I finished university and went to live in Buenos Aires for a year. There I met the man who would be my husband for thirteen years. We started a family, lived in Santiago with his children and our daughter, until one day we decided to trade the city for the beach. We believed we were starting a better life.
What I imagined as a paradise ended up becoming the most difficult period of my life.
I arrived in a place where I didn’t know anyone. A small town, with very closed circles. He worked practically all the time and, in the midst of that loneliness, the pandemic arrived. Soon after, a younger neighbor appeared. I remember feeling an immediate intuition. I told my husband: “Watch out for her, she’s thirsty for affection.” I never imagined that phrase would end up being a premonition.
She tried to get close to me, to be my friend, but I never allowed that closeness. Meanwhile, he accumulated excuses, lies, and absences. Until one day I could no longer keep holding onto the uncertainty. I confronted him and, finally, he confessed that they were having a relationship.
I asked him to leave the house. He ended up living right across from mine and she, a few blocks away. In a small town, in the middle of a pandemic, I lived for months with an open wound exposed to everyone. It was immense pain.
Over time, their child was born. And, although it may be hard to understand, that child marked a before and after in the way I looked at what had happened. His arrival made me understand that they had built a new story and that ours had really ended. I understood that they had stopped loving me and that, although that hurts deeply, it is also part of the human experience.
Obviously, I will never share the way it happened. One thing is to accept that someone can stop loving you and quite another is how they decide to act in front of that. However, over the years I was also able to see that perhaps that brutal blow ended up forcing us to face something that probably came from before: we were still clinging to a relationship sustained more by habit, fear, and obligations than by love.
I also understood that building a life together requires more than feeling attracted to the other. It requires sharing a vision, values, and a common project. And we, over time, stopped looking in the same direction. Our editorial line was no longer the same.
Today our story is completely different. We managed to transform a very painful separation into a new kind of family. It was not immediate. We had to leave anger behind, learn to relate from a different place, and understand that, although our life as a couple had ended, we still had bonds that united us.
We built a relationship based on respect, trust, and mutual support. His children are still part of my life and his youngest son holds a very special place in my heart. I learned that love does not always end when a relationship ends. Sometimes it simply changes place. It becomes respect, care, gratitude, and the conscious decision to keep building, especially when children are involved.
We are no longer a couple, but we are a great team. He is there when I need him and I am there when he needs me.
I know many people do not understand this kind of bond. Some have questioned me for having left anger behind after everything that happened, as if doing so meant forgetting the harm, putting myself second, or loving myself less. I don’t see it that way. For me, there was no other option: I didn’t want the war to define the rest of our lives.
Transforming anger into respect, pain into learning, and resentment into peace has probably been the greatest act of love I have experienced. Because I understood that a couple can end, but important bonds, when cared for generously, can find a new way to exist.
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