Why I turned a walkaway spouse: A row over stack the dishwasher ended my 20-year marriage. Like so many my age, I felt I deserved extra. But nothing may have ready me for the shock of what got here subsequent…

It was the dishwasher that finally pushed me over the edge. After dinner one Tuesday night, I could feel my husband’s eyes boring into my back as I shoved plates, glasses and cutlery into it, piling them haphazardly on top of one another.

He loaded it with the care and precision of a Scandinavian architect, with not a single teaspoon out of place. By contrast, I loaded it like a raccoon on drugs.

I knew he found it infuriating and once I’d finished cramming it to the brim, I slammed the door shut and spun around defiantly, willing him to say something.

Suddenly, it hit me. I was becoming petty and passive aggressive, deliberately trying to goad him into confrontations. At 49 and a mother of three, the unhappiness I felt in our 20-year marriage was seeping out and turning me into someone mean-spirited, someone I didn’t want to be.

There were no screaming rows or devastating betrayals. We shared three wonderful children, our daughter, 19, and two boys aged 17 and 15, a beautiful house in leafy Kent and a tight-knit group of mutual friends.

But, mundane as it was, the dishwasher incident symbolised something much bigger. After so long together, our partnership was functional rather than romantic – like flatmates, in fact – and I wanted more.

And while I wouldn’t go quite as far as to say that was the moment our marriage ended, it was the turning point I always come back to when I explain why I had to leave. I’m one of a growing army of ‘walkaway wives’, a term coined to describe the flood of women aged 45-65 calling time on their marriages.

A landmark report produced by Noon, an online community of midlife women, found that almost half of divorces are now instigated by women in midlife, with 56 per cent saying they would end a marriage because they were unhappy.

A third of ‘walkaway wives’ said that in the aftermath of their divorce, they felt ‘happier than they had ever been’ – and that’s exactly how I feel about ending my marriage in 2022. Despite the difficult, painful moments it caused, and the countless times I’ve been accused of being selfish – often, sadly, by other women – I’ve never regretted it for a moment.

If those of us now in midlife are statistically likely to live to our nineties or beyond, we’re only halfway through the journey. There’s so much life ahead of us – why should we live it unhappily, when we know there’s another version that would suit us so much better?

I salute those who evolve with their partner and are as compatible decades down the line as they were at the start. But I know there are many others like my ex and I, whose evolution takes them down separate paths, until 80 per cent happy becomes 70, then 60, then dwindles even further. I believe with every fibre of my being that women shouldn’t have to settle.

Of course, in the early days of our relationship, the picture looked very different.

We met when we were both 28 and pouring all our energy into our thriving careers, his as a City lawyer and mine as a headhunter. He was kind and funny, the man I’d always been looking for. He ticked all the boxes: he would be a good husband, father and life companion. I had no doubt we’d go the distance.

I now see just how young that is to choose the person you intend to grow old with, but back then, all of our friends were settling down, so we did too. We had a big Hampshire wedding in 2003 and our children followed.

I struggled when they were little. I realised my career in recruitment wasn’t compatible with childcare, so I quit my job and went freelance while my husband continued to work long hours in London.

Juggling park trips and refereeing sibling squabbles with employment contract negotiations at work was tough, as many working mothers know. And the fact I was doing the majority of the childcare set up a power imbalance with my husband which quietly began to shape how we related to each other.

One of our sons is autistic and has ADHD, which added another layer of stress and emotional labour. The judgment and ignorance we faced from other people could be heartbreaking – we’d never be invited to birthday parties, for instance – and because I was the one at home most, navigating it often fell to me. When I was 36 and the children were four, two and one, it all became too much and I had a nervous breakdown. I was so low I didn’t want to get out of bed.

After one session with a private psychiatrist I was diagnosed with anxiety caused by ‘loss of identity’ and prescribed a course of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which gave me much-needed coping mechanisms. It took me 12 months to fully recover.

Yes, we tried. We still arranged date nights, theatre trips, dinners and occasional weekends away, but in reality, over the following years the differences between us were growing increasingly stark.

I’m expressive and reactive by nature; I wear my heart on my sleeve and can lose my cool at times, although the storm never lasts long. He is far more contained – in hindsight, I think my emotional outbursts baffled him.

At 40, as the fog began to lift from those intense early years of childrearing, I started thinking about my career and what I really wanted to achieve. I’d always loved fashion, helping to style family and friends for events, and began sharing my tips for real women on a blog, Does My Bum Look 40 in This?

It gave me the creative outlet I craved and an income of my own, the importance of which my single mother had drummed into me. As my self-confidence grew, I admit I lost focus on my marriage. I didn’t address the nagging feelings that were building inside me.

I remember one family holiday, walking on a perfect, white-sand beach, thinking: ‘I should be the happiest woman in the world, because I’ve got everything I could ever want – but I’m not.’ It was a profoundly lonely sensation.

During lockdown, he and the children loved being housebound, while I felt like a caged animal. That’s when the domestic niggles intensified.

The dishwasher incident was one lightbulb moment, but there were more: a row over a bag of the children’s clothes, which he didn’t realise were old because he didn’t know what size the children wore, was another which seemed to underline the disparity of our roles.

I was snappy and irritable, and it’s an awful feeling watching someone suffer when you know it’s your fault. But neither of us deserved to spend the next 30 or 40 years making a monumental effort to maintain the veneer.

We still loved one another in some ways, but it was far from the head-over-heels kind I longed for. I thought, isn’t there more than this?

He wasn’t surprised when we finally had the conversation, and admitted he’d been feeling the same way. ‘I’m making you miserable,’ I said. ‘Both of us deserve the chance to be really happy.’

We both come from ‘broken homes’ – my parents split when I was 11 – and we’d never wanted that for ourselves. But we hoped that by ending our marriage before it turned nasty, we could challenge the narrative that it was a failure.

Perhaps we could eventually find a new way to be a family, just one that looked a bit different and worked better for us.

We waited until the two eldest children had finished their A-levels and GCSEs to tell them, trying to spend as little time in the house together in the meantime.

And so in June 2023 I made the leap, moving to a rented place in London, and I’ve since moved to Suffolk, where we had second home.

I recognise that I’m fortunate to be financially independent – my life as a fashion influencer has gone from strength to strength and led to collaborations with John Lewis and Marks & Spencer.

Throughout, minimising the impact on our children was at the forefront of both our minds. I was judged very harshly, even by people I’d counted as friends, for ‘leaving them’, despite the fact one was at university and another at boarding school, leaving only one still living at home with my husband in Kent. I was ‘leaving’ my husband, not them – they will always be the most important people in my life.

The most disappointing aspect of the entire experience has been the nasty comments from other women, sometimes – though not always – dressed up as faux-concern for my family’s welfare. ‘You’re so brave!’ they’ll say, adding: ‘I could never do that.’

These comments have been flung at me so often, I can only conclude my separation forced them to look more closely at their own relationship, and what they saw made them uncomfortable. Leaving Kent, and some of those ‘friendships’, was a relief.

I’m not going to pretend it’s all been plain sailing. One of our children found it more challenging than the others, and it was awful to think I might have caused them unhappiness.

Although I knew it made sense for them to remain in the stability of the home they grew up in, I’d go home alone after seeing them and cry myself to sleep because I missed them so much.

Even in those lowest moments, though, I knew it was for the best. As mums, we will always feel guilty about our children, but I knew staying together for their sake wasn’t the right path.

We might think we’re masking our feelings, but children are perceptive, and I didn’t want our marriage to be the model for their own future relationships. I wanted to show them that, if something in their life isn’t right, they can take control and change it. It’s never too late.

It took time, and it was hard, but I’m delighted to be able to say that, more than three years on, it’s worked out better than I could have hoped.

I’m 53 now, I’ve met someone else and I am happier than I ever thought possible. My new partner embraces every aspect of me; he isn’t remotely fazed by my emotions and, like me, he’s passionate and values physical connection.

We’re much more similar characters than my former husband and I ever were. We’re also older and know ourselves better, and we’re determined not to repeat previous mistakes.

My ex now says me leaving was the best thing I could ever have done. He also has a new partner, who’s lovely, and at our daughter’s 21st birthday party last year, both partners and even my former mother-in-law were there celebrating with us.

Both of our new partners get on so well with our children.

We’ve been careful to put the children first, never using them as a weapon or arguing over where they’ll spend the holidays.

Now 21, 19 and 17, they spent Christmas Day with their dad last year, and that was fine by me – it’s just a day after all. They know I’ll drop anything for them, any time.

In fact, now they’ve adjusted to the change, my relationship with them is stronger than ever. All three of them have said they can see how much happier both of their parents are, and that the people we’re with now are the right people, which means everything to me.

Seeing them thriving and knowing that they understand why I left makes it all worthwhile.

A 20-year marriage isn’t a failure – we’re amicable and we share three incredible children. I’d call it a massive achievement.

We walkaway wives don’t need your condolences or bitchy judgments, thanks – we’re just starting a new chapter of our lives and we’re excited about seeing it unfold.

As told to POLLY DUNBAR