Is the end of a marriage interesting? That time in a relationship where trust has broken and mutual irritation set in? When “us -v- the world” becomes “us -v- each other”? I never wanted to be in that situation and fought hard to avoid it, but it happened.
Maybe it was because I wasn’t ever in love with him and only wanted a large family with lots of children, whereas he – as he clearly stated at the outset, in fairness – was seeking lots of siblings for the son he already had.
He gave me that. I gave him that. And after ten years, we started living separately.
Oh, but we were still going to be a family, of course. Still be friends, for the sake of the children. Still do family things together. It worked well, for a few months…
Until.
He got a new girlfriend and our family events became stretched, stressful, horrible times in which nobody wanted to participate. Then, the children no longer wanted to go to his house and he petitioned the family court for a Contact Order. The children made their case admirably and the petition was unsuccessful. The contact broke down and I became a completely single mother, with no help or assistance of any kind from my ex-husband.
At school ten years earlier, a progressive girls’ grammar school whose primary goal often seemed to be persuading us to never produce children in case we “wasted our potential”, we’d been told to write an essay about being a single mother. Mine won the prize. It was gritty and depressing. She lived at the top of a scuzzy high rise with a predictibly broken lift. Her back ached, and so on. I had learned my lessons well.
But the real life experience was somewhat different to this. About which, more tomorrow.