A Christmas family holiday was the final straw that ended my marriage
For Bianca Best, 50, an author, business coach and mum-of-four from Surrey, a crescendo of events over the 2015 festive season caused a mental breakdown and the beginning of the end for her 26-year marriage. Here she shares her story...
Like every Christmas, the one in 2015 was a frenetic whirl of excitement and chaos. As always, we’d invited various family members and I put all my effort into a frenzy of cooking, gift-wrapping and hosting while making our four children’s Christmas magic dreams come true.
On Boxing Day, I bundled everyone into the car for the eleven-hour drive to the Alps for our annual family skiing holiday. Little did I know it was the first of a series of events that led to a month in bed battling pneumonia, a mental breakdown and the breakdown of my marriage. That Christmas period was the one that absolutely broke me irrevocably.
That Christmas period was the one that absolutely broke me irrevocably.
At the time, our twin boys, Seb and Beau, were six, their elder sister Scarlett was 11 and brother Ashley, 13. I had too much on my plate, but didn’t acknowledge it at the time. Looking back, I now realise my default role in life had been to be a frantic over-achiever.
Falling apart
Once home from France, I had to repack my suitcase almost immediately to get on an 11-hour flight to Las Vegas for one of my most intense conferences of the year. My role as one of the hosts meant I worked for 30 hours straight when I first landed.
Before the Christmas break, I had already been very stressed and unhappy at work and hadn't given myself any time to rest over the festive season. Perhaps unsurprisingly I fell very ill while on the work trip to Las Vegas. Feverish, exhausted and crying in my hotel room, I was aching and shivering on the flight back and by the time I’d crawled home, I had full-blown pneumonia.
Signed off work
I was bed-bound for almost all of January, physically and mentally wiped out. Once better, I had the time and space to realise I needed radical change.
I now see I’d taken too much on. Going away skiing on Boxing Day hadn’t been a new stress – for 30 years that’s what we’d always done. But this was, I think, the first time that I had had the sort of accumulation of intolerable stress leading up to it and so much unhappiness in my job. And, having taken on the lion’s share in our domestic life, I knew I couldn’t carry on.
I’d developed a habit of doing everything at such an intensity and found myself in a repetitive cycle of boom and bust – achieving my dreams then submitting to burnout.
I now realise I’d developed a habit of doing everything at such an intensity and found myself in a repetitive cycle of boom and bust – achieving my dreams then submitting to burnout. I’d crashed physically many times and every time, I'd come away thinking I needed to make a change. To exercise more, cut back on coffee or try meditation. But I’d never looked at the emotional stress I was under and the loneliness I felt in my marriage, or at how unhappy I was in my job.
That’s when the epiphany came: I had to leave both.
All change
It dawned on me that I was distracting myself from how unhappy I felt by keeping busy. I couldn’t ignore the angry and troubling thoughts in my head anymore.
I knew by then that my marriage had to end but my husband really questioned that. He didn’t want us to destroy the marriage, but to stay together for the children.
After 26 years together, splitting up was not an easy decision. But it had come to the point that we were living our lives alongside each other, rather than connected to each other. Instead of conscientiously investing the time in nurturing the relationship, we had ended up drifting apart. Unpacking the problems in our marriage took four years in and out of marriage counselling, exploring how to make it work.
After 26 years together, splitting up was not an easy decision. But it had come to the point that we were living our lives alongside each other, rather than connected to each other.
I moved into the spare room and went through all that counselling knowing it was over for me. I was open to seeing what we’d learn that would help but all I realised was that we shouldn’t be together, but still we limped on with different counsellors until the day we both recognised it was truly over.
Finally, in July 2019, when I said, "We can’t keep doing this anymore," he took his ring off and replied, “I agree.” Then we started the heartbreaking dismantling of our joint life. It wasn’t easy, I’d been with him since I was 18 and he was 24, and I had only known life with him as an adult. But I knew instinctively that I’d be happier out of the marriage, and so would he.
Two weeks later, we told the children we were parting ways. It was one of the worst moments of my life, especially as it was me that was initiating it. It took a long time for everyone to adjust. Scarlett was confused and it took her over a year to understand my decision.
What really helped was keeping the children in the house and taking it in turns to be there with them, each spending a week on and a week off, staying with friends or family the rest of the time. We always put the children first.
A new career
And my life overhaul didn’t stop there. Once recovered from my pneumonia bout and back at work I realised how little I wanted to stay in my job: a high-testosterone business in digital marketing where the values of the company didn’t match my own and I always felt stressed.
I’ll always want to keep things amicable with the father of my four children – I’m so proud that we worked through our break-up with kindness.
I started job hunting straight away and by the summer I had a new job where I was so much happier. By the end of the year, I’d established my wellbeing business to help ambitious women crack burnout and now I've retrained as a business coach.
The right decision
I don’t regret ending my marriage, especially now I’m engaged again and so much happier. My ex is very happy with his new partner, too.
I’ll always want to keep things amicable with the father of my four children – the twins are now 15, Scarlett is 20 and Ashley, 22 – and their dad and I still work closely together to resolve any parenting issues. I’m so proud that we worked through our break-up with kindness. We just evolved differently and it’s a relief to come to terms with it.
Looking back to the hectic and intense Christmas period and its aftermath, I can honestly say I’m glad it happened. It was the wake-up call I needed and life-changing in all the best possible ways. I’ve broken the boom/bust burnout cycle, found happiness and created a healthy work-life balance. Now I love working to help other people achieve the same.
Bianca Best's second book Big Impact Without Burnout is available for pre-order now
Read more on mental health
Nine ways to improve your mental health in winter (Yahoo Life UK, 5-min read)
Four tell-tale signs you're suffering from burnout (Yahoo Life UK, 6-min read)
How to avoid burnout and recuperate over Christmas and New Year (Yahoo Life UK, 5-min read)
