In “Both Sides of a Breakup,” the Cut talks to exes about how they got together and why they split up. Leah, 42, and Micah, 43, met right after college; got married, then pregnant; and quickly began to battle.
Leah: I met Micah in New York right after college graduation, about 20 years ago. We were both at a party in the city thrown by mutual friends. There was a theme. I want to say it was ’70s style, like bell-bottoms and tie-dyes. I remember wearing a bikini top that had fringe all over it.
Micah: Leah walks into this pretentious rooftop event wearing a bathing suit. I was like, This girl is a crazy bitch from Miami; I’m gonna fall in love with her. I’m from there, so I can spot a Miami girl anywhere. She was smokin’ hot.
Leah: Micah was staring at me. I tried to play it off, pretending I didn’t notice. But I did notice that he was sexy. He was very tan with very dark eyes and thick eyebrows. He looked manly and brooding.
Micah: I went over all big shot, like, “What are you drinking?” Mind you, I probably had $100 to my name. I was a few weeks from moving home to Florida to start law school.
Leah: His nonstop staring was so ridiculous, I finally grabbed some friends and walked over. I said something cheesy like, “Take a picture; it’ll last longer.” That’s so embarrassing, but I think that was my line.
Micah: She wanted a rum and Diet Coke. So I get us drinks, and we start talking, and sure enough we grew up in the same area and even had a few mutual friends from various sports we played and our siblings and whatnot.
Leah: That night is a blur because I was really drunk. But I gave him my number and a kiss on the cheek good-bye. He was with a crew that was party hopping.
Micah: I gotta be honest, I knew I met the woman I was going to marry that night. I did not want to leave that party, but my buddy dragged me out because he was chasing some other girl at another party. Leah was instantly perfect in my eyes. Cute, petite, spunky, fun, funny, family oriented … I loved her sass. I didn’t say it out loud, but I knew I’d have kids with her. I knew it the second I saw her.
Leah: I had a feeling we’d start dating. There was a very strong spark. He’d mentioned he was moving back to Miami, and that was intriguing to me. I had a little job in advertising in midtown, and I knew it was not a forever job. I always knew I’d want to raise a family in Miami. So Micah calls the next day …
Micah: I tried to sound cool, but I was shitting my pants.
Leah: He sounded nervous but in a cute way.
Micah: No girl had given me this feeling in the longest time. It was really powerful, this sense of destiny. I asked her to dinner at Nobu. Mind you, I had to borrow money from my roommate to pay the bill. I didn’t have a credit card, and I’m not the guy whose parents gave him a credit card.
Leah: I remember feeling like we were the stars of our own movie that night. We had sex at his apartment — while his stoned idiot roommate literally played video games — and it was a little bit sloppy because we were drunk from the wine at dinner, but no major turn-offs that I remember. I think I was like, Well, you don’t have the best sex ever with the man you’re gonna marry. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t one of those “He rocked my world” experiences.
Micah: Our sex life was off the charts from that night on.
Leah: So we move to Miami. We’re kids still, so we both move in with our parents, who only lived a short distance from each other.
Micah: We start living together at my mom’s house. Big love bubble. I start law school while working at a law firm on the side. She starts doing events because her sister had an event-planning company.
Leah: I was getting my real-estate license.
Micah: It all fell into place. I felt like the luckiest guy on earth. After our first year anniversary, we moved into a condo together.
Leah: We got really lucky because this condo landed at our feet. Someone needed quick tenants, I can’t remember exactly. Anyway, we were living together, “playing house.” We were cute, bopping around Miami for a year or so. But then I start seeing things I don’t love-love about him — like how he expected me to clean and cook. He never explicitly said it, but if I didn’t go grocery shopping and start making dinner, we literally wouldn’t eat. If I didn’t clean the toilets, they’d be filthy. But the thing that concerned me more than that was how he was commenting so much on my appearance, my body … it was all in a flattering way, but he was too focused on the optics of us as a couple. I couldn’t understand why a guy would care so much if I wore a little black dress or a red halter top. He would firmly tell me what to wear sometimes. Meanwhile, he was somehow able to coast through law school — he’s super-smart like that.
Micah: We were, like, a power couple! She was becoming a player in Miami real estate, and I could taste my own success. After three years together, we’re both around 26 or 27, I propose. It’s a huge rock. I bought it at Tiffany in the city because I knew that was her fantasy. I used all my savings. It was, like, the happiest day of our lives.
Leah: The ring was the ring I wanted since I was a little girl. I went through this short period after getting engaged where I actually enjoyed a more traditional life with him. It was so easy to make my man and my upcoming marriage the center of my universe. This is the life that a lot of my mom’s friends lived, and my grandma lived, and it felt like, I know the words to this song. I was still working, but I could foresee a future where I was a full-time mom and wife. I thought maybe I wanted that.
Micah: I can honestly say we had no problems until our first child was born.
Leah: When I was pregnant, he got me a vacuum cleaner for my birthday and I cried. It was a great appliance that we really needed, and we laughed it off when I was like, “Are you kidding me with this fucking gift?” I tried to quickly move past that because we had a baby on the way and I don’t like to fight. But I still cringe.
Micah: I asked what she wanted for her birthday and she had a very specific appliance in mind, so I bought that for her. It was expensive, too! She lost her mind. It was just a stupid fight; I never read too much into it.
Leah: The vacuum cleaner reminded me that I had so much more life to live and I was never going to get that chance to live it. Like, soon I would blink and have a life that revolved around decorating our house and scheduling play dates, making great, big meals on the weekend and pretending it was all very easy and natural while secretly drinking wine all day and regretting everything. A part of me was okay with the vision — life could be worse — but another part of me really rejected it. Mostly I tried not to think about it.
Micah: The birth of our first kid coincided with the start of my career. As a man, I felt pulled in many different directions. My priorities were blurred. I wanted to go out there and fucking dominate as a lawyer. But I knew it was important to support Leah too.
Leah: Let me be clear, as soon as fatherhood hit, Micah only cared about Micah — about his workload, his clients, his colleagues, his money, his car, his goals. He wasn’t home much. He never once asked me how I was holding up. And I wasn’t holding up well! I went back to work after I stopped nursing, which was about six months later. I also allowed myself to have a night out with friends once a week. That felt important for my mental health. I realized I couldn’t just be a wife and a mom. Despite how much I initially liked being so domestic, I had a voice in my head saying I was too young to be stuck at home playing wife. As a young mom, trying to also work, get my body back, feel even minimally happy in general … my resentment for him boiled over. There was only one word to describe him from this point on: selfish.
Micah: I could have done better, but I genuinely saw my career as a gift for her and the family. I had to be part of the buzzy Miami social scene, go out with clients, all that. Mind you, Leah was also moving in a dangerous direction. She had her mom around to babysit any night of the week. I think to punish me for whatever I was or was not doing, she started going out all the time. Partying. Getting drunk. Getting high. She went back to dressing like she did when we met. She got fake tits. She had a fake tan. I don’t know, it just felt … very narcissistic. I did not like it. I lost respect for her.
Leah: I was not partying, despite what Micah might say. I was trying to have some kind of tiny life outside of being a mom. It didn’t seem like I should have to explain that to him or anyone. We fought a lot.
Micah: We’d battle.
Leah: Deep down, I knew we weren’t going to make it, but for some illogical reason, I wanted to get one more kid out of the marriage. I loved being a mom, and it seemed like a smart idea to give my kid a full biological sibling. Micah was all for it. It meant more regular sex for us, and for a little bit, the sex brought us close again.
Micah: I never stopped desiring Leah. She’s a beautiful woman.
Leah: We had another kid, and then Micah is just gone. Poof! Decent father, absentee husband. He starts going on work trips and golf trips and I was always alone. My hatred for him was burning. It wasn’t about if we’d get divorced, but when. It was a very sad and scary time for me.
Micah: As Leah worked on her “mommy makeover,” she was consumed by her body, her outfits, her nails, her hair extensions. It was like, How superficial are you?
Leah: After a really big fight about me staying out late one night — a super-rare thing for me, a normal thing for him — I told him the next morning, via text, that we were separating. Why text? Because I felt I couldn’t wait another second to end it. I’d reached my breaking point. I didn’t know when I’d see him face-to-face that day, and I couldn’t wait another day. Our oldest was getting to be old enough to absorb our anger, and we both knew it was becoming harmful for the kids. That much we agreed on. So I sent the “we need to separate” text.
Micah: I got the text while sitting at my desk at work. We had been up all night brawling. I was exhausted. I didn’t like what I read, but it was only a matter of time. I felt underappreciated, thrown away, mocked. My wife hated me. End of story. What could I do? After the text, I think I wrote, “Copy.” Or maybe, “Agree.”
Leah: He texted back, “Sure.” I didn’t waste a second. My parents helped me and the kids leave that day. I had a place to live thanks to good friends who had moved overseas and had an empty apartment. I gave Micah our place, mostly because it had a pool and I didn’t want our young kids near a pool. That was one thing we could agree on.
Micah: It sounds weird to say, but getting divorced was easier than staying married. It was not a contentious endeavor. It was amicable-ish. We were both onboard with all the terms.
Leah: He played the pathetic card for a little while. He said we never tried therapy. But I was so over it. I was ready to move on overnight.
Micah: The next week, she had a boyfriend.
Leah: I met someone about a month after moving out. It was just … luck. I don’t know. We met at the gym.
Micah: She swears she met him after we separated, but I’ll never know. What kind of married woman parties every night without any flirting? But I don’t care. I let it go. Fortunately, I started dating a divorced, single mom who I knew from the kids’ preschool shortly after the separation. Before I could process the failure of my marriage, I was falling in love again.
Leah: Our divorce was a blessing. We both remarried the first people we dated after breaking up, and ten years later, we all get along. It’s a miracle. I still think Micah is a raging narcissist, but now I can say that with love. He turned out to be an amazing dad, and I love his wife. He’s her problem now.
Micah: I used to brag about how amazing my relationship with Leah was, but now I brag about how amazing our divorce was and how cool the intermingling of our lives is. Our kids don’t even remember us together; they think it’s awesome they have two houses, two sets of dogs, and a bunch of extra grown-ups around who love them to death.
Leah: Do I have some PTSD from my marriage to Micah? Sure. But I’m not the type of person to feel bad for myself. I prefer to be happy. We really made lemonade out of lemons.