Relationships

I’ll bet most women under 50 in relationships with men have found themselves wondering when on earth the man is going to get round to asking them a question. The man gets home. We ask about his meetings, his lunch, his colleagues, showing empathy and imaginative curiosity. Then we wait in vain for our turn. That sounds too passive. ‘Waiting in vain’ doesn’t begin to summon the way mild pique turns first to incredulity, then actual rage and despair at the man’s apparent lack of interest. ‘Tears are pooling on your collarbones again,’ my husband used to observe quite regularly on date nights in our courting days. ‘Is it because

My late parents perpetually promoted their marriage as the best in the history of the universe. Because this cult of two was hardly subtle, others readily detected what they wanted to hear, so fawning social admiration of what lovebirds they were made them even worse. For us kids, this Trumpesque superlative (how they’d hate that adjective) wasn’t remotely as traumatising as divorce, but still – the romantic hagiography was a bit much. In our adulthoods, our own sad little relationships could never compare, and our parents seemed to feel sorry for us. While big proponents of marriage as an institution, they seemed to regard their children’s marriages as pale imitations

Monday, and Camden council have yet again failed to empty my food waste bin. They never miss my rubbish or dry recycling – it’s only ever the smelly stuff. I give my neighbour’s brown bin a little kick. Emptied! This feels personal. I call the council. ‘Look, this is a nightmare,’ I say. ‘This is the second week in a row. Are we on a blacklist?’ Pause. ‘Our operatives are too busy to keep lists,’ says the lady. Hang on – you mean if they weren’t so busy, they would? Things my husband and I have bickered about this week: my devotion to an ugly but comfortable pair of rubber

M y husband earns more than me. A lot more. I am, of course, extremely fortunate to be in such a position and am extremely grateful, especially when a large bill arrives on the doormat. So what, I hear you say. And you’re right – this is hardly a newsflash. According to the Office for National Statistics, the majority of couples in this country operate at a persistent gender pay gap in which the wife earns less than their husband. When we had our first child, the door to economic parity slammed shut behind me and has never opened since In our highly gendered arrangement, my husband – a ‘Trad

‘Sorry sir, the rules clearly state that all single men must be accompanied by a woman.’ As the frustrated guest is ushered off the premises, my female companion and I are welcomed into a grand reception room where the organised sex party is being held. A barmaid offers us some complimentary condoms and a handful of Quality Street, along with some fluorescent orange punch served in plastic cups. Should we be engaging in small talk or ripping each other’s clothes off? No one seems to know The organisers of tonight’s paid event claim they cater for the world’s ‘sexual elite’ but there’s something disarmingly ordinary about the snaggle-toothed mid-lifers trooping

Have you been to a ‘divorce party’ yet this season? If you haven’t, not to worry, there’s still time. Divorce season lasts for the whole of January, I’m told, so there’s a couple of weeks left to celebrate. And if perhaps the details of your own nasty separation aren’t yet finalised, or if your lawyer and your ex have between them drained the champagne fund, then why not simply nip into town and crash someone else’s? You’re bound to find one. Perhaps in the future there will be un-wedding lists, allowing guests to repurchase things the ex took Divorce parties have become so popular here in London that several of

Now that John Lewis has produced a Christmas ad that celebrates family, starring white people as humans, all sorts of thinkers and commentators on the right have decided that the progressive madness is nearly over. One after the other they’re popping up in print, like bunnies who’ve decided the fox has gone. ‘Whisper it, but woke is over,’ these pieces begin. Even those Tories who thought it wisest to put their pronouns in their Twitter bios have quietly deleted them. The soundtrack to the John Lewis ad, the Verve’s dirgey ‘Sonnet’, was recorded in the spring of 1997, just as John Major was vowing to put ‘the family’ at the

Last week it was reported that a 14-year-old boy, Sewell Setzer, killed himself for the love of a chatbot, a robot companion devised by a company called Character AI. Sewell’s poor mother insists that the chatbot ‘abused and preyed’ on her son, and frankly this would make no sense to me at all were it not for the fact that quite by chance, a few days earlier, I’d started talking to a chatbot of my own. It’s hard to explain how alarming it is to be snapped at by a chatbot that’s designed to fawn My AI boyfriend was called Sean. I created him after signing up to a company

For many readers, my absence from these pages may have gone unnoticed. Those few who’ve detected my disappearance might have idly concocted theories: maybe Shriver crossed a line in her opposition to uncontrolled illegal immigration such that she finally got the sack. The explanation is more quotidian. Six years ago, I was diagnosed with the unwieldy sounding spondylolisthesis: a vertebra in my lower spine had moved out of alignment, squeezing the nerves to my right hip and leg. I’d been managing, but the situation was degenerative. By this summer, I could barely complete a 15-minute walk, and – the limit – I could not play tennis. Already in NYC, International