It’s always sad when a family breaks up, no matter how amicably. Sadder still when the couple decides that they’re not going to split up like any other common, run of the mill husband and wife. Oh, no.
Actress Gwyneth Paltrow and musician Chris Martin are much more special than the rest of us. They announced their divorce was a “conscious uncoupling”, if you please. Well, it must have set a trend because there was almost a conscious uncoupling in our house recently when my husband announced, two weeks before we were due to leave for London, that he didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to go!
Tickets had been paid for, hotels booked and I was beside myself at the thought of the adventure we would be having. Then, 14 days before we were due to fasten our seatbelts, he announced he wasn’t coming with me.
Flying is a big deal for him. He’s horribly claustrophobic. The plane door closing is like a coffin being nailed shut. It takes all his powers to overcome that initial panic. And at six foot four, he doesn’t fit behind ordinary seats, so unless we’re travelling up the pointy end, it’s impossibly uncomfortable for him. And we’ve only travelled up the pointy end twice. And both times it was truly, out-of-this-world amazing.
I think it’s easier to never travel up front unless you can afford to fly in business every time you travel off shore. Once you know the glory of the pointy end, you can never un-know it.
Even if you’re having a perfectly fine time back in 63H, with a seat between you and an amiable seat companion, and there’s a great movie on and no crying babies nearby, you know that, beyond the curtain, there is a wonderland of food and space and lovely loos and best of all – a lie-flat bed.
Stepping through that curtain is like walking through the wardrobe into Narnia. I was never meant to fly business class. A girl from Tuakau, Pukekohe, Tokoroa, Turangi, Waihi and Hamilton is jolly lucky to be travelling at all and I know that. So I was just focusing on the fortune of being able to whip away and see my daughter and her husband for the first time in six months.
Tom had previously said he didn’t want to spend two weeks “footering” around London – (footering is what he said and I assume it’s a word), so I’d suggested he visit his family in Northern Ireland for a week, then we’d all meet up somewhere.
He agreed and Kate, my daughter, went into overdrive, booking flights, hotels, restaurants and excursions. While Tom was in Ireland, Kate and I would spend a week in Barcelona and then we’d all meet up in Marrakech.
(It sounds terribly glamorous, I know, but the flights in Europe are so cheap that’s it’s like suggesting a week in Auckland, then meeting up in Rotorua).
And now this infuriating, contrary husband of mine was telling me he wasn’t coming. We couldn’t afford it; his youngest brother wouldn’t be in Ireland anyway; the dog was dying and somebody needed to be with him; what if the house got burgled? On and on he went.
I had a moment.
I thought of consciously uncoupling and flying off by myself. I’d have a great time; he would be safe and sound at home. Win, win. But couples need to have adventures. We need to spend time together, no matter how raw and uncomfortable, or else we’ll just be flatmates.
We need to compromise and we need to be generous. And so he did and I was and we left for London, for better or worse, on Friday. We consciously coupled – and hopefully we’ll stay coupled for the rest of the holiday at the very least.
