Ethan Slater's Ex-Wife, Dr. Lilly Jay, Breaks Silence: "How Does My Divorce Make You Feel?"

Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater's rumored love affair has overshadowed the pain of Dr. Lilly Jay.

Dr. Lilly Jay penned a powerful essay for The Cut titled "How Does My Divorce Make You Feel?"  She writes about going through post-partum depression and, in my opinion, appears blindsided by her ex-husband Ethan Slater, who began dating his Wicked co-star Ariana Grande when their baby wasn’t even a year old yet. 

“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,” she wrote. “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.”

Slater – known for playing SpongeBob in Broadway's SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical – was her high-school sweetheart and father of their child. While news reports claim that Grande and Slater dated after his divorce, social media users are convinced there was more to the story. In the essay, Dr. Jay described the paradox of being both a therapist and a heartbroken person. She was someone who spent years helping others with their grief, only to find herself suddenly going through trauma and pain – but her case was different. She had to do it all under the spotlight. The private life she had worked so hard to cultivate was gone. 

It’s important to note that Dr. Jay didn’t have a smooth pregnancy. She had survived preeclampsia. “During my pregnancy, I had never felt happier nor more aware of how precarious happiness could be. When my baby was first placed on my chest, still tethered to me by his umbilical cord, I sobbed with relief,” she recalled. “We had done it. He had arrived. I survived preeclampsia, a life-threatening birth complication, and finally, our family was whole.”

She then moved to England to support her husband, not realizing that their marriage would eventually come to an end. Dr. Jay continued, “Mine is a story of worrying in the wrong direction. As a perinatal psychologist, I knew all the statistics — how vulnerable a marriage is in the postpartum period, how vital community connection is in preventing depression and anxiety, how new parenthood impacts a whole family — but 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.”

Dr. Jay’s son is the light of her life. “Motherhood, I have learned, fills your time but not your mind. 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. This, I tell myself, is nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to hide,” she added.

“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,” she reflected. “While our partnership has changed, our parenthood has not. Both of us fiercely love our son 100 percent of the time, regardless of how our parenting time is divided. 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.”

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