ANYWAY. BACK TO THE POINT.

I have my annual advice for those of you considering this daunting prospect. It’s Blue Monday week – the most depressing time of the year so here are some pointers to help you on your way:-

HOW TO SURVIVE DIVORCE (hopefully)

1. Your friends (and family if you’re lucky) will get you through it more than you will ever know. Don’t ever take them for granted but make sure you surround yourself with them wherever possible. They will be there with you on your long journey back out of the black hole.

2. Be prepared. You are in for a long hard slog. Get a good lawyer. Rumour has it that it takes half the time you were married to begin to get over your marriage. If that is too awful a prospect then bank on it taking AT LEAST four years. The first year is almost better than the next one because you will no doubt be a little unhinged and angry in the first year – so try not to behave too irrationally. The second year can be your reality check and it’s all highly depressing because not only are things just as hard but you’re exhausted from Year One. If you’re lucky, by Year Three the drama has died down a bit and hopefully by year 4 you are able to see the wood for the trees and can finally start reassessing your life.

3. In the early days make sure you get out of bed every day. Sometimes your body feels so heavy it won’t move. It would have been so much easier to curl up into a ball, ignore the kids and have a quiet nervous breakdown in a corner somewhere. But it doesn’t work like that. You have to “face the dragon”. Deal with the shit. Go to the meetings. Brush your hair. Remember to eat. Remember to breathe. Pick your kids up from school. Put your make-up on. Fill out that complicated form. Go to that party on your own. Do the stuff you dread. You have to. It will make you stronger and consequently it will all get easier. You will do most of it on automatic pilot and then be amazed with yourself that you got through it. I managed to learn how to be a fitness instructor on autopilot, during my most traumatised time. It saved me from myself.

4. Be kind to yourself. My old school friend wrote to me at the beginning of the whole process. She told me to do just that. To treat myself as if I was going on a date with myself (which frankly had no appeal whatsoever – I hated my own company – thankfully she invited herself along on most occasions which helped hugely). Have a massage, or go to an exhibition or a film on your own.  Put yourself higher up your list of priorities.  Sometimes it pays to be selfish.  Try not to feel sad that you have no one to do things with or to buy you presents, buy yourself some stuff. Treat yourself to things. It’s important. Do the things that give you pleasure and forget the rest. Go on a cooking course, a knitting course, ride wolves, sail, play poker, write a book. Whatever. It. Takes.  Buy a big comfortable bed and spread out in it by yourself.  Learn to enjoy the solitude for a minute.

5. Cut the crap. Don’t go to everything. Do some sifting. Do the stuff that makes you happy for whatever reason. Let go of the social events that no longer work for you and of the friends that take more than they give. Drop the stuff that’s taking up too much time and getting you nowhere.

6. Most importantly keep your sense of humour. You will find that different friends are there at different times and for different reasons. Some can take you out and make you laugh and push you in at the deep end of your new scary life. Others are there for when you find your feet again and want some semblance of normality. It won’t always be funny, but there is always a funny side to be found. A different perspective to look at.

Sometimes, when you look at what is going on in the rest of the world and what other people are going through, having the time and space to mourn for your marriage is almost an indulgence. I am still a very lucky person who has three lovely children and a roof over my head and lots of fantastic friends and lots of lovely stuff to do and, and, and, and another year has gone by in a flash. It’s cold in London at the moment but maybe just try to remember that “in the kingdom of hope there is no winter”.

In many ways, life really isn’t too bad without a man. There is no arguing – apart from directly with the children. There is mostly a lot of laughter. My children have had to grow up quickly in lots of ways. They are pretty mature on the whole and very good company. I am definitely closer to them because of my divorce – I guess that’s inevitable when there isn’t a partner you feel you should stand by during an issue with the children.

Anyway, Christmas turned me into a little bit of a sexist I hate to admit and it made me feel a little grumpy here and there. There was no division of girly/blokey labour to be had. It started with the refusing to go and chop myself down a big old tree, carry it home, hack it about and hurl it into a stand and then decorate it. This year I simply put my foot down and went for the black Emo tree (as my kids described it) which my children turned their nose up on every passing I’m afraid to say. My daughter has subsequently provided me with a list of people who have told her they don’t like it. BUT I DON’T CARE. It was easy and I can bring it out next year and have the same argument all over again.

Then the next issue was simply cooking the Christmas meal on my own with no one to carve the turkey or the ham or make the gravy or do the washing up. Or get pissed and fall asleep on the sofa. Or drive us to different venues to see friends later in the day. Or buy all the booze. Or talk to my mother after too many whiskeys. Or wrap all the presents or (most importantly) buy me a present. I had to do it all on my own.

I DON’T WANT TO DO IT ALL ON MY OWN.

Is your Christmas divided along male/female lines or am I being ridiculous here?

Firstly our early evening meeting had to be delayed until we’d taken our daughter to A & E after a series of unfortunate incidents. Just as we arrived at my brother’s house for my children and my mother to meet the latest gorgeous edition to the family, my daughter managed to fall down some stairs (texting and walking at the same time is never a good idea). She was in agony having twisted her ankle. So instead of a peaceful arrival my brother had to come running out, give her a piggy back to the house, find ice, drugs, gel, cut her tights off, get a sick bowl, catch her as she fainted to the floor……all the while my poor sister in law was complaining that even having just had a baby we had STILL somehow managed to trump her on the drama scale. SORRY!! Wasn’t my intention at all.

So then once she’d stopped feeling sick I had to take her to casualty. The first minor incidents hospital we got to had closed one minute before and refused to see her. Next hospital took all her details and sent us round to the children’s ward. “Just to warn you there is at least a 3 hour wait….there are 40 children ahead of you”. FORTY????? How does that happen? Is that normal? Is there a plague? Good grief. “Bollocks to that” I thought, it would have probably been more like a six hour wait so we persuaded her that “RICE” at home (rest, ice, compression & elevation), ibuprofen and lots of attention would be infinitely better than catching a lurgy in Paediatrics. So home we went. Then I left her in the care of her grandmother and went out for what was meant to be a very brief aforementioned business meeting with my ex husband.

Two bottles of wine later I think we reached a some sort of financial agreement and mutual understanding on where the children all are.

It’s just that I can’t quite remember what it exactly we agreed on.

Perhaps this is the way forward.

We are nearly all in our forties. With children growing up. Suddenly things are going a little bit wrong. Our parents are getting sick, our children are less needy and more willful thus generously bestowing on us a vague feeling that we are losing control of our lives and what is more we haven’t really given much thought to how to deal with this stage – the bit in the middle before retirement, old age, slippers and death (hopefully in that order). It is at this crucial stage that many previously happy marriages go a little awry and from my personal experience everything can be blown out of the water and your life can dramatically change…or…..you somehow get through it and come out the other side pretty much intact if a little bruised and a little wiser.

Is this what is known as the classic mid-life crisis? Most of us got married a long time ago now. We met somebody we loved and wanted to spend the rest of our life with and merged and accepted our differences even if we had to compromise massively for the sake of that love. Then we had our children, got on with our jobs and now that we have (mostly) stopped making babies we have more time to look at the bigger picture. Generally speaking we have much to be thankful for – our health, our children’s health, more money, more confidence, less anxiety and so on, but we also have fewer choices because we are tied into marriage and children and responsibility and mortgages and all things grown up and consequently decisions to change our life at this stage may cause pain to many people. Many of us are looking now at what we’ve got and what we’ve achieved with a more critical eye. Is this what we really wanted? Is this really it? Was my ladder of life actually leaning up against the wrong wall? Or have we got to the top and realised we don’t like the view after all or discovered that it is a little lonely and empty up there.

I think what generally happens at this stage is that men and women return to type in middle age. I have two sons and one daughter. They have vastly different interests. My oldest son has a girlfriend and they get on very well but their interests are vastly different – they put up with that of course for lots of reasons. We’ve all been there, done that and it’s perfectly fine until we have stopped feeling the need to procreate the species. Once that period of time is over we can start enjoying the things we enjoyed before we united as a team and it can divide us. We say things like “we aren’t getting any younger”, “you’ve only got one life”, “this isn’t a dress rehearsal” and all those cliches that I hear almost daily these days that are only cliches because they were once “truths”. We are getting closer to death. Becoming more aware of the time we have left. Our hair is falling out or growing in all the wrong places. We don’t have the opportunities we had before. We are more cynical. Less romantic. Grumpy. Middle age is something we come to unwillingly – it’s not a place any of us would necessarily choose to be – it’s not like being 18 or 21 or at university and it is perceived more than slightly negatively. I think it creeps up on us. Then many of us fight against it. Buy inappropriate cars, clothes, some people choose to suddenly live inappropriate deceitful lives.

I have been analysing this stage for some time. This new “phase”. It seems to me that most people look at it with gloom rather than excitement. They feel trapped and consequently start examining the reasons for suddenly losing their way. My husband and I did that and examined and analysed each other and our marriage to death. Initially he said he was depressed about his life – but I question whether it was more to do with the horror of accepting he wanted to change his life. Stir it up a little. The feelings of misery are surely massively tied up with feelings of guilt about not being sure about wanting everything you’ve spent years working towards and building together.

Why do so many of us want to behave like teenagers again? Almost as if we have been cryogenically frozen for the last two decades and then allowed to re-emerge with serious arrested development problems. It was therefore with huge interest that I read an article about David Bainbridge yesterday, who is a clinical veterinary anatomist at Cambridge University and the author of “Middle Age – A Natural History”. He says “men’s interests do not change fundamentally between the ages of eight and 60 – with the exceptions of romance and sex. Instead, all that happens in middle age is that we become once again free to indulge ourselves. We have more money, some time and less fear of ridicule by others”.

He also says “all I know is that when I play Lego with my son I am not enjoying it in some ironic, post-modern way, I am enjoying it in exactly the same way I did when I was 10. So, these pastimes and preferences of middle age are not new found, they are our same old pastimes and preferences” and that to be honest is why I bloody hated playing Lego with my children. I thought it was a rubbish, boring waste of time as a child and I still do.

He believes in middle age as a definite stage of our lives, but he does not believe in the mid-life crisis – “middle age – those two healthy decades after the babies stop – is very real. Only humans have it, we evolved it, and we have enjoyed it for much of our species’ history. And why? We evolved middle age because we have always lived more complex lives than other animals – in the ways we acquire resources, socially and technologically. Unlike most animal parents, we don’t just give our children genes and calories, we give them our culture. That takes time, and quality time, too, which we cannot dilute by churning out yet more babies. We humans are an “information economy” and middle age is the time when we pass on most of that information – this is why middle-aged people like being listened to. So middle age is a very real and distinctive phenomenon, one central to the success of our species – which places it in stark contrast to the mid-life crisis, which turns out not to exist at all”.

I’m not sure I agree with that. The mid-life crisis may not be “a very real and distinctive phemonenon” but there are very real and distinctive triggers that set off a relatively stereotypical crisis amongst both men and women at this time of our lives:- mortality, desire for love, passion, kids leaving home, fear of change, fear of stagnation, money issues, elderly parents issues, boredom and so on and so on…..

It’s just all so sad and predictable. It happened to me. It’s happening to others. Everybody deals with it in different ways and of course because you have to consider your partner – it doesn’t always work out like you want it to. I don’t have any answers or any advice. Maybe if we were all more aware of the stage and better equipped to deal with it then perhaps the ripple effects wouldn’t be so great. Or perhaps we’d learn how to avoid the pitfalls. My life as a single parent is as a direct result of my husband’s actions and the consequences as I saw them. We could have both done things differently. I could have clung onto the sides of our little tin boat in the storm we had created for ourselves, instead of trying to tip it over and drown him whilst throwing lifejackets to my children. Or could I? At the time, I don’t remember his hand being there for me to hold on to. He was too busy holding on to someone else the other side. So. I. Let. Go.

Right or wrong?

I guess we will never really know.

But there is no point in mulling over the “what if’s??”. “It is what it is” (I hate that phrase) as we say and “it isn’t what it isn’t” for a lot of friends of mine at the moment. They have to work it all out. Slowly and painfully. Believe me, I don’t envy them. I wish I could help. But I can’t. I’m here though. For them and for anyone else who wants to drop in and leave a comment. Let me know what you think…..maybe we can make a better plan.

BTW – any of you out there who think I’m talking about you…..I’m not…..it’s somebody else….honest.

Every so often – and usually when I am in need of a reminder as to why I blog (LIKE RIGHT NOW) a comment arrives that blows me away. Something profound in some way shape or form. From somebody going through a trauma of some description (usually divorce or separation) who has found something that I have written to be helpful.

I’m going to reprint her words here because it hit a raw nerve for me – about why I write, but actually the quote from Rilke rings true for many of us who are looking and searching for advice and answers at the moment (I think Lady GaGa might have this quote tattooed on her forearm – which presumably wasn’t the name of her dead cat). All too often (and it took me a very long time to understand this) you know the answers yourself. You know what you want and what you have to do. Look into yourself. You are the one who knows you best. Follow your instincts. Sit. Be quiet. Find a place for a moment to sort out what your priorities are. What you are prepared to put up with. What is unacceptable. Find. Your. Own. Peace. Respect yourself and your decisions and whilst things won’t necessarily be easier you will be stronger. Sorry, sermon over – here is what she said:-

“I want to thank you for your blogs. I am early in the process of my divorce, and though the decision to divorce was mine, and I do not regret it, it makes the road ahead no easier. In fact, as the instigator, I am an easy target, and subject of speculation. I refuse to explain the reasons for my decision to others, because doing so would dishonour my children’s father, and is unlikely to truly convince anyone anyhow. If my reasons are valid and true, I expect time will reveal them to others as well – small consolation right now, though.

I needed Anne Hill’s advice – I had felt crazy, and much of it (too much) was already very true. I do need to get up every day and face my dragons as my pyjamas and reasons not to shower first thing in the day on the days I’m not working has become more and more appealing – though harder and harder to justify. And your other blogs, which I have only just discovered, provide much therapeutic relief and cathartic laughter.…things that may not always seem funny, but ring so true, you just have to laugh –relieved I am not the first to have thought the same things.

As to your brother’s mentioning that your blogs have been a bit dull lately (a statement that, as a newly single mother of an 11 and 14 year old, I wholly disagree with), I thought of Rilke, and his advice in “Letters to a Young Poet”–advice I think applies to more than just writing:

“You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must”, then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.”

This is an awful time for opinions and advice-giving–as though there is a right way to go about divorce, or as though anyone but you knows what it is like to be you. But I suspect, that like me, you feel the urge to write it out just the same–that just speaking it is cathartic and makes you feel less insane…For myself, I recently chose a confidant to whom I have expressed these fears and feelings. Unfortunately, my newfound confidant, despite their care and concern for me, is not as fond of verbal expression, and my long heart cries often elicit blunt one liners–many of which do not even touch the heart of the matter. There is a need to be heard, to be understood–I do not want advice, but then I Google “how to survive divorce”. I do not feel the least bit sociable, but then cling to the first person to share genuine care and concern. I am a living anomaly, and do not know how to go about this new life, almost frozen into inaction with fear, while my two children look to me for direction and strength…

Okay, I digress. All to say, thank you, and please, don’t give up blogging”.

Thank you lovely anonymous stranger for your comment. I wish you well in your journey. It is most certainly reassuring to know there are a lot of us out there each searching for answers.

Not such a massively cool start to my birthday mind you…I’m not really sure about this being single again birthday scenario. This morning whilst was attempting to eat a massively stale croissant microwave warmed up by my 11 y/o (left over from my daughter’s birthday breakfast a week ago) with two out of three of my children and my mother sitting on the end of my bed watching me open three presents, I was thinking, “this is the sum total of my life at the moment. My mother and my children at the end of my bed” That is not quite right somehow is it and not really what I had in mind for my 46th year. In addition no partner = no presents. RUBBISH. But I am trying to be grown up about it. It’s not all about presents obviously and I can rush off out and buy something for myself maybe, but it’s not quite the same. Of course my daughter has been spectacular and bought me a lovely top and some make-up and my 11 y/o is getting me something later and rubbish 18 y/o is in Leeds and hasn’t even sent me a birthday text yet. He promised to be home ASAP today – which will mean he’ll rock up around 5pm just in time for the start of evening celebrations.

Three out of five of my cards are about ageing – two of them are about grey hairs, one of them specifically about grey pubes. God. How depressing. My 11/ y/o’s card says “Happy Birthday to the best mother in the world, I love you so much, thank you for everything, oh yeah and don’t worry you’re not THAT old”.

I am old.
I don’t have a partner.
My mother is sitting on the end of my bed.
I can’t read my cards without glasses.
My mother gave me something she had won in a raffle and has suggested that I do something with my hair because it looks awful.

STILL. Lots to look forward to. In fact last night in the build up to my birthday I had a great evening with a GF in London – lights all sparkly everywhere already and my brother is making the effort to come all the way to see me today so that we will all be together this weekend. We have a family meal out tonight and a lovely local friends gathering tomorrow so I. Must. Not. Complain. I am very lucky. Even if having no partner is really rubbish on your birthday.

Sparkly lights in South Molton Street:-

Yes, of course I’m missing Builder Bloke and I’m having to come to terms with being single again, but there are upsides to not being with him. Most importantly, because of the complicated “wife swap” scenario we were in, it is good to have less stress between my ex husband and me. Conversations and arguments aren’t swooping round and round in four different directions like Chinese Whispers and he has been sympathetic to the situation I have found myself in. So much so that when I had to go and collect my daughter’s art book from his house the other evening his new wife – my children’s stepmother invited me in! It was the first time that I’d stepped over the threshold of the house where my children spend every other weekend and I was very nervous about it. Then she asked me if I wanted a drink. After a slight pause in which I am quite sure she could see me thinking “shit, f*ck, yes, no, HELP!!” I said “yes, why not” and so I sat with her and my ex husband in their kitchen, drinking wine and talking. The situation was strange but surprisingly fine. In fact it was more than fine it was a good thing to do and a major step forward in developing our grown up working relationship on behalf of the six children we have between us. It is obvious that our common bond means that we both want the best for our children and will do all that we can to make sure that happens. We all know that the kids (especially the younger ones) would find it a lot easier if we had a better relationship and certainly down the line there will be events – significant birthdays, graduations, maybe even weddings that we will all need to be at. How much better it will be for all concerned if everyone can be in the same room together being civil. We both know how much stress it will alleviate for our children in the years to come.

I am feeling very grown up and think we all deserve a gold star (presented to us by our children). Although tomorrow’s post will probably be called “It’s All About Me”…

I am the first to admit that blame has featured widely in the breakdown of my marriage and subsequent divorce. It is easy to blame somebody else for your position in life and presumably you can only move forward and away from blame once you have found a way to take responsibility for your own life back into your own hands. I still love blaming my parent for f*cking me up. Everything was their fault. Still is. I even have a badge that says “It’s All My Parent’s Fault”. But really is “blame” in itself of any use at all in life? It’s so easy to find somebody other than yourself to blame in life but is it right?

“A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame someone else”.
William Burroughs

and as Arnold Bennet says:

“There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied, he says nothing, if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row”.

I feel really upset today. I am missing my youngest son hugely now who I haven’t seen for over a week and haven’t really been sleeping for the last few nights as a direct consequence of the frustrations surrounding my teenage son’s future (oh and having to sleep in a double bed with my mother for two nights hasn’t helped either). My head and heart are pounding constantly as a mass of thoughts about what, if anything can be done swirl around my head. It really is very unhelpful that he’s gone away. We sort of need him here to do a teeny little bit of sorting out the rest of his life. I really wasn’t expecting it to be so stressful, but perhaps that was because we all thought he’d get the grades he the university he wanted.

After being two marks away from the required grade we decided to have the maths and biology re-marked. In maths, instead of choosing one of the cores, we went for all four in a panic because of the time restraints. But we heard on Friday that one core went up two marks, another went down two marks. So no difference. AAAAGHHHH. How frustrating.

It now looks highly unlikely that he will get his place. There is a brief glimmer of hope left but not much. I am doing all i can but the deadline is Wednesday and today is a bank holiday. So not much time to do anything.

Of course with life disappointments such as these we have all regretted not having worked harder, not having read the question better, not allowing so many distractions, not playing so much sport, whatever it may be. I have asked myself the inevitable questions about how much of it was my fault? Should I have made him work harder? Made him go to bed earlier? Made him stay in more? Fed him more brain food? Perhaps that would have made all the difference. But I doubt it. I am not a Tiger Mother. It’s his life, not mine. I did as much as I thought I should. I was supportive and present. I’m sure I could have done it differently, but I didn’t. So what is the point of dwelling on that? He is the one kicking himself now and having to make some other decisions about what to do next.

What I am most upset about though was a conversation with his father last night about how he thinks it is my fault that I didn’t help him manage his time better. Aren’t we supposed to stand together at times like these? I pointed out that blame, at this stage was pointless. “We are where we are and we have to deal with it”. But, of course I then got defensive and pointed out that in my opinion he’d had an incredibly difficult year personally for a number of reasons, including not only his father getting remarried and moving further away right in the middle of his A levels, but the death of his Grandfather – had he not considered what effect those extenuating circumstances might have had on our son and his focus? How much more blame-slinging years do we have in us? Isn’t it time to stop??? Work together? Communicate better?

All I know, is that if he had got the grades he’d needed I would have got no credit at all – it would have been entirely down to him – which is absolutely as it should be – and I must try and remember that (once I have stopped panicking about what to do next).

Do you agree with that?

I don’t. This makes me angry – comments like this. I am all for accepting the wonderful world of gender differences, but frankly this sort of statement takes us right back to the last century. Surely most relationships are now based on mutual respect and equality? If not then on a compromise agreeable to both? Why should one partner expect or deserve to be happier than the other? Is it right that children learn that imbalance from an early age even if outwardly calm and happy?

I did try that approach when I was married – tried to go and watch cricket matches and other sports with the children in tow but it made us all miserable, which admittedly was my fault because I didn’t come from a sporting family and wasn’t used to it. My parents spent every weekend doing stuff together.

Of course, it is quite clear that I am not qualified to comment because I got it all wrong. One writer, in agreement with Kirstie states:-

“I know of couples where the husband commutes to London during the week to work 10 hours per day in order to support the family and then at the weekend gets told by the wife: “No, you’re not going to play golf, it’s your turn to have the kids, I need some “me time”. I am amazed the men stick around to be bossed about. I’m sure most of them are having affairs – in fact, I hope they are poor blighters. If you don’t look after your man, someone else will”.

That really makes me feel sad because that is pretty much what happened to us. I was one of those awful women who when at home with three small children wanted her husband around at the weekends to do family stuff and to spend time together. He did work unbelievably hard and was used to playing lots of sport and needed an outlet. I get that. He did get to do his thing sometimes, but I simmered with resentment because I couldn’t do my thing. It was just a bad time and we didn’t manage to sort it out. Small children make everything go wrong for a minute and to be honest I thought I was working unbelievably hard as well – or at least it felt like that at the time.

I hadn’t realised that there are actually women out there encouraging men to have affairs the minute the going gets tough. Writers like the one above who justify breaking up a marriage at this precarious time, because it’s all the woman’s fault. What about the women who work full time as well?

Where do the same sex partnerships stand on this issue? Is one assigned the job of resident doormat for their relationship to survive? Or is it actually supposed to be just what it says on the packet – a PARTNERSHIP. Where both strive to understand, sympathise, empathise and compromise their way through the messy thing we call life.

Surely it’s all about communication? We are equal partners here trying to find a way to make it work. Women who stay at home to look after the children are more inclined to feel they have to do what their man says, in my limited experience and very often this comes down to who is in financial power – but even then it’s got to be a compromise that works both ways. It is very very difficult. I’m quite sure we weren’t really designed to live together when bringing up kids. Quite frankly most friends I know would have been much happier living in a commune with women and many children all eating and playing together. The men could then have played sport to their hearts content and gone to the pub. We could all have shared babysitting duties and had a sex rota to meet your partner at least twice a week.

It is not easy raising a family and trying to focus on your relationship at the same time. I know that from personal experience. But my advice is that you have to work at it and you have to be honest and talk about it and most importantly of all, make it very clear to “your man” and any of those women apparently waiting in the wings to pounce on “your man” that it would be very very stupid to do anything rash before your youngest child is five. You shouldn’t give up, shouldn’t wander off. If you married for love you should stick with it – because warped as it might be in the middle years of change and nappies, it will get better as the kids get older. Everybody gets their life back and it gets better.

There we are then. That’s my view. Biased as hell. What do you think?

Perhaps more relevant advice on holidays or places to stay or what to do with my children or even just to actually meet some other people in a similar situation – but not in a dating scenario which fills me with horror.

There doesn’t appear to be anything that offers help online for specific problems or questions and neither have I found a relevant place to meet new people at an event that offers some guest speakers and lots of wine.

Anybody out there feel the same way and looking for something seemingly non existent at the moment? Would love to have your thoughts on the matter.