Cat and Nat's Mom Secrets by Catherine Belknap & Natalie Telfer

Author:Catherine Belknap & Natalie Telfer [Belknap, Catherine & Telfer, Natalie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Published: 2022-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

Confession: “I am going to shave my partner’s head in their sleep if they forget to unload the dishwasher one more time. No one fucking prepares you for marriage! I love my partner, but it’s not like…teenage love, or even engagement or pre-kids-married-life love…and I feel bad for saying that, because every day some twenty-five-year-old on Instagram is expressing his intense love for his girlfriend. Do I just need to like, buy some lingerie like in the movies? What’s my problem?” –Anonymous

It’s Friday night. Our husbands have taken the kids to a movie night, and we have Nat’s house to ourselves. Which means the rosé is flowing, and it’s time to talk shit and gripe without having to hide in a closet from our kids. (Just kidding.) (Except about the rosé.) Now that the kids are a bit older, we’ve actually been having some good one-on-one time that’s not impeded by a constant scramble of emergency kid needs. With the kids out of the crisis baby stage, we have time to actually think about ourselves, deeply, for the first time in…years? This time to think is fun—we’ve been able to rank members of the royal family based on relatability (thank you, Princess Charlotte, for the win there), plan the trips we’re going to take once our kids are out of the house (husbands not invited, obviously), and work on our business (this one isn’t funny, but as working moms, it’s important).

But it’s also…terrifying. Suddenly, we actually have the mental capacity to reflect. And what good ever came from being emotionally intelligent and introspective?! We’ve been having a lot of nights like this, reflecting on things together and digging into topics we honestly just haven’t had the mental capacity to even entertain for the past decade or so. This thinking, of course, includes a huge part of our lives: our marriages.

This Friday night, we’re chatting, laughing, I’m scrolling through Instagram to show Nat this hilarious meme, when suddenly, a post from one of the male strippers that we take on tour with us pops up. It’s an all-text post that reads: “Statistics show that 50% of marriages end in divorce. The other 50% break down like this: 2% reach success with ultimate love & happiness. 3% still have romance with lil’ ups and downs but can maintain. The 45% left are stuck in an unhappy situation…they’re trapped and can’t get out…they gotta stay in it for financial reasons, kids, or to make it look good for family and friends.” Underneath he includes that emoji with the eyebrows raised way up, eyeballs popping out. Pretty much my face while I’m reading it.

Nat’s like, “What’s the deal?” I turn my phone to her. She reads it and, without saying anything, immediately stands to get more wine. Who knew our stripper friend was going to send us into an existential tailspin?!

Glasses topped up, she comes back.

“You know,” I say to her, “I’m really challenging the theory of marriage these days. Not because I want a divorce, not at all.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.