Courtesy of Anu Verma
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Anu Verma, a 44-year-old trauma recovery coach in Coventry, England. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I met Rob in 2014 while on vacation with a friend in Ibiza, Spain. At the time, I was getting over a relationship, and Rob was away with his friends for a bachelor party.
As soon as we met, Rob made it very clear he wanted to date me, but at the time, I wasn't looking for a relationship.
When we got back to England, Rob continued to contact me on the phone and visited me periodically. I kept telling him I just wasn't ready. But eventually, his persistence paid off, and we started going out; I told him I wanted to take it slow.
I struggled with trust, communication, and insecurity. There were so many arguments. We could have split up, but instead, we worked through it all my issues little by little — apologizing, understanding what happened, and learning from it.
We got to a good place and felt really happy with one another.
By 2017, we were married and had bought a house. A year later, in 2018, I gave birth to our son Noah.
As soon as I had Noah, my mental health took a downward turn. I became depressed and very anxious. It didn't help that we were living in a remote location, away from my support network.
Feeling like a terrible mother, I decided to quit my job to focus on taking care of Noah. I've always been an independent woman who owns her own money, and suddenly, I wasn't that person anymore. I lost my whole identity.
We decided to move back home to live with my parents, but it didn't help my mental health. In my head, I started making Rob out to be a lazy, irresponsible man. Even though those thoughts weren't logical, they were very true in my head at the time.
Out of the blue, when Rob was visiting his mother, I went online to start the divorce process in June 2019. In the UK, all you have to do is fill in information about why you are applying for a divorce and pay £500 (or about $650). The next day, Rob received the divorce papers in the mail.
He called me, asking where this decision came from, asking why I hadn't spoken to him about it before. My mind was made up, though. He moved in with his mom, and I got my own place for Noah and me.
For a year, I had Noah during the weekdays and Rob would have him on the weekends.
During this year, I spent time in therapy. It was a healing time and I felt in a much better place by the end of it. It was only during therapy it was suggested I had gone through postnatal depression after having Noah.
Rob and I also started dating again. I quickly realized that the grass is not always greener on the other side. Nothing was panning out for me because I kept comparing everyone to Rob.
When the pandemic hit, I asked Rob if he would be willing to come and stay with me on the weekends to see Noah. It was such a lonely time, and I didn't want to be away from Noah. Rob agreed.
Without the pressure of marriage, our friendship strengthened. We danced together in the kitchen with Noah, spent endless hours in the garden, and went for walks when the sun was out.
A year after seeing each other most weekends, I started to notice romantic feelings toward Rob, but I knew he was still traumatized by me. As my feelings got stronger, I knew I had to talk to see if Rob would be open to being in a romantic relationship again. I phoned him, and his first response was essentially, "No way." For six months, I kept bringing it up, and by the summer of 2021, we'd gotten back together.
Just a few months later, we became pregnant with Eva. We bought another house together, this time near my parents.
Despite loving each other and having children together, I won't marry Rob again. I'm a free spirit at heart, and the feeling of being tied down makes me cringe. Just the words "settle down" irritate me.
Being with someone isn't about a marriage certificate or the government classifying us as a couple. True love and connection are how we feel about each other, how we miss each other, and that soul-divine connection.
