so it wasn’t a surprise. Nor did it seem out of character. He did seem quite stressed but when I asked him about it he just said it was because he was busy with work, his dad was unwell and the adoption process was dragging on. So I kept going ahead and getting things: princess bedding for the girl’s room and lots of toys donated to us by people we knew. When Simon came home from his trip, everything was ready. Then on 30 September – two days before we were due to meet the children – he woke me up at 6.30am, knelt beside me in bed and told me, “I don’t want you or the children…” He revealed he “had feelings” for a woman from work and that she’d stayed over at our house while I’d been away. He said it matter-of-factly, as if he was finally getting it off his chest. Still half-asleep, I was in complete shock. I couldn’t take it in, thinking, “How on earth do I deal with this?” I couldn’t believe it, so I asked to see one of their text messages as proof, but he refused. He was busy getting ready for work, so I followed him around the house, asking questions. Then, he left. His parting words to me were: “You would have made a good mother.” It turned out he was rushing to get to work to tell his boss, before the woman’s husband did. The husband had been secretly reading their text messages for six weeks, so he knew about the affair. I knew this woman, Liz*, and Simon had even encouraged me to join her book club. He taught all three of her children too. I’d never once considered her a threat. I called the social worker and she told me I wouldn’t be able to adopt the children by myself. I’d suspected that but hearing it confirmed was devastating. I’d lost my husband and the children. I ended up calling Liz*, asking, “What are you doing with my husband?” but she wouldn’t give me a straight answer. I told her I now couldn’t be a mother, thanks to her. I was so distraught that my sister came to stay for a week. Things spiralled out of control. I then went to stay with a friend and my family told her not to let me out because they were worried what I might do. When I did leave, her husband panicked and called 999. I was placed under a 28-day section in a psychiatric hospital. It was a terrifying place. There was constant shouting and I began having panic attacks even though I was heavily medicated. The doctors diagnosed me with an acute stress reaction, caused by the break-up. I was eventually released. I felt a huge sense of grief about losing the children, which took me a long time to get over. Two years after the split, I went travelling. I fell in love with Bali and ended up building a new life there. I found the lush greenery and beauty of the country very healing. Journalling also helped save me. I wrote about how I regained my strength. I refuse to let what happened define me. Looking back now, I feel lucky that I didn’t end up with someone who could treat his wife like this. If he could do this so flippantly, imagine what else he could have done. Last thing I heard, he was still with Liz, but we haven’t been in touch for years. As for me, I’m happy being single and am excited about the future. *Names have been changed to protect identities