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© A Edmonds and V Lafaye 2006

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The Shameless Hussies: read the novel online

Rumination: I wish I'd known that...

Life, so the cliché goes, does not come with an owner’s manual. There are so many things that no one tells you about The Biggies: marriage, children (your own and other people’s), divorce, friendship, men. But everyone who has been there and got the t-shirt is a walking repository of valuable information. Just get a group of women with some life experience together in a room, add a few bottles of wine, and it soon becomes apparent how much we have learned – mostly the hard way. Yet there is never a record of it; all the wise and wonderful knowledge fades with the hangover.

So as a public service, here is a collection of frank, bawdy, humorous, and above all, useful insights gleaned from several sessions with a group of women of diverse ages and backgrounds:

2006

Liz's life has just been turned inside out by a divorce which has left her both traumatised and exhilarated.

...I wish I'd known how much more expensive it is to get unmarried than married.

Nancy is 51, a freelance writer, married for 30 years, and has two grown daughters.

...I wish I had known that all the baggage we carry from our past is just a bunch of stories. If we can acknowledge them as such, then we can move past them. They are not definitions of who we are now. I've spent too much time thinking they still mattered, but have learned that, except for the insights we can gain from them, letting go of them is so healthy.

...I wish I had known that my children were going to teach me more than I ever imagined, instead of the other way around. I would have spent more time listening deeply.

...I wish I had known that screwing up can bring so many years of laughter.

Pat, about to be 70, married in 1958, two children, divorced in 1982 and remarried in 2003. Now there are two step-children, two step-grandchildren and two grandchildren. Have worked since 1965 as a speech therapist and in the past few years have dropped down to very part-time.

...I was lonelier in my marriage than after my divorce. I was employed and worked very much harder and felt wonderfully self-sufficient. My children were away (one for 20 years) and my girl child and I supported each other. My friends were "mine," not "ours," and if I wanted to stay in my jamas all Sunday it was OK.

"I need a husband like a fish needs a bicycle" was my rallying cry and for many years it was so. Then, in 1996 in a fit of daring, I placed a personal advertisement in our local newspaper and met some very interesting men. One was particularly attractive but "unavailable" in terms of communication. My daughter met him, liked him, but felt he was too inattentive. Right she was. Eventually we married. What is the lesson in all of this?

...It is better to be alone in good company than with bad company.
...You never know what you are capable of until your back is to the wall.
...Less is more (and that includes shoes)
...You are never too old to love again.
...Forty is the new thirty, fifty the new forty, etc.,etc. and old age comes in around ninety-something.

2004

	Amy (38) is originally from the U.S. but has lives in Britain for 15 years. She is married, works part-time, and has three children: twin girls aged 2, and a boy aged 3. She always assumed that she would have children one day, but was overtaken by events when her first child was conceived. Barely two years later, she became pregnant again with twins, who were born prematurely. Amy and the babies were both dangerously ill at the time of the birth, and since then their health has slowly improved. The family lives in Banbury in Oxfordshire.
	Paula (41) is married and has two children aged 6 and 4 and works part-time. She lives in Oxford and has just decided, after 10 years, to leave her career in marketing to be at home with the children full-time.
	Julie (42) is married and has step-children aged 19 and 16. Julie has always been a talented artist, and had a successful career in publishing. Soon after marrying, she and her husband decided to leave the corporate world and bought a pub in Hampshire to fulfil his ambition of being a chef. After two difficult years, for financial reasons they had to sell the pub and start over. They now live in Shropshire, where he works in a restaurant and she works for a medical communications agency.
	Vanessa (42) is divorced, lives in Wiltshire with her partner, has no children and works full time. Originally from Florida, she has lived in Britain for 16 years. Having divorced after 10 years of marriage, she found happiness again through an internet dating site.
	Fiona (45) lives in Oxfordshire. She is separated and has three children aged 13, 20, and 23 and is trying to establish herself as a property developer after working for years in marketing. Having freed herself from a restrictive marriage, she is now pursuing her dream. Even with the hardship and financial insecurity, she has never been happier.
	Sue (62) lives in Cambridgeshire. She is divorced and has two children and three grandchildren, works part-time and is a Cruse Bereavement Care counsellor and volunteer for Dogs for the Disabled. During the same year, she got divorced, lost both her parents, and had a hysterectomy. Five years later, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her treatment finished earlier this year.

Not so much an owner’s manual as a crib sheet, the principle is that forewarned might be forearmed. These are some of the things that real women would have liked to know in advance.

Life generally:

Paula –

…Everything goes in cycles, as if we are on a big wheel. Sometimes the wheel turns you face-on into a howling gale, but then it turns again and you emerge into the sunshine. Eventually you will get hit by the bad stuff again, but you know that something better will always follow it – you just don’t know how long it will take to turn again!

Fiona -

… I was worth so much more than I thought.

…I always had the capability to realise my dreams and ambitions, but I put them off in favour of something more conventional for years because I lacked confidence. They were not wishes, they were plans.

…my worries when I was young were trivial – how I looked, whether people liked me.

Sue -

…I’m able to do so much more than I thought I could do.

… I can survive terrible events – cancer, divorce, death of my parents. I am much stronger than I thought.

…I would get happier as I got older.

Marriage:

Fiona –

…that my fairytale princess vision of marriage, the romantic ‘Save yourself for Mr Right and his white charger will be along shortly’ thing was unrealistic. It sounds silly to say it now, but it was how I felt at the time.

…it is possible to love someone and yet have completely incompatible expectations of life.

Sue –

… the woman should always choose the wedding date – to avoid your period! I was caught out completely.

…it could be so restricting. I was very much controlled by my husband, which I did not realise until we were divorced.

Julie-

…something changes when you marry, even if you have been living together. It is like the closing of a door – a door that you didn’t intend to use – but even so, it can make you panic. I panicked for the whole first year after we were married.

…that it is normal to hate his guts sometimes. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the marriage is doomed.

…that it is important to maintain my own personal happiness as well as my happiness as part of a couple.

Men:

Vanessa –

…the best way to get a man to do a big, difficult job around the house is to pick up the power tools yourself and announce, ‘I’m just off to fell that rotten tree!’

…they are very, very simple creatures. They do not analyse things the way that we do. I would have saved myself a lot of heartache if I had accepted this sooner.

…it takes much longer for a man to be bothered by mess. It is not that he is by nature a pig: he honestly does not see the filth until it reaches his knees.

…they do not take things personally, even when they should.

…they do not do non-verbal communication. If you want a man to know something, you must tell him clearly. No hints, no meaningful looks, no being ever-so-standoffish. I once refused to talk to my boy friend on the phone for two days because he had upset me. He just thought that my phone was broken.

Paula –

…men are totally solution-orientated. If you just want a sympathetic listener, talk to a woman.

Julie –

…they expect praise for doing the smallest chore, as if they have just climbed Everest instead of putting the clothes in the dryer.

Pregnancy/babies:

Fiona –

…breast-feeding hurts, at least at the start. You see all the paintings of the Madonna and child, looking serene and fulfilled. You don’t see paintings of women being scraped off the ceiling, with a hoover attached to their breast. I’m sure that you could stick a sucking baby to the wall and it would not fall off.

Paula –

…grapefruit juice cures morning sickness, and can help with swelling. During my first pregnancy, the only time that I wasn’t being sick was when I was eating, and I swelled up like a balloon. Neither happened during my second when I drank the juice.

…you are SUPPOSED TO GET FAT. During my first pregnancy, I worried that the baby’s weight + extra water = much more than I weighed. But all the fat was sucked out once I started breast-feeding. During the second pregnancy, I ate for Britain. Nature intends for you to pork out because you need the reserves later.

…it is OK to be terrified. I worried a lot about worrying, that I was somehow failing in my Mother Earth persona if I was shit scared. There is so much pressure to glow calmly, but it is normal to be frightened. In fact, I would be deeply suspicious of any woman who claimed not to be.

…I could ignore the hype around breast-feeding. Babies can easily adapt from breast to bottle and back again. I think that the whole ‘nipple confusion’ issue just makes women feel guilty.

Amy –

…I had it easy when we had only one child. At the time, it seemed hard, but it was nothing compared to life after the twins arrived.

…it was crucial to have support, in the forms of friends and family, but also help around the house, even if you have to pay someone. Having three kids under 3 years old, when two of them are seriously ill, with no family nearby, was incredibly hard work.

Sue-

…it would be so undignified and exhausting. The system is awful: the last thing you want after sweating for hours to bring forth this screeching creature is to have to look after it. Much better to sit on an egg.

Children:

Fiona:

… my kids would turn out all right, even if I didn’t follow the gospel according to my sister-in-law or the baby book writers.

… so much about how my kids would turn out is out of my control. Their influences at school, their friends, and their own personalities have a huge effect. Only by keeping them in the house until they were 35 could I completely control their development.

Sue –

…I would lose the closeness with my son once he found a partner. I would have liked to have been prepared for that.

Amy-

…I could cope with more physical and emotional stress than I thought possible. It has made me realise that I could apply this capacity in other areas of life if I had to.

Step-children

Julie -

…at the very best, you can be like a god parent. At the worst, you can be everything that is bad, according to what their mother thinks. She has a lot of control over your relationship with the kids.

…young kids can still want their parents to get back together, even if they love you. They will not understand why there is a conflict in this.

…the mother has the power in the relationship. She controls what you know about everything going on in the kids’ lives.

…you are always on the defensive because you do not know what the kids have been told.

…you perform some of the functions of a parent, and you have many of the same responsibilities, but you do not have the rights of a parent.

…it feels like you get all the hassles and only half the pleasure. And you don’t get credit from the rest of society.

Divorce

Vanessa -

…things happen when they are meant to. I beat myself up for staying in a bad marriage, but it only ended when I was ready for it to end.

…people would not judge me (at least, not to my face). I had this idea that I would be shunned, branded with a red ‘D’ for all to see when my decree nisi came through.

…I could cope, and damned well. My ex tried to scare me with stories of disasters – the roof would fly off, the boiler would explode, there would be a plague of locusts – and I would be all alone in dealing with it. I reassured myself by getting phone numbers for a whole team of tradesmen: plumber, gas man, electrician, carpenter. I never had a disaster, but having the phone numbers to hand gave me a sense of security.

…I would get such a huge sense of achievement from managing my own affairs.

Julie –

…she’s not just his ex-wife, she’s yours, if he had children with her. She will be a feature of your life forever.

…unless she remarries, you and your partner will be supporting her for the rest of her life.

Sue -

…what a wonderful, wonderful relief it would be. The weight of someone else’s unhappiness, and your own, is an enormous burden.

…mediation would be such a good idea. I would have done it sooner. It saves a lot of time and money. It’s much better to present the solicitors with a plan already agreed.

…how much better my life would be, that I would feel so good.

…that I would be so happy to be on my own, and not feel compelled to find someone else right away – or ever.

Downshifting

.Julie –

…beautiful scenery is no consolation when you can’t afford the mortgage.

…means working just as hard for a third of the money.

…walking away from a good job also means leaving behind a chunk of your self-image.

…you should plan for it, and save money while you’re earning power is greater, so that you can cushion yourselves.

…people may say ‘well done’, but they really are thinking, ‘they’re mad’, or ‘they’re running away from something’.

…not having money is socially isolating as well; I can’t afford to get involved in things which cost money.

…it’s like early retirement without the pension.

…I could walk away sooner. Even with all the loss of money and prestige, I appreciate not spending my weekends worrying about my job.

Vanessa

Have another point of view? Email us with your own story.