Micaela Sharp: "If you get divorced, you choose yourself"
The broadcaster and interior designer on putting herself first, creating a slower life in Spain, and true contentment
I’ve followed Micaela for a couple of years and have known her through a few of my friends in media. But it wasn’t until I was scrolling through my TikTok and came across her videos about being in her 30s, divorced, packing up her life in London and moving to sunny Malaga. It was the kind of content that immediately made me sit up.
A Black woman in her 30s creating an entirely new life, slowing down, felt like a breath of fresh air on my feed. But not only that, I so rarely see anything by Black women who are divorced and are talking openly about their experiences.
So many of us have a fear of making ourselves vulnerable because of how it can be weaponised against us. Seeing Micaela be so open about the ending of her marriage made me reflect on mine, and I knew that I wanted to speak to her for the newsletter about life and love after divorce.
Name Micaela Sharp
Age 38
Relationship status Single
Monogamous/ENM/Poly? Monogamous
Four years ago, the content that you're sharing right now was the content that I was looking for and couldn't find. I just kind of wanted to start by almost setting the scene, what was that time like for you when you knew you wanted to end your relationship and how did come to your decision about what you wanted to do next?
It was a really topsy-turvy time. I think I am quite used to that, of having an outward public perception of things going very well and having an different internal dialogue of how I’m feeling. It was a really major time, everyone was messaging me and congratulating me…it was weird, when you have this moment of other people’s success markers. Everyone was like, “Congratulations! We’re all rooting for you!” when I was suddenly on a TV show…and at the time I was in a failing marriage and a relationship that left me feeling really lonely.
Despite having all of these new followers online and being reached out to by people that I used to go to primary school with, I just felt completely disconnected. So it was tough. But I think also sometimes you need that real juxtaposition and like you need to feel the extremes to be able to take really decisive action.
And so I kind of knew…God, if I can't share this joyful time with my husband, if he's not supporting me through something this major, if he's not rooting for me, then what are we doing?
My husband and I had an argument before I found out that he was cheating on me. And he’d said he was going to leave and go and stay with his parents. And I thought, this man can't even be in the same house as me to talk about our failing marriage. He wants to flee. He wants to go and be with his parents. So in my head, I thought, we're going to get divorced because I can't keep banging my head against this wall.
Do you think that even without the cheating that you would have probably left that marriage? When I was getting divorced, there wasn't a significant moment as severe as cheating, as traumatic as a betrayal, it feels like there is a different level to a marriage breaking down when that happens. For me, I just felt over time that it wasn’t right, and that I knew in my gut that something was wrong. I knew that if I continued to stay, things would start to get worse. I wanted to make sure that we could kind of both get out of it unscathed, if that makes sense.
It totally makes sense. I think I knew it wasn’t going to work, I do think we would have gotten divorced one way or the other. The thing that really sealed the deal for me wasn't necessarily the betrayal…but it was how he was treating me.
Yes, I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone who says they’re monogamous and they’re not. But for me, it was the year and a half that he was having this on and off affair, he treated me really badly. There was a lot of coercive control and emotional manipulation. And so I really knew it wasn’t right. He was telling me he was depressed, but he wasn't depressed. He was having an affair.
For a year I was so confused, I was like, “what’s going on?” and then those last six months, I just started to think, I can't do this. I can't live like this, where I'm expected to put someone else's emotional state completely above my own and I get nothing in return. I would go to hug him and he would push me away. He would literally grimace and recoil like I was disgusting, and this was in lockdown. It was so brutal.
We were completely unable to talk about anything. Every time I tried to bring up that I was unhappy or that I didn't know what was going on I was confused he would just shut it down.
At the time I was watching Selling Sunset and I think it was in season one that Chrishell was getting divorced, and she had just found out publicly that her husband was cheating on her. And I watched it and I was in floods of tears for her and I just thought, “this is gonna be me, I'm gonna be getting divorced.” Then an hour or two later, the texts started to come through from the woman who was cheating on me with, saying, “I've been sleeping with your husband.”
I'm quite grateful for it because now I am out of it and I have such clarity. I think it's often harder for people like you who, as you said, it's not like an instant thing, like you've crossed a boundary, you've done something unforgivable and then you have to try and explain it to everyone around you.
Yes, it’s the explaining when there isn’t such a traumatic event occurring that I feel like fed a lot of my guilt and shame because I felt like I was actively causing someone pain when I shouldn’t have to.
I think you are spot on. And I think it's because society really sets us up as women to have to just endure. It's like, endure, endure, endure. And it's like, no, babe, life isn't about endurance. This isn't an endurance test. This is your one shot to live joyfully.
I also wanted to ask, as so many of us have a lightbulb moment where we decide that we need to change something right away or maybe for some people, it’s slower, almost like an undercurrent. For me there was a feeling of anxiousness and uneasiness, and I was like, I know I want my life to be different but I don’t know how to get there. What was that moment like for you? Did it come simultaneously with you being like, “I’m going to physically remove myself from this situation?”
I do think there’s a trauma response involved to flee, and I think I did have that. People were like, “my god you’re so brave,” but I do think it was possibly a trauma response.
It is brave though, it’s very brave.
I don't know, it didn't feel that way at the time. I was full of a lot of fear and a lot of shame initially. Although when someone else has cheated on you, you can shift a lot of that shame in some contexts. But then in others you feel like you're gonna be the judged like, “what were you not doing for him? How could you not keep him satisfied?” As if he had the right to cheat on me if I had done something.
There was a lot of fear around what the world was going to be like for me as a divorced, young, Black woman.
I thought about that for myself as well, you already have so many labels.
So many labels and now I'm adding “divorced.” And you just kind of feel like, God, if black women are already at the bottom of the social hierarchy, then divorced Black women must really be at bottom. So this was what was going on in my head all the time, like I already know that the world has this perception of me which doesn’t align and now I’m gonna have to fight against this thing as well.
Then I sat with that for ages and then I just thought, get a grip Michaela, don't dwell on how other people are going to see you, Don’t give into it. The more you sit here thinking, “I'm a divorced Black woman,” the more you actually accept that title.
So after that I welcomed the change. I’m quite good with change and I knew that change was coming regardless. You can't control your path in life. Things just come when they come. I just started to think about what I wanted from the next chapter and what true contentment was, you know, not happiness.
I don't think when you're in the middle of a divorce, you're like, what's going to make me happy? You're just like, what's going to get me out of bed?
Yes, exactly. Every day, I just wanted it to be over. I wasn’t even thinking about my own happiness, I was thinking of a time where I wouldn’t have to think about it anymore. Each day was just me putting one foot in front of the other. Everything was just looming over me.
Looming is the word. Your world is just so overshadowed by this thing, and I just thought, let’s get to contentment. Where do I feel like that? And how can I have more of that? And for me, that was like traveling so I kind of lived out of a suitcase for the first couple of years, moving around and then I was like, okay, I'm feeling free, you know? I’m feeling good. I'm choosing me. And I realised that suddenly I have all these options again, like everything is on the table. And so I needed that time.
I love that, and I love hearing about that moment of feeling free and like getting to that place where you're like, “I have all of this opportunity lying ahead of me.” And at the time you were on TV, working in media, you’ve got all of these incredible opportunities that people always say only come once in a lifetime. How did that feel at the time? Was it hard feeling like you were being presented with incredible TV opportunities vs look at my life now, things feel open and I can take it in whatever direction I want?
I did focus on work a lot to distract me, but I kind of knew it was a distraction. The show was airing when I realised I was going to be getting divorced. And then the opportunities did start to roll in, but I knew I was in a really reactive state. And I think that sums up both things like finding out my husband was cheating on me.
And also the workflow, I was just saying yes to things or no to things. It wasn’t necessarily directional. I wasn't like, I want to do this. I was asked to do this collaboration, or this show wanted me to come for a segment, or someone wanted me to write something or meet with me.
It was okay, but life is actually not just for doing what other people want you to do, you know? Yes, those opportunities were great, but none of it was really lighting me up. I am super grateful for all the opportunities I've had because that's led me here.
And here I'm the happiest I've ever been. I think that so many of the career moments that other people would point to, they don't feel that amazing to me because I don't feel like I carved them out for myself, if that makes sense. It was someone else who asked me, “Do you want to do this thing?” And I was like, “Yeah, sure.”
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So many of us aren’t even in touch or in tune with that part of ourselves, the understanding of what it is we actually want. Those external markers of success or what other people think are the most important things that you can get out of life don't necessarily align with what it is that we personally want and it can be very distracting.
Did you have an idea in mind about what your dream life would look like? What would you recommend to people who are kind of in this kind of state of maybe uncertainty?
I didn’t always know, is the honest answer. When I eventually started to tell my friends what I wanted to do, they were worried. They were like, is she having a breakdown? She's giving up everything she's built to go and try and buy a farm and rescue some donkeys. Eventually, that's the goal. But I can't wait.
I think the biggest thing is putting yourself in new situations. When you feel stuck, it's often because you are stuck in a loop. You're seeing the same people, you're going to the same places, you're doing the same things over and over and over, but yet you're trying to imagine a completely new life for yourself and it seems unachievable.
It's a really privileged thing to be able to do, to break that cycle and to put yourself in new situations. But however you can facilitate that, I would advise it because it gives you the most clarity and questions things at the minutia. It doesn't have to be expensive, but you can recreate them in smaller ways that normally would feel really new for you.
Whether it’s going out to eat dinner on your own, table for one, and not looking at your phone. Sitting there in uncomfortable silence with yourself, it's funny what will come up. I think really just shaking yourself awake, being uncomfortable and then questioning why do I feel uncomfortable? And when you then feel comfortable asking, what is this feeling? Why do I feel comfortable here? And is this feeling of comfortability? Is it contentment and joy or is it boredom?
I was travelling and I was doing lots of different things and realising like, oh, I really like this, I really hate this. And then I went back to London and was able to compare and contrast. And I realised here [in London] I just haven't really questioned things. I've just been sleepwalking from one day to the next, like this is what we all do. But I had never really taken the time to think, what does success look like for me?
I've been told what success is. It's a bigger house, it's a fancy car, it's marriage, it's children. It's a job where people are going to text you and say, congratulations. But I was like, actually, these things aren't success for me.
Success for me, when I'm old, and I look back at my life will be contentment, stillness, knowing myself, being with nature, contributing to something that is more than capitalism.
And now that you're divorced and life has taken a little bit more of a slower pace, how did that change your ideas of marriage and partnership? Are those still things that you're in pursuit of?
I have my moments where I'll rejoin one of the apps and be like, let's just see. And then I’m quickly like, “delete, delete, delete.”
I’m in a season of no dating apps as well!
My friend sent me a meme that was basically like, redownloading a dating app is like going to reopen an empty fridge that you know is empty. [We laugh.]
I was like, my God, that’s what it’s like. I know there’s nothing here for me, but I’m just going to. And of course, here in Malaga the dating pool is way smaller than Spain and then London. Plus, I still need to date in English at the moment. So my dating pool is like crazy small. But honestly, the longer you're single and the more you sit with yourself, I think the more you realise, especially as women, that you want to opt out of a lot of what society is telling you you need.
And I don't think a romantic love is the be all and end all. I don't think it's the thing to put on a pedestal. I don't think it's the thing to spend tens of thousands of pounds celebrating. Yes, if you meet someone amazing, it can be fantastic. I'm not sure I believe that things are forever.
If you meet someone for a really amazing chapter, great. If you can accept when the end is even better, you know? So I don't think marriage is for me moving forward. I'm open to meeting incredible people, but I'm not prioritising it. It don’t feel the need to spend all of this time and energy dating.
It takes an unbelievable amount of time every night to log into the apps to be rewarded for engaging with things you don’t even want to, to keep on top of who said what to you, to remember who's who. Honestly, my threshold is on the floor at the minute. So it's a no from me. I’m open to meeting someone, but I’m not going to over exert myself.
I want to talk again about some of the feelings of shame and stigma attached to being divorced, especially at an age that is still technically considered to be young, it’s not like we’re in our 50s and 60s at this point. And I think this shame is still women’s burden to bear. But you’re one of the people subverting this, talking about your experience on TikTok and in your videos. Why was that important to you to kind of put out into the world?
I think I've always been an open book. You can tell from how we're talking.I know as a woman, this is how we get knowledge, by sharing, right? I feel like knowledge shared is really valuable. I went on a divorce podcast three or four months after finding out my husband had been cheating on me and knowing I was like, I knew straight away the next day I wanted to get divorced. A few years later, I listened to it back and the clarity I had then…
There's no shame in having tried something and failed. There are more questions about having never tried something. If you've never pushed yourself outside of your comfort zone, if you've never failed at something, then are you even living?
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What you speak about on you TikTok is what I was looking for at the time I was getting divorced. And especially now, there was a wave of books written by divorced women, but it’s mostly white women that I’m seeing having these conversations and talking about this subject. How are you finding that?
It’s interesting, isn’t it? The books that I've seen around divorce and a lot of the discourse around divorce has often been through the lens of a white woman who has two kids, gets completely blindsided by husband who leaves her for another man, has to pick herself up and lose a bit of weight, get a new haircut and eventually finds another partner. That’s the blueprint for these memoirs.
When I was getting divorced, I was looking for resources. I was looking for my tribe. I was looking for advice because I didn't know a single person that was divorced. So it's very isolating. It's isolating for a million reasons, right? You're feeling all the shame and blame and, and fear, but then also you can't even chat to your mates about it because no one's divorced. What I was finding was negative story after negative story after negative story. Women being treated awfully by their ex-husbands but then, “don’t worry, I’m now with someone new.”
Why is that goal?
My channel on TikTok is small, mainly I talk about single life at 38, being child-free by choice and divorce, so what I hope I'm putting out into the world is the other option. How about if you get divorced, you choose yourself. You start showing up for yourself in a way that is building a life that you want. Whether or not you find another partner is not the goal. I’m not living my life to try and attract a man.
Honestly, the more I think about it and the more I dig in I think it's a bit of a trap and there's so much more to us and there's so many more things we can experience and feel and give to the world than coupling up with someone. I just think that's a tiny part of who we are as humans but for some reason it's really pushed.
And what about love and romance? What does that look like for you now?
I mean, I'm not actively dating at the moment, but I feel like my life is so full of love and I feel like it's always there, you always have it. And whether you're choosing to share it with a partner or not, it is there inside of you. I feel like I am so full of love. I'm so full of romance and cute, little touches. And I try to do that a lot for myself and for my friends and the people that I love.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
About me: I'm Nicole, the writer of A Crumb of Romance. I’m the co-author of The Half of It: Exploring the Mixed-Race Experience, a content creator and the co-host of the award-winning Mixed Up podcast. Having been chronically online since the age of 13, you can also find me on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Pinterest.
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