Plot twist: Ebele Okobi's separation story

In this episode, Kate is joined by Ebele Okobi, who has held senior roles at OpenAI, Meta and Nike. But in this conversation, it's her separation story that takes centre stage. And this one is different – you'll want to stay right till the end to find out why.

We talk about:

• The circumstances that led Ebele to the decision to separate
• How society can make it harder to do things kindly – both in divorce and co-parenting
• How Ebele’s children and friends responded to the news
• Why communication matters so much through separation
• How certain revelations can completely change the way you see your life and your relationship

There's a big reveal at the end – and it's worth the wait.

This episode is for anyone navigating separation and looking for a story of hope – and a reminder that there's not a single right way to do this.

Trigger warning: This episode touches on content some listeners may find distressing, including violence, murder, police brutality, racial discrimination and genocide. Please take care of yourself while listening.

Meet Ebele Okobi

Ebele Okobi is the principal of Revolutionary Projects, an advisor, board member and maker of good trouble with 25 years of experience leading global teams across tech, consumer brands and arts institutions. With a background spanning corporate law, policy and the C-suite – including roles at OpenAI, Facebook/Meta, Nike and Dr. Martens – she now focuses her energy on organisations that push towards joy, justice and better worlds.

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Kate’s book amicable divorce includes dedicated chapters on navigating separation with kindness, rebuilding your identity and moving forward with confidence. Find it on Amazon today.

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#SeparationStory

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Divorce Podcast, where we explore all aspects of ending relationships, separation, and parenting apart. If your marriage or partnership has ended, or you have friends and family who are separating, this podcast is for you. I'm Kate Daly, a relationship counsellor, divorce specialist, and co-founder of Amicable, the online legal service for separating couples. In each episode, we look at relationships and separation from different angles, including the emotional, legal, and social. I'm joined by experts and special guests who share their own unique stories, experience, and tips with the goal of helping people end relationships in a kinder and better way. In this episode, I'm joined by Abele Okobi to hear her separation story. And this one is a bit different, so you'll want to stay right till the end to find out why. Abele shares her story with real openness and honesty. We talk about the circumstances that led to the decision to separate, and how society can sometimes make it harder to do things kindly, both when it comes to divorce and co-parenting. We also cover how her children and friends responded to the news, why communication matters so much through separation, and how certain revelations can completely change the way you see your life and your relationship. There's a big reveal at the end, and we promise it's worth the wait. But just so you know, this episode comes with a trigger warning. The episode touches on content that some listeners may find distressing, including violence, murder, police brutality, racial discrimination, and genocide. So please take care of yourself while listening. If you loved this episode, then please subscribe and rate us on your preferred listening platform. Welcome to you, Abeli. Thank you for having me. It's brilliant to see you. Thank you very much for joining me. Now, this episode to set the context is all about your separation story. And without giving any spoilers away, it is an unusual one. So I'm really keen to hear all about it and to share with listeners a story of hope and triumph over adversity. So why don't you kick off, if you will, with a little bit of background. Start by sharing a bit about your separation story. How did the relationship evolve to a point where separation felt like it was the right step?

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Sure. So I'll start and send a couple of sentences about how it began because I think that's important. So my husband and I met when I was 17 and he was 16. My little sister introduced us. We went on one date to see, we're old. So we went to see Boys in the Hood in the theater. We cried, both of us, when Ricky died. But after that, I was going off to university. And you know, when you're 17, someone's 16, you just feel quite mature and sophisticated. And so we were friends for 10 years. And we actually ended up getting back together when both of us happened to move to New York. I had been in London, he'd have been in North Carolina. We moved to New York at the same time. We went out on a date as friends, and we woke up the next morning as more than friends. We essentially moved in together three days after that. And we were together essentially for 20 years. And when we decided to get divorced, and I a lot of this, you have to say this in retrospect. So, as in like what you've understood in retrospect. And so my little brother was murdered by police, and I threw myself into activism because, like many of like all many of these murders in the US, uh, he was essentially murdered for walking down the sidewalk and being black. And I, in retrospect, what I realized is that in the aftermath of that, I threw myself into activism. I was very, very involved in work. We had three very small children, plus we have an we were foster parents to another child. And candidly, I in retrospect realized that it was because I refused to face my sadness over losing my brother. And I pushed away someone who I was most afraid of losing. Now, of course, you know, when you're married a long time and you have a million kids and everybody's working. And I also think there was a piece of it that was around um Rich really being an artist and not really stepping fully into his purpose. And so there's a way I think that he showed up in our relationship, which he's always a kind and loving and joyful person, but where he wasn't like really himself. Fulfilled. Yeah. Yeah, he wasn't fulfilled. And I was grieving. And so I think that, and then we had a billion kids, it felt like. And so I think all of those things together really led to a decision. It wasn't, it was never yelling and screaming. It was never, we never had arguments. We were always friends. At the core of our relation was friendship. But I remember reading this book and it said something like, you know, 20 years in anything is considered a triumph. So why would you consider 20 years in a marriage or relationship a failure? And so I remember saying, I would rather part as friends than turn our relationship into a project and hate each other at the end. So that was so our story is actually not dramatic in the sense of it wasn't, we would never fought. We it wasn't that. It was just more us deciding that the way we were together didn't work and we'd rather retain the friendship.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Such a lot to unpack in that, isn't there? I mean, the grief that you must have been going through and the impact that that must have had, as you say, on how available you were, how close you wanted to feel, and how vulnerable you were prepared to make yourself. Because ultimately being in a relationship is making yourself vulnerable to somebody else, isn't it? And having no control over that person and feeling the sense that they hold your life in their hands almost. So I I cannot imagine the tumult that must have been going on emotionally at that point for you. I wonder when you think back on this, did you have a sense of, because you said at the beginning, you know, you you're looking on this retrospectively, did you have any sense as your relationship was essentially breaking down for that period of time of what was going on, or were you just sort of flung into it day to day?

SPEAKER_01 6:18

So if I'm putting myself back where I was, I've had this sense of recklessness a little bit about life. And I think that's very much connected to feeling like this horrible thing had happened. And so, no, it wasn't the worst thing, but there's this sense of this horrible thing has happened. I don't want to say what's the worst that can happen, but just like, yeah. You can't touch me now almost, isn't it? That feeling was well today. Yeah. In some ways it was that. And in some ways it was just not having any emotional capacity because now I had again, like anybody who's had who's been a parent, if you have very small children, you already don't have emotional capacity. And then you have the this this additional, like real grief and me actually also not facing the grief and not really engaging with because I went straight to rage, like straight to rage. And like, how can I attack the system that that took my brother? And even then, I knew I wasn't processing. I remember people telling me, look, look, you can head straight into rage, but you're gonna have to deal with this emotion at some point. And so I think in my head, I thought, well, I'll deal with it at some point. But right now, this feels safer to me than grief. Like rage and disconnection felt safer to me than grief.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

I guess in some ways, it's an incredibly brave decision to take, to actively end a relationship rather than let it disintegrate. Did you have a sense of that at the time? Or was it or did it come across differently? What in what sense? What do you mean? Well, so you you it sounds like you actively took a decision to end the relationship rather than let it disintegrate. Was that your decision? Was that your husband's decision? How did that come about? What led up to that ability to almost stand back and say, as you just said, I'd rather end this as friends than actually to put it off and just allow it to disintegrate because then the decision's made for you, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 8:09

I think it's a collective decision. I think I so a couple things. I think that I tend to be someone who likes to act rather than to be acted upon. And I think there's a real helplessness that's connected to the way my brother was killed, as in like he's my little brother, and feeling like so, so since that was a thing that happened, this felt like a thing that we could make happen as opposed to having a bad outcome. And I also think it's connected to the way our parents, so my parents, so I'm I come from an Nigerian family, divorce is unheard of, one is not meant to get divorced. My parents had a terrible marriage, and my mother divorced my father when I was 14 or 15, and I felt very proud of her for taking that step. On the other hand, Rich's parents got divorced, and they were, I remember when Rich and I first started dating, he always said, we will always be friends because his, and I think part of it is he had an example of parents who had separated, but they remained friends. They remained deeply involved in his life. And so from the beginning, he had always said, you know, of course we promised to be together forever, but he said the core of it is that we will always be friends. And I remember the beginning, him saying that and feeling a little put off. Like, what are you saying? Are you planning ahead of us uh not being together? But I admire that so much because that was set from the very beginning is that this is the relationship we will have with each other, that we won't burn anything down because the intention is that we'll be in our life, each other's lives forever. The shape of it may change, but we will always be in each other's lives. So that means that there's a way that you maintain a relationship because you don't intend to burn it down.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

I think again, it's a brave thing to say on his part, isn't it? Because as you say, you know, we talk about prenups, we talk about having these conversations when you get married. We know what the stats are. In America, 50% of marriages break down. In the UK, it's just under that. But essentially, if something is as likely as the stats suggest, why wouldn't you have this conversation? But as you say, you know, even you, a well-rounded, intelligent person, emotionally available, you kind of feel that sense of offense. And I wonder how much that's to do with our cultural narrative in the Western world versus, you know, ultimately we live longer, we're here for a very long time now. As you said earlier, a 20-year anything is seen as a massive success in most cases, anything that lasts for 20 years. So why do we still have this sort of cultural hang up where we still feel that it's a failure or it's a shame? And it kind of doesn't matter almost from what walk of life you're from or from what cultural background, it still permeates. And there's a lot of us trying to change that, but it still hangs around like a bad smell, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Absolutely. And I would add that there's another layer. So there's a layer of my, of me being a Nigerian or African, and our specific culture, like one does not get divorced. I mean, you can have a terrible marriage, but you don't get divorced. But then there's this other piece. So our, you know, as there is a narrative around black marriages, which is, oh, broken homes, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think there's a piece, and we our marriage had always been considered aspirational, like rich Annabella, they're so happy, they have great kids and they travel. And so there is this sense that we were not just breaking, that we held, I don't know, like we were responsible for what people thought about the state of black marriage, which it's not for us to hang on to, but that there was still a sense of we were considered a success story. And so, what does that mean if the success story, if the people who were at the center of the success story are no longer married?

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Yeah. And did you feel that as a pressure? Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. So it wasn't, it wasn't just other people's narrative you'd sort of bought into that narrative as well, and you felt the sense of shame and pressure if things didn't go down well.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Even if logically I knew that that was nonsense, I still felt it.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Absolutely. That's the thing with the shame narrative, isn't it? Even though logically I sit on the podcast and talk about this, you know, week in, week out, about there should be no sense of shame. Life has moved on, this is a transition. You are together as parents potentially, but not as a married couple anymore. But you still personally, you still feel that sense of shame. And like you say, the stigma. And for you, it's around race and culture. And for me, it's around the stigmatization of single mothers and the way they're seen, and particularly in this country, and you know, we're the root of all evil. But it's kind of it's all of that that plays into it and the feeling that you have versus the logical narrative that you you have are, as you say, very different things. So let's move the story on then. So the relationship broke down, you took a decision to go your separate ways. What kind of divorce did you have, or what kind of separation did you have?

SPEAKER_01 12:51

So it's so interesting that we're chatting only because we were very so this will sound weird, but before we started talking about divorce, we sat down, we watched the marriage story, which I don't know if you've seen that. It is it is harrowing. It is, I mean, so it's this, you know, the story of this marriage breaking down. You don't see it at the beginning. So candidly, it was unclear to me what they saw in each other in the first place, but it's and it's not a dramatic breakdown as in like, what's that one that came out in the 80s where they're like throwing stuff? It's not like that. It really is Kramer versus Kramer. Right. It's not that, but it's this very kind of realistic, and also it shows how people can start off saying, no, no, no, we're we're just gonna be completely amicable. But then a lawyer gets involved, and the lawyer says, Well, she's gonna do this. And so what we sat down and watched that, and we were very deliberate about saying, we do not want that. And so because we didn't, we said we do not want that, we want to maintain our friendship, we want to maintain relationship and not just oak for the kids. We like each other like a lot as humans. So we want to stay connected to this. So we sat down and said, we do not want that kind of divorce, we do not want lawyers involved. And you know, I was trained as a lawyer. I mean, so I'm not against lawyers in all circumstances, but in this particular thing, we didn't want that. So we actually looked up how do you do a divorce? And then we're also in a different country. In the US, you can do a no-fault divorce, or at least in California, the state in which we got married, but we're in the UK. And imagine, to my shock, realizing you couldn't do a no-fault divorce at that time. You couldn't do no-fault divorce. You had to figure, so that was a whole process. But then we, I remember we looked at the time, we looked at Amicable and we looked at another, and I can't remember now. I've I'm blanking on the provider. I don't know if she's still around. And we looked at two things and we said, what are ways that you can get a divorce, but not involve lawyers and ensure that everyone is sort of represented and everyone feels comfortable. And so that was, we were quite deliberately took that route because we specifically did not want, we didn't want to fight over anything. We also wanted to agree ahead of time and have someone who would sort of ratify what we agreed on. We were completely aligned, have always been aligned on kids. We were both of us are very involved parents. So we agreed on all of the big things. And so we were specific in saying we only want someone. We don't want someone who's gonna stir up dissension where there isn't. We don't want someone who's going to make us defensive and say, well, if she's doing this, you must do X. And we also want to do it collectively. So I know, you know, obviously people would say, oh, you should have someone who's only represented your interests. We didn't see our interests in the context of this as separate. So we really want to see our interests as actually connected interests. We both have a mutual interest and a very specific endpoint. And so we want someone who's going to work with both of us to get to that endpoint, not two different entities who have their own agendas and who are going to put us at odds.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

I think it's so interesting that you say that because I think you're echoing probably lots of people's fear when they first come and speak to somebody about divorce. You know, they are usually or often, not usually, they are often quite amicable and they set out with all the best intentions. But you're right, the system we have where you take individual advice and your interests at that point are immediately separated, is very difficult because it just means that nobody is ultimately representing your children. You are being polarized at every turn, and you are also second-guessing malintention on the behalf of your partner. And it often isn't there. It's often suggested by people who are coming from a fear or a different agenda. And so you ultimately have two people who end up who start quite close together, but the system pulls them to opposite ends of a very long table, and then you spend all of that money and time and emotional collateral fighting it out with the person who ultimately, when this all is finished, you're meant to then go and co-parent with.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Correct. I mean, and to be fair, I so to your point, I think most divorces or separations can and should be amical. Of course, you have situations where you have abuse, it's and that's very different. But to have a system that's organized around those circumstances, when most divorces are not in those circumstances, it means that you drive people to those. So you drive people to be quite adversarial when you don't, when it's not necessary, and even in those situations where you do have abuse, et cetera, even the way the system is set up is not necessarily protective of people. It's not protective. So it does amplify the adversarial nature of it, but it's not necessarily protective of the interests or the safety of either the partner who's being abused or the children.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

No, exactly. And it it feels like such a wrong way around. And you'll know this from all your tech experience and business experience. You know, you'll have to build something for the 80%, not the 20% exception, don't you? You always have to start with the 80. And sure, you need workarounds for the 20, and that's absolutely right and fine, but you can't start with the 20. You have to start with the 80. And it feels like whoever designed our court system didn't start with the 80. Really, or maybe it's just that we've outgrown it and that's also a possibility, isn't it? But then it frustrates me the slow snail's pace it takes to get anything changed around how you do things.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

I think when you have the people who benefit and not who benefit from the system remaining the same. So, you know, if you're and you know, of course, there are a number of divorce lawyers who are excellent, etc. But if the legal system is in charge of writing itself out of business, not out of business, but like or writing it itself to an extent out of business, I think that the incentives are a little bit misaligned.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

So it sounds like you had this amicable divorce set up. How did your friends and family react and and and your children to life as a separated couple?

SPEAKER_01 19:20

So I so I think there's the difference between what happened when we s we told them and what what was the actuality. So I will say still till today that telling our children that we're getting divorced is one of the hardest things I've ever cardest conversations I've ever had to have. That the twins, I think at the time were six or seven, and they had never seen us fight. I think that's the other thing. Like it wasn't as if it wasn't like when I was growing up, I was like, oh my God, my I can't wait for my parents to get divorced. Like they had never seen us fight, we always got along. And so there were two things. One, they were shocked, like as little as little children, they were quite shocked. And that and and it felt like you were you were pulling to use and overuse cliche, the rug up from underneath them. So the world as they knew it, then started to doubt. And I've I will always regret that, if that makes any sense. Like they so now it feels so even now they'll some, even though they're much older, will say, even though you're getting along, are you guys still together? Because they didn't, there were no signs at all, at least for them. So that was one, and then sort of explaining to them what it was gonna look like. So we made a decision very early on that we were always going to, for example, live within walking distance of each other. So we not only said, Oh, we're getting divorced, but we said, mom and dad are gonna live in walking distance from each other, we are gonna split. So it really was 50-50. So it they really spent 50% of the time with Rich and 50% of the time with me. So we talked them through the logistics of it. But first they had to get over the shock of it. And when they thought of divorce, they thought of horrible things. Like they thought, you know, they they knew friends who were divorced. And so their initial thing was, oh no, does this mean mommy and daddy won't speak to each other? Does this mean I won't see someone? And then in their little baby hearts, even though they don't know how to articulate, does this mean I'm gonna have to pick a parent? You know, does it mean that that I'm gonna have to pick a person? And we were very, we identified the things that they were afraid of, even if they couldn't articulate them and we talked through them and we also walk them through this is what it will look like. You know, we did stuff like saying, oh, you're gonna be, you're gonna go with daddy to pick his new apartment, you're gonna pick what your room looks like. So we tried to involve them in it, but also with the understanding that some of it is just not gonna be, they're not gonna be excited about. So that was that was the kids. And then with our friends, I mean, that was, I mean, there's some friends who cried, you know, through friends who cried about it. Um, I remember my mother happened to be in London at the time. So sat her down and told her, people were very invested in us as a couple, you know. So I think for some people, it felt like they took it harder than we took it, also because no one's in the in the in on the inside of your marriage. So by the time you come to that decision, you've sort of dealt with a little bit of it, but we were telling people and dealing with their grief around it. And and their grief was sometimes about us, sometimes about what they understood. Understood divorce to be. And sometimes about some of my girlfriends said, Well, gosh, if you guys can't make it, like what does that mean for me?

SPEAKER_00 22:07

You know, because they I was wondering that whether it was them sort of reflecting on their relationships and feeling that if because that they say that, don't they, in a group, if one person gets divorced, it's kind of like a contagion. So good for my friends for sticking with me then, because I was the first, but yeah. But it is kind of like that feeling, isn't it? That you know, if if it can happen to you, then it does pick, I think it does make people reflect on their own relationship and what they're prepared to live with. Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

It for uh for us it was that, and also a lot of our friends weren't married, but wanted to be married. And so there is a sense that this thing that I'm aspiring to, and I saw this couple as really having it together. So what does that mean? You know, what does that mean in terms of my own aspirations?

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Yeah, ruining their vision before they've even started. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that sounds tough. It really does. So when you actually got to the situation where you were co-parenting, tell us a little bit about that. How did that work? And then the sort of the big reveal in this story, what happened next?

SPEAKER_01 23:11

So I think so. The thing with co-parent, and this is something that has been throughout our relationship, is that we talked about things. So we talked about what are and doesn't mean we we figured we it doesn't mean we anticipated everything. But I think from the beginning, we said, you know, we said things like we will always live walking distance from each other. This is what 50-50 looks like. You have to talk about things like dating. Like, okay, so if you're dating someone, what does that mean about when you meet, when that person meets the the kids? What does that mean? Like all of these, we had to talk through all of that. That didn't mean that everything went smoothly. There were some difficult conversations, but I think we were because again, we were committed to a co-parenting and b being friends. So it wasn't just that we said, oh, we're gonna co-parent. We also said we want to still be friends. So, you know, we would do, we would um have dinner. So we'd almost so every month we'd have dinner all together at least three or four times a month because we also want the kids liked us being together. And let's be, we're actually friends. Like I actually like his company, he likes mine, and so, but we were quite deliberate about setting that time aside. We talked about holidays, so we were gonna spend holidays together. So, yes, a big part of it was talking through everything and that even when things went wrong, because our North Star was that we will stay friends, that it meant that it was better to have the difficult, awkward conversation than not if the intention was that we were gonna stay friends.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

I see there's a theme here, isn't there? Because you said it a couple of times. We talked about it, we involved the children in it and that willingness to talk. And when you were saying about the children before, I was sort of thinking, gosh, I wonder how many parents listening would feel quite nervous about, you know, talking to the children in that level of detail and telling them, you know, how things are gonna be and you know, going through all of that detail with them, whereas you were quite clear that you were gonna do that, you were gonna involve them, you were gonna, you know, let them know what it was gonna look like, how it was gonna be. And I think a lot of parents feel that the less they say to the kids, the better, almost.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

I think it's that kind of mistake. I think it's such a mistake because uncertainty is the thing that makes people, and this is little humans as well as big humans, uncertainty is the thing that makes the people most nervous.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

Well, you fill in your own gaps, don't you? With all sorts of weird wonderfuls.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

It's always worse. So what the story that people make up in the absence of information is almost inevitably worse than what it actually will be. And so we try, and we also tried to say it when we didn't know. So we also tried to say, mom and daddy have never been divorced before before. So like we don't actually know everything. So we're gonna tell you what we know. There's some stuff that we don't, you know, there's some stuff that we think, you know, you're too young to know, but we said that as opposed to just being silent about it. Uh and then we also tried it to the extent that there were choices that they could make, we tried to bring them into the choice that that way, because kids feel so not in control of their worlds. Things just happen to them, happen to them, happen to them. And so the extent to which you can kind of help them feel like they're in control of at least something little, at least that was our we felt that it was helped with the with the with the children. And that more transparency, even if the transparency was, we don't know, was better than not saying anything and was better than pretending to be all-knowing adults.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

And your willingness to talk about things that you know are going to be potentially controversial, dating again, that kind of stuff. I think that shows a real sort of skill in understanding how necessary it is to have those conversations rather than just hope they never come or we'll deal with them when it comes up. Because a lot of people say that to me, oh, well, that's not happening now, so we'll just deal with it when it happens. What's the difference between planning it in the cold sort of aftermath of a relationship breakdown versus stumbling across it when it happens?

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Emotions are always higher when you're in the middle of the thing, right? So when you're talking about something in the future, you can talk about it in a calmer way. It still feels like a hypothetical. You can also focus on the principle of the thing as opposed to the emotions that are around. The emotions are all very, very important. But when you're talking from a space of not being both very activated, and let's just be clear, even though we talked about it, there were things that happened that A, we hadn't anticipated, or even though we had made a rule, once we were in the middle of it, I was like, I don't like this at all. But having the foundation of having talked about it made even the subsequent conversations that had emotion around them easier because we had already agreed previously on a principle.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Yeah. And in some ways, if you've agreed the principle, you've demonstrated a level of reasonableness. And it's, I think it's almost better to go back and say, look, I know we agreed this, but actually I'm finding it hard, rather than just going, no, I'm not going to do that first off, which is the alternative way of doing it, isn't it? So I guess that you buy yourself some good grace and some time by actually confronting some of those things in the abstract rather than the logistical nightmare of having to sort it out in the here and now. Yeah. I interrupted you then. Go on, finish your story then. So you're co-parenting and you're separated. And so there is a happy ending to this story, isn't there?

SPEAKER_01 28:52

Well, I mean, we're co-parenting, separated, and it's it's too funny because it might we we call it to the kids a happy divorce. And in fact, one of our our youngest daughter who's written who's always considered herself an author since she was since she started at three. So she's always writing. And so she decided to write a children's book called The Happy Divorce because she said and had like animals. I think it was a bear and a wolf. I can't remember, bear and a dog were married. And so she because she said all of the stories about divorce are not happy. And so I want to write a story about a divorce that's happy. And that's just to let you know that the kids, you know, had come to a place like this is where mommy and daddy are. They're divorced, they're friends. I had been working for Facebook and I had an incredibly high pressure job. I'd quit my job. I'd quit it to chase joy. I was loving life. I was traveling. I'd spent a ton of time in the art and cultural space, not as an artist, I'm not artistic at all, but really as someone to support artistic practices, loved it. Um, and I just was in this, I was in a space of being a little bit further from grief, but also just exploring things that brought me joy. And because I spent all this time with artists, I started to recognize who my husband is. And so, and you know, you can know someone for years and still, and I think that's one of the beautiful things about friendships, about long marriage, is that no matter how long you know someone, you can always discover things new. And I spent all this time with artists, and so I realized I recognize him. And so I realized he is someone who needs to create. So he had spent all of this time trying to run away from it. So I remember having a conversation with this incredible artist. She's a um Scottish Bayesian artist named Alberta Whittle. And she talked about in her in Bayesian culture, there's a converse, there's a whole thing around if you have a gift and you run away from it, there's a way in which you are never, you're never okay. And she was talking about that. And I just immediately was like, wait a minute, it felt familiar when I thought about Ridge. And then I went to this incredible artistic gathering in Venice called Loophole Retreat that was created by Simone Lee, who represented the US, the Venice Biennale a couple of years back. And she did this incredible moment. Anybody who's gone to it talks about it as being life-changing. And in that, they have this, there was all of these conversations around grief and all these conversations around who's allowed to mourn, and all these conversations around which kinds of people, which bodies we were allowed to mourn. It was all around, and so I connected with it really deeply from this um, the perspective of my brother and the perspective of what it's like to love people who aren't meant to survive. And that's if you think about all kinds of people. If you think about so the other thing about my family history is that we're Igbo. And so my family was part of a genocide in Nigeria, and so my paternal grandfather was murdered in a well-known massacre. And so it was just this real sense of like grief in lineages and how one grieves. And that was, and I had this car, I met this woman there who's an incredible artist and a jewelry maker who had lost her younger sister. And short of along, she started talking to me about her grief. And she said, Hey, did you go to therapy when you lost your brother? I said, I totally believe in therapy. And she said, Yeah, okay, cool. But did you go? I said, and I believe in it. I think people should go. She's like, So you did to go. She said, No, the reason, the only reason I'm asking is because there's this phenomenon of when you lose someone, that you then try and do everything to protect yourself against that hurt. And sometimes that means pushing away the people you love the most. And I remember her having this conversation with me. And then also the week before that, she'd happened to see my husband and I be, or my ex-husband and I, because we were at this artistic event. And she said, Who's that guy? And I said, Oh, it's my ex. And she said, Your ex. And I said, Yes. She said, No, that's not, that's not ex-energy. I said, No, no, no, we've always been friends. She said, No, no, no. I said, and she said, No, I know what I saw. And so, anyway, out of that conversation, when she told me that, I felt like I had been, I felt like someone who just met me had seen me really deeply. And so two things happened. One, I had this like real strong sense that I needed to tell Rich, like, you need to follow your purpose. If that means that you're an artist and you never make a penny, that's what it means. You have to do that. So that was, I think that was a really key thing to go to him and say, I see you. I see who you are. And I think you have to do that. So, regardless of whether we are together or not, you have to do that. But then I had this real deep realization, wait a minute, was part of why we were apart and part of why I didn't have any energy around it is because I was protecting myself against what it feels like to love someone who you're always afraid, like deeply afraid that you will lose them. So that realization, then we started spending time together first as friends. And then we went to, this is gonna sound really, but I we went to Venice because I had been a patron for Sonia Boyce, who's the first um black woman to represent the UK at Venice. And so there was a closing event in Venice. And I said, Hey, you should come because you're an artist and you should hang out with artists. We're gonna go as friends. And so we went to Venice, and you know, Venice is beautiful, it's like one of the most beautiful romantic. And so I think we went on a Thursday by Sunday. We were more than friends. And so I remember flying back and being like, well, so what does this mean? But then realizing we couldn't tell the kids. So we were sneaking around behind the kids' backs. So we would get a babysitter and like have the big the kids at my uh at Rich's house, and then we'd be on a date at my house. Like it was it was very slapstick, like the whole situation was very slapstick, but this, but it also was actually quite cute. It was quite like the this thing of like getting to know him again in a different context and also.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

You've had the sort of scales pulled from your eyes almost, so you can see him for the man he is. And he has the opportunity to step into that character, doesn't he? And to and to play his part properly rather than getting sidelined by work, job, whatever it was that was holding him back from reaching his artistic potential.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

I also think that the time apart was really good for both of us in that we developed and grew as people. I had my own developing and growing up to do as well. And I think there is a way that when you're in a long-term partnership, sometimes you're not, it's not on purpose, but because of there's just a way that sometimes you can keep each other from growing in the way that you need to. So I would always joke, like, I actually recommend a divorce to so like so many people should get divorced, or it's like spend time apart.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

There was something really truth to it, isn't there? There feels like a real validating truth to the way that you tell this story and the sense of you being very in tune with how you are in that moment and accepting the consequences of that. And that was that you couldn't live together as man and wife for a period of time. But then the the the change in that circumstance is not because it would be so easy, wouldn't it, at that stage to say, no, I'm divorced. This is just wasn't meant to happen. We just had a fling in Venice, and then to not uh run with that and allow yourselves to see where that took you because you'd have had every cultural narrative screaming at you, you don't go back, you don't go back, you don't go back. You know, it just it's you know, that's for Elizabeth Taylor and uh Richard Burton. You know, that that's not for normal people, you don't do that. And so it must have been amazing to allow yourselves the freedom to experience that in the moment. I've I've just so much admiration for you.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

It was actually one of the most romantic periods of time, also because it's with someone who knows you really well. I mean, I've known him since I was 17, like I've known him almost all of my life, but like I didn't know the version, I didn't fully know the version of him that we were coming back together, that was coming back uh when we were coming back together. And I think there was something really beautiful about having all of these layers of understanding of someone, but also the humility of saying, I actually don't know everything about you, and I'm curious about getting to know you. And I think one of the things that dies sometimes in a long relationship is curiosity because you're like, ah, I already know them. Like, and so this thing of like, of being like, actually, I don't know you in the interim, you've dated other people, I've dated other people, we've had other adventures, and so you're a different person. And so that was both like beautiful, but and also there's also a vulnerability, if that makes any sense, because you then had to consciously choose each other. It's not like, oh, we're we're together, we just happen to be together. You had to say, well, actually, is this a person that I want to be with? You had to kind of you there's an effort, I think, that was that was actually quite beautiful for both of us, where you're trying again in a very different way. And then you're no longer assuming that you're gonna be together in the act as in the exact same way. You're asking questions like actually, what does it mean? Because we had a so we dated for like for through two months before actually three months, I think it was, for three months, before saying like we undercover dated, and then we went back to California for the holidays and then went, you know, yeah. I think I told them our parents we were dating. We had we hadn't told the kids anything. And then we went, we left the kids with our parents over the holidays and went, did like we did something for New Year's and then New Year's Eve, we had all of these conversations like who do we want to be with each other? Because when we had to say, do we want to date? Do you know, do you, or do we want to just be kind of like you know, people who are raising kids together? We still have sort of separate lives, but we're kind of like exes with benefit. We had we talked through all of it. And I think all what are all of the options and what do we actually really want, not just based upon the people we were, but on the people that we intend to be and the people that we've evolved and changed into. And it wasn't a given that we were gonna decide to get married again. It was actually what do we want? And what does the marriage look like? Is it it might look different, it might need to look different because of what we've learned about each other. We actually talked about, well, maybe we want to live in different places, you know, like we just talked through all of that. And then we also talked about that it felt ridiculous as well. Like after we've gone and told everyone we're getting divorced, it's a great divorce, and we're gonna now go back and say, hey guys, so we've just there is a level of it that felt silly, you know, that felt like it's like how are you at this big age unclear about whether or not? And so there's a piece of us that just had to lean into it and say, well, we're doing this for us, and so we're defining what the relationship means to us. Our big concern and our big care is the children and how and how the children will deal with it. And so we wanted to be really careful about uh being clear what we were doing before we told the kids. But we had to let go of being the perfect couple, if that makes sense. And we had to let go of looking respectable and and not looking ridiculous because it, I mean, there is, yes, it's romantic, but there also is a side of ridiculous to say we're back.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

But also what I like about the way you frame it is that it you're not framing it as, oh, it was a mistake to get divorced. It was the right thing to get divorced, it was absolutely a necessary part of this journey. It's almost like an independent decision to then get married. And I'm almost not wanting to use the word remarried because you're not remarrying into the same arrangement, but you've ended that marriage and you are choosing to start by the sounds of it, and correct me if I'm wrong, you are starting a completely different marriage. The fact that you know somebody is sort of neither here nor there on the one level, but it's obviously feeding you with the possibilities and perhaps some of the confidence to take what feels like, as you say, because it might look ridiculous to some people, a massive risk. Yeah, absolutely. But it's that's a to me, that's such a lovely story. And it it means your divorce story is your divorce story. It wouldn't have been any different, it hasn't changed your divorce story, and then you've got a whole nother story about a remarr- I've said it now, about a marriage and starting again, albeit with shared children. Yeah. Well, that's another podcast in itself. In just a moment, Abella's going to share her top tips for navigating separation in a kind way. And I know that you wouldn't want to miss that. But before that, if this episode is giving you a tiny bit of clarity or just a bit of comfort or a tip that's made things feel just a little bit better, make sure to follow the divorce podcast on your favorite app. Each week we're here with expert advice and real support to help you through your separation one step at a time. Okay, so it's a moment of truth. Top tips, main message for listeners that you'd like to leave them with. What are your top tips for a good or a kind divorce?

SPEAKER_01 41:21

Okay. This is maybe a tip for people who are considering getting married. Talk about it now. So it feels like a really awful thing. And I think people have talked about the fight, they'll say, oh, get a prenup, et cetera. Even I'm not even talking about a prenup, but I think talking to people about what's your view, if we are no longer together, how will we handle it? Like who are who who do we want to be to each other? I think it feels like a scary conversation to have in the beginning, but it's I I found that it was very important to have had it. And that leads to the other thing, which is talk communication. And I this is true of everything. And sometimes it feels weird because you're thinking, well, if you're so great at communicating, why would you be getting divorced? But you could be getting divorced for a whole host of reasons. And it doesn't mean that the necessity of being able to talk about things, even the things that seem hard, even the things that you hope don't happen. I found that it was better to talk about them in advance and not because hope is not a strategy that you that talking through them before actually helped us. Um and I should have started by saying I hesitate always from giving advice because I think everyone's situation is different. And so I can just say these are things that I found helped us. And, you know, maybe they're useful, maybe they're not. I find that people's advice is more reflect reflection, often more reflection of them and their circumstances. And this is another tip that has more to do with who you pick. If you're picking someone who you don't see yourself as being able to be friends with, there's a question about why you're marrying that person to begin with. Like if that, and I think people sometimes pick people like, oh, this person is, I don't know, feels like a good match on paper, or this person is someone who's very sexy, or this person is someone who like, you know, I don't know, it's like it feels romantic. If someone is not at at core, someone who's a friend, one of the things that Rich said, I remember after we got divorced, and I was asking something, it was when, because I was going through career stuff and I was thinking about quitting my job, and I forgot. I said something, and he said, Bell, I don't think you understand. I'm your biggest fan. Like I'm your, and this is when we were divorced. He's like, I'm your and so someone who really is thinking about you as distinct from them, like cares about you as distinct from them. So it who isn't like, I want you to, I want you to do well as long as we're together. But if we're not together, then that is bad. So, and I think being able to have those conversations, even if you're already married, you haven't had them before, being able to start having those conversations now and really develop a core friendship, I think are huge. Talk about dating. So if you're thinking about getting a divorce, think about like what is the world you want? You have to get through the divorce, the separation, but like what is the world you want on the end of other end of it? So, not just what do I want to avoid, but what is the world that, what is the relationship we want? So that you're thinking about not just the ickiness of the separation, but like after post-separation, what do we want? Like, what's the what are the things that will bring us joy? And then work backwards to that. So even though now like the happy ending is that we got together, candidly, a happy ending would have been that we stayed really great friends and co parented our kids. Exactly. And we stay friends together. And if and if that's your goal, if you know like that's what a happy ending is, work back. So we'll fighting about this one thing. Get you to that, if that makes any sense. Like, is everything that you're doing in the interim going to lead you to whatever this, the, the bright future that you're looking forward to? And I would think about that. Um, and I think with uh the other thing is I think dating can get tricky. And having rules around, for me, it was having rules around how we integrated people we were dating with children. And I actually, and actually, I think in from a principal perspective, we agreed, but some of the execution got a little messy. And I think being able to talk through that is super important.

SPEAKER_00 45:05

They're brilliant tips. Thank you so much. Where can people find more information about you?

SPEAKER_01 45:10

It's so funny that I am actually now writing a television show, television series, I know, about this, like a comedy, but it's also a drama. And so maybe in a couple of years you'll be able to watch it. Oh, I can't wait.

SPEAKER_00 45:25

That'd be amazing. Excellent. And um, if people want to connect with you, you're on LinkedIn, wherever you can find you. I'm on LinkedIn. Yeah. Lovely. Um, for separation and co-parenting advice, please visit amicable.co.uk where you can explore our free resources, our tools, or you can book a free advice consultation if there's been anything in this episode that you want to talk about. You can find me on LinkedIn as well. You can hear about new podcast episodes by subscribing for updates and visiting thedivorsepodcast.com, or you can find us on your favourite listening platform. Finally, don't forget we'd love to hear your feedback and ideas for guests and comment on anything you've heard in the episode today. You can get in touch on hello at amicable.co.uk. Thanks so much indeed for joining me today, Abella. It's been absolutely lovely talking to you, and thank you everybody for listening. Likewise, bye.