I had a pre-midlife crisis... and would recommend it to everyone

One morning, I realised it wasn’t working. I was 35, I had the house, the husband, the beautiful baby, and yet everything felt wrong. I wanted to tear it all to the ground and start again.

I did the next best thing – ended my marriage.

The weeks that followed were chaotic. I had no idea who I was without the framework my former life had given me. Where did I want to live? How did I want to dress? Who did I want to sleep with?

My mid-thirties crisis – my thrisis... – was scary and often painful, but when I emerged from the other side, I knew it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Here’s why.

1. I tried things I’ve never done before

In a long-term relationship, you fall into roles – someone gets allocated bins, another dirty-nappy duty; if you’re lucky the division feels equitable but it isn’t always fair. Until I lived by myself, I hadn’t realised how much of our financial administration I had left to my ex.

With no one but my lodger to turn to, I could no longer use “I hate maths” as an excuse to shirk responsibility. I was forced to tackle tax calculations and overdue bills, and surprised myself by enjoying the sense of control.

The experience opened me up to other unexplored territories. Some – travelling alone – were wonderful; others – Tinder… – terrifying, but each new thing felt like an adventure, when I had thought my adventuring days were over.

It was by taking on these challenges that I learned who I really am. My first weekends without my son (when he was with his father) were heart-breaking, but they also gave me the space to rediscover what I enjoy and claim more than ‘mother’ as my identity. Making decisions alone was scary, but I found you can still be brave when you feel afraid.

2. I learned who my friends are

A common phrase one hears is “I can count my friends on one hand”, and I always thought: “But you have a whole other hand there…”

It wasn’t until my separation that I understood: a friend isn’t a person eager to be included in your two-for-one cinema voucher or someone who chucks you a last-minute wedding invitation when their second cousin drops out. A friend is a person who will cook for you when you forget to eat and won’t roll their eyes when you try to describe for the thousandth time how much it hurts.

When I left my husband, the most surprising people identified themselves as friends and many others got real busy, real fast. If you haven’t had one recently, I’d recommend a crisis. It’s the perfect mate-notification system. My own made clear who my true friends are, and I can count them on one hand.

Matt Roberts fitness

3. I stopped being afraid of failure

I swore to a registrar, two witnesses and, of course, my husband that I would be committed to our relationship, unless I was dead. As far as I know, I’m still alive, so it’s fair to say that was an unmitigated failure. The wonderful thing about failing so well and so publicly is that it makes petty day-to-day inadequacies feel like child’s play.

I had lost more than I thought possible and emerged bruised but not broken, so why stop there? I made it my mission to fail and fail often, to get turned down for dates and receive polite ‘No’s from prospective employers and many were happy to oblige. Each knock-back was uplifting, because the wonderful thing about failing is the trying and if you try often enough, you might just stumble into success.

4. I set about a reinvention

A few months into my separation, one of my attempts at failure failed. I sent the first chapter of a novel to Penguin Random House’s Write Now mentoring scheme and it was accepted. I was given an editor and not long after found myself with a finished book and a publishing deal to go with it.

My novel is about a woman reinventing herself in the wake of a divorce and I had done more than a little research. The labels of divorcee and single parent may have been thrust upon me but everything else I got to choose for myself.

I chose to be a writer and it didn’t feel completely crazy because I had already experienced going to bed one person and waking up someone entirely different. I forced myself to push aside all the doubts – fears that I was too old and that my face didn’t fit – because believing life should look a certain way is a trap and it wasn’t one I was going to get caught in again.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve made a lot of changes about where I allocate my time and how I love; it took some trial and error, but I feel more me today than I have in years. And if I had to, I’d do it all again because now I know that sometimes you have to tear everything down to rebuild something beautiful.

The Reinvention of Martha Ross by Charlene Allcott (Bantam Press, ￡12.99) is published on August 9. To order your copy for ￡10.99 plus p&p, call 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk