Dotty

After all the upheaval, surviving the backlash and making what I thought were concrete plans, I have decided to stay with my family.

I don’t know that this is the right decision for me as an individual – but I do know that leaving is not the best thing I can do for my family.  There are many things I need to change first before I throw the metaphorical baby out. I still believe that I am not the feisty, vibrant individual my children deserve to know – but I don’t know when I fell back into believing that person could only be brought alive by a man, or that a man could be the cause of her demise. I was brought up with that belief and somewhere, somehow during the last 10 years I have regressed.

I need to believe in myself again and I need to lose the strict contraints I have put around myself to define what makes me a good mother. Before Wee1 was born I believed I could only qualify as a good mother if

1. I used terry nappies (and the old-fashioned squares, not pre-made)
2. I breastfed exclusively
3. I served only wholesome home-cooked food
4. The television was never on
5. I used a real Silvercross pram
6. I enjoyed every moment of my baby’s company
7. I kept a perfect home
8. ….999. I stayed at home

The list goes on and on and on – and of course almost every item on the mile-long convoluting, strangling, suffocating mental list I made  has at one point or another fallen by the wayside. I am still a mother and my children are still fine human beings.

The last hurdle I have to face, and one which I suspect will cause more upset in my family than the thought of me leaving my husband is that I have to return to work.

I love my children – but their sole company is not enough to illuminate me. I will be the first person to acknowledge that this may indeed make me less of a person, but it is the truth. I need more. I need other adults to laugh with, battle with, be challenged by and fire off. I need the focus and adrenaline rush that comes with deadlines, deals closing and targets being hit and busted. I need to be employed outside the home.

As for Mr? I don’t know – I hope that the spark will return and that love will grow into what it should be. I know that we will both try. I know that what I seek is not to be found in the arms of another man (I really truly never thought it was).

I begin February knowing a lot more about myself but paradoxically understanding a lot less. Please bear with me.

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When I said those words almost 15 years ago I truly believed the promise I was making would be an unbreakable bond. I looked forward, like most other brides, to a life of making memories and growing old together. We have weathered sickness, changes in our fortunes and circumstances, been blessed with two wonderful children, but what has broken us is the death of love… the one thing I thought would never happen.

I am still inordinately fond of my husband, despite his still very raw and understandable anger. I appreciate his strengths and I know all his weaknesses. He is still the most wonderful father – the same one who sped from Bristol to Scotland to see his first son minutes after he was born, the same one who was called in from combining in the middle of harvest to meet his second son. The issue is that I do not love him as I want to love a man.

There is no-one else involved. There may never be another man for me to love, but I cannot live without the hope of that spark, the possibility of finding that missing piece from the jigsaw puzzle of my life. We have tried actively for the last 3 years to fan the dying embers back to life: we have been responsible parents and done our very best to maintain the ideal nuclear family unit – but I am spent: I have nothing left to give.

I do not want my children growing up with a mother without verve; watching a marriage without affection – they and I deserve more than that.

The practicalities will be difficult – we have little disposable income and no capital. I am looking for a job (doing anything) which will enable me to save up enough to put down the deposit on a small flat big enough for me and for the children. My husband will remain in the family home: the decision to leave was mine so it seems only right that I should be the one to find a new home. We will share custody and I believe that once the hurt has subsided we can recreate the great parenting team that we were – albeit under separate roofs.

In the meantime we will try to rub along, tease apart finances and chattels and remind ourselves that to conduct ourselves in anything other than a civilised and amicable manner would be a travesty, not only for our children, but for the 18 years we have spent together.

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