{"id":2304797,"date":"2026-02-28T10:09:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T10:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2304797"},"modified":"2026-02-28T10:09:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T10:09:10","slug":"were-expected-to-stay-quiet-about-it-what-happens-when-a-long-marriage-implodes-and-you-want-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/were-expected-to-stay-quiet-about-it-what-happens-when-a-long-marriage-implodes-and-you-want-answers\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We\u2019re expected to stay quiet about it\u2019: What happens when a long marriage implodes and you want answers?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p id=\"313d7c4a-e4d2-4a84-9eb2-d628d6cce8f2\">When author and lawyer Belle Burden&#8217;s marriage of 21 years came to an abrupt end, she wanted answers. When they weren&#8217;t very forthcoming, she decided to stop searching for an explanation, instead looking towards the life she wanted to rebuild.<\/p>\n<p>It turns out she isn&#8217;t alone. When Belle shared her story with Nuala McGovern during an episode of <a target=\"_blank\" data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/m002rdxg\" target=\"_blank\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/m002rdxg\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer-when-downgrade\" data-hl-processed=\"none\" data-mrf-recirculation=\"inline-link\">BBC Woman&#8217;s Hour<\/a>, the response was huge, with many women sharing their own stories of being blindsided by their marriages ending suddenly.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" id=\"elk-seasonal\"\/><\/p>\n<aside data-block-type=\"embed\" data-render-type=\"fte\" data-skip=\"dealsy\" data-widget-type=\"seasonal\" class=\"hawk-root\"\/>\n<p id=\"313d7c4a-e4d2-4a84-9eb2-d628d6cce8f2-2\" class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&#8220;I believed I was very happily married,&#8221; Belle shares, adding, &#8220;and then one night I got a call from a man saying his wife was having an affair with my husband.&#8221;<\/p>\n<aside data-component-name=\"Recirculation:ArticleRiver\" data-recirculation-type=\"inline\" data-mrf-recirculation=\"Trending Bar\" data-nosnippet=\"\" class=\"pt-3 pb-4 mb-4 border-b border-solid border-[#333]\">\n        <span class=\"&#10;            after:content-[''] after:flex-1 after:ml-4 after:my-[0.7rem] after:border-t-[#333] after:border-t after:border-solid &#10;            before:content-[''] before:flex-1 before:mr-4 before:my-[0.7rem] before:border-t-[#333] before:border-t before:border-solid&#10;            font-article-heading pb-3 !text-base font-bold uppercase sm:text-sm text-[#333] flex custom-thumbnail-list-styles\"><br \/>\n            You may like<br \/>\n        <\/span><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">She continues, &#8220;I begged him for an explanation and he would not give it to me. I went down the road of thinking maybe he was in love, maybe it was about money, maybe it was just about me and not loving me anymore.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">Frustratingly, Belle still didn&#8217;t ever get the answers she needed. The more she tried to find them, the more she was simply faced with &#8220;a road to misery.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">Things needed to change and Belle needed to turn her focus elsewhere and try to find peace without knowing the reasons for her husband&#8217;s actions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&#8220;What changed it for me was really switching the spotlight from him to myself, and trying to really think about the life that I wanted,&#8221; she says.<\/p>\n<div id=\"slice-container-newsletterForm-articleInbodyContent-MsXV5xR636G2grU6mySXXD\" class=\"slice-container newsletter-inbodyContent-slice newsletterForm-articleInbodyContent-MsXV5xR636G2grU6mySXXD slice-container-newsletterForm\">\n<div data-hydrate=\"true\" class=\"newsletter-form__wrapper newsletter-form__wrapper--inbodyContent\">\n<div class=\"newsletter-form__container\">\n<section class=\"newsletter-form__top-bar\"\/>\n<section class=\"newsletter-form__main-section\">\n<p class=\"newsletter-form__strapline\">Sign up to our free daily email for the latest royal and entertainment news, interesting opinion, expert advice on styling and beauty trends, and no-nonsense guides to the health and wellness questions you want answered.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"eae13e65-8f5d-4172-8d5d-7464ddce50ae\">Belle explains, &#8220;I think as women, and especially as mothers, we&#8217;re expected to really stay quiet about it, that&#8217;s it&#8217;s perceived as graceful and good to actually not talk about these things. To really quietly clean up the mess.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That serves to protect the men in the story,&#8221; she adds, continuing, &#8220;and is often to our detriment. I think when you stay quiet, these things can get repeated across generations.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>When the segment was posted to Instagram, the comments were sadly filled with women who had a similar experience.<\/p>\n<p>One person wrote, &#8220;This absolutely resonates with me. I discovered by sheer chance that my husband of 24 years, and father of our four children, had been having many affairs over many years.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I met him when I was 18 &#8211; he was nine years older than me and I didn\u2019t even know what a red flag was back then let alone spot one. The truth has set me free but only after a journey of research into covert narcissism, red flag spotting, healthy boundary setting and learning to live alone with myself.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Another added, &#8220;My situation was exactly the same as this- 27 years together and 21 years married. No explanation or reason was given. I didn&#8217;t think I could survive it, but 13 years on I&#8217;ve finally healed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.womanandhome.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When author and lawyer Belle Burden&#8217;s marriage of 21 years came to an abrupt end, she wanted answers. When they weren&#8217;t very forthcoming, she decided to stop searching for an explanation, instead looking towards the life she wanted to rebuild. It turns out she isn&#8217;t alone. When Belle shared her story with Nuala McGovern during [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2304798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2304797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\u2018Were-expected-to-stay-quiet-about-it-What-happens-when.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2304797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2304797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2304797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2304799,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2304797\/revisions\/2304799"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2304798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2304797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2304797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2304797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}