Allison Carmen - A Year without Men: A Twelve-Point Guide to Inspire + Empower Women

Copyright 2021 by Allison Carmen

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Jacket design by Daniel Brount

Jacket illustrations by Shutterstock and Getty Images

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-6412-5

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-6413-2

Printed in the United States of America

To my children, Morgan and Amanda.
May my journey inspire you to embrace your truth.
May my journey inspire you to love and value everything that you are.
May my journey inspire you to embrace your strong, independent spirits as women.

Contents

Introduction

Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead, let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?

Rumi

***

A year ago, I thought I was in a happy and committed marriage. Id been married to my husband for twenty-seven years, and wed been together for twenty-nine. Life was full. I had published a self-help book a few years earlier, The Gift of Maybe: Finding Hope and Possibilities in Uncertain Times, and I ran a successful, one-woman company as a business consultant and business/life coach with a wide variety of clients. I imagined that as our children got olderthey were fifteen and nineteenI would focus more on the self-help part of my business. I wanted to guide people through difficult and uncertain times, sharing the tools I had gathered in my own journey from a tax lawyer to a businesswoman, as well as a parent. I had struggled a lot in my life physically and emotionally, but I was at a good point in my journey. Most of all, I had my familytwo wonderful girls who were blossoming and a husband I loved and was committed to with all my heart.

On June 30, 2018, my husband came home to our New York City apartment where we had lived most of our childrens lives and which was filled with so many incredible memories and milestones. He had just returned home from the gym, and I was eating lunch at the kitchen counter. He sat down with his own food a few feet away at the kitchen table and said he wanted to speak to me. I swiveled around on the stool I was on and looked at him, expecting him to bring up our summer vacation plans or our oldest daughters upcoming year at college. Instead, he blurted out, I am attracted to other women at the gym, and we need to separate because I want to have sex with other women. We can still have family holidays and family vacations together.

I stared at him, trying to understand. You are joking with me, right? I responded. I could think of no other explanation for what he was saying.

We had just celebrated our birthdays with loving poems in May and sent both of our children off to summer programs. A few months earlier, he had launched his new business with my unwavering support. He was my best friend in the world. I searched his face. He looked down.

I repeated, You are joking, right?

Without looking up, he said, I am serious. We need to separate. He continued talking about women at the gym, going into detail about the types of women he was attracted to and his desire to have sex with other women. I stopped hearing his words. I just fell to the floor, hoping to grab something I knew. As I lay there, I wanted to find something to hold me. I remember looking across the room at the wall thinking, If I could get there and bang my head against that wall, it would hurt less than how I feel right now. I heard my husband telling me to get up, but he never moved from his seat. I looked up at him, and his eyes appeared glazed over. He had detached from the only world I knew.

What I had imagined would be a fun few weeks of regrouping and sharing special one-on-one time together was turning into the most traumatic time of my life. My entire world had just blown apart. What did he mean, to separate? We were married. We were partners in every part of our lives. We had kids together. This was like someone telling me they were going to rip off both of my arms. Shocked, I finally spoke. I begged and begged for him not to leave.

He agreed to go for counseling for three months. My husband and I had gone to marriage counseling a few years earlier for just three sessions to work out some issues. After these sessions, he never said another word about any problems and life seemed good.

This time, although he had committed to three months of counseling, we would not even make it past seven weeks. On August 24, our wedding anniversary, I would leave for the weekend with the girls to my sisters house on Long Island, and he would move out of our family home.

As I entered my sisters guest room that day, I remember taking off my wedding ring and once again falling to the floor. I didnt understand what was happening, I didnt understand how I would exist without this marriage, and I didnt understand what would become of my family. Also, I didnt realize that June 30, 2018, the day he made his announcement, the day he truly left me, would mark the beginning of a yearlong experience in which my daily life was practically devoid of men. This was to be a year without men.

My husband left me. But that alone was not enough to shift my entire perspective about myself as a woman in the world. It was being surrounded by women and in very little contact with men for twelve months that would shift the way I think, act, and feel in business and in my personal life in ways I could never have imagined.

In truth, my life had already begun moving in this man-free direction without my realizing it. In May 2018, I left the Board of Directors of my building, comprised mostly of men, because I had joined the Board of Directors of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS). GEMS is a New York City nonprofit organization that empowers girls and young women who have been commercially sexually exploited and domestically trafficked. The organization was women-led, and many women who worked there were survivors themselves.

By the second half of the year, not by my own design, I was no longer working directly with any male clients, apart from my main client with whom I had consulted for twenty-five years. Within a few days of my husband announcing he wanted to separate, my main client stopped communicating with me about his business. He was selling his company and gave the responsibility of managing the sale to his internal management team. He quickly moved away from dealing with many aspects of the business. This break was a natural progression of the sale but was, for me, abrupt and upsetting. I did work at the company with his internal management team for a short time after, but the company was sold in early fall, and my contract was terminated.