When I got home that night my wife served dinner. I held her hand and said, “I’ve got something to tell you.” She sat down and ate quietly. Again I observed the hurt in her eyes.

Suddenly I didn’t know how to open my mouth. But I had to let her know what I was thinking about divorce. I raised the topic calmly. She didn’t seem to be annoyed by my words, instead she asked me softly, “Why?”

I avoided her question. This made her angry. She threw away the chopsticks and shouted at me, “You are not a man!”

That night, we didn’t talk to each other. She was weeping. I knew she wanted to find out what had happened to our marriage. But I could hardly give her a satisfactory answer; she had lost my heart to Jane. I didn’t love her anymore, I just pitied her.

With a deep sense of guilt, I drafted a divorce agreement which stated that she could own our house, our car, and 30% of my company. She glanced at it and then tore it to pieces. The woman who had spent ten years of her life with me had become a stranger. I felt sorry for her wasted time, resources, and energy but I could not take back what I had said. I loved Jane now.

Finally she cried loudly in front of me, which was what I had expected to see. To me her cry was actually a kind of release. The idea of divorce which had obsessed me for several weeks seemed to be firmer and clearer now.

The next day, I came home late and found her writing something at the table. I didn’t have supper but went straight to sleep and fell asleep very fast after an eventful day with Jane. When I woke up, she was still at the table writing.

In the morning she presented her divorce conditions. She didn’t want anything from me, but needed a month’s notice before the divorce. She requested that in that one month, we both struggle to live as normal a life as possible. Her reasons were simple; our son had his exams in a month’s time and she didn’t want to disrupt him with our broken marriage.

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