Ethan Slater was not a big part of Wicked’s promotional tour. He attended the premieres and gave some interviews, but he and Ariana Grande did not make any kind of coupled-up appearances on red carpets or whatever. It was in July 2023 when all hell broke loose – that was when Ethan and Ariana’s relationship became public knowledge, that’s when we learned that Ariana had left her husband, and that’s when he learned that Ethan was married to his high-school sweetheart, a woman named Lilly Jay, and they had an infant son. Ariana and Ethan’s affair blew up both of their marriages and it definitely hurt Ariana’s image – as Lilly said in a rare public comment, Ari is “not a girl’s girl.” Well, now that dust has settled and Lilly and Ethan’s divorce has been finalized, Lilly Jay wrote a personal essay in The Cut about what she’s learned and how everything went wrong. She’s actually Dr. Lilly Jay, clinical psychologist in perinatal mental health & child development. You can read her essay here. Some highlights:
Mourning her marriage: 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.
Giving birth to her son: 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. We had done it. He had arrived. I survived preeclampsia, a life-threatening birth complication, and finally, our family was whole. 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.
Accepting her new divorced 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. 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. 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.
She’s lost jobs because her husband banged Ariana Grande: It’s hard to measure an absence, and I can’t say for sure how much my career has been impacted by what’s out there online. But there have been hints along the way, like the job offer that dissolved without explanation after yet another tabloid news cycle or the patient who’s scheduled for a first appointment but seemingly vanishes. On my darker days, I railed against the unfairness of a public divorce, asking my therapist…Who would trust a cardiologist who had a heart attack because they never got an EKG? Of course, I am not owed anything, whether it be a job or the privilege of being any given person’s psychologist. Still, even as someone who spent years researching how people respond to ambiguity, I hate not knowing if the way my story has been told has impacted my opportunity to help others sort through their stories.
“Who would trust a cardiologist who had a heart attack because they never got an EKG?” She’s being incredibly unfair to herself and unfair to her would-be patients. While I’m sure the job offers have withered away because of her husband’s sleazy tabloid dramas, her personal experiences will make her a better therapist, a more understanding and empathetic therapist. No one goes into therapy wishing that their therapist was perfect and in a perfectly happy nuclear family. That’s not the way any of this works. Dr. Jay writing this after Wicked’s promotion has finally ceased, but while the awards season is ramping up… that’s a choice. A really great choice, truly, because Ariana is getting a lot of heat for awards. Dr. Jay is like… btw, this woman f–ked my husband and destroyed my marriage when our son wasn’t even one year old, and their affair has hurt me professionally, psychologically and financially. Well played, Dr. Jay.
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Photos courtesy of Instagram, Cover Images.
