I haven’t read Nikki Gemmell‘s new novel, With My Body about a married mother and her lost sexuality (and am none the wiser after reading this, to be honest) so I won’t bang on about her book but I will say something about that interview with Gemmel by Karen Hardy. This annoyed me:
I’m sitting at the hairdresser and the woman in the chair next to me is going on and on, about her marriage, and how she and her husband have nothing in common any more, how her children are sucking the life force out of her, how there has to be more to life than this …
I’ve almost reached the point of turning around, slapping her across the head with a blowdryer, and telling her to shut up, for I am sick to death, that’s right sisters, SICK, of hearing women complain about their marriages. I’m sick of complaining about my own, too. There’s nothing more pointless and destructive.
Geez, why the hostility towards wives expressing some dissatisfaction with their lives? I wonder if it is a little bit of this and a little bit of that going on with a whole lot of this?
And maybe the wrong approach for a piece pitching a novel about the very same malaise? Just a thought.
But I did appreciate this description by Hardy and Gemmell of the social circles you can sometimes find yourself a part of when you’re a parent – where you are hanging about with people with whom you have no more common interests than having a child born in the same year:
There’s a minor relationship in the book between the Wife and Susan, another mother from her son’s school. It’s a relationship that many women will recognise, where women become entwined purely because their children are at school together.
Gemmell laughs, again, when I talk about the Susans in my own life. ”We all have them, don’t we?” she says. ”I had a Susan in my life, I kind of felt, ‘Am I the only one who is driven completely bananas by this woman’, but I couldn’t say anything to her. I felt locked into this strange kind of relationship where she was always going to be in my life, for years and years, this woman dragging me down and getting under my skin.”
”I thought I would never be a friend to this woman, never chose her as a friend … disentangling yourself from a relationship like that is part of the process of getting our own life back.
blue milk 
I’m far more sick of women pretending that their marriages are faultless, just like their children, and that they are blissfully happy in whatever arrangement they’re in – stay at home/work outside the home/part time/full time.
I find the pretence that life is perfect is much more prevalent in my bubble than any issues with constant whinging. It’s really hard to remember that I’m probably not the only person at school drop off who gets the shits with their partner, sometimes wants to strangle their kids and hates the particular work/family arrangement they have.
Yes exactly!
Having older kids seems to have dramatically reduced my interactions with people of the “everything is perfect” variety, though I don’t think there were ever all that many of that persuasion in my social circles. Or perhaps I just ran a mile whenever I heard a hint of it!
I jumped right out of an “everything is perfect” circle, but I see one of the moms from it occasionally at the pool. She always looks miserable, she yells at her kids, the kids are kind of hesitant and want-y with her in a way that hurts my heart. I just want to go up and hug her…except she won’t make eye contact or interact at all, and we weren’t that close to make it OK.
I get a bit frustrated with the ideas in the last bit you quoted from too. It isn’t just being a parent that leaves you hanging out with people who make you think, ‘Who are you and who am I, and what are we doing sharing any time together?’ Workplaces, school classrooms, families – it happens everywhere. I’ve made some of my most valuable friends hanging out in the school playground. Good, nourishing, enriching friendships. I get the point she’s trying to make, but I feel like it sometimes gets overplayed.
I tend to agree. I worked in a law firm and that is a pretty good example of being forced to hang out with people that you really don’t like or have much in common with. What I have actually really loved about being a mother is meeting people outside my social circle who I wouldn’t have otherwise encountered. When my daughter first started at nursery I learnt so much from this 18-year old girl who was one of her carers. She hadn’t graduated high school even (I was then doing my PhD) and was from a completely different socio-economic background from me. She was amazing with my daughter and I valued her advice so much. If I am completely honest, I never would have given someone like her the time of day prior to having my daughter. And I find myself empathising or chatting with mothers from all backgrounds at various places around my town who I never would have spoken with prior to my daughter – waiting in the line for the toilets, the elevator, in the doctor’s surgery etc. Becoming a mother has made me so much more tolerant, open-minded and just downright appreciative about what everyone has to offer.
Uncomfortable truth-telling and those eureka moments we experience when a stranger suddenly writes our own life – that is part and parcel of what feminism is all about. I adored all the links; such a lovely blog by someone who gets it. Thank you @blue milk.