When Monique's husband stepped out of the car with a bunch of flowers, she knew she had to divorce him

As Monique tipped the remnants of a pot of macaroni cheese into a Tupperware – the leftovers from the meal she'd whipped up for her two young kids – she looked out the kitchen window to see her husband arriving home in the rain.

She watched as he pulled into the driveway, got out of the car quickly, holding his jacket over his head and then fetched something from the back seat.

She smiled. He'd got her a bunch of flowers.

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It was her birthday and they'd made a plan to get the kids to bed early, get dinner delivered and maybe watch a movie or just spend time together.

Well… at least she'd definitely made those plans and had told her husband that morning it's what she wanted to do.

She'd wondered if he'd been listening.

She worried that by the time he'd left the house that morning he might have already forgotten that it was her birthday – she hadn't heard from him all day. And it was a lot later than she'd hoped he'd be home.

The kids were in bed and she'd been contemplating whether to just eat their leftovers.

But here he was, and he had a bunch of flowers for her.

She then had a few thoughts as he rushed in the rain towards the front door.

The first was that now that she could see him more clearly with the motion detector lights illuminating him, she could see this was quite a small bunch – like something you'd pick up at the corner dairy.

And secondly, the flowers were white carnations.

In that moment she felt she now had two choices in life: should she continue on with the night as planned and then in a day or two pick the moment to sit down with her husband for 'the chat'. Or, should she just tell him tonight that she wanted a divorce.

"The moment I saw those flowers, I knew I wanted a divorce," says Monique. "I was done. Those flowers were the very last straw."

She planned to go with option two and wait until another day to tell him the relationship was over.

"I didn't want my birthday to be the day we split up," she says. "But as soon as that moment happened, it was always going to be the day it was over."

See, Monique's seven-year marriage had been going through a rough patch for a quite a while – it had been years.

She'd been feeling unseen, unheard and unsupported. "It didn't feel like a partnership," says Monique. "I felt like a solo mum most of the time."

There'd been plenty of tears and arguments – Monique had asked to go to therapy together, but gave up after six months of asking and went alone.

She was tired – exhausted from working full-time, running their household, being the primary caregiver and exhausted from trying to get her husband to notice or care.

And then he turned up with the flowers.

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Monique had spent her university years working in a rest home as an orderly.

"There was one very ill woman who had a husband who also had big health complications," says Monique.

"But he would visit her every Saturday and bring a bunch of carnations – they were her favourite flower. I'd cut them and change their water when I was there, but I was the only one who did that I reckon, because she would want to keep them for the full week and they'd never last the distance. They'd be smelly and in bad shape by the next Saturday."

Monique says that ever since, carnations have always filled her with sadness. It's something she'd told her husband a lot over the years.

"Carnations are like this mix of loneliness and sadness and just, I don't know, every deeply sad complicated emotion," she says.

"I'd told my husband so many times. My grandmother died when I was newly post-partum and someone sent me flowers with carnations in them and I completely lost the plot. Carnations come up surprisingly often."

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So, when her husband turned up with a bunch of dairy carnations for her 40^th birthday (yip, it was a milestone one), it was the final straw for her.

"I saw those and thought, 'yip, he really doesn't listen to me, or he just doesn't care' and neither is good, y'know?" she says.

"It was like a tangible thing that I could look at and go, enough's enough. He'd only thought about me enough to stop at a dairy on the way home, and then, he'd picked up something I absolutely hate and fills me with dread."

In the end, Monique couldn't hold off waiting for another day to tell her husband.

As he went to get changed and told her he wasn't that hungry and she should just order whatever she wanted for dinner, she cracked.

"I told him this was it, I couldn't keep going," she says.

"It was my birthday and he couldn't give a s--t. He knew our relationship was hanging on by a thread and still couldn't bring himself to do anything remotely thoughtful for me on my 40^th birthday."

Her husband didn't seem to think she was serious. "He barely put up much of a fight and then just said he was tired and we could talk about it in the morning," she says.

"I slept in my daughter's room that night,' she says. "I just looked at her, feeling so full of fear about what this would mean for my children's lives."

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The next morning, her husband acted as though nothing had happened.

"I took the day off work. I called my friend who is a lawyer to get some advice. I packed up a bag of his things and sent him a message to let him know he should find alternative accommodation and I'd packed his bags."

The next few months were very up and down – her husband wanted to make it work, and she let him stay.

They tried, but ultimately, Monique says, the damage had been done and when it really came to it, her husband didn't show any real signs of wanting to change things.

"We'd have these big blow ups and I'd cry and he'd cry and promise me things would change," she says. "But then a week later, it was no different."

It took another six months to finally break things off for good, and Monique has now been separated for one year.

"The first three months were really hard," she says.

"But if I'm honest, the three months after that were the absolute worst – things were less busy and the adrenaline wore off and it was hard."

But Monique says she's in a good place now.

"I have custody of our kids – they see him every other Sunday," she says.

"It's definitely challenging being a single mum, but I've learned that I can depend on myself.

"I couldn't depend on my husband, but I know I'll always show up for myself and there's something liberating about that. I'm not living with constant disappointment."

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