Ethan Slater‘s ex-wife, Lilly Jay, penned an emotional essay about their “sudden” divorce “in the shadow” of his relationship with “Wicked” co-star Ariana Grande.
“No one gets married thinking they’ll get divorced, in the same way we don’t board a plane expecting to crash,” she wrote in the essay published by the Cut Thursday.
“But I really never thought I would get divorced. Especially not just after giving birth to my first child and especially not in the shadow of my husband’s new relationship with a celebrity.”
Jay admitted she is in a “season of shock and mourning” one year after their split while “deeply” missing her “invisibility” leading a normal life as a psychologist specializing in women’s mental health.
“As a therapist, part of what I could offer my patients was the experience of being in relation with someone else without the complexities of a personal relationship. I was never meant to be fully known to them,” she wrote.
Jay added that research has shown how setting clear boundaries between therapists and patients is an important part of the process.
“I loved my life working in a helping profession and being immersed in the details of other people’s stories rather than documenting my own narrative for public consumption,” she said.
Jay described that she was such a strong believer in privacy that she stayed off social media — despite Instagram and Facebook being powerful tools in Slater’s rising success as an actor.
“My partner was on a different path, in which social media and exposure were not impediments but rather necessities,” she said. “We puzzled through this predicament on walks, over pizza, in our apartment and excitedly concocted rules of engagement of how and what he would share about our lives together. It was a tenuous balance — my profession, which requires privacy, and his, which is measured in applause — but it worked well while life was unfolding according to our plans.”
When the now-former couple welcomed their first child, the trio moved to London so she could “support his career” despite her struggle with postpartum depression.
“Consumed by the magic and mundanity of new motherhood, I didn’t understand the growing distance between us,” she wrote of her and Slater.
As she focused on motherhood, Jay said that she worked tirelessly on learning to accept “the sudden public downfall of [her] marriage.”
She noted that co-parenting their 2-year-old son with Slater has remained solid despite their breakup.
“While our partnership has changed, our parenthood has not,” she said. “Both of us fiercely love our son 100 percent of the time, regardless of how our parenting time is divided.”
Jay furthered that, despite loving life as a mom, she still has dark days due to the heavy promotion of “Wicked” — the film that united Grande with Slater.
“As for me, days with my son are sunny. Days when I can’t escape the promotion of a movie associated with the saddest days of my life are darker,” she wrote.
Jay also reflected on how her name in the headlines may have impacted her career — and not for the better.
“It’s hard to measure an absence, and I can’t say for sure how much my career has been impacted by what’s out there online,” she wrote. “But there have been hints along the way, like the job offer that dissolved without explanation after yet another tabloid news cycle or the patient who’s scheduled for a first appointment but seemingly vanishes.”
The mom of one explained that she has come to accept that she no longer lives an unknown life and has decided to introduce herself through her own words instead of letting the tabloids do it for her.
“I cannot resolve the incongruity of a career in helping others prepare for the exquisite fragility and beauty of pregnancy and postpartum and then having my own world upended,” she said. “But I can start hearing myself when I tell patients that avoidance maintains fear, and maybe it’s time to accept that I’m not unknown anymore.”
She went on to describe her essay as a “message in a bottle” to her clients.
“I’m sorry I can’t be invisible anymore (really, more than you know, I’m sorry),” she wrote. “This information about me will rush in like water filling all of the blank spaces where you could have, should have, would have imagined me to be whomever you needed.”
She continued, “If you want to or need to, we can acknowledge what you now know about me, and then we’ll quickly work our way back to your story with a question that is a therapy classic for good reason: And how did that make you feel?”
Grande and the Broadway star fell in love on the set of the musical film after they split from their respective spouses.
News broke in July 2023 that Grande had separated from her then-husband, Dalton Gomez, while Slater filed for divorce from his high school sweetheart later that month.
Jay blasted Grande at the time, telling Page Six exclusively that the pop star is “not a girl’s girl.”
However, sources insisted that Slater and Grande “didn’t do anything wrong” and had been separated from their partners for months.
The “7 Rings” singer, for her part, denied speculation that they had an affair.
“There couldn’t be a less accurate depiction of a human being than the one that the tabloids spread about him,” she told Vanity Fair of Slater in September. “No one on this earth tries harder or spreads themselves thinner to be there for the people that he loves and cares about.”
Grande added, “There is no one on this earth with a better heart. And that is something that no bulls–t tabloid can rewrite in real life.”
