‘My husband and I have a secret pact to split up once my daughter turns 16’

On the surface, the marriage between Anna and Jack looks picture-perfect. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll see that not everything is as it seems.

With a successful husband, loving daughter and a thriving career, Anna*, 49, looks like she’s got the perfect family.

But for the past five years she has been living a lie…

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Anna will be splitting up from her husband as soon as her daughter finishes Year 10. Picture: iStock

Living a lie

Hearing my daughter chat about her day at school and how excited she was about the Spanish holiday we planned for half-term, my heart broke.

As tears pricked the corners of my eyes, I quickly picked up the plates off the table and hurried to the kitchen to compose myself.

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My beautiful 14-year-old daughter, the most precious thing in my world, has no idea that her dad Jack and I are planning to separate and divorce as soon as possible when she turns 16.

Once Rose* finishes her GCSEs, the happy family she has grown up in will be gone for ever.

With two years to go, it really can’t come fast enough for me.

Jack*, 52, and I have been married for 19 years.

We had a beautiful, romantic wedding near London, but despite almost two decades together, we’ve spent the past five years counting down the days until Rose turns 16 so we can split up and get on with the rest of our lives.

And we’re not alone — according to research, more than a fifth (22 per cent) of parents stay together longer than they want to purely for the sake of their children.

While I know Jack has no intention of getting together with anyone else until we have separated, I’ve already met someone else through work.

Although I won’t do anything about it right now, I’ve dreamed about what might happen when Jack and I go our separate ways.

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On the surface, it looks like I have the perfect happy family.

But our secret pact to split as soon as Rose finishes her GCSEs proves we’re living a lie.

It’s not a decision we’ve come to lightly.

Jack, a lawyer, and I fell madly in love when we met through work.

So much so that I moved from my original home, Canada, to live in the UK.

I left behind close family, friends and a successful legal career.

I retrained in British law and put everything I had into our life here.

Rose was born four years after we married and, while the first few years were blissful, things started to fall apart when she was around nine.

There weren’t any huge arguments or throwing plates at one another — instead, life became dominated by our jobs.

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We’re both fortunate to have good careers, but climbing the career ladder and using our pay rises to buy a holiday home in Spain and pay private school fees for Rose came at a cost.

We went from eating every meal together as a family to just one of us being at home most nights, while the other worked late at the office.

Our once-vibrant sex life started to suffer, too.

Stress or tiredness always seemed to get in the way.

Now, our idyllic family holidays have turned into either me or Jack taking Rose away on our own, the other parent joining for the first or final few days.

There’s no hate, but we simply don’t enjoy one another’s company any more.

Fortunately, Rose doesn’t connect our absences with anything other than long work hours.

Like most teenagers, she’s too absorbed in her own world to suspect anything.

When I first broached the idea of splitting up with Jack, it was with the intention of ending our marriage sooner rather than later.

But he was adamant he didn’t want to.

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"We simply don’t enjoy one another’s company any more." Picture: iStock

Prick my conscience

He has a son from a previous relationship and, having not spent as much time with him as he would have liked, he wanted Rose to grow up in a secure family unit with both parents around.

I’m from a broken home myself and always longed for a father figure.

My own dad was never present, so I also felt it made sense to stay together for Rose’s sake.

That is how we decided — with heavy hearts — on our secret pact.

It was Jack’s idea, but I went along with it willingly, admiring the fact he wanted to put our daughter’s happiness ahead of our own.

Financially, it made sense, too.

As lawyers, we know how messy divorces can be if one partner decides to dig their heels in.

We’ve started our own negotiations with regard to how we’ll split everything.

We’re also frugal and know that, financially, it makes sense to run one household rather than two.

When we first discussed not being together we had counselling.

Jack wanted to try to recapture the early years of our marriage, where we were both in love.

But we’d already tried things like date nights and they hadn’t worked.

Nothing physical has happened between me and the man I’m hoping to develop a relationship with.

But he has recently divorced and has made it clear he would be happy to pursue something with me the minute I give him the green light.

I know how shocked Rose will be when her dad and I split, because she hasn’t witnessed any cross words or anger.

Hearing her talk with her friends about the school prom that’s two years away always pricks at my conscience.

And the few dinner times where we do eat together as a family are tough, because there’s so much she’s excited about and she loves chatting away with us both.

She’s looking forward to working hard for the next two years, then celebrating and having a big party before doing her A Levels.

She dreams of being a lawyer.

I hate the fact she has no idea her world is going to implode then and there’s nothing we can say, or do, to prepare her for it.

*Names have been changed

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was republished here with permission

Originally published as ‘My husband and I have a secret pact to split up once my daughter turns 16’