The story of actors Alice Evans and Ioan Gruffudd is the closest you can get to a front-row seat to the unravelling of a marriage.
Evans quit Twitter this week after posting a series of furious tweets attacking her estranged husband’s new girlfriend, Bianca Wallace for sharing romantic photos of the couple together.
In a comment that will resonate with spurned wives everywhere, the star of 102 Dalmations accused 29-year-old Wallace of driving “a stake in my heart” with the pictures, which included a photo of the shadows of her and Hornblower star Gruffudd holding hands while on holiday in Nice.
It’s the latest spat in a break-up that started last January, when Evans, 53, announced on social media that Gruffudd, 48, was leaving her.
Ever since then, she’s been pilloried and described as “crazy”, “demented” and “weak” for sharing her “messy story” on social media – and trolled for refusing to maintain a “dignified silence”.
But why should she? While some of her now-deleted posts are certainly bitter and filled with rage, accusing her husband’s new girlfriend of “scum behaviour” and Gruffudd of “ghosting” her, there’s no protocol for announcing a divorce in the social media age.
Gruffudd hasn’t helped matters, recently captioning a loved-up post to his 82,000 followers: “Thank you for making me smile again @iambiancawallace”, complete with a love heart emoji.
There’s a deeply unfair and outdated narrative that discarded wives should keep quiet and make way for the newer model without comment for the sake of their dignity. But when your life has been completely upended, dignity is the least of your concerns.
It’s more than 20 years since my ex-husband, former TV reporter Brent Sadler, now 71, abruptly abandoned me and our sons, then aged four and one, for a woman 16 years his junior.
Even though I’ve since remarried and found lasting happiness, the sting of Brent’s betrayal has never quite gone away.
I was a 25-year-old TV news producer at ITN when, in 1993, I met Brent, then 41, at a party. He asked me to marry him just four days later, neglecting to mention the slightly inconvenient truth that he was already married, to his second wife, Debby, 58.
In the aftermath of their break-up, Debby branded him a “love rat” in the newspapers, and Brent responded by orchestrating a magazine story with a photo of the two of us celebrating our new love on the front cover.
Debby issued a heartfelt public plea for “Brent’s mistress” to “just leave me alone”. I was deeply shamed when I read it, but I was in too deep by that point.
However, if revenge is a dish best served cold, she didn’t have long to wait. Four years later, while I was heavily pregnant with our second son, Matt, who is now 24, Brent began an affair with a Serbian translator. Our marriage imploded and, in 1999, we split up and I was left heartbroken and reeling. I realised that everything Debby had said about Brent was true: when a man is married four times, he’s not just unlucky in love.
To begin with, I tried to do the “right” thing by attempting to forge a cordial relationship with Brent’s new girlfriend for the sake of our sons. But in 2001, when I met my American second husband, Erik, 50, all attempts to build bridges collapsed.
At that point, the gloves came off. Like Alice Evans, I didn’t see why I should keep quiet about my pain any more.
It’s not easy admitting that you’re hurting and vulnerable. Being discarded is humiliating and extremely painful, though far worse is the grief you experience on your children’s behalf.
But if women like Alice and me don’t speak up for ourselves when the fathers of our children decide they’ve had enough and walk away, it just perpetuates the taboo. We’ve been wronged, and it’s our right to name our pain and give it voice.
If that makes us an “absolute nightmare” for our ex-husbands – oh dear, what a pity, never mind. It’s not the job of the betrayed spouse to make a cheater feel better. We don’t owe it to them to “get over it” so they can stop feeling guilty.
The first time I shared my story in a national newspaper, I was inundated with emails from women thanking me because it’d helped them to come to terms with their own divorces. “I could have written this,” one woman said. “Most people can’t understand what it’s like to be discarded and bullied in this way.”
Others – mainly men – told me to “shut up” and “move on” because I was embarrassing myself. But I didn’t feel embarrassed. Why should I? Why is it embarrassing to say that being betrayed by your husband when you’re carrying his child is painful? Why is it embarrassing to admit I took my marriage vows seriously, even if he didn’t?
As Alice put it in one pithy tweet: “I’m not bending over for this guy.”
I was told to “be quiet” for the sake of my children, but in openly discussing my pain and grief, I allowed my boys to feel and discuss theirs, too.
It was cathartic not to pretend I was fine with what’d happened to me. I never traduced Brent to the children, but when they asked why they only saw him once a year, I told them the truth.
As recently as this week, Brent wrote an article for another newspaper once more attempting to control the narrative – my narrative. In it, he pondered why women like Alice and me couldn’t “let go”, so that the likes of he and Ioan could pursue their happy endings.
With astonishing narcissism, he concluded that: “Happily for me, I found my fairytale – though Tess was the price to pay for it.”
It took a huge amount of swallowed pride for me to chase and chivvy him into rebuilding his relationship with the boys. It would’ve been so much easier for me to let him fade from their lives. But I wanted them to know him, even if it was only as a “summer Dad” for three or four weeks every year.
But, then, men like this would much rather not have to face the emotional carnage they leave behind them when they’re chasing their “fairy tale”. Far easier to sweep it under the carpet and blame it on their “sniping” women.
It’s unfortunate that four-times-married Brent, a once-successful reporter, may – rather like Henry VIII – be remembered for his multiple wives, rather than his professional achievements.
But gone are the days when men get to lop off our heads or send us to a convent if we present an obstacle to their “forever love.”
I, for one, applaud Alice Evans for refusing to go quietly and standing up for herself.
Stolen by Tess Stimson (HarperCollins, £8.99) is available from books.telegraph.co.uk, or by calling 0844 871 1514
