Within hours of the filing becoming public, my phone started buzzing with messages from people I hadn’t talked to in months. The first one came from Sarah, a friend from my book club who I’d gotten close to during the early days of my marriage. She sent a long text about how shocked she was to hear what was happening and how she always thought we were such a happy couple.
She asked if we could talk because she wanted to understand my side of things. I called her that evening and tried to explain the situation without going into too much detail about Lily’s experiences. Sarah kept interrupting to say that marriage was hard and that everyone went through rough patches. She said her own husband had said some harsh things over the years, but they worked through it.
I realized she wasn’t actually listening to what I was telling her. She’d already decided I was overreacting before she even picked up the phone. Two more friends reached out over the next week with similar messages. They’d talked to my husband or heard his version from someone else, and they wanted to know why I was being so extreme.