My name is Sae. I live with my husband, Mutsuki, and our two elementary school kids. My husband is self-employed and uses a room in our house as his office. I work at a major corporation and have been successfully building my career. He covers the rent, while I handle all of our other living expenses. One day, a plan came up to put my father-in-law into a senior care facility, and my husband told me we would need to pay 200,000 yen a month from our household budget. When I refused, he blurted out, “Well then, we have no choice. Let’s get a divorce.”
I thought I had come to terms with the fact that I was carrying the heavier load financially, around the house, and with the kids. But looking back, maybe a quiet resentment had been building up inside me all along. I had turned a blind eye to it, telling myself that having my husband at home was what allowed me to focus on my career.
But putting on such a cheap, underhanded show and tossing around the word “divorce” so lightly… I’m sure his sister was the one who put him up to this. I’ve completely lost all respect for his family, seeing the lengths they would go to just to force me to pay for my father-in-law’s facility.
My husband clearly never expected me to agree to a divorce so easily and was flustered the entire time. But he brought this entirely on himself. From that day on, I wasted no time taking decisive steps toward our divorce.