I wrote The Undoing of My Marriage a few years into starting over as a divorced single mum in my late thirties.

While the story is true to my experiences, ‘AJ Moore’ is a pseudonym. Names, locations, and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved – and to keep parts of my personal life separate from my ‘irl’ self.

So why share the story of my marriage unravelling in such raw, explicit, and often unflattering detail? Because I hoped that anyone stuck in the same place I was – where things aren’t ‘bad enough’ to leave, but you can’t go on like this either – might feel less alone.

I’m talking about the thoughts you’re not supposed to have in a marriage. The ones that start as a whisper, a lump in your throat, a quiet knowing that something is off. At the time, mine sounded like:

• If we already feel stale in our thirties, what will our sixties look like?
• How can I be so horny, but not want sex with my husband?
• Why am I fantasising about other men?
• I have the life I dreamed of… so why do I feel trapped?
• How did I go from certain he was ‘the one’ to not wanting to kiss him?
• Is falling out of love a good enough reason to leave? Or am I selfish?
• Could this be depression?

Clichéd, right? If I sound like a forty-something-year-old man on the brink of midlife-crisis-induced infidelity, that’s because that’s exactly how I felt.

The appeal of an affair is obvious – you get to keep the Facebook-perfect family life, the holidays, the shared friends, the in-laws, the split power bills… and for a few stolen moments, you feel alive again with someone new. Someone who hasn’t been enmeshed into every inch of your life for years. Someone who makes you want.

That idea – having the best of both worlds – appealed to me far more than either alternative: leaving my marriage or resigning myself to the slow suffocation of the status quo. But I wanted to do it honestly. That’s how I ended up asking my husband for an open marriage.

Back then, at the peak of the post-Covid divorce surge, Ethical Non-Monogamy ('ENM') didn't seem to be a mainstream status like it is today. At least not from regional New Zealand where I logged into Tinder anyway... but then, we Kiwis tend to lag a bit behind when it comes to these things!

In theory, the concept seemed deceptively simple and foolproof: you remain committed to the person you decided to 'do life' with, but you also get to experience all that exciting 'New Relationship Energy' (NRE) again. I was completely sold on the idea that I could experience the thrill of being discovered by someone new, that intoxicating feeling of longing, and feel seen again – all without risking the safety net of my decent and reliable husband, the stable family environment we'd created for our daughter, and the security of our double-income home.

I tuned out all the anecdotal evidence that open marriages were a fast-track to divorce. Instead, I read books like Polysecure and The Ethical Slut to 'research' ENM. I think it was Dan Savage's documentary Monogamish that finally got my husband on board. He agreed to try it, but only on the proviso that we had very strict rules and boundaries in place.

It was a decision that ultimately accelerated the very end we were trying to avoid. As the title of my book suggests, it didn’t work. More than that, it exposed cracks and vulnerabilities in myself I never anticipated.

As my marriage unravelled, I didn’t journal or see a therapist – I wrote poetry. What began as a pandemic hobby became the place I put my desires, fears, and conflicted feelings before I was ready to speak them aloud – even to myself. Those poems appear throughout the book in the order I wrote them. I hope that even if your own marriage or divorce looks nothing like mine, something in them resonates.

From the time and space where I write this, I look back and ponder whether my marriage would've endured if David – the catalyst for me pursuing an open marriage – hadn't stumbled across me on Instagram that day. I'd have saved myself the stress of being a single parent, the emotional rollercoaster of modern dating, and the uncertainty of a future without a clear path.

But on the flip side, I know that the version of myself I've become on the other side of it all simply wouldn't exist. I am a much stronger, more resilient woman who travels alone, writes, navigates co-parenting amicably, and raises a child who is secure and confident despite a 'broken home.' I have worked on my own shit, and I know exactly what I need in a relationship.

And as for my ex-husband? Well, he got to start over again with a woman who seems lovely, compatible with him, and – as it happens – the complete opposite of me in many ways. If only the younger, naive version of myself who rushed into marriage thinking it would be a fairytale fantasy had such self-awareness and wisdom, right?

In the years since my marriage ended, I've continued to write poems and short essays from time to time when inspiration hits. You can read these on the Poems from After page.

And of course, I didn't manage to avoid the classic divorcee trap of falling into a one-sided situationship with someone who didn't really want me, which caused me more grief than my actual marriage ending. I like to think of him as a wake-up call to examine my own patterns (and the reason I pursued an ADHD diagnosis – but that's another story).

You can read all about him, and my journey of writing The Undoing of My Marriage, in my companion novella Not a Fairytale Ending: The Rewriting of My Story. It’s available on Amazon, or free to download on the Not a Fairytale Ending page with the passcode included in the paperback edition of The Undoing of My Marriage.

To get in touch, visit the Contact page or email me at ajmoore@ajmoorewriting.com.

Thanks for being here. If you haven’t read my book yet, you can read more about it here and buy it from online booksellers.

Warmest regards,

AJ Moore