The letter continued. “[Toby] has instructed us that your marriage has broken down and there is no likelihood of reconciliation.” Various points about the children and shared property followed,plus a line about the family home she was sitting in. Unless she wanted to keep it as part of the settlement,the letter suggested,it should be sold. “I was looking at my emails and,among ‘Remember the cupcakes for school bake day’ and some work stuff,there it was:the end of my marriage,” she says.
Rebecca is one of the sharpest people you’re likely to meet. She’s the one you call in a crisis:level-headed,competent,a skilled businesswoman. Butthis. This blindsided her. Between them were two kids,eight and 12,and a 26-year relationship. Nothing would be the same again.
It soon became clear why Toby was leaving:he was having an affair with a man and wanted to be with him. A few weeks later,Rebecca told her friend,Alice,the story while they were walking around Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens.
Alice offered no judgment. She knew about husband problems. Her own husband,Chris,had recently suffered a heart attack,collapsing on the porch after a Sunday surf. He was 44. One stent went in,another four were to come,but that passing glimpse of death changed him. He became an obsessive exerciser;first marathons,then triathlons. He also became,at times,spectacularly unreasonable,melting down about things like the mess of the utensil drawer which,Alice calmly pointed out,had been in disarray for at least 20 years. “He went mad,” she says.
Alice’s superpower is bringing people together. One morning,not long after her walk with Rebecca,she pulled up at her kids’ school with a boot-load of meals for Harriet,another mother with kids there. Alice didn’t know Harriet well,but knew her husband had been diagnosed with lymphoma and that they had three kids under 10.
Harriet remembers that morning. As she navigated a number of strains on her marriage,only one of which was her husband’s cancer,this was of those magical days when a life-changing friendship began. “Alice said,‘Come with me,’ and she opened up my boot and transferred five meals,” says Harriet,who describes her husband’s diagnosis as the death knell of their marriage,though he would go on to survive the cancer. Around this time,Nicole,another mother,a corporate high-flyer,was struggling with a terminal cancer diagnosis for her husband,a much-loved school dad called Jonno.
At this point,this disparate group of women – who knew each other through Alice and the school – were dealing with,as Harriet puts it,“a heart attack,two cancers and a spicy midlife crisis”. Something needed to be done. “I said,‘These husbands are all very unsatisfactory’,” recalls Alice,with a wry chuckle. “‘We need to start a club.’ ”
And so they did.
The Unsatisfactory Husbands Club started meeting regularly for dinner. Each time,its members would decide who’d topped the unsatisfactory husbands’ leaderboard that week. “We didn’t have a high bar,” says Alice. “We didn’t need perfect husbands. We just needed satisfactory husbands.”
That was in 2012. Twelve years later,the club still meets,though only one of the wives – Alice – still has her husband.
In 2017,they admitted into membership the sole man,a geologist called Jeremy,so technically the club is now called the Unsatisfactory Spouses Club,though UHC remains the label on their WhatsApp chat. Jeremy,a school dad,lost his wife to breast cancer in 2016. In her final months,he discovered she’d been cheating on him for years. “At the funeral,I was both grieving and
resentful,” he says. “And it was really hard to hide the latter emotion because everyone thought the world of her.” He thought the world of her,too. Life is complex.
This is a story,then,about three women – Rebecca,Harriet and Alice – and one man,Jeremy,told very firmly from their points of view (Nicole chose not to be interviewed). It is not about their spouses,who would no doubt have different recollections of what had happened in their marriages and why. It is a story about a group of privileged people,with kids at private schools,whose relationship losses did not financially imperil them. But this did not cushion them emotionally against death. Or betrayal. Or the slings and arrows and weighty responsibilities of midlife. It did not help them wrestle with the gulf between their expectations of happily-ever-after and the cold-slap reality of life. This is a narrow story,then,that’s also about the big things in life:how you survive when your world tilts fundamentally off its axis. And the friends who help you find your balance again.
Even now,Rebecca describes her marriage as a mostly great partnership. Much of it fun,even. Toby was a Peter Pan type who would happily dance with the 70-year-olds at social events. They got together when they were “half kids”,he 20,she 21. Her mother had warned Rebecca that a man is not a plan,and Rebecca knew she’d always work in the family’s logistics business. And that’s what she did. Along with having two children.
We’re sitting in Rebecca’s modern,airy,open-plan living space. Short,with brown eyes and freckles,the 57-year-old is looking particularly professional today in a pair of camel pants and a white and green shirt. Her brain goes a million miles an hour so I’m trying to slow her down,get her to reflect. I ask what she’d wanted her marriage to be. “I thought that there would be an equality in the relationship,with two people who support each other and really wanted to enjoy our kids and what we could do together and the places we could go.”
When they had kids,they shared parenting more evenly than many couples;she puts it at a 60/40 split. Toby would organise the holidays,change late-night nappies,help with bedtime and kid-ferrying. She carried most of the organisational burden:medical appointments,birthday presents,extracurricular activities. She rang around for childcare. She stayed home when the kids were sick. She ran the wall calendar that noted what each child had to take to school. Then,as the only female among her male siblings,she carried most of the burden when her mother got Alzheimer’s. She was sandwiched. She often found herself hanging out the washing at 11pm.
All members of the club met when they were young — early marriage is a risk factor for divorce.Illustration:Ollie Towning
She sensed Toby wasn’t at ease with her earning more money than he did. (Toby was also in the family business,but it didn’t belong to his family.) She doesn’t offer these reflections as the reasons her husband walked out. She just thinks they took a toll. “You don’t think of that stuff consuming a marriage some of the time,but it does.”
Rebecca’s 20-year-old daughter emerges,off to university. “Are you taking your bag? Have a great day! Are you home for dinner?” Rebecca’s questions,bold and cheery,are met with the mumbled,low-key replies of a living-at-home fledgling adult.
Rebecca can only speculate about the exact circumstances around her husband’s abrupt departure (in the past 12 years,she’s barely spoken to Toby,who is still with the same man). She noticed no hints that he might be interested in men. “Peoplealways want to ask that.” From her perspective,he had a midlife crisis,possibly sparked by the death of his mother and a career crossroads. The hurtful thing was the way he left,ending their marriage via email. If only he’d come to her,said he was questioning his sexuality. If only he’d said he wanted to arrive at a place of post-separation peace,like sitting amicably together at school speech night. They could have done that. Instead,he was angry and blamed her. “I wasn’t evil or mean or nasty. I was just competent and prioritised,making sure that our kids’ home life was sorted and under control.”
She wonders how he could go from being an involved father to having no plan to accommodate the kids in his new place. (One child has weekly dinners with him,the other sees him infrequently.) No plan! Rebecca would never be without a plan. “It’s like dealing with someone who has died,” she says.
‘He would get up at 5am and go jogging for three hours. He was just manic.’
Alice
I’m sitting at Alice’s large kitchen table,which can accommodate about 12. This is her home’s loving heart:where the family gathers,where she hosts friends for lunch. Today,the kitchen smells of fresh bread,as several loaves cool on wire racks. She’s made one for me. This is very Alice:generous,problem-solving,smart. She’s written tonight’s dinner in yellow chalk on a small blackboard:fish and potatoes (“I’m a very good housewife”). On the window ledge are portraits of her drawn by the children. The fridge door is a gallery of selfies of her travelling around Spain with unsatisfactory husband Chris,a banker who,it must be noted,disputes this status and maintains Alice should be evicted from the club.
A 59-year-old art curator,Alice has spent much of the past 15 years looking after their five children. Just before Chris had his heart attack,their eldest left to study overseas. The first child leaving the nest hit Alice so hard that one day she found herself in her GP’s office,crying uncontrollably. We can send you to see someone,the doctor said,or you can just get a dog. She filed this advice away.
After the heart attack,it was like Alice suddenly had a sixth child. Chris insisted the family go on an overseas holiday,which,in his on-edge state,was a disaster. “Everything about it was awful,” she says. “He would get up at 5am and go jogging for three hours. He was just manic.” He started to instruct Alice,a wonderful cook,about his new diet. This was fair enough,he needed better eating habits. But the instructions often took on dictatorial overtones. “One night,he said there must always be a plate of greens on the table. So the family now has a joke about the compulsory plate of greens.”
‘If you’re late,I’m not going to ring you,I’ll just know and will continue my life. Also,I’m getting a dog.’
Alice
She did everything to empathise and be sensitive. She knew it was hard for him,swallowing handfuls of tablets daily,coming to terms with his mortality. But there came a breaking point. And it happened on date night. “I’m always,you know,constantly saving my marriage,” she says,sliding her brown,shoulder-length hair behind her ear. Alice had organised a movie date and a babysitter,but Chris wanted a run just beforehand. She said fine,be back at 6pm. When it ticked past 6.20pm,the time they had to leave for the movie,she rang him. He was many suburbs away – and returned at 7.30pm. “By this time,I know the babysitter’s entire life history. I’ve made her dinner,given her a foot massage,” she jokes.
Alice set off on a walk,furious. Chris trailed behind. Eventually,he announced he was hungry. They sat down at dinner. “I am going to explain some things to you,” Alice began. “You are no longer in charge. I am now in charge. And this is what is going to happen. I am going to have an app on my phone so I know where you are. If you’re late,I’m not going to ring you,I’ll just know and will continue my life. Also,I’m getting a dog. And the dog will be coming inside the house.” And so it came to pass. “I had just sucked it up and been so good. And then I was justdone.”
“I thought that it was his turn,and I would support him,” says Harriet,who put her career on hold to raise three children. “And then it would be my turn. But that isn’t how it played out at all.”Getty Images
As we drink chai,I ask Alice about her expectations of marriage. “Oh,Jesus,” she says. Like Rebecca and Toby,Chris and Alice married young after meeting at university. She remembers one of their dates in their first year together. It was a comedy gig. Chris had invited a woman along after meeting her on campus earlier that day. Alice was horrified:“I told him that she would have thought it was a date.” But he thought he was being friendly. Alice had always wanted to be married,and she really wanted to be married to Chris. “I think for me,[marriage] just made me feel safe – which is really stupid. But I just feel like that’s my spot in the world. My marriage is very important to me.”
Even though Chris was,at times,unbearable after his heart attack,Alice knew she’d never leave. “I tell him that the only way he is getting out of here is dying.” I offer gently that he’s not been doing a bad job of that:first the heart attack;then,this year,a near-fatal bike accident. For days,it was unclear if his neck was broken. Alice sat by his bedside,strategising how to make their house wheelchair-friendly. “It was terrifying.” When she talks about the bike accident,you can see,plainly,how much Alice loves Chris. The thought of nearly losing him summons tears.
She’s always been obsessed with him,she says,ever since they first met. “I just worshipped him. I just loved him. I still do. I would still say that I don’t believe he’s my husband.”
I find this hard to understand. Alice is the most wonderful person – whywouldn’t Chris be her husband? “Because I just think he’s amazing. I think he’s,like,the most handsome man in the world … And for all of his craziness,he is absolutely my cheerleader. He would tell you I could do anything,and I’m amazing. Like,he totally believes that. And I believe the same thing about him.”
The Unsatisfactory Husbands Club membersloved Harriet’s ex-husband,Adam. “Just fabulous,” says Alice. “Shockingly intelligent,” adds Rebecca. Universally regarded as charismatic and good-looking,Adam is a talented entrepreneur. He was only deemed unsatisfactory because he had lymphoma,which,of course,was not his fault. Later,he was unsatisfactory in many other ways,yet somehow he remained a popular,albeit unsatisfactory,husband.
Sitting at her marble kitchen bench,near floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook a blue rectangle of pool,Harriet,50,rolls her eyes when I mention the UHC members’ high regard for her ex. “I liked him less.” She laughs. And this is good because it’s been six years since he left and there’s been way more crying than laughing.
Like the other two couples,Harriet and Adam met at university. They were 19 and 18. Harriet,who is witty,with wavy blonde hair,was studying commerce. But after marrying,she put her career on hold to raise three children,while Adam built a successful importing business. “I thought that it was his turn,and I would support him. And then it would be my turn. But that isn’t how it played out at all.”
Looking back,Harriet says she would do things differently. She loved being a wife and mother,but being at home established a “lovely traditional paradigm”,a kind of two-world situation where “I was inside here,with the kids,insular,and he was out there”. She waves a hand towards the glass. “He was a present father but I should have pushed harder to keep the value on my professional life,even if that meant working for a pittance. I should never have surrendered it so completely.” Success breeds success,she says,then suddenly it’s 15 years later and so much harder to follow your dreams.
‘I thought we’d be married for 50 years and say,“Ten of them were a bit shit. But the other 40 were amazing”.’
Harriet
After his cancer diagnosis,Adam suggested that Harriet,then 39,enter the workforce in case she needed to support the family. She’d been planning to do this,but it happened quicker than expected. (Alice remembers watching it play out:“Adam promised that it was her turn and he was going to do it all,but after a week[at home with the kids],he said:‘Nah,I’m not doing this.’ He said that every day with the kids was ‘like Groundhog Day’.”)
Harriet says Adam struggled with her having a bigger life outside the home,but also that he never felt like himself again after the diagnosis. “I think he behaved in a way all unhappy men do. He ended up being very much the cliché.” Adam left several years later,after he’d been given the all-clear – during their son’s VCE year. Very unsatisfactory. Harriet,who did not see the end of her marriage coming,kept the ship afloat. “I felt very much blindsided,” she says. “I had to be the soulless automaton who made sure the kids were OK-ish. So it’s hard to forgive that – that total overturning of the ship.”
Like Alice,Harriet’s belief in the institution of marriage was absolute. She would have done anything to save hers. Coming from “a long line of rock-solid marriages”,she would never have initiated a separation. And she was confident in her particular union with Adam. She looked on it as a disaster-safe structure,like a bunker. “I relied on my marriage as a construct,that it would always be there. That I could hang my hat on it,look away from it,and it would still be there. If someone had ever told me my marriage would break down,I would have laughed in their face,” she says. “I really thought we would be like the Obamas,you know,where[Michelle Obama] says,‘Oh we’ve been married 25 years,five of them were terrible!’ I thought we’d be married for 50 years and say,’10 of them were a bit shit. But the other 40 were amazing,and we’ve got these kids and built all these things. And we worked together and we loved each other’.”
“I just love him,” says Alice. “I still do. I would still say that I don’t believe he’s my husband.” (Posed by models.)Getty Images
When it dissolved,so too did her confidence and self-esteem. She describes her marriage breakdown as “a complete unmooring” and “the biggest grief of my life”. She’s since re-partnered and established her own successful business,but the pain still sometimes overwhelms her,even as we talk. “If you were happy and loved and felt deeply seen in your marriage,I don’t think you ever recover from it imploding.”
In 2017,when Alice invited Jeremy into the Unsatisfactory Husbands Club,the group only knew that his wife,Hannah,had died. But then he told them the whole story. “She went to the top of the board,posthumously,” says Rebecca.
Jeremy and Hannah,like the others,got together young. He was 21,she was 19. She had beautiful,henna-hued hair. That was the first thing. She was also smart and outdoorsy. They travelled and built rewarding careers,she as a corporate lawyer,he as a geologist. He was keen on marriage. She less so. He had to ask her several times. “I used to joke much later that I caught her at a weak moment,” says Jeremy,58,a gentle man whose smile recruits his whole face. Hannah said later she felt she’d been “swooped up” too young.
I ask him about his expectations of marriage. He sighs. We’re drinking coffee on his verandah,where we can smell the lavender bushes heating in the morning sun. “I didn’t think it through too deeply at all.”
Hannah’s career was thriving,so Jeremy took on most of the home duties,looking after their two daughters while also working full-time. For years,he couldn’t shake the feeling that there were “three of us in this marriage”,to quote Princess Diana. She started resting her phone face-down and closely guarding it. A male colleague rang the house one night,saying he’d just missed a call. She was physically distant. One day,when he picked her up at the airport,she cuddled the kids and just said to him:“Hi,mate.” No hug. It was one of the most devastating moments of his life.
Jeremy began piecing together the clandestine life of his dead wife and her one-time lover.
When Hannah was diagnosed with cancer at 44,Jeremy cared for her. It was a five-year medical merry-go-round. Three months before she died,she was out of it on opioids,as she had been for months. One night,as she slept,Jeremy picked up her phone. There,he discovered she’d been having a long affair with another man – the one who’d called the home – and it had ended only a few months earlier.
On the day he made this discovery,Hannah was admitted to hospital,where they switched her to morphine. A few hours after he’d looked at her phone,Hannah woke up,cogent. They were in a dark room in the middle of the night. She heard the pain in his voice and asked what was wrong. He told her. She apologised,he forgave her and their relationship shifted again. “We had a nice three months together,” he says. (His experience echoes that of former academic Kerstin Pilz,whose memoir,Loving My Lying,Dying,Cheating Husband, is about caring for her unfaithful husband,Gianni.)
But when he was searching for photos for the funeral,he found phone snaps of a ferry,an island,and unfamiliar fancy resorts and hotel rooms. He began piecing together the clandestine life of his dead wife and her one-time lover. “The deception had been deeper than I’d known,” he says. “It’s taken me a while to get over that.” Fortunately,her lover did not turn up to Hannah’s
funeral,although Jeremy isn’t sure if he attended a memorial organised by her colleagues.
Over time,the anger did fade. “You want to remember the good things anyway. And there is no reason to remain angry at someone who has gone,who has died. I’ve forgiven her.”
Back at Harriet’s place,her new partner,Zack,wanders in and out again. I ask what she’s learnt. “I have no wisdom to impart,” she says,bluntly. “I’ve done a lot of unlearning.” By which she means you can’t seek anything from outside yourself. It’s up to you to be in a good place;to do the work on your own issues. “I wish it was as easy as finding someone to fix you or make that go away. It doesn’t work that way.”
I ask where she learnt all the things that she had to unlearn – these ideas about marriage being immutable and fundamental to her identity as a person. “I think a lot of it has to be religious,cultural,patriarchal. And a lot of these ideas are imposed on us and are still imposed on our kids.”
As she speaks,a small diamond ring clinks on her tea mug. And,oh,it’s onthat finger. Is that a wedding ring? No,she says,it’s an “I belonged to myself before I belonged to anyone else” ring. “I missed wearing a ring on that finger,so I bought it for myself.”
Would she get married again? Despite everything,yes,she says – she still believes in marriage. This surprises me – not only because of her divorce trauma,but for all the arguments one can muster against marriage:that a wedding is an unnecessary rip-off given marriage holds the same legal status as a de facto partnership;that,as “marriage abolitionist” Clementine Ford argues in her recent book,I Don’t,marriage has historically “enslaved women sexually,reproductively,financially and domestically”;that studies suggest unmarried women are happier than married ones;and its poor success rate (in 2022,there were 127,161 marriages in Australia and 49,241 divorces). But,says Harriet,being in meaningful give-and-take relationships is thewhole reason we live. If her partner had a similar view and they’d both done the work,“it’s a guarded Yes”.
Other lessons:Jeremy says he’d work harder to keep the flame alive. “The breakdown wasn’t 100 per cent her fault – clearly,I wasn’t being much fun. I was really struggling,looking after young kids and keeping the home fires going.” Alice learnt that life is unpredictable and to seek help,especially from friends.
Couple and family therapist Elisabeth Shaw says,“It’s amazing what people don’t discuss”,including monogamy,independence,finances and career.Supplied
Rebecca’s lesson? Do not marry complicated people. Also:you can never really know your spouse. Next to a terminal diagnosis,this is one of the more blindsiding things to hit a marriage – not love’s slow petering-out,but its sudden termination by someone you don’t feel you know any more.
This is not uncommon,as it turns out. Former lawyer and business executive Kate Christie writes about a similar situation in her 2023 book,The Life List. In 2016,her husband of 22 years,Melbourne lawyer Dan Christie,left her suddenly. He acquired a warehouse home and a ute (both kid-unfriendly),got a new partner and,for 3½ years,Kate says,wanted little to do with his three children. “This person you thought you knew suddenly feels like a complete stranger because they go from being involved to being very detached,” she tells Good Weekend.
Dan was then diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He reconnected with the kids but died 11 months later,at 54. Kate Christie’s lesson from this is why she wrote her book:it’s a rallying cry to think about the life you want and start living itright now.
Sometimes,says couple and family therapist Elisabeth Shaw,the person who leaves might seem detached and more resolved because they’re much further along the grief journey than the person left behind. Shaw,chief executive officer of Relationships Australia NSW and a clinical and counselling psychologist,says the person leaving often has a long back-story of concerns they haven’t felt able to bring up. “Sometimes people go round and round in their own heads,validating their own interpretation.” When a crisis arises,they’ve already got a foot out the door and the partner left behind can feel ripped off because they haven’t had the chance to work through the problems.
How does one gird a relationship against the travails of midlife? Fateful whacks are gonna happen,right? And we are,as Shaw points out,living through a lot more life these days. The average life expectancy for an Australian child born in the late 1880s was about 50;today it’s 84. That’s a lot more potential for the “in sickness” bit of one’s marriage vows. And for life,in general,to test a couple’s limits.
Shaw recommends having the big conversations early. “It’s amazing what people don’t discuss,” she says,listing monogamy,independence,finances,career and parenting as key topics. But she says a greater test is whether couples can have these conversations across the relationship. “It’s about whether a couple has developed the skills to face each other,look each other in the eyes and have really intimate conversations.”
This was missing,Harriet says,in the relationship she had with Adam:“We pretty much communicated as 18-year-olds for our whole marriage.” Indeed,none of the UHC members had the big conversations before getting hitched,perhaps because they all met when they were young. In youth,it’s hard to spot the icebergs that may sink you.
People change. And sometimes,says Shaw,they get to their 30s and 40s and wonder what they’ve missed:“If you look at the literature on divorce,one of the risk factors is early marriage.” A sign of a successful and secure couple is that they don’t panic and feel they must discuss “every little thing anxiously”. But there’s a balance. Date night has long been a thing,but Shaw recommends more in-depth check-ins. “Like:‘What have we done for each other? How are we investing in the relationship?’ ”
Earlier this year,American journalist Rhaina Cohen released a book calledThe Other Significant Others:Reimagining Life With Friendship at the Centre,which questions our almost one-eyed emphasis on the romantic couple as the fundamental societal unit.
Many I interview for this story consider their fellow UHC members to be just as important as their intimate partners. They travel together,walk together and,in a rarity given today’s judgy world,cast no aspersions on each other. “They’ve seen me insane and making just ridiculous decisions offhand,” says Harriet. “And they love me. And they’ve seen me quiet and completely withdrawn and really the flattest and most depressed I’ve ever been. And they love me.”
For Rebecca,who knew there would be much school-gate tittering about her husband running off with a bloke,the lack of judgment was crucial,too. And as a fiercely independent person,she learnt that she needed a support system.
Jeremy felt he could share things he hadn’t with anyone else because the UHC members really knew about loss and pain. “I owe them a great debt.”
Once,in 2019,they trialled a bring-a-friend-night. “It was a disaster,” says Jeremy. “They all came to a dinner and they were just …” He takes a moment to identify the issue. “We’d all recovered a bit but they weren’t ready to have fun yet.”
That’s the other thing. The UHC isn’t really a forum for wallowing. As Alice says,she has several close friends for when she wants sympathy. “The UHC’s role is to listen and laugh and go:‘I wonder what he’ll do next?’ ” Harriet adds:“Nothing is too absurd.”
In 2021,the group attended Jeremy’s wedding to a lovely woman he’d first met at high school. The couple fell in love in 2018 and Jeremy was keen to marry again. “She’d sworn off men so it took me a while to open that possibility,” he says.
When Hannah died,Jeremy approached a handful of people who’d lost someone close. He wanted to know how long the grief lasted. The answers ranged from 10 years to forever. That feels about right,he says;feelings of loss and sadness still sidle along at odd times. “For whatever reason,a week ago,I was really missing her.”
Rebecca,whose kids have now been shepherded into university,is enjoying her 50s. “In terms of my autonomy,and being able to do the things I want to do,this is the best time of my life.”
Alice,meanwhile,has had to nervously accept that Chris,a bit beaten-up,is back on his bike. “I did look at the app to check that he got to work that first time,” she says. The accident – specifically,his recalcitrant questioning of medical advice afterwards – has rocketed him up the unsatisfactory spouses’ leaderboard. Plus,this year he forgot her birthday – again.
But,a few suburbs away,someone did remember. And when a bunch of flowers landed on Alice’s doorstep,it wasn’t Chris’ name on the card. It was Harriet’s.
*All couple names and some details of their lives have been changed.
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