Ethan Slater's Ex-Wife Lilly Jay Was Shocked by His Relationship With Ariana Grande

Lilly Jay broke her silence about her ex-husband Ethan Slater moving on with Ariana Grande so soon after their divorce. In a personal essay for The Cut that was published on Thursday, December 19, Jay, a clinical psychologist, got candid about the "public downfall" of her split from Slater and how she "never" expected her marriage to end the way it did.  

“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,” Jay wrote without mentioning Slater and Grande by name, adding that "in this season of shock and mourning," she yearns for her former life "of invisibility."

Jay and Slater finalized their divorce this September, 12 years after they first started dating and nearly six years after they got married in November 2018. The former couple also share a 2-year-old son, who was born in August 2022. 

The Broadway actor and Grande, who both star in the new film adaptation of Wicked, began seeing each other following their respective separations in 2023 (the pop star was previously married to her ex-husband Dalton Gomez). 

In her essay, Jay spoke about her and Slater's move to England as he filmed Wicked, writing: "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.”

“I work diligently on my private project of accepting the sudden public downfall of my marriage,” she added. “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.”

Despite their divorce, Jay says she and Slater are committed to co-parenting their son together. "While our partnership has changed, our parenthood has not," she wrote. "Both of us fiercely love our son 100 percent of the time, regardless of how our parenting time is divided.”

Accepting that she can no longer be anonymous given the publicity surrounding her divorce, Jay concluded her essay by writing: "If I can’t be invisible anymore, I may as well introduce myself. You know how a sponge is most effective at absorbing liquid when it’s already a bit wet? Maybe we can think about my messy not-so-personal life in that way: a dose of my own loss, rage, powerlessness, sadness that helps me hold yours."

Read the original article on InStyle