This book had another significant impact on me. Elizabeth talks a lot about her fears around marriage and some of the things that happen to women within marriage. She talks about the traditional agreement and how, no matter how hard women try, they often find themselves sitting in conventional marriages, even in this day.
So here I am, desperately wanting to move on with my own professional life, and I realise some of the things she’s talking about have happened to me. I am working around my husband’s career. I am making my little sons the priority in my life – as they need to be at this tender age. But the one thing that came through for me is I know I have been losing touch with what I want and need to make me happy. That’s not good for anyone in this family.
This book was a great kick in the arse for me and I immediately sms’d my husband and said its time for you to take on the home life so I can get ripping on everything I need and want to do. My ambitions have only gotten stronger since becoming a Mum. Thankfully, he is the sort of guy that said cool, I’d love to and he meant it!!
Sometimes life happens this way and you don’t even realise it, or worse, you really don’t have any control of it as some priorities are just bigger. The reality was and is my little lads need a lot and I was the person in the best situation to take on this role – something I will never regret. But as time moves on, I need to come back to me, and the only way we can do that is to split work and home 50/50 or I take the work lead and Steve takes the home lead for a while…. but really, we are happiest when it’s 50/50 and we’re 100 per cent focused on that now and moving towards it every day.
This book helped me to take a step back and look at how we were chugging along. It helped to clarify some of the aspects of our married life that weren’t making me happy, but they also weren’t making my husband happy either. It’s been great seeing beyond my current predicament and I thank Elizabeth for my kick up the arse – it’s good to be back.
Yours, without the bollocks
Andrea
