“I Thought Romantic Love Was the Prize, Then My 25-Year Marriage Ended”

When my twenty-five-year marriage ended, I thought I’d learned the lesson.

“Right,” I said to myself. “No more centring my entire existence around one man.”

Then, in what can only be described as the emotional equivalent of putting out a house fire with petrol, I accidentally centred my entire existence around another one. Brilliant.

The first person I dated after my marriage ended pushed every single button my marriage had. You’ve probably heard people say you keep repeating the same patterns until you learn the lesson. Whether that’s true or not, the universe clearly decided I hadn’t finished the exam. It sent me the final boss.

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The wild part is, it wasn’t really about him. It was about how frighteningly easy it was for me to hand my self-worth over to someone new. In my mind, I was a strong, independent woman living my best life, but then one man would go a bit quiet and suddenly my brain was running a full ASIO investigation into whether I’d done something wrong.

Somewhere along the way, I’d bought into the idea that romantic love wasn’t just one beautiful part of life; it was the point of it. The gold medal. Proof I’d made it. You can have a career, children, incredible friends, purpose and a creative life bursting at the seams, but if nobody is choosing you romantically, there’s this quiet suggestion that something’s missing.

I’d been in a relationship since I was twenty. Twenty-five years. That’s longer than some of you reading this have been alive, which is both horrifying and incredibly rude. I’ve spent years standing on stages telling women to stop making themselves smaller. Turns out I wasn’t very good at taking my own advice. Quietly, without even noticing, I’d confused self-sacrifice with love. Every little compromise felt reasonable. Every time I bent, I told myself that’s just what good partners do. Until one day, I couldn’t remember what shape I’d been in to begin with.

Then my marriage ended.

And after the grief—and believe me, there was gut-punching, screaming-into-the-void grief—came something I never expected. Space.

Not the Eat, Pray, Love kind. I wasn’t skipping through Tuscany in linen, discovering myself over olive oil. It was quieter than that. Uncomfortable. Empty in places. But eventually it became something else. Possibility.

I realised I’d spent my whole life measuring how loved I was by one relationship. How bloody unfair. Not just to me, but to all the people who’d been loving me brilliantly the whole time.

My little boy doesn’t crawl into my bed before sunrise because he’s trying to prove anything. He just wants to be close to his mum. My parents love every version of me. My friends have held me together with wine, voice notes and completely inappropriate jokes.

And every night I walk on stage, I’m reminded that love can look like thousands of strangers trusting you enough to laugh, cry and see themselves in your stories. Afterwards, women wait to tell me they finally feel understood.

How had I convinced myself that any of those loves counted for less simply because they weren’t romantic? They didn’t. I had.

Not to bring it back to THAT kind of love, but I am out there being single, and let me tell you: dating in your forties is wild. At twenty, my only question was, “Do they like me?” Now it’s, “Are they emotionally available, kind to waitstaff and capable of apologising without saying, ‘I’m sorry you feel that way’?”

The questions have improved dramatically. Which probably means I have too.

I’m no longer looking for someone to rescue me from my own life because, despite its spectacular messiness, I actually quite like it. I’m co-parenting. Writing. Touring. Raising kids. Forgetting why I walked into rooms. Living with a brain that thinks 2am is the perfect time to solve every problem humanity has ever faced. But it’s mine.

Which means if love comes along again, it won’t be arriving to fill a hole.

Although, to be clear, there are still one or two holes I’d be perfectly happy for it to fill.

I still believe in ridiculous, sweeping, cinematic love. I hope I fall in love again. I hope they make me laugh so hard I snort. I hope they’re emotionally vulnerable. I hope they have a beard and rock-hard abs. You know… the important stuff.

But the biggest love story of my forties hasn’t been finding someone else. It’s been finding my way back to myself.

And honestly? She’s a lot more fun than I remembered.