Sugar’s divorce from her first husband was both one of the most painful decisions of her life and, in retrospect, one of the wisest. Her account resists an easy verdict: love and remorse were real, but so was her need to leave, and ending the marriage ultimately offered a better future to both partners.

The Decision to Leave

Sugar describes a drawn-out struggle to admit that she wanted the marriage to end. She tried to be good, then bad; she was sad, frightened, ill, self-sacrificing, and ultimately self-destructive. Rather than make a clean break, she had sexual relationships outside the marriage because she lacked the courage to tell her husband directly that she wanted out. She loved him, but that love did not resolve the conflict or make remaining together the right choice.

The Separation

After confessing, Sugar and her former husband spent about a year disentangling their lives. She remembers the period as wall-to-wall pain, but not as a simple contest between two opponents: they struggled together through the consequences of the marriage’s collapse. The divorce was, by her account, the most excruciating decision she had ever made. Its difficulty did not mean it was mistaken; the pain belonged to the process of separating, not proof that the separation should not happen.

Consequences and Retrospective Meaning

Sugar later judged the divorce wise, and believed that both lives were better because it happened. Her former husband deserved a partner who did not remain haunted by the desire to leave. Ending the marriage could therefore be understood as a kindness, even though it had not felt like one at the time. The episode distinguishes compassion from staying: Sugar’s remorse over hurting him did not cancel the truth that the relationship had to end.