I know, I know, three blogs in 24 hours. It’s feast or famine with me, I know… but the last 24 hours in the media haven’t been great on the relationships front, have they?
Michelle Mone – someone who I look up to because she’s shifted lots of weight and runs a growing business, has split with her husband of 20 years. Russell Brand and Katy Perry are getting divorced – and that upsets me because I want to think that two people who are hot and attractive, can make a go of it despite being in the public eye. And Katherine Jenkins and Gethin Thingy Me Bob have called off their engagement.
And it makes me sad. Because I hate thinking of relationships not working out. Of divorce. I only remember one family being divorced when I was growing up – and that’s how I thought of it, that divorce was something quite rare. But it’s not is it? And I’m sad that it’s a family that gets divorced, not just a couple, isn’t it? Whether there’s children involved or not. It affects everyone. Sometimes, I appreciate, people are cheering when relationships end – I know that my ex’s parents will be pleased to see the back of me and the feeling was very much reciprocal from my family, but there’s still a division of people, histories and plans that had been made for the future.
The way that I know that I’m a grown up now, is that I’m married. Whatever went before, doesn’t count. It’s what happened on 18 August 2006 for me. I’d lived with Lovely Bloke beforehand, since our second date in fact.. (ahem) but getting married was important to me. Not least because I was 20 weeks pregnant and wanted us all to have the same surname. And I really like that I’ve taken my husband’s surname – Weston – which is different, to his own family, for complicated reasons, (but nothing bad, I hasten to add…) So we’re not Payne’s (my family name) or Lindsell’s (his family name). We’re Westons. And I love it. I don’t mind at all, if our boys get married and start a new family name for themselves. I’d think it pretty good actually.
Because we are all our own units. Lovely Bloke Weston and I are a team. We work things out together. We fight. We hold hands. We bicker. We fart under the duvet at night. We look at each other and wonder “what’s happening” and “where is our life going” but we’re doing it together. We don’t always face the world together. Ha ha. He wants the boys to go shooting and stalking whilst I want them nowhere near guns. He wants all sorts of things different to me in life and it’s not always easy to resolve things. But somehow we do.
And that’s why I’m sad that, despite their money, which lots of people think makes life easier, people who have – or appear to have – everything they could materially desire, can’t make it work. People get divorced because they can’t cope financially together every day, but for people in the media, we assume they don’t have money worries. So why can’t they make it work? What chance for the rest of us? Surely they should be able to do it? It’s always annoyed me with David Beckham and the constant rumours about his life with Victoria, that if they can’t make each other happy, what chance do us muggles have?
So there we have it. I’m rambling. But I’m annoyed. And sad. That people are getting divorced – seperating families, getting divorced within 14 months of marriage and saddest of all, not even making it up the aisle together. That’s not good news is it? But at least they are all starting 2012 knowing where they are, what they are doing and where they are going, after a fashion at least eh?
