Family Affairs

SCHOOL FRIENDS

My youngest and most sensitive child is feeling a bit low. He spends his life fluctuating between thinking life is brilliant one minute and thinking life is shit the next. I can go from being the best mum in the world where he buys me a Terry's Chocolate Orange and hides it in my bed to somebody who has somehow managed to ruin his life in a millisecond. He is feeling a little sad at school. Sometimes he decides that nobody likes him or wants to come back to his house for a play after school and then suddenly the whole world seems to be against him and he drags himself up the road to school and other times he positively bounces. This was not helped yesterday by being asked by his teacher to talk to another little girl in the class about how it feels to have separated parents. I think it's a good thing that the teacher has asked him to talk about it, I hope he did manage to make her feel a little less isolated, but I'm not sure. "Mum, she's really sad. The teacher asked me to talk to her because her parents are just splitting up and he said that because my parents have already split up maybe I could help her. I didn't know what to say to her. I told her that she had to just try not to think about it too much. To just get on with other things. She said did she just have to stick her chin out and I'm not sure what she meant, but I told her that it's not easy and that sometimes I'm still sad about it". "That was really lovely of you to talk to her" I told him "and did you tell her that sometimes it's not all bad? That you get to have two houses and more holidays and sometimes even new families to play with?" "Well, no mum, I didn't, because that is just not true. It's not better to have any of those things. It's worse. It wouldn't have made her feel better". ...and then my heart just breaks a little bit more for him.

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DIARY OF A DIVORCE

Actually, my entire blog is a diary of a divorce. On the advice of a friend, I kept a diary after I found out about my husband's affair. Not really sure why - other than to try and clear my thoughts and I suppose to be able to go to at some time in the future to understand how I felt. From there, I moved onto writing online as it was my cheap form of therapy and a way of finding others in a similar situation. One of my main reasons for changing my blog format recently was to try and encourage other people to write about their experiences. I've written a lot about how I've felt during all those traumatic years, but now, I'm going to go back to the beginning of the end because maybe it can be in some way a comfort to others going through a similar thing.....to know that however difficult it is, life does go on in some way shape or form. This is my diary entry on the day I found out:- "Our son's 11th birthday party and the end of life as I've known it for the last 15 years. During the party my husband did the following:- 1. Went for a run 2. Came back from the run and went straight upstairs to do half an hour of sit-ups 3. Came downstairs and shouted at the children for being too loud 4. We argued for most of the evening about unnecessary stuff. I began to wonder what was going on. His behaviour was irrational. He no longer seemed to want to be part of family life. 5. Whilst lying in bed, I asked him again if he was having an affair. There was a split second delay before he denied it. This was the moment I knew. In that pause. That 3 second pause changed my life forever. I pushed him. Why? Why did I need to know? He told me he'd been having an affair for three months. In my head, I doubled that figure. I started palpitating. Feeling sick. I asked him questions; Who? Where? Why? "I'll never tell you", he said "it's completely irrelevant". Completely. Irrelevant. Completely. Irrelevant. I told him to leave. He wouldn't. "Can't I make a mistake?" he said. "You haven't made a mistake", I told him "you've made a choice - there's a world of difference". He slept in another room. I didn't sleep. Strangely, initially I felt curiously calm. Probably because for a long time I've known something was wrong and thought it was me. I've been doing my utmost to make him happy and I've finally realised that I wasn't to blame for his behaviour. This is the worst day of my life ever, ever, ever. I can't stop thinking about his deceit, his lies, his lack of feeling for me and our poor children.

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THINGS TO DO WITH YOUR CHILDREN DURING HALF-TERM

You could take them away on holiday or take them to an adventure playground or a museum or a gallery or any of the usual things that parents should do with children whilst on half term holiday. I, on the other hand am not going to be doing any of the above for a number of [...]

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THE SECRET TO A HAPPY MARRIAGE

There is an article in the paper today entitled “The secret to a happy marriage: no children”. Lots and lots of research has been done on this subject by a professor of psychology at Harvard University. He told a conference in Sydney that “children do seem to increase happiness while you’re expecting them, [...]

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