Sadness

A little over a year after the chaos of the move to the house that we are now in, it looks, barring a small miracle, that we will be facing the chaos again. Sadly, it is not a move that I ever wanted to make, but it has become necessary. It may also mean another major change in my life, but I really hope not.

Just before we moved into this house, the job that m'Julie was expecting to start shortly after our move fell through, and unfortunately she has not been able to find a full-time, reasonably well-paid, job since then. As a result, the burden of the financial outlay has fallen on me, with her mum also contributing.

As a result of this, I have been extremely stressed for the majority of the last year, trying desperately to ensure that we had somewhere to live and food to eat, in an effort to keep us together, but it appears that what I have actually achieved is to push us further, much further, apart. So when this move takes place, it will see me and Andrew move into one house and Julie and Hannah move into her mother's house. And whilst that doesn't necessarily mean the end of the relationship, it certainly feels like it at the moment.

Inevitably, there has been reflection, certainly on my part although I can't speak for Julie, on the almost eight years since we met, and apart from the last year, almost every memory is a happy one.

When my ex-wife and I parted, it was no real surprise. Our relationship had been in the doldrums with a unending round of almost constant arguments for a number of years. If I'm honest, I had only carried on for the sake of our children, who at the time we parted were 12, 8 and 6. Definitely the wrong reason for staying with someone! Her timing of presenting me with divorce papers four hours after I returned from Iraq wasn't the best timing, but that sums her up really.

However, that hasn't been the case with Julie and I. Yes, we've had our difficulties, but we have always been able to sort things out and look back and laugh, even when I was ill. We have no "mutual" children, but my children, particularly Drew, have more affinity with Julie than their own mother, and Hannah has called me "Dad" since about a year after I met her.

In fact, before we moved into this house, we never really had any significant problems, lived a reasonably good life and had no real financial worries. But all of this changed after the move and we haven't had the disposable income that we had previously, which has meant that we haven't done half of the things that we did previously. On reflection I can say that often it was a case of my not wanting to "in case" we couldn't afford it rather than because we actually couldn't. I have also been very tired as I have been working at least fifty hours per week and sometimes as many as seventy.

Inevitably this has resulted in my being more irritable and less forgiving, which has clearly impacted on the way in which Julie and I have been with each other.

So that's the current situation. Perhaps, as Julie says, having semi-separate lives will result in us re-discovering the spark that we have had for the last eight years, ignited in May 2005 when I received a letter from a Dental Nurse whom I had recently trained asking me to "Please excuse the familiarity". I hope so, because it’s pointless being financially better off if the person that you love isn't there to help you spend it.