The Myth That's Making Your Relationships Harder

0:02One of the biggest myths many of us grow up with believing is that one person is supposed to be our everything. Welcome to Motherkind. It is me, your host Zoe. Welcome to this Monday Moment episode. We get given this story that one person needs to carry everything, our happiness, share our moments, share our emotions. and in this moment I am joined by the brilliant Anna Whitehouse also known as Mother Pucker who shares one piece of relationship advice that completely changed the way she sees love, family and what a happy ending really looks like. We also talk about the reality of divorce, why it's one of the hardest things she's ever been through and the powerful reframe that helped her let go of the idea that she'd somehow broken her family.

0:51So whether you're in a relationship, you're navigating big changes or you're simply feeling the weight of trying to make one person your everything. I think there's so much wisdom in this moment. I love Anna. I loved this full episode. I think you're going to love this clip. Here it is. I hope you enjoy it.

1:13So ironically, my ex and I wrote a book called Where's My Happy Ending? I have read it. I read it purely on the title because I was like, This is the most genius title ever. I'm going to read this book. I mean, the writing, you know, was somewhat on the wall. But I think probably that book helped me find my way to where I am now more than anything. And it was the most unusual interview that got me there. You know, interviewed romance novelists, psychologists, therapists, everybody. and the final interview I did in that book, ironically called Where's My Happy Ending? It wasn't in the book, was with a 96-year-old whelk fisherman called Derek West who had been married for 75 years and I went into the interview and wasn't maybe expecting much and he gave me more wisdom than I could ever hope to sort of garner in a lifetime.

2:13He said the issue is that most people in any relationship, whether that's marital or friendship, are putting a lot of pressure on that one person to be their one and only. Till death do us part feels like more of a threat than a vow. You know, Clinton cards, you know, happily ever after feels so weighty. And he said, what I think people are getting wrong today is they're not reaching out to their community. They're not looking up. They're not looking around. They're putting everything on one person to be the best friend, the funniest person, you know, the manager of their life. He said, because when I'm out at sea and I'm fishing those whelks, if I fall overboard, it's not actually my wife or even my best friend or my mum or my dad that I reach out to.

3:05It's the lads on the boat near me who haul me overboard. It's my community. When I go to the shop, the corner shop, and I haven't got enough change, it's Maureen at the corner shop who's saying, by the way, don't worry, pay me back tomorrow. He said, just look at your neighbours, look at your community, whether you're a mother, father, you know, single, it does not matter. but we've stopped being part of ironically you had Michelle Kennedy on from peanut recently we've stopped being part of that village and I think I started reaching out more and putting less pressure on my now partner Ollie to be everything my children to fulfill me fully my job to be the thing that makes me thrive I've started looking up and looking out and that has absolutely changed everything that's so beautiful it's so true as well isn't it it's so easy to forget I think in the sort of humdrum of you know up kids work back dinner it's so easy to not reply to the whatsapp to think I'm too tired for the mum's night out and I know I did that for years as well and it isn't natural actually to just be sat with the same human every single night and then expect to fancy them and you want to go and you know it's just it's not it's not natural yeah Glennon Doyle who is this author that I I love she talks about first marriaging things and second marriaging things and how different they are.

4:28And that's, I really heard you say that actually one of the big differences is putting less pressure on it. What else feels different this time? What feels different now is, it's a really simple thing that I have been doing. So again, coming back to the pressure. So me time feels like way too much pressure. It's another thing to do on my list, you know. And so what I've started doing is when I say taking that time, it's realistic time so after every kind of module of activity whether that's school run speak to Zoe on the Mother Kind podcast have lunch everybody in their day can divide it into little modules of compartments almost of what you're doing and between each thing I did it just outside I literally put my phone down I take one minute and I think about something that morning that either lit me up or made me happy or something I haven't even said to somebody like my partner this morning, he just brushed his hand against the back of my back and it just made me feel really like comforted.

5:29And it was small. It was a little inflection as a tiny punctuation point in my day. But you know what? I'm going to let him know that that mattered to me because those are the tiny little punctuation points, the full stops, the commas, the exclamation marks that actually make up who you are and who the people around you are. Like if we don't communicate the good bits, then all we tend to sit in is sometimes the bad bits. So I've been taking those moments. I think anybody listening right now, if you are feeling the pressure of, you know, respite needed or me time or spa days, it's like, it's not about that.

6:06It's those moments, one minute, anyone can do it between the school run and your next meeting, between the school run and talking to the tax man, between the school run and going to the doctor. It does not matter what those two modules are but take that minute and put your phone down look up and think about something that has lit you up it's so true and I started doing weights class and the PT keeps saying the rest in between the reps is just as important as what you're doing in the reps yeah and I'm like oh that's an idea for life the rest in between is just as important you'll find me just horizontal yes exactly okay I'm gonna start the next one

6:48there'll be so many listeners who will be thinking in that sort of first relationship really considering thinking about divorce or changing the shape of that what would you say to the anna a couple of years ago who i would make up was kind of fearful uncertain what would you say to her now and in turn to that listener who's in that same place well i think there's two things. One is that this is absolutely not a divorce club. I'm not here to... You don't want to be the post-it girl. It is the most traumatic thing I've ever been through. It is not all about all the single ladies off you go into the hinge hinterland and find you're happily ever after.

7:32It is categoric trauma. It's rough and I have to preface this conversation with that because it would be wrong to do anything other than that. I think for me personally, I can say that I knew the blueprint for my daughters as my relationships did wasn't the blueprint I wanted them to see. And I have seen my girls obviously go through difficult times with us divorcing, but I've seen them completely lighten. Little conversations they've had with me have gone, mommy, I can see you're so happy now. And that's not to say that there weren't moments of happiness in my past. It's not in any way to demonize my ex.

8:15You know, it was 50-50. There were things I did, you know, and there are things he did, as in any relationship. But my little girls have seen me like reclaim bits of myself. And I didn't realize quite how many moments they heard of the crying behind closed doors. And I think that that was starting to significantly affect them. And when we told the girls that we were getting divorced, I'll never forget, we sat in the guest room, a kind of neutral space. Dr. Martha had said to me, just choose a neutral space. Don't make it somewhere, you know, their room or your room. Just go somewhere neutral and sort of said, look, for no fault of mommy or daddy, you know, we're just friends and friends don't live together anymore.

8:59So we will be living apart, but we'll still be your parents. and we'd thought about it and we both G'd ourselves up for this conversation bringing positive energy into the room not negative you weren't sobbing telling them and my youngest just went okay yeah that makes sense can I watch Mamma Mia 2 now and obviously we've held them throughout but I think the thing I would say to the Anna of five years ago who thought it would be an impossible task it's not impossible but it is something that you need privilege for because financial privilege to sometimes get out of a marriage. You did an amazing episode on your podcast with the, you know, it's still available a couple of years ago, I think, maybe last year, about exactly the financial privilege of divorce and how hard it can be.

9:50Yeah, it's not for the faint-hearted but also it's not for the financially, for anyone who's not financially privileged, you know, and I think this is the thing that's really hard to say and I don't have the solution for it. I'm not a divorce lawyer. I'm not a financial planner. I'm just a woman who went through it with that financial privilege. And I think the one thing I did do an episode on, which will be useful for anybody to listen to, with a divorce lawyer, Georgina Hamblin from Hamblin Lawyers. And she does offer pro bono one-hour sessions with people to establish their case so there are lawyers out there that you can get a lay of the land from but yeah it's not for the faint-hearted and I think what I would love to see is the Disney happily ever after is completely rewritten that the fairy tales are kind of ripped up and you know re-established because I grew up thinking that boy meets girl and runs off into the sunset it's because we spent all of our teenage and 20s watching those rom-coms.

10:54Totally. And they're really different now. If you watch a modern rom-com now, they are not the Disney ending. No. But the ones that we grew up on were exactly like that. I thought that's how it would go and how it was meant to be. Well, right now, it's boy met girl, boy and girl got divorced, boy met other girl, girl met other girl and boy. Sorry, I'm getting confused. I'll start again. Well, there's that too. Yeah, there's all of that. Yeah. So it's sort of boy meets girl, boy and girl get divorced, you know, boy meets other girl, girl meets other boy. And then I've suddenly got a blended family of five with two guinea pigs thrown into the mix.

11:31And, you know, that's the Disney happily ever after I want to see. I want to see also my sister and her wife who have decided not to have children. That's the happily ever after I want to see. You know, I want to see different iterations of what that happy ending can be and that divorce, hate the word divorcee. I think the language like broken family. No, do you know what? It's reforming a family. The language around it, I think, was so weighted. I am not a divorcee. I didn't break up my family. I chose myself and I reformed my family. and that is the language I want to see used around anyone making decisions that are going to be better for them but better for their children as well.

12:17That was the episode. I hoped you loved it. If you did, please make sure you subscribe and I will see you next time.