Lily J has broken her silence on a topic that is both very personal and very public.
As most celebrity gossip fans know at this point, Jay is divorced from Ethan Slater, an actor who plays Bok in the smash hit film Wicked.
The pair split last year, right around the time Ariana Grande divorced Dalton Gomez.
Grande is now dating Slater, sparking rumors about when, exactly, the co-stars began their relationship.
“I really never thought I would get divorced. Especially not after just giving birth to our first child, and especially not in the shadow of my husband’s new relationship with a celebrity,” Jay wrote in an essay published Dec. 18 for The Cut.
Jay and Slater are parents to a two-year-old son.
In his intensely personal essay, the clinical psychologist never mentioned Grande by name.
But she talks openly about what it’s like to see her name in newspaper headlines, as well as the endless conversations she has about her ex and one of the country’s most famous celebrities.
Jay wrote, “The countless hours I spend rocking my son to sleep, pushing his stroller, marveling at the sight of his sweaty little hands holding a crayon, I find myself coming to terms with the sudden public collapse of my marriage.” I work diligently on personal projects.”
“I tell myself, there’s nothing to be ashamed of and hide.”
Jay says she has remained focused on her life as a mother to her young son, saying “I’ve learned that motherhood fills your time but not your mind” and says:
“Slowly but surely, I have come to believe that in the absence of the life I had planned with my high-school boyfriend, a lifetime of sweetness awaits me and my baby.”
The Broadway actor’s divorce from Jay was finalized in September, a dozen years after they started dating and nearly six years after they were married in November 2018.
Also… six days after we first saw stories of Slater and Grande hooking up.
Elsewhere in the essay, Jay admitted the following:
“No one gets married thinking they will get divorced, in the same way we don’t board a plane expecting it to crash. But I never thought that I would get divorced…
“In this season of shock and grief, more than a year after the end of my marriage was made public, I deeply miss the life of invisibility I built for myself as a psychologist specializing in women’s mental health. Am.”
She says Jai tries to find solace away from the spotlight; An attraction he never asked for and certainly doesn’t desire.
“As far as I’m concerned, days are good with my son,” Jay wrote. “Even worse are the days when I can’t avoid promoting a movie about the saddest days of my life.”
Without a doubt, the promotion for Wicked has been as prominent as any film in recent memory.
A particularly private man, Jay said:
“If I can’t remain invisible any longer, I might as well introduce myself. Do you know how a sponge is most effective at absorbing liquid when it’s already slightly wet? Maybe we can think about our messy, non-individualized lives this way: a dose of my own loss, anger, powerlessness, sadness that helps me be with you.
“So consider this essay my message in a bottle that might someday be sent out to sea to wash at the feet of my patients: I’m sorry I can no longer remain invisible.”
While being careful not to throw his former partner too far under the bus, Jay also wrote about co-parenting and Slater:
“Although our partnership has changed, our parenthood has not. “We both love our son 100 percent, no matter how our parenting time is divided.”
To read Jay’s essay in full, you can visit The Cut.