“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 wrote, not naming Ariana Grande.
Dr. Lilly Jay is opening up about her marriage with Ethan Slater ending in the public eye.
The clinical psychologist wrote an essay for The Cut — titled “How Does My Divorce Make You Feel?” — where she examined the relationship between her ex-husband and his unnamed celebrity girlfriend (who we all know as his Wicked costar, Ariana Grande).
Jay — who specializes in perinatal mental health and child development — also reflected on the difficulties she has faced during the emotional roller-coaster.
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“In the countless hours I spend rocking my son to sleep, pushing his stroller, marveling at his sweaty little hands grasping a crayon, I work diligently on my private project of accepting the sudden public downfall of my marriage,” Jay wrote. “This, I tell myself, is nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to hide.”
She focused on her life as a mom to her and Slater’s two-year-old son after the divorce, adding that “motherhood, I have learned, fills your time but not your mind.”
“Slowly but surely, I have come to believe that in the absence of the life I planned with my high-school sweetheart, a lifetime of sweetness is waiting for me and my child.”
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Grande and Slater’s love story shocked the pop culture world. The Wicked costars found their names plastered across headlines in 2023 due to their relationship becoming public knowledge quickly following Grande’s split from Dalton Gomez.
In July, 2023 TMZ reported that Grande and Gomez had split in January. A few days later, sources told the outlet Grande and Slater started dating several months prior, with the two first meeting while shooting Wicked.
Slater had also split from his wife, his high school sweetheart. Slater and Lilly filed for divorce six days after Slater was publicly linked to Grande. Per TMZ, the couple’s romance didn’t start until after Slater’s separation from his now-ex wife, with whom he shares a son. Grande’s divorce from Gomez was finalized in October 2023, while Slater’s divorce finalized in September 2024.
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Elsewhere in the essay, Jay admitted that, “No one gets married thinking they’ll get divorced, in the same way we don’t board a plane expecting to crash. 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.”
“In this season of shock and mourning, over a year after the end of my marriage was made public, I deeply miss the life of invisibility I created for myself as a psychologist specializing in women’s mental health,” she continued.
She explained how the repercussions of being in the media for a controversy has affected her and her career.
“As for me, days with my son are sunny,” Jay wrote. “Days when I can’t escape the promotion of a movie associated with the saddest days of my life are darker.”
“People from [her] past have reached out to say they saw my face in a tabloid,” she said before adding that her “patients have remained silent.”
“At the Children’s Hospital, my invisibility was welcome protection from hard conversations for me and my patients,” she said. “And while I still firmly believe in following my patients’ leads and not presuming to know what parts of my personhood resonate with them, the publicity I did not consent to increasingly feels like both a challenge and an opportunity.”
“If I’m discovered — as what, being vulnerable? — perhaps it could be a point of connection rather than a clinical liability,” she continued.
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For her career, she wanted to keep her privacy, noting that she deactivated her Facebook before she turned 18, explaining the importance of keeping her personal life a blank slate when it came to treating patients.
“If I can’t be invisible anymore, I may as well introduce myself. You know how a sponge is most effective at absorbing liquid when it’s already a bit wet? Maybe we can think about my messy not-so-personal life in that way: a dose of my own loss, rage, powerlessness, sadness that helps me hold yours,” the essay continued. “So consider this essay my message in a bottle sent out to sea to maybe wash up at my patients’ feet someday: I’m sorry I can’t be invisible anymore.”
She went on to say that she was fearful that “loss of control and postpartum depression would destroy” her for her “entire adult life” but she said she is “okay.”
“I confidently moved to another country with my 2-month-old baby and my husband to support his career. Consumed by the magic and mundanity of new motherhood, I didn’t understand the growing distance between us,” she revealed.
You can read the full essay here.
