We all do it. I do it all the time. It’s just what we do when we’re faced with a friend who is having a terrible time and there’s nothing we can do or say to help, but we want to show how much we care about and support them. We want to acknowledge how […]
Tag: advice
1989
I remember 1989 clearly. It was the year I started at University (the place that E and I would meet the following year) and danced the nights away to Ride on Time and Like A Prayer in the Student Union. It was my gap year and I was lucky enough to live in Paris for […]
Valuation
I received a third email from E last week pressuring me to sell the house. This one was even shorter than the others: “Hi Haven’t had a reply re getting the house on the market. It’s been 6 weeks since I raised it and 2 weeks since my last message and with no response my […]
Pigeon
There’s a phrase I love about pointless arguments: “Never play chess with a pigeon: the pigeon just knocks all the pieces over, then shits all over the board, then struts around like it won.” Looking back on some of my recent communication with E, it seems strangely appropriate. These days communication between E and me […]
Bad Romance
From the abduction of Helen of Troy to the betrayal of Dr Foster, the tales told by our culture – in our literature, television, theatre and film industries – have thrived on affairs since the day we started telling each other stories about ourselves. Of course, not all of these stories suggest that affairs are […]
Work
Working full time, after 18 years out of the workplace, has been a brilliant but, at times, slightly strange experience. I know lots of women can find being at home with their children very stressful, whilst others can find it very boring and not challenging enough – but I absolutely loved it. I loved being […]
Body
One of the first things I did when I found out about E’s affairs was look at photographs of the woman he had been involved with and compare myself to them. I didn’t even question why I did it, it was just instinct – if I wasn’t good enough what did they have that made […]
Fathers’ Day
It was Fathers’ Day on Sunday, and whilst the kids didn’t particularly lament the lack of their Dad (in fact none of them noticed – Youngest Son only remembered because I asked him if he’d wished his Dad a Happy Father’s Day), it did make me reflect upon E’s role as a ‘father figure’. In […]
Shaman
Yesterday evening I was lucky enough to interview a Shaman for the magazine that I work for. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences I’ve ever had. I won’t go into detail here (I’ll save those for the article I’m writing), but one of the things that stood out about our conversation was his […]
Fair
A couple of days ago, a friend at work asked me if I was writing this blog for E to read. My answer was a rather surprised ‘no’. There were a few reasons I started writing this blog. The first was to explore what had happened to me, to pull at strands of the tangled […]
He-total: Life without Ex 