Read the book: «Change (d) her last name. The book is a story of self-help during a breakup»

I stand against divorce!

© Anastasia Sapukova, 2025

ISBN 978-5-0068-2239-9

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Why do I stand for family, yet choose myself?

Anastasiya Sapukova

From the author

This book is an intimate journey through the clash between my deepest convictions and my yearning for an “ideal family”, and the life-altering choices that emerged from that collision. Within these pages, I reveal my most intimate experiences, my struggles, fears, lingering uncertainties, and the hard-won victories that followed. I share my story in the hope that it will encourage those enduring similar hardships to see that no matter how shattered life may feel, there is always a way to rise again.

This is not meant to encourage divorce, but to share openly why it matters to remain true to yourself and how, even after losing everything, you can find the strength to create a new beginning.

My heartfelt thanks to everyone who opens this book. I wrote these pages to remind you that you are never truly alone in your struggles and to show you that a full, authentic life is possible, as long as you have the courage to choose yourself.

Chapter 1. Manifesto: Why I stand for family, yet chose myself

I am the daughter of divorced parents. Four simple words, yet they carry the weight of pain, loneliness, and unfulfilled hopes.

Since childhood, I envied my classmates who had both a mom and a dad. I envied those whose family drawings always had two figures standing together, side by side. Who ran to their father after school, proudly waving their report card. Who whispered secrets into their mother’s ear while their father smiled behind the wheel.

I could only watch from the outside, I never had that.

I was like a fragile chick sheltered beneath the single wing of my mother, a woman who juggled two jobs and battled each day simply to keep us alive.

At dawn, she would rise at 5 a.m., braid my hair into tight plaits, and then vanish into the darkness, heading to the farm where the air reeked of milk and exhaustion. I would crawl back under the blankets, only to wake again in an empty house and get ready for school on my own. There were days I forgot my keys, days I forgot my backpack. And then there were days I wished I could forget myself.

I hold no blame for my mom.

She did everything in her power, hauling us through the storms of life, just as I now fight to pull myself through my own.

But a child’s emotions can never be hidden.

I promised myself: my children will have a different destiny. They will have a family, a whole one. A mother and a father. Love. Support. A childhood free from fear.

I’ve witnessed it with my own eyes.

I always had my godmother’s family as an example before my eyes. Ivan was strict but fair, and he worked to earn a living. Marina was busy in the kitchen, always greeting her husband with a smile. Two children were my cousins. They had everything I had dreamed of: a complete family, a sense of comfort, and holidays shared together.

All I had were tight braids in the morning, brief moments with my mother on rare weekends, and visits to her workplace, where I clung to every chance to be near her.

I carried a dream through my childhood. I promised myself that my children would have a different life. They would know a real family.

Yet, in the end, I was wrong.

Chapter 2: Childhood: a family broken, and a promise born

As a child, I was quite insecure.

I towered over most of my classmates, yet my height never brought me the confidence I longed for. They called me a rail, a lightning rod, and I hated my reflection in the mirror.

My teenage years left me overweight and riddled with insecurities. I never truly loved my body.

I held on to the belief that, when I grew up, I would fall in love with a man, and together we would create the family I had longed for all my childhood.

As time went on.

I wasn’t a popular girl in school or college. While I had relationships, none of them ever felt truly serious.

In every man I dated, I unconsciously searched for the fatherly love and support I had lacked as a child.

I dreamed of a family.

I always longed for a proper wedding.

A wedding with a veil, a white dress, and friends and family cheering “I love you!” as we left the registry office.

Simply dating never appealed to me. I matured quickly, and by 19, I already felt like an adult, something many people noticed.

I always dreamed of having a tall, handsome husband and two children.

Being an only child, I knew what loneliness was. I had no one to play with, no one to share secrets with. Even as a child, I promised myself: I will have two children.

The firstborn is always a boy, meant to protect his little sister, to be her anchor.

That is exactly what happened in my life.

By the time I turned 20, I thought I had it all figured out, how my family life would unfold.

Get married → have my first child → have my second child three years later → be a young mom.

Like my mom.

She gave birth to me at 20, and we’ve always been a bit like friends. She looked great, and every time she said, “This is my daughter,” people had a hard time believing it.

And that’s how I pictured my happy family life: a wedding, children, and a mortgage.

I didn’t understand the most important thing.

I didn’t know that marriage was only the beginning, that relationships demanded daily effort.

Being a wife isn’t just about dreaming, it’s also about confronting a reality no one ever prepared you for.

I didn’t know that.

And I had no role models to guide me.

Chapter 3: Dreams of marriage and the first steps in love

All I could do with my dream was wait for it to come true. Yet as the years went by, reality began to teach me otherwise.

After high school and during my college years, I had relationships, but they all seemed kind of frivolous. It wasn’t like a real relationship, or a relationship that was about growing up.

Every new person I met seemed to be measured against the image of the perfect man I never had in my life. I suppose I was searching for the love and support I had missed from my father.

My first serious romance happened closer to the end of my studies. I was focused on my studies and future plans, but deep down, I was still waiting for the right person to come along and create a real family.

At 19, I already felt like an adult. People often told me I was mature beyond my years, probably because I had learned to take responsibility for myself so early. I wanted to begin my “real life” as soon as possible: to get married, to have children… In short, to fulfill my plan.

I met a guy. He was older and seemed so reliable – tall, handsome, and in some ways, he even resembled the man I had dreamed of as a child.

After a while, we got married. I was 22, and I thought, this is it – the fulfillment of my promise to myself. I would be like my mother: first a young wife, then a young mother. Our wedding was almost everything I had dreamed of, not extravagant, but filled with joy, and yes, there was a white dress.

I felt like my path was crystal clear.

The wedding was behind us. Next came the first child, then the second a few years later, a mortgage, and a lifetime of happiness growing old together.

What I didn’t realize then was the most important truth: a wedding alone cannot create a happy family.

Marriage is merely the first step on a much longer journey.

Chapter 4: Marriage: The Beginning, the Challenges, and the Path to Awareness

The girst warning signs

We spent 12 years married, 10 of them legally. It wasn’t bad at first; quite the opposite, actually. Everything began with brightness and strong emotions.

We met at work, began a romance, and soon moved in together. Everything was new and passionate; we were drawn to each other, learning the wisdom of life through touch: fighting, making peace, with the full understanding that this was for once and for all.

I was loyal, devoted, and together we built our life and family.

Yet after 30 years, a change came over me.

I began to question everything: Who am I? Where do I live? And is this the life I truly wanted?

It was at this point, starting in 2019, that I immersed myself in psychology. I began to realize that the image in my head didn’t match reality, and that something had to change.

But how could I? Everything seemed so perfect at first glance.

The so-called perfect family: passion, a husband who doesn’t drink or abuse me, a man who works tirelessly while I stay home with the children, constantly short on money. I had once done needlework, then turned to marketing.

It all looked like everyone else’s life, and by all appearances, I should have been happy. Yet deep inside, I knew I longed for something else. I longed for a different kind of treatment as a woman. By that time, we had become mere neighbors, living not in love or connection, but in coexistence and survival.

The key turning point came when I was working on a project with someone else’s husband. I saw how he handled his wife’s problems, not with anger, but with shared responsibility. She didn’t have to carry everything alone, not even the renovations. That’s when I realized there was another way to approach life.

That’s not what I was going through.

That moment marked a turning point, opening the door to doubt and personal conflict.

The very realization that marriage might be otherwise came as a shock. Wasn’t it supposed to be a lifelong oath, sacred and final? I had promised myself never to betray that conviction, yet now I stood facing my own denial. And the truth was bitter: by then, our relationship had long been crumbling, falling silent before I dared to name it.

I tried again and again to open a dialogue, to speak of my feelings, to suggest small changes that might breathe new life into us. Each attempt ended the same way with a wall of silence, a refusal to understand.

On the other side, everything was declared “normal,” as if the disquiet I felt existed only in my imagination. “Nothing needs changing. I won’t”. And then the sting of blame: I was the one at fault, I was overthinking, I was weeping too much. Left alone with that verdict, I sank deeper into my own contradictions, until the tension of my soul began to press into the body itself – a slow descent into psychosomatics.

I closed my eyes to the truth, convincing myself that everything was fine. I forbade myself to want more, whispering the familiar excuse: “everyone lives like this”. And as if to soothe the ache, I clutched at my so-called “prize” – a husband who, in twelve years, had never raised a hand against me and at least went to work each day.

But beneath that fragile consolation lay the cruelest reality: this was the most painful chapter of my life.