The Shift With Sam Baker
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On Monday a friend told me, almost in passing, that she was leaving her “miserable marriage”. I didn’t know there was anything especially miserable about her marriage, although I’d always thought she was way more fun, interesting, smart etc than her, frankly, quite boring husband. (Having been stuck with him for several hours at a friend’s wedding, I’d often wondered how she put up with him. But, who knows, he probably felt the same about me.)
Anyway, even though I couldn’t say I saw it coming, I wasn’t honestly that surprised. After all, she’s not the first. She’s not even the second or the third. She is, in fact, about the fifteenth woman I know in their mid-40s to late-50s who has turned around in the last few years and gone… Is this it? Really? For the next thirty-odd years? No ta.
Let’s be clear, these are not, on the whole, women in so-called bad marriages. Although I’m inclined to think that bad is in the eye of the person who has to lie next to it in bed every night. They are not, on the whole, having affairs, although “people” often find that hard to believe (and are vocal about it). And they have not, again on the whole, been cheated on (although some have). They are not even all suddenly “freed up” by the kids leaving home (although, again, some are). They have “just” tired of the daily grind of “acting the wife” as my aforementioned friend put it. And all that that, even in 2024, seems to entail.
