For lots of people, holidays are a tinderbox. There’s this pressure to have the best possible time ever because a) everyone else is (I mean, we’ve all seen the adverts), b) you’re in the most magical place in the world, and c) you have spent so much money.
And yet, if you weren’t in a great place back at home, a holiday is like a magnifying glass on your marital problems, because you’ve packed up all those issues and squeezed them into a one-bedroom villa – it’s a case of ‘same s***, different kitchen’!
Interestingly, although I know lots of couples who have had blazing rows on holiday, that was never my experience. From very early on I realised that my ex-husband and I wanted totally different things. I’m like, ‘Lie me on a beach, baste me and turn me over every 30 minutes.’ The only activity I want on holiday is to put my hand up and say, ‘Another margarita, please!’ He wants to go cycling or hiking, or to the gym every morning.
Even on our honeymoon to Mauritius, he took his golf clubs – and I didn’t see anything wrong in that because, you know, it’s a compromise, and that’s what a marriage is all about.
We met another couple who were also on their honeymoon and the two guys went off to play golf every day while the wife and I lay on the beach. Then we’d meet up again for lunch. And it was absolutely fine because we were both doing exactly what we wanted, and we felt very modern and forward-thinking.
For most of my marriage, this approach worked perfectly well – once we’d had our three children, they’d go off and he’d play golf and I would lie by the pool. Everyone was doing the things they enjoyed. What’s not to love?
‘It’s only when we were on a family holiday the summer just before I left my husband and I got chatting to two other couples that I realised this might not be the future I wanted,’ writes Kat Farmer
It’s only when we were on a family holiday the summer just before I left my husband and I got chatting to two other couples that I realised this might not be the future I wanted. These couples were slightly older than me, they had no kids with them and they were having the most fabulous time. They seemed nothing like me and my husband.
I asked, ‘How long have you been married? Because you look like you’re having so much fun, and you seem to really like each other!’ Turned out both couples were on their second marriage.
All the pennies dropped and I thought, ‘When our kids have grown up and left home, do I want another 20 years of this, or do I want to sit with someone and belly laugh all day long?’ It made me think that maybe there was a way to have another bite of the cherry.
I mean this for my ex-husband, too. I did think, ‘Hang on a minute, what if he would much rather be with someone who wants to go cycling with him on holiday?’ In fact, one of the very first things I said to him when I was leaving was that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life compromising – and neither should he.
If you think it was happy ever after straight after I left, though, let me tell you that the first few holidays with my children as a single parent were like a cross between a Bushtucker Trial and The Hunger Games.
It was mainly down to naivety on my part. The marriage had been over eight months earlier but we held off telling the children until after the elder two had done their exams. So, I planned the trips for the school holidays thinking, ‘I am now in a really good place, so we’re going to have the best holidays ever!’ while they were still coming to terms with their parents getting divorced.
Of course, I had turned their world upside down, so imagining that I could fix everything with holidays was a car crash of an idea. I went into overdrive, desperate to make everything amazing and be the perfect parent – almost as if to prove that in leaving their father, I’d done the right thing. Whereas my children were still processing it all and, of course, they were used to holidays where everyone did their own thing, so why would we suddenly become the Brady Bunch?
I didn’t mind being on my own when it was my choice, but as soon as they went to leave the room I’d be like, ‘Guys! I thought we were going to all play a game?’ Honestly, I may as well have had ‘Can we play dominoes?’ tattooed on my forehead.
One day I even sat at breakfast from 7.30am until 10am because they all ate at different times and I was thinking, ‘I must have breakfast with all of them!’ It was ridiculous.
I am happy to say it is totally different now, so much more relaxed. I have worked out that we all have a better time when we do active things (the irony, when all I ever wanted to do was lie on a beach!). So this year we went to Iceland, which was incredible. We had the best time walking and going to see waterfalls.
This brings me to holidaying with my new partner and the biggest revelation of my post-divorce life: I don’t have to check in! When I was married, I did it all – book the holiday, pack for the kids, find the passports… The first time my partner and I went away together, I said something about needing to check in and he replied, ‘Oh, I’ve already done it.’
It was a small thing that might sound inconsequential, but the implications were huge. The fact that someone would do something so considerate for me… oh my god, it was like a seal of approval from the universe that I’d done the right thing. Suddenly I felt like part of a team again, which I hadn’t for so long.
In the same way a holiday shines a light on the cracks in a relationship, it also shows if you’ve made the right choice.
My ex-husband is now with someone who shares more common interests – and I am sure he’s all the happier on holiday for it.
Similarly, I love a walking tour but never did one with my ex because it would have ended up in a row. With my new partner, if we get lost it’s hilarious – I can laugh at his terrible sense of direction and he thinks it’s amusing. My ex would have taken offence.
My partner also loves lying on a beach doing nothing as much as I do. And it’s during moments like these when I think, ‘I am now with the right person.’
- If you have any questions you’d like to ask Kat or topics you want her to cover, write to her at editor@you.co.uk
Hair: Dayna Vaughan-Teague. Make-up: Levi-Jade Taylor.
Jeans by Hush. All other items, Kat’s own
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