[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-post-title” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_font=”Black Han Sans|700||on|||||” header_text_align=”center” header_font_size=”46px” header_letter_spacing=”4px” custom_margin=”25px||5px||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
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You\u2019re not at breaking point, but you\u2019re far from enjoying marital bliss. And the pressures of parenthood, life admin and constant juggling mean your partner feels more like a coworker. Stuart Heritage and Robyn Wilder, married for 10 years, reveal how they survive the grey area of the daily grind.<\/strong><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/10\/WEB-HOLD-grey-area.jpg” alt=”marriage grey area” title_text=”WEB HOLD grey area” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”fp-in-article-bold” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”Black Han Sans|||on|||||” text_font_size=”18px” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n STUART<\/strong><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” min_height=”107px” custom_padding=”||0px|||” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Clearly, this is not how we envisioned our lives. We spent the first years of our relation- ship travelling and laying in at the weekends and sharing impenetrable inside jokes. But gradually we\u2019ve become little more than colleagues in parenting. Which isn\u2019t to say that we don\u2019t do nice things for each other any more. It\u2019s just that nice things largely involve letting the other one rest, which means we\u2019re rarely actually in the same room<\/span> So that\u2019s not great. But also, that\u2019s just how this part of life goes. All my friends with kids, all the parents at the school gates, they\u2019re just as trapped. They\u2019re all grinding through the thankless, endless churn of putting everyone else first. It\u2019s draining and there are times where you not only lose sight of who your partner is, but who you are too. But it\u2019s part of the job.<\/span><\/p>\n And what\u2019s the alternative? We\u2019re all trying to raise our kids to be better than us, because they\u2019re going to replace us. That takes work. And if that means spending a decade or so exclusively texting your partner about the school run at the expense of spontaneous bunk-ups, it\u2019s worth the sacrifice.<\/span> Also, and this is a big thing, it\u2019s important to remember that this stage is temporary. A few weeks ago I ran into an old school friend, who I\u2019d lost touch with when he had his first baby, at 17. Now his kids are adults and he spent our entire chat telling me about a<\/span>ll the amazing holidays he gets to go on with his wife now that his kids have grown up.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>So, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe not tomorrow. But there will come a point where the ceaseless exchange of logistics will end and I\u2019ll get to explore the world with my wife. I can\u2019t wait to meet her again.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_font=”Libre Bodoni|||on|||||” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#333333″ header_2_font_size=”40px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_margin=”||19px|||”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”fp-in-article-bold” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”Black Han Sans|||on|||||” text_font_size=”18px” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n ROBYN<\/strong><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n This month, Stuart and I celebrated 10 years of marriage. And by \u2018celebrated\u2019 I mean \u2018briefly floated the idea of a second honey- moon before our children distracted us by freestyling a competitive rap battle that a) was about diarrhoea and b) ended in tears\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/span><\/p>\n But this sort of thing has been par for the courseforourmarriagefromtheverybegin- ning. I was five months pregnant when we married, about to pop when we left London for the suburbs and, by the time our first son arrived, we were still living half out of boxes. But as we began the bleary-eyed ascent up the steep learning curve that is parenting <\/span>a newborn, we \u2013 like most new parents \u2013 developed a workable rhythm. One of us held the baby while the other worked, slept or ate a still-warm meal, then we\u2019d swap.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And this rhythm is something we\u2019ve been able to adapt and fall back on when external support hasn\u2019t been available during chal- lenging times. Which have included, in no particular order, minor assault, redundancy (me), two parental terminal illnesses, one family house fire, two parental deaths, two life-threatening births, chronic illness, anxiety disorders, one truly awful family holiday in rural France, and even a period of disability (me) that halved our household income, scuppered our plans to move and lumbered Stuart with most of the parenting.\u00a0<\/span> I mean, it\u2019s the stuff stress aneurysms are made of, or would be if Stuart and I didn\u2019t have each other\u2019s back. One useful trick we deploy is something I call an \u2018unsafe\u2019 word \u2013 like a BDSM \u2018safe word\u2019, but you honk it out to alert your partner to the end of your teth- er. Like a safe word, an unsafe word must never be weaponised, faked or ignored. And it needs to stand out, so if you\u2019re thinking of co-opting one, may I suggest \u2018gazpacho\u2019?<\/span><\/p>\n Fortunately for us, my health is improving and the weight of our marriage is starting to swing back so we can share it more evenly. The challenge now is how to step back down out of the emergency mode we\u2019ve been in. When it comes to raising our kids, I want to set the example of enjoying life, not just hunkering down through hard times.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Now our children are a little older and the pressure is a little less, perhaps we can start to enjoy the good life, however tentatively. Maybe it\u2019s time to start talking about that second honeymoon again.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ divider_position=”center” divider_weight=”2px” module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”0px||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-texts” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|||on|||||” text_orientation=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n MAIN IMAGE: IMAGO<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes, the pressures of parenthood, life admin and constant juggling mean your partner feels more like a coworker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4291,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"kschwarz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4282"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4310,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282\/revisions\/4310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/span><\/p>\n\u2018We’re all trying to raise our kids to be better than us, because they’re going to replace us. That takes work.’<\/span><\/h2>\n
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