Chapter Three – …Till Endowment Policy Do Us Part

Once upon a time, there was a script. It was unwritten but universally understood. You met someone, you tolerated them, you married them, and you stayed; “Happy ever after” right? From the unenviable position of being single again in my fifties and navigating internet dating, I realise that this powerfully shaped the narrative for relationships in our generation. We did not so much choose partners as fall into them, then carried on because that was what you did. Love, marriage and mortgages all bundled together in a neat, unquestioned package, and once signed up, opting out felt almost unthinkable.

And it started like this, for many couples, after that initial night club connection (a solid basis for the start of a relationship, right?). It led predictably to a few dates at the local Berni Inn for a prawn cocktail, knitted steak and black forest gateau. Then came a quiet assessment: this boyfriend is not too annoying, you could probably sleep with them, there is no emerging secret fetish and so we mostly settled for that person.

From there, the expected path would unfold. Awkward introductions to controlling parents, an inevitable squeeze into a large white meringue style wedding dress, and a big beige buffet wedding breakfast with an eye watering price tag. It’s as though spending toe-curling amounts on a wedding will make for a concrete foundation for life. Everyone getting their knickers in a twist about fancy flowers and chicken chasseur and where guests secretly pray that there’ll also be a free bar afterwards. Watching the wedding video from the evening reception seemed to comprise of distant relatives perched uneasily around the edge of a “fold out” dance floor, while friends and work colleagues got increasingly drunk and try to recreate their youth with some dodgy dad dancing and some of the single chaps trying to get off with one of the legal age bridesmaids.

A short honeymoon in Weymouth, then this would quickly follow with two children and a risky endowment policy on a soulless three-bedroom house on a large housing estate.

What none of us considered at the time was whether the person we were settling for was actually someone we could tolerate for the long haul. Compatibility was assumed and curiosity just stopped once the boxes were ticked.

This would then result in numbly stumbling through an expected pattern of annual holidays, overtime and promotions, realising about twenty years later that, just like the frilly shirts and perms of the eighties, that here was an ill-suited couple, who had grown apart, weighed down heavily with the usual stresses of life, work, money, expectations and kids. Too tired or bored with life to communicate properly or make any effort anymore. The next step could be giving up completely on making any effort, the end of sex, and the beginning of buying skirts with elasticated waistbands, two cats, pre-diabetes, high blood pressure and letting the grey hairs and whiskers take hold, becoming overgrown and chaotic, like a long-abandoned allotment.

Yes, all relationships are tested. Some couples stride through the peaks and troughs and remain together as they always thought that’s how it would be. Some are genuinely soulmates and ride the storm to find an unbreakable connection. The most tragic are the ones that end up resenting each other but still stay together. Sadly, this is what I see the most in my line of work in the NHS. Then, there are many, such as us, who just eventually come to understand and agree that there’s very little reason left to stay. Time to cut loose and seek a new path.

It makes you wonder whether, in our early twenties, we had any real idea what true love actually was, or whether we simply mistook initial attraction and timing for something deeper. Hardly anyone sets out hoping for this, or for the equally stirring companionate marriage, unless their long-term ambition is to slowly merge into their partner like a pair of damp socks on a radiator.

As we mature, our wants, needs and dreams change as we navigate through life’s challenges. As couples, we choose to listen, compromise, support and encourage new adventures, or resist, fail to communicate and become distant. The slippery slope then continues into a slow but steady, downward spiral. Without open discussion and effort, it’s easy to become two people circling in their own orbits and, although there is no one else involved and no blame needed, the chapter needs to end, and that’s it.

The final straw might be empty nest syndrome and time and space to reflect, without the slightly chaotic hustle and bustle of the kids, their social calendars, and trying to support them while they set up the foundations for their lives to come.

There’s no shortage of excuses I could have used for my own marriage, each more palatable than the last. Work, stress, children, timing or just life. All the usual ones. But if I’m honest, none of those were the real reason. There was a fundamental shift, and neither of us were willing, or perhaps able, to acknowledge it for a long time.

I suppose the only regret I do have is not listening sooner to that small, persistent voice that would tap me lightly on the shoulder, to let me know that something didn’t quite fit anymore. At the time it was easy to ignore, drowned out by a momentum of a life already in motion. I understood this afterwards that coasting is not choosing, and that it is never too late to step off the conveyor belt, rewrite the script, and choose a different life.

Once that realisation settles in, the question was no longer if, but when to tackle it head on with your other half.

For me it still took many months of quiet debate with myself to pluck up the courage to have this difficult conversation that I’d played over and over in my head. I eventually sat down with my husband and suggested that we separate and salvage what was left of our lives, as we both deserved to be happy. He was in quiet agreement at the time. He just shrugged and said “ If I was you, I probably would have left me years ago”. Just like that, an acknowledgment of the end of the road.

And then came the odd, quietly painful months of unpicking a shared life and dividing it into two separate ones. We were no longer a unit, just two people standing in the aftermath of a life that had once seemed permanent, trying to work out what comes next.