I’ve just come from visiting a friend who’s 4 months pregnant with her first baby. Having been made redundant in her first few weeks, she was expressing some concern about her unhirability…ness, and fretting over her lack of future income. My other friend pointed out that she has savings plus rent money coming in from a flat she owns, however this to me wasn’t the crux of the issue. I don’t believe the drifting apart arises from one party bringing in the bacon and the other not. The problem is that while we’re at home with the kids - whether as a working mum on maternity like me, or a stay-at-home mum – we’re knocking our pans in from the early hours of every day: running around like blue-arsed flies, starved of adult conversation unrelated to our or other people’s children; sick of the sight of the local park; cooking, washing, and tidying endlessly; cutting, pasting, colouring, baking, playing, organising and never finishing a single bloody cup of tea off and certainly never in peace. And this doesn’t stop at 6pm. It is ceaseless till we fall into bed and often continues through the night, depending on the ages of our children. He, on the other hand, goes to work and yes, no doubt he deals with stressful and taxing situations but at least with other grown-ups (largely) and with a hot, fulfilling Starbucks in hand.
His take on the above however, is as follows. He works. You don’t.
And that’s where the drifting of parental continents begins. We are so many, many miles apart in what we’re experiencing on a daily basis that communication breaks down. Let’s face it, I don’t care if Sally in Marketing is incapable of operating her opposable thumbs to run a basic report and H doesn’t care if B dragged dog shit into the front porch (provided it’s cleaned up before H gets home).
All the financial independence in the world would make no difference to our separation, if I was still spending it on soft play and groceries.
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