(I’m not sure how I feel about the “unravelling” part these days, tbh) — You see, I would quite like it all, that’s the overriding thing about me — I really would quite like to have it all, as all the ball-busting ceiling-smashing shoulder-padded business women of the 1980s promised me I could; I’d like to trip-trap-trip between glossy offices in my patent heels…

Mainly, I learned never to try to predict my own feelings — We’d been married for two years and we were away on a mini-break, which was a rare thing in those days because we had very little money. Also, we’d taken our children with us, because they were very small, so it wasn’t exactly a romantic mini-break. But still. We were…

There is no way to tell an abusive man from his looks alone — Over the past couple of weeks, it has become fairly clear that the Armie Hammer abuse rumors — which include screenshots of his talk of cannibalism fantasies and details of him carving his initials into a woman’s genitalia with a knife — are going absolutely nowhere. (For more on those…

Can’t think clearly? That’s exactly what they want — When I was living alone for the summer in which I left my husband (after my messy, all-consuming, entirely regrettable affair), I remained in touch — at first — with my extramarital lover. This is how that went. On the night that our affair was discovered, he held my hands…

A multi-generational puzzle I badly want to solve — My first serious relationship was with the man who I would go on to marry, and who fathered my first child. I was smitten with that man. I loved him with pure, fierce devotion, a feeling I haven’t ever had since and had never felt before. I just adored him…

How “Maid” on Netflix contains an important truth about domestic abuse — The first time I left my first husband, I didn’t go very far at all. I didn’t go for very long, either. I had no money and also, I didn’t really want to go. I was nineteen years old, my baby was one year old, and I’d shaped my whole…

But that’s ok. — September. It is such a beautiful month, isn’t it? It used to be my absolute favorite. I love so many things about it. I love the way the light begins to soften at the edges, becoming ever gentler at each end of the day, abandoning the throbbing white glare of…

Why would I care one way or another, though? — I knew, even as I heard the news, that it shouldn’t matter. That it didn’t matter. Because I didn’t want him, that’s the thing. I hadn’t wanted him for a long time. I had ended my affair with him. I had my eyes opened to his toxicity and his narcissism…

We both know it’s over, but somehow we’re still here — One weird thing about the pandemic and its year of various tiers of badly-managed lockdowns is that some of the friends who once lurked in the background of Facebook suddenly became very much front-and-center. Did you notice? One minute they existed only peripherally, burbling on every few days about how…