Ethan Slater's Ex-Wife, Dr. Lily Jay, Writes Essay on Her Very Public Divorce: 'A Season of Shock and Mourning'

Dr. Lily Jay, Ethan Slater's ex-wife, is speaking out loud.

Jay, a clinical psychologist specializing in perinatal mental health and child development, contributed an emotional and vulnerable essay to The Cut in which she reveals the deep pain caused by her divorce.

This pain is compounded by the fact that Jay broke up with Slater in the middle of filming “Wicked” and met his current girlfriend, Ariana Grande, on the set. And, as anyone with Internet access knows, Wicked promos have been utterly unavoidable lately and have been going on for months, making Jay's grief even thornier.

“No one gets married thinking they are getting divorced, just like we don't get on a plane thinking we are going to crash. But I never really thought I would get divorced,” Jay began his essay. [Especially not right after the birth of my first child, nor in the shadow of a new relationship between my husband and a celebrity. In this season of shock and mourning, more than a year after the end of my marriage became public, I deeply miss the transparent life I created for myself as a psychologist specializing in women's mental health."

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The therapist went on to explain that she and Slater had to strike a balance where her work was very private and his was necessarily public, a balance that, of course, was completely It broke down.

“I learned that being a mother fills your time but not your heart,” Jay wrote.

“In the countless hours I spend putting my son to bed, pushing his stroller, and marveling at his sweaty little hands holding crayons, I am diligently working on the private project of accepting the sudden demise of my marriage.” Slowly but surely, she continued, “I have come to believe that my child and I have a lifetime of sweet life ahead of us, for the lack of the life I planned with my high school sweetheart.”

She continued. [Our partnership has changed, but our parenting has not. We both love our son 100 percent, no matter how we divide our parenting time”

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“As for me, my days with my son are sunny. Dark are the days when I can't escape the movie publicity associated with the saddest days of my life.”

Slater and Grande began dating in the summer of 2023, and it is a little unclear when she and Jay actually separated.

In July of that year, in a moment of anger, Jay told Page Six, “[Ariana] is a story, really. It's not a girl's girl. My family is just collateral damage."