Reiko divorces her husband

Reiko’s divorce from her husband is a deliberate separation after a renewed mental-health crisis, not a repudiation of his care. She tells Watanabe that her husband had been an ideal, patient partner and that both of them had tried to make her recovery last; nevertheless, she feared that the crisis would return and chose to end the marriage rather than make her family live under that threat.

Background to the Separation

Reiko’s decision comes after she had been unable to sustain her recovery. A month after an earlier crisis, she experienced another breakdown and attempted suicide. She was hospitalized, and it took several months before she felt calm enough to consider what should happen next. She then asked her husband for a divorce, explaining that she believed separation would be best for him and their daughter.

Her account makes clear that she had not entered the marriage expecting it to fail. She had believed she was recovering and says she was happy for six years after they married. Her husband had done everything he could to help her, while she had tried to get well for his sake and their daughter’s. The crisis therefore overturns a life they had built through mutual effort; it does not follow from a lack of commitment or care.

Reiko’s Decision and Its Reasoning

Her husband initially refuses the request. He proposes a fresh start somewhere else, with the three of them beginning again together. Reiko rejects that hope: in her view, changing their circumstances would not change what she expected to happen. She believes she would again ask him to wait, and that the cycle would make him suffer. Her decision is framed as a refusal to keep imposing that uncertainty on him.

Reiko distinguishes her judgment about the future from her feelings about her husband. She describes him as faithful, strong, patient, and someone she could trust completely. She says he had brought her 99 percent of the way toward recovery, but that the remaining one percent had gone wrong. The numerical contrast captures both the extent of his care and the limit she believes neither of them could overcome: their effort had been real, but it could not guarantee that she would remain well.

She also explains the separation in terms of responsibility for her family. Believing she would remain vulnerable to losing control of her mind, she did not want her husband or daughter to live in constant fear of another crisis. The divorce is thus presented as a protective choice made within the limits of her own understanding of her condition, not as proof that either spouse had failed to love or support the other.

Outcome and Significance

Reiko says that she, in effect, divorced her husband. He later married again, while she remained glad that she had made him leave her. That retrospective qualification preserves the asymmetry of the decision: although they had worked toward recovery together, she ultimately took responsibility for ending the marriage because she believed continuing it would prolong his suffering.

The episode resists a simple account of recovery as a completed return to ordinary married life. Reiko’s six years of happiness and her husband’s devoted support coexist with the renewed crisis that ends their marriage. In her telling, care can bring someone close to recovery without removing all risk, and love does not necessarily mean insisting that a shared life continue. The divorce is a consequential boundary she sets against a future she fears will repeat itself.