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I stand against divorce!

Why do I stand for family, yet choose myself?

Anastasiya Sapukova

From the author

This book is an intimate journey through the clash between my deepest convictions and my yearning for an “ideal family”, and the life-altering choices that emerged from that collision. Within these pages, I reveal my most intimate experiences, my struggles, fears, lingering uncertainties, and the hard-won victories that followed. I share my story in the hope that it will encourage those enduring similar hardships to see that no matter how shattered life may feel, there is always a way to rise again.

This is not meant to encourage divorce, but to share openly why it matters to remain true to yourself and how, even after losing everything, you can find the strength to create a new beginning.

My heartfelt thanks to everyone who opens this book. I wrote these pages to remind you that you are never truly alone in your struggles and to show you that a full, authentic life is possible, as long as you have the courage to choose yourself.

Chapter 1. Manifesto: Why I stand for family, yet chose myself

I am the daughter of divorced parents. Four simple words, yet they carry the weight of pain, loneliness, and unfulfilled hopes.

Since childhood, I envied my classmates who had both a mom and a dad. I envied those whose family drawings always had two figures standing together, side by side. Who ran to their father after school, proudly waving their report card. Who whispered secrets into their mother’s ear while their father smiled behind the wheel.

I could only watch from the outside, I never had that.

I was like a fragile chick sheltered beneath the single wing of my mother, a woman who juggled two jobs and battled each day simply to keep us alive.

At dawn, she would rise at 5 a.m., braid my hair into tight plaits, and then vanish into the darkness, heading to the farm where the air reeked of milk and exhaustion. I would crawl back under the blankets, only to wake again in an empty house and get ready for school on my own. There were days I forgot my keys, days I forgot my backpack. And then there were days I wished I could forget myself.

I hold no blame for my mom.

She did everything in her power, hauling us through the storms of life, just as I now fight to pull myself through my own.

But a child’s emotions can never be hidden.

I promised myself: my children will have a different destiny. They will have a family, a whole one. A mother and a father. Love. Support. A childhood free from fear.

I’ve witnessed it with my own eyes.

I always had my godmother’s family as an example before my eyes. Ivan was strict but fair, and he worked to earn a living. Marina was busy in the kitchen, always greeting her husband with a smile. Two children were my cousins. They had everything I had dreamed of: a complete family, a sense of comfort, and holidays shared together.

All I had were tight braids in the morning, brief moments with my mother on rare weekends, and visits to her workplace, where I clung to every chance to be near her.

I carried a dream through my childhood. I promised myself that my children would have a different life. They would know a real family.

Yet, in the end, I was wrong.

Chapter 2: Childhood: a family broken, and a promise born

As a child, I was quite insecure.

I towered over most of my classmates, yet my height never brought me the confidence I longed for. They called me a rail, a lightning rod, and I hated my reflection in the mirror.

My teenage years left me overweight and riddled with insecurities. I never truly loved my body.

I held on to the belief that, when I grew up, I would fall in love with a man, and together we would create the family I had longed for all my childhood.

As time went on.

I wasn’t a popular girl in school or college. While I had relationships, none of them ever felt truly serious.

In every man I dated, I unconsciously searched for the fatherly love and support I had lacked as a child.

I dreamed of a family.

I always longed for a proper wedding.

A wedding with a veil, a white dress, and friends and family cheering “I love you!” as we left the registry office.

Simply dating never appealed to me. I matured quickly, and by 19, I already felt like an adult, something many people noticed.

I always dreamed of having a tall, handsome husband and two children.

Being an only child, I knew what loneliness was. I had no one to play with, no one to share secrets with. Even as a child, I promised myself: I will have two children.

The firstborn is always a boy, meant to protect his little sister, to be her anchor.

That is exactly what happened in my life.

By the time I turned 20, I thought I had it all figured out, how my family life would unfold.

Get married → have my first child → have my second child three years later → be a young mom.

Like my mom.

She gave birth to me at 20, and we’ve always been a bit like friends. She looked great, and every time she said, “This is my daughter,” people had a hard time believing it.

And that’s how I pictured my happy family life: a wedding, children, and a mortgage.

I didn’t understand the most important thing.

I didn’t know that marriage was only the beginning, that relationships demanded daily effort.

Being a wife isn’t just about dreaming, it’s also about confronting a reality no one ever prepared you for.

I didn’t know that.

And I had no role models to guide me.

Chapter 3: Dreams of marriage and the first steps in love

All I could do with my dream was wait for it to come true. Yet as the years went by, reality began to teach me otherwise.

After high school and during my college years, I had relationships, but they all seemed kind of frivolous. It wasn’t like a real relationship, or a relationship that was about growing up.

Every new person I met seemed to be measured against the image of the perfect man I never had in my life. I suppose I was searching for the love and support I had missed from my father.

My first serious romance happened closer to the end of my studies. I was focused on my studies and future plans, but deep down, I was still waiting for the right person to come along and create a real family.

At 19, I already felt like an adult. People often told me I was mature beyond my years, probably because I had learned to take responsibility for myself so early. I wanted to begin my “real life” as soon as possible: to get married, to have children… In short, to fulfill my plan.

I met a guy. He was older and seemed so reliable — tall, handsome, and in some ways, he even resembled the man I had dreamed of as a child.

After a while, we got married. I was 22, and I thought, this is it — the fulfillment of my promise to myself. I would be like my mother: first a young wife, then a young mother. Our wedding was almost everything I had dreamed of, not extravagant, but filled with joy, and yes, there was a white dress.

I felt like my path was crystal clear.

The wedding was behind us. Next came the first child, then the second a few years later, a mortgage, and a lifetime of happiness growing old together.

What I didn’t realize then was the most important truth: a wedding alone cannot create a happy family.

Marriage is merely the first step on a much longer journey.

Chapter 4: Marriage: The Beginning, the Challenges, and the Path to Awareness

The girst warning signs

We spent 12 years married, 10 of them legally. It wasn’t bad at first; quite the opposite, actually. Everything began with brightness and strong emotions.

We met at work, began a romance, and soon moved in together. Everything was new and passionate; we were drawn to each other, learning the wisdom of life through touch: fighting, making peace, with the full understanding that this was for once and for all.

I was loyal, devoted, and together we built our life and family.

Yet after 30 years, a change came over me.

I began to question everything: Who am I? Where do I live? And is this the life I truly wanted?

It was at this point, starting in 2019, that I immersed myself in psychology. I began to realize that the image in my head didn’t match reality, and that something had to change.

But how could I? Everything seemed so perfect at first glance.

The so-called perfect family: passion, a husband who doesn’t drink or abuse me, a man who works tirelessly while I stay home with the children, constantly short on money. I had once done needlework, then turned to marketing.

It all looked like everyone else’s life, and by all appearances, I should have been happy. Yet deep inside, I knew I longed for something else. I longed for a different kind of treatment as a woman. By that time, we had become mere neighbors, living not in love or connection, but in coexistence and survival.

The key turning point came when I was working on a project with someone else’s husband. I saw how he handled his wife’s problems, not with anger, but with shared responsibility. She didn’t have to carry everything alone, not even the renovations. That’s when I realized there was another way to approach life.

That’s not what I was going through.

That moment marked a turning point, opening the door to doubt and personal conflict.

The very realization that marriage might be otherwise came as a shock. Wasn’t it supposed to be a lifelong oath, sacred and final? I had promised myself never to betray that conviction, yet now I stood facing my own denial. And the truth was bitter: by then, our relationship had long been crumbling, falling silent before I dared to name it.

I tried again and again to open a dialogue, to speak of my feelings, to suggest small changes that might breathe new life into us. Each attempt ended the same way with a wall of silence, a refusal to understand.

On the other side, everything was declared “normal,” as if the disquiet I felt existed only in my imagination. “Nothing needs changing. I won’t”. And then the sting of blame: I was the one at fault, I was overthinking, I was weeping too much. Left alone with that verdict, I sank deeper into my own contradictions, until the tension of my soul began to press into the body itself — a slow descent into psychosomatics.

I closed my eyes to the truth, convincing myself that everything was fine. I forbade myself to want more, whispering the familiar excuse: “everyone lives like this”. And as if to soothe the ache, I clutched at my so-called “prize” — a husband who, in twelve years, had never raised a hand against me and at least went to work each day.

But beneath that fragile consolation lay the cruelest reality: this was the most painful chapter of my life.

Chapter 5. My inner war: fear, psychosomatics, and the weight of guilt

I found myself face to face with the very wall I had built brick by brick, when I swore to myself that “this is forever”. Yet behind that fortress, my heart and body cried out in unison: “Help us! We can no longer bear the weight”.

I carried the heavy guilt of believing I had “ruined my marriage with my own hands”. The thought gnawed at me, haunting my every step, until I felt myself teetering on the edge of madness. For more than eight months, this merciless inner dialogue raged on, leaving no space for peace.

I kept questioning myself: was it all just a figment of my imagination? What if I was the one making a terrible mistake, tearing everything apart with my own hands? I no longer trusted myself, nor the feelings that once seemed so certain.

Analyzing my marriage, I understood one thing: fear ruled me. The fear of ending up alone with two children pushed me to endure humiliation, to forgive without reason, to keep quiet while the pain accumulated inside. And worst of all, this destructive pattern had already begun to seep into my children’s lives.

Especially on my son.

He took it upon himself, as the elder. And during one session with a psychologist, it struck me: this was no longer only about me. It was about the example my children were growing up with. If I kept enduring in silence, then my son — who should grow into a man — would see nothing but a victim before his eyes. And in time, he might learn to live the same way.

It hit me with the force of a jolt: holding on to marriage “for the children” was nothing but self-deception. I wasn’t saving them — I was condemning them. Condemning them to the idea that it is acceptable to live in silence, to give up on oneself, to bury one’s own needs and dreams. And I knew: if I didn’t act, I would turn my own life into a monument of self-hatred.

The fear of the unknown pressed hard. Could I survive alone? Could I raise the children? I knew too well: separation would not be peaceful. There would be fights over alimony, over support, over his anger. But despite it all, I also knew — I had to go through it, because not going through it would be even worse.

Chapter 6. The blowup. the escape. the point of no return

The hardest part was voicing it.

But once the decision was made, the words came. On the way back from a friend, I finally said it aloud: “I don’t love you anymore. We need to break up”. He was shocked or pretended to be. Because the truth was obvious: everything had been collapsing for a long time, and he had chosen not to notice.

When we reached the house, he wordlessly pulled from the fridge a bottle of vodka that had been lying untouched for half a year. In his eyes, I could already see the beast awakening.

By three in the morning, it broke loose. He rampaged through the apartment, smashing everything in his path — chairs, beds, dishes, even laptops. His fists pounded the walls as if trying to tear down the space around us.

It went on for more than an hour. Surely the neighbors must have heard? They did, yet no one came.

I sat in the corner of the bedroom, pressed against the wall, paralyzed by what was happening.

He never laid a hand on me, but the terror whispered: if I stay, I cannot know what will follow.

Clutching my phone and car keys, I rose at last. I stepped into the kitchen with the flimsiest of “pretexts just to drink some water”.

In a split second, I bolted from the apartment — leggings, sweatshirt, slippers, nothing more. It felt like a nightmare I couldn’t wake from. I knew he would chase me. I pressed myself into the branches behind the house and froze.

For fifteen endless minutes I sat there, afraid even to breathe. At last, with trembling hands, I called a taxi and went to my mother-in-law’s, where the children were sleeping.

At five in the morning I shook her awake and poured everything out. She looked at me, at the photos of the wreckage, and only said: “Well, if you can’t live with him, then get a divorce”.

That night, something inside me broke: I no longer felt safe beside this man.

I knew with terrifying clarity, if I forgave the pogrom, I would be opening Pandora’s box.

First would come the shove. Then the blow. And one day, the headlines.

I couldn’t allow it.

And when he awoke, the storm began…

“It won’t happen again”. “I’ll kill myself”.

“Go ahead, find someone else — but we’ll still live together”.

These were not words of remorse, but shackles. He no longer sought dialogue; he wanted control. He demanded that I strip the children of his name, repeating like a curse: “traitors must not bear it”

The pressure became relentless — text messages, calls, threats. They filled the days and bled into the nights.

And I knew then: I had no choice but to endure. Quietly, almost in secret, I began to search for an apartment.

Chapter 7. Divorce, children, and relocation: A new beginning

Two weeks after my ex-husband moved out, I understood one thing with absolute clarity: I could no longer stay in that apartment. The walls still held my fear, as if the night of terror had been etched into them.

So I began searching for a new home in a neighborhood I had long dreamed of living in. And I found it.

On the day of the move, the very first feeling that washed over me was unexpected in its simplicity: calmness.

We moved everything in a single day. By evening, the boxes were unpacked, things had found their places, the children had gone to bed in the new apartment. I switched off the light and suddenly it came over me: I’m home.

It was a deep, genuine sense of peace, as if all the scattered pieces of my life had finally fallen into place.

The surroundings themselves seemed kind, almost protective. Nothing grated, nothing threatened. There was no anxious expectation of footsteps at the door, no dread that something might erupt at any moment. Only quiet. Only safety.

I’m at home. No one is interfering, no one is demanding explanations, no one is waiting for a report.

I can do whatever I want, though, truthfully, I don’t want anything at all. I only want to be. To breathe in the present moment. To savor the realization that my life now belongs to me. I choose where to go, I decide what to do. And there is no longer any need to invent excuses or justify my choices.

The very next morning, when I woke up in my new apartment and stepped outside to walk around the neighborhood, I felt it — wholeness, triumph. A victory not loud or ceremonial, but real, full-blooded, lived through to the very core.

I did it.

And that was what frightened me most — that I had managed without him. I had asked for his help with the move, but his answer was a blunt refusal. In that moment, I understood: I can cope. I can cope with all of it. From that day forward, my new life began.

Yet the brightness of those first emotions was soon shadowed by darker undertones. For the first couple of months, he still clung to hope — the hope that he could win me back.

He pursued me with persistence that bordered on aggression, constant calls, demands to meet. But I wanted no communication at all. Not in any form.

For me, the priority was to quickly and clearly resolve the legal side. I filed for divorce through a lawyer, deliberately cutting out the possibility of direct contact.

I avoided face-to-face meetings on purpose, knowing they would only aggravate my already fragile state.

Those conversations would only have torn open the wounds I was struggling to heal. And then, in parallel, came the issue of alimony. He refused any peaceful resolution. At first, there were vague promises, to help with food, to give some money. But even that quickly ended. One incident in particular turned everything upside down.

I had been loyal, unfailingly devoted throughout our twelve years together. I brushed aside every glance from another man, never allowing myself even the thought of something more.

When we separated, the first months were consumed by adaptation: settling into the apartment, searching for projects, learning to breathe in a new reality. But time passed. And one day, with sudden clarity, I realized: I am now a free woman.

The divorce papers had been filed, and little by little life began to take shape.