'I abandoned my family without warning. It was the best thing I ever did.'

Monique was enjoying a coffee at sunrise when she had the realisation.

"I thought, holy sh**, the coffee's hot," she told Mamamia, explaining that this was a luxury at the time. "I haven't got a cold coffee while I'm running around, doing everything for everybody else!"

It was the end of the pandemic, and Monique was visiting her second home in North Queensland. She was due to fly back to Sydney two days later, where she lived permanently with her husband of 20 years and two teenage sons.

But as she drank the hot coffee, and observed the place she used to call home, Monique was hit with a strange feeling.

"I had this flash of being 21 years old, bright-eyed as you are, with everything ahead of you. And I looked out over the same day, on the same drive, and I felt like this very slumped 50-something woman."

At that moment, she realised she had reached her tether with the "mental load", and had grown "invisible under the weight of everyone else's expectations".

"I'd had enough of finding myself at the top of everybody's pyramid and very much at the bottom of my own," she said.

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Realising there was a "long runway" left in life, Monique considered, with alarm, what the next few decades would look like if she carried on in the same pattern.

"I thought, 'What am I going to do with the next 40 years that doesn't necessarily involve just being the chief emotional officer of the family?'" she said, explaining she was anxious to return home.

"I became quite petrified that I'd be absorbed back into the fold, and I'd start to feel invisible again," she said. "Then something made me think: I don't have to. I'm an adult. I can make decisions for myself."

Her kids were grown, her parents not too grown. If there was ever a time for her to put herself first, this was "the window".

So, she decided to extend her Queensland trip for a few days. Then, a few days turned into weeks. Then into months. Then, indefinitely. She wasn't divorcing her husband, she had simply decided to live separately from him and her sons.

"It wasn't to run away from my lovely life and my beautiful family and my husband, but I had enough with being the default person," she said.

"I didn't check out of the marriage or the family, I just simply chose to follow things that lift me up. I felt so exhilarated and so excited about the possibilities in my future. And I felt very creative about life again, rather than just the trudge, trudge, trudge."

While Monique wasn't mad at her children for the mental load she had acquired, she admits she was "probably cross" with her husband. And that is why she told him of her decision over email.

"I said, 'Here's my post office box, and I'm not coming back for a bit'. It was kind of like a line in the sand.

"It's kind of breathtakingly ridiculous in retrospect, but I think when you're cranky you're not necessarily thinking straight. I should have just picked up the phone, but I wasn't in the mood to talk."

After confirming that his wife was alright, Monique's partner called her mum for some answers.

"I think he was probably quietly trying to say to her, 'Has she gone mad? Is she okay?' And I think my mother said, 'Just give her a bit of space. I think she needs a breather; she'll be back when she's ready. And if you need a hand to find your way around the kitchen and pick up any of the household minutia, sing out."

Though perhaps surprised, Monique's husband was supportive of the spontaneous decision.

"We've always been individuals within our relationship; we've had individual interests and individual holidays and, even when we had kids, we've always maintained our independence," Monique explained.

Monique and her husband live separately. Image: Instagram/@moniquevantulder

They liked each other from the start, and had plenty of things in common. They just hadn't discussed what their future would look like before they were living it.

"You get married, you have kids, all of these conversations which you might have had, you tend not to at the beginning of a relationship," she said. "Probably more so now, but not when we got married a couple of decades ago. It was still very, very traditional."

Her husband had also always lived within a five-kilometre radius of where he was born, surrounded by a "beautiful network" of friends. Monique didn't have that same experience.

"We didn't talk about the minutia of who was going to look after his ageing parents, who was going to give up their career should the kids need a little bit more support? And we got to a point where we probably realised that there are different things that float our boat."

Three years on, Monique and her husband still live separately, visiting each other from time to time.

According to the mother-of-two, falling in love can be all "technicolor and fireworks" and "thrilling and fabulous" until the travails of life threaten to undo everything. But their arrangement has "strengthened [their] relationship beyond repair".

"I won't be as dramatic as saying it's like falling in love again, but it definitely reinvigorated a relationship without a lot of expensive therapy and tears."

She continued: "I had my husband up here for the last fortnight. A few years ago, him being here for a fortnight would have made me roll my eyes and hold my breath and just think, 'Oh, God, will it be over soon? I need my space'.

"But when you're more comfortable in yourself, and you have agency within a relationship, then everything looks rosier. So when he left this time, I thought, 'Oh, that was really lovely, that he was here; I hope he comes again soon'."

The living arrangement has also given Monique's husband a better appreciation for the mental load she once endured.

"My husband is very mathematical and very academically clever. Before I left it was really convenient for him to say, 'My brain doesn't work with cooking'. So I calculated how many evening meals I've had to be creative with over the years. And I just said, 'Well, you have a look at that. Just tell me; is what I want to do for the rest of my life?

Now, he's had no choice but to learn.

"When you're more comfortable in yourself, and you have agency within a relationship, then everything looks rosier." Image: Instagram/@moniquevantulder

Similarly, her sons, who are now at university, also "pick up the pieces" around the house, and have been supportive of their mum's decision.

"We'd always had slightly independent lives within the family, all of us, they could see that there were no slammed doors and raised voices and 'Is she leaving forever?' There might have been a twinge of, 'Is she coming back?' And they might have had a chat amongst themselves. They never wanted to reveal that to me if they did," she said.

Later down the track, Monique sat down with her boys to ask them how they felt about her decision.

"I said to them, 'I didn't really have this conversation with you, but are you feeling okay about it all? The fact that I took off?' I think the youngest said something like, 'Look, you probably deserved it'. And the eldest said, 'I'm actually really proud of you for following something that makes you happy'. So I think they probably see it as a good role model," she recalled.

Monique knows her situation is "unusual" and wouldn't work for everyone.

"I don't really know that many mothers and wives who just go, 'I'm not coming home. Most women who are in a committed relationship either want out permanently, or there's a conversation about it. But I didn't stop to think about what the reaction would be," Monique said.

"My husband might have said, 'Well, that's it, relationship over', but I got to the point where I couldn't not go, and then I would have just had to live with that. It would have made me terribly sad, because I didn't leave him because I didn't love him. I left because I needed to love myself a little bit more; that got buried under the weight of everything."

The author has faced plenty of opinions about the decision, including speculation of adultery.

"People have often alluded that there must be another partner involved, but I barely want the one I've got at the moment. Do I look like I want complications?"

She also recognises she comes from a place of privilege, to have a second house to which she can escape, but asserts that there is "always a way".

"It's about actually putting yourself front and centre stage of your own life. Some people might go, is it a bit too me, me, me? And then I'd have to say, listen, I'm a better wife and mum for being happier with my own lot."

You can buy Monique's book, 'A Grown Up's Gap Year', here.

Feature Image: Instagram/@moniquevantulder