Mum divorced husband after realising she didn’t miss him while on holiday
Topics: Life, Sex and Relationships, Travel
Jake Massey
Featured Image Credit: SWNS
Topics: Life, Sex and Relationships, Travel
It's hard not to get a bit carried away while on holiday. Maybe I could emigrate to Gran Canaria, you think to yourself. Perhaps I'll learn Spanish, set up my own beach bar and completely sack off my life back home.
But normally these dreams rapidly evaporate upon returning home, when the practicalities dawn on you and you remember that you're s**t at Spanish.
However, one mum actually went ahead with a huge life change that she decided upon while sunning it up on holiday.
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Stephanie Hanson, from Liverpool, was in Greece with her pals last year when she resolved to divorce her husband of 10 years.
She was on a 10-day trip to Kefalonia with two friends in May 2022 to celebrate her 40th birthday, and it ended up becoming a more momentous holiday than she'd expected.
"I remember thinking while I was away about how I really missed the kids, but I didn't miss my husband," the mum-of-four said.
"I was in the worst shape of my life, and it dawned on me, at home, I was miserable - so I did something about it."
She added: "I was having the best time with the girls, and the thought of going back home to my husband was awful.
"I had a moment of clarity at the hotel that I'd been miserable in my marriage for as long as I could remember.
"So when I flew back, I ended it there and then - and I knew I'd made the right decision when I saw his reaction."
And off the back of this big decision she immediately made another, and embarked on a mission to get in shape.
She was 17 stone on the holiday and decided as a newly single woman to begin a new fitness regime.
Stephanie began exercising at home using a hula hoop and drastically changed her diet; she swapped chocolate, takeaway meals and cream and butter-based dishes for lean meat, fish, salad and soup.
After a few months, she incorporated running into her fitness regime, and slowly but surely, she started to shed the weight she'd been carrying for a decade.
And after meeting her new boyfriend, David, Stephanie said she 'can't wait' for the future.
Stephanie - who works as a phlebotomist - said: "After leaving my ex-husband, the next thing I needed to do was lose weight.
"The photos from the holiday made me see what horrible shape I was in, so I started working out at home and changed my diet.
"It was hard at first, but the motivation of being freshly single carried me through."
She continued: "In July, I met David on Facebook's dating website and we hit it off straight away.
"I met him around halfway through my fitness journey, but he didn't care about that, he loved me as I was.
"I now weigh 12 stone, but I'm quite tall, so I think if I lose one more stone, that will be perfect.
"If I hadn't of gone on that holiday, I'd still be stuck in a marriage with a man I no longer loved, so to be where I am now, I couldn't be happier."