August 2016. Julia Clark flies to Egypt with her husband Peter and their two daughters. Fifteen years of marriage, three children, a family balance that seems solid. But, at 53, the mother feels a lack that sticks to her skin.
“Our two weeks of vacation in Egypt were coming to an end and we were making the most of our last days in the heat of August. But, when we all laughed and we came back with wonderful photos, I couldn’t help but feel alone“She says.
This vacuum is coupled with a bitter observation: “I had the impression that my relationship was expired. I was married to my husband for 15 years and he was a good man, a brilliant father for our children … but I had the impression that we were just there for the children. “
It was then that an employee of the hotel approaches him, asked him for his name. Nothing more. Julia does not imagine that this simple exchange will upset her life.
Virtual friendship at the start radical
Back in England, Julia receives a friend request on Facebook … then another. Ahmed writes to him. “I felt that I could confide in him and that he was there for me“, She says. Messages become daily, video calls are linked. Three months later, Ahmed admits to him that he falls in love.
She tries to cut short, without success. In 2017, she initiated a divorce procedure. The following year, she found Ahmed in Cairo. He offers her a ring, asks for her hand. She says yes.
In 2020, Julia made the most radical decision of her life: leaving England to settle with him. “”I abandoned everything: my house, my children, my family. “Married discreetly, they settle together. But quickly, Ahmed changed. Outings canceled, nights spent outside without explanations, loneliness.
“I was already suffering from anxiety, but it worsened it.“Then the blow of grace:”He told me that he had to marry an Egyptian to be able to have children because I am older and already menopausal. It broke me.“The divorce was pronounced in 2022. Julia returned to England the following year.
Passion or crisis of the fifties?
So, love at first sight or existential crisis? Psychologist Amélie Boukhobza nuance: “The border is sometimes fine. We have a family, a balance, children … and we plague everything for a crush.“”
For her, love impulse often masks a deeper need: “A need to reinvent yourself. Not to be satisfied with what” holds “but no longer vibrates. At 50, we know what we want. We know especially what we no longer want. And that makes the decisions more decided.”
Love at first sight has no age, she adds, but he can get involved in “The urgency of living, the feeling that time spins, the desire to flee a life that has become too narrow“. An alchemy sometimes explosive, nourished by the desire to finally share what has been understood by oneself.
“Without doubt a little both. And above all a way of saying: my life is now. Or never,” says the psychologist.
Change life: a leap into the unknown
Leaving everything on a whim is never trivial. “”Ask yourself if you have to leave everything to change your life … It is never a light decision. There is no miracle recipe. Yes, this is a risk to take. Because leaving is necessarily going to the unknown. We know what we leave. We don’t really know what we’re going to find“Insists Amélie Boukhobza.
And the desire for rupture does not happen by chance. “”Behind the desire to place everything, there are often signals which, for a long time, say that something is no longer going. A couple that goes out, a daily life that no longer feeds, we no longer recognize each other. “
It remains to ask the right questions: “Do I go to flee … or to live? Do I try to escape something, or to join something that really calls me? But it is especially after the fact that we can answer it. Change your life is a real dive“, She concludes.