Betrayal in the form of adultery is always painful. In my case, its exceptional power lay in the fact that it reawakened my deepest emotions: my wife was rejecting me in much the same way I felt my mother had “rejected” me by dying when I was ten years old. In effect the situation that resulted was similar, only now it touched the core of my being.

In fact, my whole life disintegrated. My family was in tatters; I was no longer a husband or life-partner and was struggling to remain a father. I lost all sense of who I was and my confidence plummeted. I felt completely deskilled instead of the reasonably competent person I had been. Every one of my accounts was called in – I stood naked at the counter of life. For me this was loss on a grand scale. Most of all, I felt emasculated and impotent.

In time and with the help of therapy I was gradually transformed by the crisis. The therapy helped me to rebuild my confidence, to start believing in myself and to put myself center-stage. I shed a lot of my emotional armor and began to develop a greater awareness of my feelings. This fundamentally changed the way I functioned, shifting me from being ‘in my head’ to being ‘in my heart’ more; from looking out to looking inward. I slowly came to realize that “it’s all in me”, that we see the world as we are, not as it is.

My new perspective allowed me to feel more comfortable with myself and easier in my relationships with other people. I moved from feeling weak and powerless to feeling passionate and powerful. Somehow I managed to lay most of my demons to rest and virtually begin life afresh. I emerged a new man, in charge of my own life.

While in the throes of divorce, I was sure my days of despair would never end. But inadvertently my breakup crisis – the proverbial ‘kick in the butt’ – launched me into my present, and best, phase of my life. The transformation I underwent allowed me to enter into and sustain a loving relationship with the woman of my dreams.

In fact, my whole life disintegrated. My family was in tatters; I was no longer a husband or life-partner and was struggling to remain a father. I lost all sense of who I was and my confidence plummeted. I felt completely deskilled instead of the reasonably competent person I had been. Every one of my accounts was called in – I stood naked at the counter of life. For me this was loss on a grand scale. Most of all, I felt emasculated and impotent in all senses.

Somehow I managed to turn the situation around. It took time, of course, and I was fortunate to have help, in the form of therapy. The therapy helped me to rebuild my confidence, to start believing in myself and to put myself center-stage. I shed a lot of my emotional armor and began to develop an awareness of my feelings. This fundamentally changed the way I functioned, shifting me from being ‘in my head’ to being ‘in my heart’ more; from looking out to looking inward. I gradually came to the realization that “it’s all in me”, that we see the world as we are, not as it is.

As I lifted the lid on my emotions and got in touch with my anger and my grief, so I found it easier to deal with my situation, particularly vis-à-vis my ‘wife’. I moved from a position of feeling weak and powerless to one in which I felt passionate and powerful. This turnaround stood me in good stead throughout our protracted divorce. In addition, I got the whiff of freedom in my nostrils; colors suddenly seemed brighter, smells sharper. My kingdom was smaller but at least it was mine; I was in charge of my own life. I learned to enjoy my unmediated contact with my children and not having to consult another person constantly. When my wife was away there was a welcome feeling of calm, relaxation and ease in the house that I came to appreciate.

My battered ego was given a boost once I started dating other women. I began to feel like a sexually attractive man, something I had not felt in relation to my wife, even in relatively good times. Just going for a walk and holding hands with a new woman was exciting. Naturally, I did not hit it off with every new woman I met, but I did with a few, which was enough to show me that alternatives existed. There are lots of fish in the sea.

With hindsight, I can see that what initially seemed like a double blow – my wife’s betrayal coupled with the sense of abandonment I felt as a child of ten when my mother died – eventually became a transformative experience for me. The change I underwent allowed me to enter into an exhilarating and loving relationship with the woman of my dreams.

While in the throes of divorce, I was sure my days of despair would never end. But as my story indicates, there is a way through the trauma of a breakup. Handled correctly and with a bit of help it can lead to better things. Better than you ever imagined.

Divorce affirmations
a) Seven points to keep in mind to help you ease the pain of divorce.
1. Let go of the past; learn from it.
2. The relationship with X is over. Rejoice.
3. Drop the X issue.
4. Life will be better without X.
5. My divorce has opened the way to better things.
6. He/she is off my back. Don’t pick up that load again.
7. I am infinitely better off without her/him.

b) Seven more points to keep in mind to help you ease the pain of divorce.
1. There are no endings; only new beginnings.
2. Life will return.
3. The pain will pass.
4. A new life beckons.
5. Give myself credit; keep my eyes on my own ship.
6. Go easy on myself.
7. I have a lot going for me.

Affirmations for you
Seven affirmations about yourself that are important to bear in mind.
1. Love yourself; you are 100%; celebrate who you are. Nobody can diminish you.
2. Grant yourself the power to: be assertive, leave the prison, do what is right for you (and others).
3. Grant yourself what you need: love, warmth, affection, tenderness and appreciation.
4. Be authentic and true to yourself; this is the essence of your strength and source of your power.
5. Go easy on yourself; be forgiving and give yourself credit.
6. Find your center and create yourself out of your talents.
7. Give the whole of yourself unconditional love. This is the chi.

So, despite the slightly faltering start to my relationship with my future wife, I expected my marriage to last forever. After all, we were from similar backgrounds, had shared values, and we both viewed matrimony as a sacred institution that you did not enter into lightly, nor did you leave it without good reason.

In fact, for many years it seemed we were going to live out my vision of marriage and family life in much the way I had grown up to believe and expect. We lived pretty harmoniously, enjoyed doing things together, and had a wonderful circle of friends. We happily invested time and energy in our three children because their welfare was our primary concern. Overall the atmosphere in our home was relaxed.

This familial bliss continued for about fifteen years before cracks began to appear. For numerous reasons my relationship with my wife gradually deteriorated until we reached a stage where we were hardly touching each other and resentments began to build up. It was a dark period for me generally.

My solution to my mid-life crisis was to seek therapy for myself. By contrast, my wife’s response to our predicament was to have an affair. When I found out, about two months later, it hit me like a thunderbolt. I felt like I had been slit down my middle with a knife; opened like a tin can. The pain just seared through me. What I felt was an agonizing mix of betrayal, abandonment, hopelessness and impotence. It was as if my world had collapsed. My life partner, my wife of nearly twenty years, mother of my three children was saying, “It’s over. You are not good enough. I want a new man.” In the early stages I was completely swamped by a sense of my own inadequacy, as a man, and as a husband. Later these feeling turned into anger and rage.

Betrayal in the form of adultery is always painful. In my case, its exceptional power lay in the fact that it reawakened my deepest emotions: my wife was rejecting me in much the same way I felt my mother had “rejected” me by dying when I was ten years old. In effect the situation that resulted was similar, only now it touched the core of my being.

Initially I wanted to file for divorce and started proceedings. Then some incident occurred which convinced us that we should try to “make a go of it.” We made a little progress but it never got very far. Sadly, we got into a roller-coaster situation in which neither of us could ‘leave the marriage’ – a sort of paralysis. We descended to levels of acrimony that we would never have believed possible for us. It was not plate-throwing but it was pretty horrible. So we were on this see-saw of occasionally wanting to glue Humpty-Dumpty together again while knowing deep down that it was futile.

There are various versions of hell but one of them must be: an estranged couple living in the same house, sharing the same facilities and sharing responsibility for three children.

After almost three years of this misery, left with no choice, I finally initiated divorce proceedings. Within months we had split up and were legally divorced. Amazingly, there was virtually no argument at all between us over the terms of the divorce or the child custody/care arrangements. We shared all our modest possessions equally and each bought a house in the same area. By this time our older daughter was already at university and the two younger children had no problem moving between our two homes.

With the advantage of hindsight, I can see that the breakup of my marriage inadvertently turned out to be a transformative experience for me. The upheaval, coming like a bolt from the blue and feeling like hell, jolted me back to life and forced me to begin afresh. It shook me out of the fog I had been living in for years and liberated me in the process.

As it turned out, my breakup was a wakeup call.

My crisis came in the shape of a divorce, a breakup, after nearly twenty years of marriage and three children. I believe that my divorce ordeal has given me insight into how to deal with a personal crisis. It was very rough at the time and it is not easy revisiting my experience now but I do get some satisfaction from knowing that I went through hell and lived to tell the tale.

My overall outlook is that when we are facing a crisis we need all the help we can get, from ourselves and from outside; we have to mobilize all possible resources. In short, we need to maximize our chances of negotiating the crisis successfully.

Rule 1 – stand still and breathe.
When you feel that initial wave of panic and you think the world around you is collapsing, you must stand still and breathe. Don’t try to do anything. No decisions, no resolutions, no actions. Just be in a quiet place and do nothing. Sometimes you just have to let the pain go through you. Eventually it will ease.

It sounds easy but sometimes things that sound easy are the hardest to accomplish. This is one of them. It is hard to do nothing. Believe me. Your instinct will tell you that you have to act: strike out, make decisions and arrangements, show who you are, etc. It’s difficult to go against these instincts but it is in your interests to do so. Give yourself time. Be the calm at the centre of the storm for a while. While the storm is raging overhead it is appropriate to take cover. It’s not the time to be outside and exposed. Your time will come.

Rule 2 – conserve your energy.
You need all your strength to deal with the crisis, so don’t waste it. The way a lot of people waste energy is to run themselves down, to blame themselves for precipitating the crisis. This might not be the case, or only partly. Maybe you share the blame.
People often tend to think that what is happening outside themselves is better than what they have and during crises this tendency is exacerbated. It is not better out there. And it is very debilitating to start thinking that the world out there is a greener pasture, whether what you have in mind is only a change of scene for yourself or the world that somebody who has left you has just entered.

What you have to do is keep your eyes on your own ship. Never mind the other yachts or liners sailing by, yours is good and you need to concentrate on steering it. Once you start looking ‘out there’ you see only waste land, which is bound to appear a lot more glamorous than it actually is, and to be full of all sorts of beautiful people who seem to be living happy, contented and fulfilled lives. Look at what you have got and at what you have achieved. You will probably find that there is a lot you can take credit for.
The point about looking inward is that if focuses you on yourself and stops you from comparing yourself to others, particularly to somebody who is party to your crisis. The moment you start running yourself down you leak energy, which is what you want to avoid.

Rule 3 – don’t be scared of what may or may not happen.
In crisis situations we start imagining the worst and it can be very frightening. The secret is not to predict. Things will happen and you will have a greater or a lesser say in them. What you must avoid at all costs is being intimidated by what-if scenarios. They can drive you crazy because there is no end of possibilities and at times of difficulty they get multiplied and the future seems much more foreboding and threatening. The idea of imagining a worst-case scenario can be a useful controlled exercise, but getting into a panic about what may happen is dangerous.

One of the best ways to prevent yourself from worrying about what might happen is to concentrate on the present. As far as possible, try to live in the moment, in the here and now. Break time into small units and force yourself to be here and nowhere else. It takes practice but it can be done. Use all your senses: sight, sound, smell, touch and taste to experience the world around you – as it is right now. Whichever way you look at it, the idea is to take one day at a time. Just today. The future will happen and it will be okay.

Rule 4 – take one small step at a time.
In many difficult situations the tendency is to rush and to expect too much too quickly, especially with regard to repair. We want change and we want it fast. Unfortunately it does not usually occur at the pace we expect. Here I am reminded of the Chinese sage who was asked how he managed to complete a trek of thousands of kilometers. He answered, “By putting one foot in front of the other.” There are variations of this story, yet it remains true: even the longest journey starts with one small step.

Bear this in mind and don’t ask too much of yourself. The good things happen slowly; they take time. It is pointless to try to speed them up and ultimately the effort is wasted and draining. Remember also the tale of the three pigs? Only the one who built a house of bricks survived. You need to figuratively build your house with bricks, on a solid foundation. Accomplish a little bit each day, making sure that what you have done is sound and right for you.

In practice this means that you should not rush to get things done, to make changes, to resolve situations, and so forth. A time of crisis is the worst time to hurry. Nice and slow is the best motto.

Rule 5 – most paths are good; go for what you want.
I firmly believe that very few of the paths open to us are going to lead to the abyss. Without denying that there is clearly a place in our lives for rational, sensible behavior, I think we agonize, ponder and deliberate over choices about what to do next far too much. Once we begin to think that, within the realm of what is reasonable, most choices will turn out okay, things become much easier.

Here there is room to listen to your heart and to do what you really want. Again, it is not easy. Knowing what you want for yourself means really listening to what is going inside you. But the rewards are great. For the most part people do not do what they really want because they are restricted by convention, upbringing or perhaps finances.
However, if you are able to do what you want in your given circumstances, you have gone a long way to reduce the dimensions of the crisis. In fact, you will have transformed the crisis into an opportunity. That is a major, life-changing achievement.

Practical steps:
a. You must treat yourself well in every sense. Number one, be kind to yourself, go easy on yourself – give yourself a break. Allow yourself time out, to just be. Don’t expect too much of yourself at a time of crisis. All you need to do is keep your bits together. Don’t splinter.

b. It is also time for treats. On the food front, make sure you eat decent, simple food. Drink a lot of water and fruit juices which are nourishing. If you can afford treatments such as massage, reflexology or aromatherapy, it is worth indulging yourself at this time.

c. Resort to nature. Get as much fresh air as you can. Go for walks in a park or in the country. You will find they give you energy and facilitate your recovery.

d. If you can possibly get involved in doing something practical you should do so. The experience of being in a group with people engaged in a similar activity will also help you to relax. Classes in drawing, painting, pottery, knitting, carpentry come to mind. I know from my own experience as a potter that clay has a very calming effect. It is wonderful to take a piece of raw clay and play with it for a while. You might also want to make something, which can be very satisfying.

e. Music – has the capacity to relax you, to quieten your world or even to express what you are feeling/thinking. Used in the right way it can be very helpful and exhilarating.

f. I used affirmations a lot. I needed to keep reminding myself of certain things, so I wrote them down on bits of paper that I kept with me at all times. When the chance arose I would go over them and drill them into my system. Sometimes we need a lot of convincing and this was one way I found that worked for me. The affirmations themselves change with you and your circumstances, and you will find that it’s helpful to be reaffirmed. Examples: the pain will pass; a new life beckons.

g. Therapy: if you are at all inclined towards therapy, this is the time to find a good therapist, either in a one-to-one situation or in a group. You don’t have to sign up for ten years; even ten sessions can be beneficial. Naturally, you can achieve more in longer periods, of say a few years.

h. Keeping a diary: you will find that writing things down is strangely comforting. They seem to assume a clarity that was not there before. For me the simple act of writing – with a pen on a blank sheet – was very cathartic.

Lastly, remember: your best days are ahead of you.
Whatever you may think while in the depths off despair, when it seems your misery will never end, it will. There is light at the end of the tunnel. What is more, if you take this opportunity to transform yourself – to come to terms with your loss; to let go of the past – you will find that you will enter a period of ease and comfort with yourself in the world that you would not have believed possible. If it is a lost love that precipitated your crisis, in time you may well find a much greater love than you believed yourself capable of. Fortunately for me, I did.

This statement rang true for me during my divorce. For a long time we were a happy family. We had a decent home in North West London, three lovely kids, plenty of friends and a family ambience that was the envy of people who knew us well. We were not without financial pressures but overall the family unit looked solid and it is difficult to pinpoint when things changed.

Between Paula, my wife, and I there had always been an underlying sexual tension that we never addressed properly, and which became more apparent as time went on. It got to the point where almost all intimacy between us ceased. We were like ships passing in the night, yet we never discussed what was paining us. As a result we both became progressively more frustrated and angry. Aware of my malaise, I sought comfort in therapy and began weekly sessions. Paula chose a different option. Following a medical crisis that threatened to be serious, she started an affair with Shawn, a work colleague, while they were at a conference. Until then we had remained faithful to each other.

When I found out about her affair a short time later, my initial response was shock and confusion. I was deeply hurt but as my shock turned to anger I decided, though not without equivocation, that I would remain on in the house with the kids come what may. For one, the house was my safe haven at a time when I felt adrift in rough seas. For another, I reasoned that the kids needed me around, as the more stable, or less distracted, adult. I also made it plain to Paula that as she had chosen to have an affair, she should be the one to leave if the marriage was over. She did. After we settled the arrangement for the kids she went to live with Shawn in a rented apartment nearby.

It was not easy to adapt to the new family format but we buckled down. Despite being upset, the kids, now sixteen, thirteen and nine respectively, behaved responsibly. They spent most of the time living in the family house with me although the two younger ones went to spend one or two nights a week with their mother.
With financial help from my wife I proved fully up to the task of running the reconstituted household – kids, cooking, cleaning, laundry and some ironing. From my point of view the separation was hard but fine. It definitely looked like we were on the way to divorce. Sad but it happens. “The kids will be alright,” we kept reassuring ourselves. The therapy helped me keep my bits together and I started enjoying my new-found freedom within the harmonious environment of our truncated family. Separation clearly had its compensations.

Some months later I began to get the message from Paula, still my wife, that things were really tough for her. She was missing her kids terribly and could not handle Shawn’s kids when they were around. She wanted to know whether I would consider “having her back.”

Taken by surprise, I was uncertain about what to do, particularly as it seemed a risky undertaking, with a limited chance of success. At the same time I was aware of our long history together, and the importance to both of us of maintaining the family unit. In addition there was the matter of my pride. I thought my severely dented manhood would be restored by Paula’s return to the fold. The children, of course, wanted us to re-unite.

I agreed to take a chance and Paula moved back into our home and the marital bed. It did not take long for the old tensions to arise and by the second or third night one of us was sleeping on the floor. We looked at each other forlornly and had to admit that it could not work. Paula had not ended her relationship with Shawn and, therefore, could not really be at ease with me. We agreed that she would move into a room downstairs; separate but together under the same roof.

There are various versions of hell but one of them must be: an estranged couple living in the same house, sharing the same facilities and sharing responsibility for three children. And if that does not sound nightmarish enough, this setup continued for three long years until we finally split up. Initially I wanted to file for a divorce and started proceedings. Then some incident occurred which convinced us that we should try to “make a go of it.” We made a little progress but it never got very far. Paula was still involved with Shawn and I began to date other women.

A while later another event caused Paula to think that family was all-important and we should “get together.” Each time I tried to lay down conditions to ensure the success of the endeavor but to no avail. In between times we descended to levels of acrimony that we would never have believed possible for us. It was not plate-throwing but it was pretty horrible. So we were on this see-saw of occasionally wanting to glue Humpty-Dumpty together again while knowing deep down that it was futile.

To her credit, after almost three years of this roller coaster ride, Paula eventually turned down my final offer to put everything behind us and start afresh. I accepted her decision without reservation and immediately initiated divorce proceedings. Within months we had split up and were legally divorced. Amazingly, there was virtually no argument at all between us over the terms of the divorce or the child custody/care arrangements. We shared all our modest possessions equally and each bought a house in the same area. By this time our older daughter was already at university and the two younger children had no problem moving between our two homes.

The transition from a happy to an unhappy family was indeed long and arduous for us. Consequently, there will always be questions about why we held on for that amount of time. The simple explanation is that for both of us it was difficult to “leave the marriage,” albeit for different reasons.

Our three children undoubtedly suffered during the period of our breakup. Nevertheless, I think they were aware that our love of each of them, and our strong desire to keep the family together, was what prolonged the saga. Judging by the way they are building their lives it seems our breakup did not destroy the notion of family for them. In fact, we have all moved on pretty well.

In the traditional South African Jewish society from which I originated divorce was almost unheard of. That is not to say that relationships between husbands and wives were always good back in the fifties. I am sure they weren’t, but for cultural and economic reasons couples tended to stay together, although there were some exceptions.

So, despite the slightly faltering start to my relationship with my future wife, I thought my marriage was going to last forever. After all, we were from similar backgrounds and we had willingly agreed to marry after conducting a relationship for a few years and living together happily before the wedding day. We both viewed matrimony as a sacred institution that you did not enter into lightly, nor did you leave it.

In fact, for many years it seemed we were going to live out my vision of marriage and family life in much the way I had grown up to believe and expect. We lived pretty harmoniously, enjoyed doing things together, shared similar values and had a congenial circle of friends. We happily invested time and energy in our three children because their welfare was our primary concern. Overall the atmosphere in the house was convivial and relaxed.

This familial bliss continued for about fifteen years before cracks began to appear. For numerous reasons my relationship with my wife gradually deteriorated until we reached a stage where we were hardly touching each other and resentments began to build up. It was a dark period for me generally.

My solution to my mid-life crisis was to seek therapy for myself. By contrast, my wife’s response to our predicament was to get into bed with a work colleague. When I found out, about two months later, it hit me like a thunderbolt. I felt like I had been slit down my middle with a knife; opened like a tin can. The pain just seared through me. What I felt was an agonizing mix of betrayal, abandonment, hopelessness and impotence. It was as if my world had collapsed. My life partner, my wife of nearly twenty years, mother of my three children was saying, “It’s over. You are not good enough. I want a new man.” In the early stages I was completely swamped by a sense of my own inadequacy, as a man, and as a husband. Later these feeling turned into anger and rage.

Fortunately I had already started therapy. It did not take long for the therapist to point out the connection between what I was feeling then, aged forty-six, and what I had experienced but didn’t allow myself to feel at the age of ten, when my mother died – abandonment. My wife’s betrayal had opened up an old wound, touching a very deep vein in my makeup.

Betrayal in the form of adultery is always painful. In my case, its exceptional power lay in the fact that it reawakened my deepest emotions: my wife was rejecting me in much the same way I felt my mother had “rejected” me by dying. In effect the situation that resulted was similar, only now it touched the core of my being.

My therapy helped me enormously to deal with what I was experiencing. Firstly, to cope with the crisis and, secondly, to begin to understand the dynamic I had established in relation to my mother. It also helped me go through the mourning I had not gone through at the time of my mother’s death, playing the tough boy instead. For the next five years I was in weekly therapy, at first in a one-to-one format and then as part of a group. Throughout this period, which paralleled the disintegration of my marriage, I delved into the nature of my relationship with my mother and the effect her dying had on me. Naturally the therapy covered other aspects of my life as well.

Over time I came to realize that what initially felt like a double blow – my wife’s betrayal coupled with my memory of my mother’s abandonment – eventually became a transformative experience for me. The insight I gained into my emotional patterns allowed me to turn the saga into an opportunity. Somehow I managed to lay most of my demons to rest and virtually begin life afresh. I emerged a new man, in charge of my own life, able to be my own good father and mother, and lover if necessary. I got the whiff of freedom in my nostrils and became aware of myself as a sexually attractive man. Inadvertently, my breakup launched me into my present, and best, phase of my life.

That one is also unique in other respects: it stretches to almost two thousand pages and covers a period of about six years. My marriage took a long time to unravel and there was plenty to write about. And a great need to write. The journal, a chronicle of the breakup of my marriage, written in real-time in London in the early nineties, would become my book BREAKUP.

During my mid-forties I was feeling low, a sort of dark night of the soul. My work situation was unsatisfactory and my relationship with my wife was at a low ebb after about eighteen years together. As a way of dealing with my predicament I decided to go into therapy and immediately began to record my sessions with my therapist. This was the start of my journal.

To my dismay, after a few months of weekly sessions I began to suspect that my wife was having an affair and I confronted her. My suspicions proved correct: she had begun a relationship with a work colleague two months earlier. It came as a terrible shock – a real blow. The world seemed to collapse around me. I was thrown into turmoil, shaken to the core. I ached and agonized as the implications of the revelation gradually became clear to me.

What I was experiencing immediately expressed itself in my journal and I began to write furiously to keep pace with events. Every day, at all hours, I poured my heart and soul into my journal, unexpurgated and unfiltered. I just wrote, page after page. Sometimes the writing took the form of reams of flowing prose. At others it appeared as telegraphic notes, numbers or even doodles and symbols. In parts it is elegant, quasi-poetic script in others an almost illegible, crude, disjointed scrawl – all faithfully reflecting the fluctuations of my mood.

I had to get my feelings out of my system and onto the paper. The very act of writing was cathartic; things written suddenly assumed a clarity that was absent before. In short, my journal became my veritable “shoulder to cry on,” my refuge, my confidant. Of course I continued recording my therapy sessions as well. Sometimes it is difficult to know where the therapy ends and where “life” begins.

As my wife and I went through the torture of alternately trying to split up and battling to stay together, on and off over a period of a few years, I would religiously go to my journal and transfer to the page what had happened. It is my version that exists, not my ex-wife’s. It is subjective and one-sided, maybe in the extreme, in this case. However, for all its shortcomings, it has the virtue of being a brutally honest record of what I felt and thought at the time. It’s an insider view of marital disintegration, with all its agony and pain, as well as a testament to my process of transformation, leading to a new life.

The journal, all two thousand pages, was hand-written, mainly on A4 sheets of paper but also in two smaller hardcover diaries and twenty-three little notebooks of the sort I kept on me at all times. Being a semi-organized person, I dated every entry. When I left London in 1998 I stored all this material in boxes in a friend’s garage in Muswell Hill.

In July 2005, while sitting on the veranda of my pottery studio in the Jerusalem hills, the thought crossed my mind that my life story was encapsulated in an object that hung behind the studio door – a sweater. A green jersey as I like to call it. That jersey was knitted for me by our maid Johanna when I was a teenager in South Africa in the early sixties. Since that time I have lugged it across three continents and worn it for almost fifty years.

The jersey provided me with the inspiration to resurrect my journal, at the time still in my friend’s garage in London, as a book. Initially I had severe hesitations about publishing the journal because it is personal, intimate and confessional, but chiefly because my present partner felt a certain discomfort at the thought of my dabbling in my previous relationship. I put my doubts aside and when I was next in London I boldly decided to have all two thousand pages scanned onto a disc. I then got rid of all twelve thick folders of A4 sheets by putting them into the paper recycling bin. Somehow this act symbolically terminated the journal’s direct emotional association with the breakup of my marriage and placed it in less emotionally-laden territory.

Back home in Israel I began to type up on the computer the contents of the journal, which I could now see digitalized on an adjacent screen. Given the great length, the multiple, obsessive repetitions and the excessive detailing, I had to exclude a lot if I wanted it to approximate a standard book. I made a point of reducing but not adding anything. As to distancing me from the trauma, the digitalized format from the disc failed to keep all my emotions at bay. Despite the time lapse of some fifteen years, rereading the journal upset me. It really was a grim time.

Over the next two years I continued cropping the text. It now stands at 260 pages, just over 100,000 words – a good length. In the meantime I have added a prologue as background, a short introduction and an epilogue, divided the text into chapters and made some minor cosmetic alterations to facilitate reading. It has undergone copy-editing. Essentially BREAKUP, my book, is taken word-for-word from my original journal.

The Green Jersey, which gave me the inspiration to write the book, became its working title but I dispensed with the name, on the grounds that its connection to the subject was incidental. I did, however, go in search of the woman who knitted the jersey for me. In September 2007, after a nationwide effort in South Africa to track down Johanna Maart, I eventually made contact with her family. Sadly, she had died but I had an emotional reunion with her sister and four daughters in Wellington, near Cape Town, where I showed them the jersey. For me it represented the closing of a circle.