The Friend Who Was Always on My Side
By this point, my marriage had become a very strange kind of lonely.
We were still married.
Still living together.
Still raising children under the same roof.
But somewhere along the way, we'd stopped really being husband and wife.
We were just two people who happened to live in the same house.
And sometimes?
We barely even did that.
Twenty Minutes With Your Wife
When I started working at the care home, there were days when my husband would be coming home from work just as I was getting ready to leave for mine.
Sometimes we'd have about twenty minutes together.
That was it.
Twenty minutes between him coming through the door and me walking out of it.
And I remember thinking:
Surely if you've only got twenty minutes with your wife, you'd want to actually spend them with her?
Ask how her day was.
Give her a cuddle.
Have a cup of tea.
Talk.
Anything.
Instead, he'd come through the door and immediately start moaning.
Something had happened at work.
Somebody had annoyed him.
Somebody had done something.
There was always something or someone.
Then he'd roll a joint.
Turn on the Xbox.
And there went our twenty minutes.
I'd leave for work.
He'd disappear into his world.
And we'd do it all again.
Even when we were both home, we weren't really together.
We sat in separate rooms.
He'd drink, smoke and play Xbox.
I'd sit somewhere else.
Alone.
There's something particularly horrible about being lonely when the person you're married to is only a room away.
Eventually, I started picking up overtime.
Obviously the money helped.
But that wasn't the only reason.
Sometimes?
I'd rather be at work than sitting alone in my own house.
At work there were people.
Conversation.
Things to do.
I felt useful.
Needed.
At home, I could sit alone while my husband drank in another room.
So I worked.
Eventually, I moved from the care home to the brain injury unit.
From the outside, I probably looked like I was getting on with life.
Working.
Raising kids.
Functioning.
Inside our house, though?
Our marriage was slowly disappearing.
Then my youngest started football.
And that's how I met her.
The Football Mum
At first, she was just another mum.
Training.
Matches.
Standing freezing at the side of football pitches while the kids played.
We started talking.
And we clicked.
Really quickly.
We laughed.
Messaged each other.
Started talking outside football.
Then seeing each other outside football.
Before long, she wasn't just another football mum.
She was my friend.
And at that point in my life, having somebody new who actually seemed interested in what I had to say felt brilliant.
Because I'd spent years feeling unheard.
Suddenly somebody was listening.
So naturally?
I started talking.
I Told Her About My Marriage
The drinking.
The Xbox.
The separate rooms.
The arguments.
How little time we spent together.
How lonely I felt.
And when things happened between me and my husband?
I'd tell her.
Sometimes I'd show her the messages.
Send screenshots.
Show her exactly what had been said.
So she wasn't only hearing:
My husband's pissed me off again.
She was seeing some of these things as they happened.
And she always had something to say.
Usually?
She was firmly on my side.
“How dare you have feelings?”
she'd say sarcastically.
Or:
“He's got no right to speak to you like that.”
And:
“You're his wife, not his child.”
And here's the thing.
Some of what she was saying made perfect sense.
That's important.
Because I'm not going to rewrite history and pretend I was listening to completely ridiculous advice.
I wasn't.
I was entitled to have feelings.
I was his wife, not his child.
There were things happening in my marriage that weren't okay.
So when somebody finally looked at what I was dealing with and said:
No. You're not wrong for being upset.
It felt good.
It felt validating.
And every time she seemed to understand me?
I trusted her a little more.
She Had Plenty to Say About Him
She told me he'd flirted with her.
She called him an arsehole.
Controlling.
Poisonous.
She'd tell me:
“You deserve better.”
“You deserve to be happy.”
“Why are you still there?”
And when you've already spent years feeling alone in your own marriage?
Those words find somewhere to land.
She wasn't creating the problems in my marriage.
Those problems already existed.
The cheating.
The lies.
The drinking.
The violence.
The loneliness.
The years of leaving and going back.
But she was becoming the person who constantly confirmed something I'd already started asking myself:
Why the fuck am I still doing this?
She Became Part of My Life
And I mean properly part of it.
I took her places.
Introduced her to people.
She met friends.
Family.
I took her to my mechanic one day and she flirted with practically every man there, including my mate.
Before long she was constantly texting him.
Apparently his wife could see through her a mile away.
Me?
Not so much.
But I didn't think:
There's something wrong here.
I wasn't analysing my friend's behaviour.
I liked her.
I trusted her.
She was my pal.
And she became so much a part of my life that eventually I invited her to come on our family holiday.
She was a single mum and nervous about taking her children abroad herself.
So she and her children booked onto our June holiday.
At the time?
Why wouldn't I want my friend there?
I had absolutely no idea how significant that holiday would eventually become.
We Hadn't Given Up Yet
Despite everything happening between me and my husband, we hadn't completely given up on the marriage.
We were struggling.
Badly.
But there was still fifteen years between us.
Children.
A home.
A family.
Eventually, we sat down and made an agreement.
We'd go on the holiday.
We'd have that time together.
And afterwards, if we both still felt the marriage was finished?
We'd separate amicably.
No war.
No destroying each other.
No making everybody choose sides.
Just accept:
We tried. It didn't work.
For once, it actually seemed like a sensible plan.
Then came Valentine's Day.
Valentine's Day
I'd finished nightshift.
My husband took me to our favourite place for breakfast.
We'd already made plans for later.
He wasn't going to drink.
We were going to go for dinner.
Maybe the cinema.
Just spend some actual time together.
He went to work.
I went to sleep.
Later, I woke up.
I could hear him on the Xbox.
Then I heard another sound.
One I knew immediately.
The bottle screwing closed.
He'd started drinking.
And I was fucking furious.
Because it wasn't just about one drink.
We'd made plans.
He knew how I felt about his drinking.
We'd specifically agreed he wasn't going to drink that night.
And once again, it felt like spending time with me came after everything else.
So who did I message?
Her.
Of course I did.
She was my friend.
The person I'd been telling everything.
And she was basically saying:
Fuck him.
If he cared about our plans, why had he started drinking?
Why should I sit there miserable?
Come to hers.
We'd have a Galentine's night.
She'd help me take my hair extensions out.
So I went through to my husband.
I didn't sneak out.
I didn't disappear.
I sat on his knee.
Explained exactly where I was going.
I even showed him the matting in my hair.
Then I left.
The minute I got into the car?
My phone rang.
Him.
“Where are you going?”
I'd literally just fucking told him.
And somehow we ended up arguing.
That became the theme of the entire night.
Me and my husband fighting.
My friend beside me telling me I deserved better.
That he didn't care.
That he was an arsehole.
Why was I still putting up with it?
The next day she even messaged me sarcastically:
“You mean you're not okay with the teenage-boy behaviour from your nearly 50-year-old husband? What is wrong with you?”
Funny.
Sarcastic.
On my side.
Exactly what you want your pal to say when you're raging with your husband.
She even joked about what he must think about our friendship:
“It's that bitch. She's stole my fucking wife! She changed after she met her. I can see it all now!”
At the time?
I laughed.
It was a joke between friends.
Then my sister commented that it sounded like me and this woman had more of a relationship than a friendship.
Her response?
“You're my pal. Why do I always get accused of stealing people's women?”
Again?
I didn't think anything of it.
Why would I?
She was my friend.
Then Something in Me Broke
Eventually I went home after Valentine's night.
The next day, I was accused of having been out later than I actually had been.
And something in me finally snapped.
We sat down.
We talked.
Properly.
And I told my husband things I'd kept buried.
I told him just how depressed I'd been.
How lonely I'd become.
What our family life had done to me.
And I told him there had been times when I'd become so low that I'd nearly taken my own life.
That's how bad things had become.
This wasn't really about Valentine's Day anymore.
It wasn't about one bottle.
It was years.
Cheating.
Grief.
Drinking.
Violence.
Arguments.
Separate rooms.
Loneliness.
Leaving.
Returning.
Forgiving.
Trying again.
And again.
And again.
I couldn't keep living like this.
The following day he phoned me.
He said that if I was gone before he got home, the two kids could stay there with him.
I agreed.
I packed.
And I left.
Leaving Didn't Mean Fifteen Years Disappeared
This part matters.
When I left the marital home, my relationship with my oldest daughter hadn't fallen apart yet.
That came afterwards.
And leaving the house didn't mean my husband and I suddenly became strangers either.
We still spoke.
Still argued sometimes.
Still talked about our problems.
We hadn't completely closed the door on trying to sort things out.
We even still talked about going on the family holiday together.
Because leaving physically and leaving emotionally are two completely different things.
This was fifteen years.
My husband.
Our daughter.
Our children.
Our home.
Our entire fucking life.
You don't switch that off because you've packed some bags.
Practically, though, I needed somewhere to live.
Travelling backwards and forwards for work was becoming ridiculous.
And I'd always hated his house.
So maybe this was finally my chance.
Declare myself homeless.
See what I was offered.
Get somewhere of my own.
Start again.
Eventually, I was offered temporary accommodation.
And when I told my friend?
She was delighted.
She told me she was proud of me.
Told me to go for it.
“Your life is going to be so much happier and less stressful.”
And I believed her.
Maybe this really was my fresh start.
I didn't know that leaving my husband was only the beginning.
Because next?
My relationship with my oldest daughter exploded.
She would send me a message that absolutely devastated me.
And, naturally, I would forward it to the person I trusted.
My friend.
The woman who had been firmly in my corner throughout everything with my husband.
And when she read what my daughter had sent me?
Her reaction wasn't:
Give her time.
It wasn't:
She's your daughter. You'll work this out.
It was:
“Judgemental little bitch. How did that come out of you?”
And:
“What the actual fuck? Who the fuck does she think she is?”
And that?
Is where the next part of this story begins.
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