Helen was married for 21 years. Nine months ago she found out about the affair and she left. Everyone told her she was doing the right thing and nobody argued.
What she has now is a phone she checks too often and a friend called Denise who keeps telling her things she hasn't asked to know. He isn't at the house. He isn't working. He's on somebody's sofa twenty minutes away. And Helen lies awake at four in the morning wondering whether he's registered with a doctor, whether the car is taxed, whether his mother got a card in May.
She has the cleanest permission anyone has ever been given to feel nothing at all, and she still can't stop.
We talk about what that actually is, because Helen is right that it isn't love and it isn't guilt. It's the responsibility that quietly accumulates over twenty years, until you find out you weren't two adults running a house. You were running it and he was living in it.
Then some of the unsent messages. The hoovering one. The two people who both froze. The woman who came home from karaoke and wished it had been him. And one that made Emma cheer.
Show notes
The Huddle opens on 16 September. Two calls a month, one with an expert answering questions sent in beforehand, all of it recorded and kept. £37 a month at the founding rate, and it stays at £37 for as long as you're a member.
dadhugsforyoursoul.com/huddle
Bhavna Radia's session, free to watch. A former family solicitor of twenty years answering eleven questions live and twenty-three more in writing afterwards. Chaptered, so you can go straight to the one that sounds like yours.
dadhugsforyoursoul.com/huddle/q/bhavna-radia
Unsent. The message you've written four times and not sent. Put it there instead, read what everyone else nearly sent, and see how much of it you recognise. Free, no account needed.
Rage, by Carol Allen. Short poems written going through exactly this. Harry mentions it in the episode.
Big Hug
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