A Filipino American divorce: A Jersey wife reclaims her life

By Cristina DC Pastor

From the beginning of her marriage 20 years ago, the red flags were there. She chose to ignore them because she was busy raising her five children and running a home-based food business.

There was the constant put-downs, the hundreds of calls checking on her whereabouts, and the alarm clock thrown at her when she was pregnant with her first child.  Carla Perez (not her real name) was busy being a mother and an entrepreneur to worry about what her husband had been doing to their marriage. Her children were her priority. Their school, their meals, their daily routines, and the seemingly endless responsibility of getting them from one place to another filled her days.

Somewhere along the way, she said, she began to lose sight of herself.

The little things were gnawing at her but not severe enough to make her think “divorce.” But one of her decisions gave away her dread: She refused to use his surname.

“Parang hindi ko ma-feel sa sarili ko. Parang hindi ako. Parang ibang tao,” said, describing how she felt in the early years. It took years for her to recognize that the life she had built was no longer a life she could continue living.

Carla’s divorce from her husband of two decades became final this year.  She now feels freer and the children are better able to communicate as a family because there was no longer any tension at home.

“We don’t fight in front of the children,” Carla said, explaining that she tried to avoid arguments in front of them.

She described her former husband as someone who is happy working 9 to 5 and coming home to a hot meal and watching TV till bedtime. He did not finish a college education and works in a supermarket. He struggled to communicate with the children and he, in her account, frequently used hurtful and insulting words as a way of disciplining them.

The impact of COVID  

She said the marriage grew increasingly strained during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, when they spent more time together at home and exposed the problems that had long festered.

“We were growing apart,” she said.

The arguments became more frequent. What she once tried to overlook eventually became too much.

In one incident she described, a knife was thrown during an argument, and she said her husband made a threatening remark. Two of the children, she said, witnessed what happened.

She also described harassment, including repeated phone calls. At one point, she said she received approximately 100 calls in a single day. These experiences, she said, left her emotionally exhausted.

By 2023, Carla and her husband were separated. The decision followed what she described as escalating emotional abuse, harassment, and conflict inside the home. She said restraining orders became part of the process of protecting herself and the children. She did not want her children to grow up believing that constant fighting was normal.

Her children, she said, were not surprised when the marriage ended. They had grown up witnessing the tension.

“They were waiting for it,” she said.

For Carla, the end of the marriage was not simply the end of a relationship. It was the beginning of a difficult transition into a life she had not yet learned to imagine.

The long road to divorce

The divorce was finalized this year after years of mediation and legal proceedings. The process was emotionally and financially demanding. Because she and her former husband did not reach an agreement through mediation, the case continued through the legal process.

She said her lawyer charged approximately $5,000 to complete the divorce, a cost she considered manageable compared with what she had feared.

Their marriage had been a civil wedding. They got married in New Jersey. The husband had a wife in the Philippines whom he did not divorce. Carla could have sued for bigamy but did not want the additional legal complication. She was just relieved when the divorce became final. For her, the priority was to end the marriage and move forward.

Many people imagine divorce as a period of grief, followed by healing. Carla said her experience was different.

“I did not mourn,” she said.

The family continued to function and she did not have the luxury of stopping to grieve. Instead, she had to keep going and the children are now happier minus the constant tension that once defined their home.

The stigma of divorce

For many Filipino families, divorce carries a stigma that extends beyond the couple. Carla said she was concerned about how her family would react, particularly her parents. 

“They do not know,” she said.

She worries they may not understand or accept what happened. There is also the familiar Filipino pressure to preserve the image of a perfect family, even when the reality behind closed doors is far from it.

Her relationship with her former husband remains complicated. She said she has been disappointed by what she considers a lack of effort on his part to reach out to the children.

Still, she is trying to look forward.

Carla said she is not rushing into another relationship. Her immediate priority is healing, raising her children, and finding peace. She knows that leaving a marriage does not automatically erase its emotional consequences. There are memories to process, practical arrangements to manage, and relationships that may never return to what they once were.

Divorce was not a declaration that her years of marriage had been meaningless. She loved, worked, sacrificed, and raised five children. Those years mattered. But so does the life that comes next.