So how does it feel to have another woman start being the family that you wanted, with your husband and kids?

Tonight they’re out for a family meal, with the kids and my ex in-laws of the last 20 years.

So I’m going to go with, well, pretty rubbish, actually.

I should be zenning my way through it. But I’m just so frustrated about the SILENCES in my life – which have shaped it for the worse since the Smalls came along.

You know. The things we’re all not supposed to talk about out loud.

Things like birth.
The awfulness of new motherhood.
Mental health, depression and anxiety.
Incontinence.
Prolapses.
Fissures.
The complications of relationships after children – sex after children – careers after children… All of it.

Because so much of it is about minimising and dismissing women’s emotional or physical pain as somehow unseemly.

In this case, talking about your break-up and how awful it feels really isn’t the Done Thing.

It may be the subject of 90% of all pop songs, but in real life, it tends to feed straight into the narrative of all ex-husbands all over the world – that the woman they left is ‘a bit of a psycho’, possibly ‘wild with jealousy’, has certainly ‘lost the plot,’ and definitely needs to ‘get over it’ by now.

One of the most terribly unfair things about what’s a terrible and unfair thing in general, is that the only route really deemed acceptable for an ex-wife is the high road. You basically have to sit back with as much dignity as you can muster and watch – pretending it all doesn’t hurt like buggerooney.

Or you’re just cast as the madwoman in the attic.

The only exception to this rule is indeed the world of pop, so if you’re lucky enough to be Pink, or Rihanna, or Adele, you suddenly get a free pass to sing out your pain from the rooftops (which have traditionally, and coincidentally, always been ABOVE the attic – go figure).

But unless you have a two octave range and a forthcoming album to fill, forget it, love. Shut up and put up.

The thing is, it DOES hurt. And I don’t WANT to have to pretend otherwise.

I have to do that for my kids, every day, because they’re 6 and 3 and they don’t need to know anything but that Mummy and Daddy love them very much but don’t live together any more.

But that’s not the tale I have to tell the rest of the world. Why should I?

Because I’m not over it. Not by a long shot. (I mean, it happened 8 months ago). You don’t get over this sort of thing – you get through it. And I am getting through it.

I AM also jealous – but not of her, or of him. I’m jealous of the family unit I worked for and tried to achieve, and begged him to join in on. The one currently out to dinner.

For their very first meeting, he took *Jessica* and the kids to a play centre and restaurant we used to frequent as a family. Slotting her right into role, but playing his counterpart far better than he ever did for me. For us.

How is that not supposed to hurt?

How could any human being feel otherwise?

That’s why I don’t think that any of this makes me a psycho. Or the madwoman in the attic. (Nor, sadly, Pink, as I’m tone deaf).

Feeling emotional about the demise of your long term relationship, the break up of your family, and being away from your kids is NORMAL.

Boringly normal.

Not feeling emotional about it would be kind of, well, abnormal, surely?

I would have liked to have met her, first, though. And I think that’s normal, too.

But they didn’t want to do that unless they could do it together. When Dadoffthenetheredge and I are already not communicating well, I just couldn’t see that working. I still just can’t imagine how it would have looked – the three of us sat there opposite each other, in a bizarre interview situation. Gah! It’s just too awful.

Now, I COULD see a coffee shop or a pub in which she and I could have spent a slightly awkward 10 minute conversation about each other and the kids. (This is how other people I know seem to have done it).

I’d like to know the woman they come home talking about – just a bit. What she does for a living. For hobbies. That sort of thing. (Just like I like to have a cursory conversation with the new key worker at nursery, or the new teacher, or the folk who run Catonthenetheredge’s cattery).

I’d like to see her as a human being, and for her to see me as the same. I actually think it would have helped all of us – mostly the kids.

Also, it would have avoided what will now be an excruciating first meeting – probably in front of the kids – as they play happy families at the local park/farm, and I ill-time a walk or run. Or a trip to Tesco. Oooooof. I get palpitations just thinking about it – rounding the bread aisle and walking slap-bang into them… My family minus me. And I’ve got no idea how the kids would react.

Anyway, for now what I get to do is smile and coo when the tales of *Jessica* come home with the Smalls – this stranger living the life I wanted, if only part time.

It’s weird.

And then I get to mop up the Smalls’ wobbles and tears and bad dreams, which come inevitably with more change, all without letting my mask slip.

So here it’s slipping.

Here, in this space, I want to be able to say: Ouch.

Ouch.

Ouch.

OUCH.

Sometimes I do read these stories online, from women further down the line, grateful for the other woman loving their kids as her own when they’re away from her. Maybe one day I’ll be there.

I’m already grateful, in some ways, that she’s inspiring him to be better than he could be for me. Because that’s good for the kids, in the long run, isn’t it?

And then I think about my still pudgy-round-the-edges smallest Small waking up in the morning and climbing into bed for cuddles with a woman who isn’t me, and my whole soul weeps. Very much like it did when the Big Small first came home from her first full day of nursery smelling of Another Woman.

That got better fast.

I’m sure this will, too.

Until then, though, I’m going to give myself – and anyone else who needs it – permission to feel emotion about quite clearly emotional things.

Channel your inner Pink/Rihanna/Adele.

It’s okay to acknowledge things suck. And you don’t even have to sing about it in order to let it out!!!!! No, really. (But hell, if it helps, go for it).

It’s okay to feel weird.

It’s okay to feel sad.

It’s okay.

We’ll be okay, too.

We’re still rock stars.

Or at least Mums.

And sometimes that’s the same difference, right?