Nicole Madigan on new book Torn: Four Women’s Stories of Why They Left – or Why They Stayed

Australian journalist Nicole Madigan has published her second non-fiction book, Torn: Four Women’s Stories of Why They Left - or Why They Stayed. Photo / Leah Desborough

As a journalist, Nicole Madigan has spent her career covering issues from domestic violence to stalking to coercive control. Her newest non-fiction book, Torn: Four Women’s Stories of Why They Left – or Why They Stayed, is released this week. Here, she tells the Herald how the book came to be.

Brisbane-based journalist Nicole Madigan has had her newest book in mind for years.

Torn: Four Women’s Stories of Why They Left – or Why They Stayed, published this week, tells the real-life stories of several Australian women wrestling with the question of whether to leave or stay in relationships troubled by infidelity, drug abuse or gambling addiction.

It’s the book she needed when she found herself undergoing her own separation, she says. Like the women she writes about, hers wasn’t a snap decision, but the result of years of living in limbo.

“I’ve been working on the book for about 12 months now, but it’s been a concept swirling around in my mind for many years,” Madigan, 44, tells the Herald.

Torn: Four Women's Stories of Why They Left – or Why They Stayed by Nicole Madigan.

“The inspiration was the culmination of a few things. When I was very young, the idea of spending months, let alone years, deciding whether or not to end a relationship seemed so foreign to me. You either wanted to be with someone or you didn’t.

“It wasn’t until my relationship with my children’s father started to break down that I understood what it meant to feel torn,” says Madigan, who is a mum to three children aged 16, 14 and 11.

“This was a man I’d been with since my teens – the very idea of being without him was terrifying. Yet there was that voice telling me, ‘This isn’t right, you know it isn’t right – so why can’t you bring yourself to leave?’ That period of indecision, for me, was years long. And at the time, I felt utterly alone.”

Madigan’s first non-fiction book, Obsession: A Journalist and Victim-Survivor’s Investigation into Stalking, published in 2023, drew on her own experience of being stalked for three years. Though Torn is about other women’s stories, it was her own experience of betrayal that sparked the idea for her second book.

The “isolation” she felt at the time pushed her to examine it through the eyes of other women who had undergone the same thing.

Nicole Madigan's first book, Obsession: A Journalist and Victim-Survivor’s Investigation into Stalking, was published in 2023. Photo / Leah Desborough

Those women, whose experiences are detailed in her book – albeit under false names, with some details changed and conversations imagined – all experience a moment when their worlds shatter. They discover something about their husbands they didn’t know going into the relationship: that he had a gambling addiction, was abusing drugs or had been unfaithful.

“All four women experienced a form of betrayal or extreme marital upheaval, all fought tooth and nail to save their relationships, each was touched by elements of coercive control,” Madigan says.

“The outcomes were different, and the nuances around those outcomes also differed vastly. I’ve often said that real life is more compelling than fiction; these women’s incredible stories prove that.”

The trust forged between her and her subjects was key in telling their stories, she says.

“I was overwhelmed by the level of trust and faith these women placed in me. It was an absolute privilege and honour to be allowed into their hearts and minds so intimately.

“I truly believe these stories will help other women who are fighting a private battle within themselves, who feel traumatised between the innate knowledge that they deserve better, and wanting to save a relationship they’ve poured so much into, often with a person they still love.

“As a human being, it is a true honour to be given the privilege of knowing these women, of knowing their stories. They were so forthright and open and generous. These are truly incredible, strong women.”

Through the process, Madigan says she’s learned just how complex human relationships can be.

“We invest so much of ourselves into our partners that we often forget we are people outside of relationships,” she says.

“Women, in particular, are prone to fight hard for their relationships, sometimes for years, and often at the expense of their own mental health. When things go wrong – whether that be due to a sudden behaviour or decision, or a slow burn of smaller behaviours – we desperately try to fix things, to justify staying or leaving, an internal tug-of-war that can be debilitating.”

She hopes that readers finish the book knowing that if they resonate with its content, then they’re not alone.

“I hope that by reading this book, the period of relationship purgatory may be sped up a little bit, to take away the prolonged agony of indecision.

“Importantly, I hope they are reminded of their worth, that their boundaries are valid and so are their feelings. They deserve contentment and peace, and sometimes that comes off the back of a difficult decision.”

Torn: Four Women’s Stories of Why They Left – or Why They Stayed is available now.