You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs

Anger can often be a useful thing, driving us to effect change, and galvanising us to get things done. But from certain standpoints, anger just looks bitter and resentful. Which is why I’m wary of being angry about how I’ve been presented by the editors of a magazine following an article which I wrote about my marriage, as I know being angry about it will only invite people to respond that I should have known better.

And indeed I should. As a journalist, I know how people are presented by the media as pantomime puppets to be booed or cheered as their caricatures are casually drawn by the people who pull the  strings.

When I was asked by a friend to write about my marriage, which has the unusual facet of being open, or rather, right now, that  I’m seeing someone other then my husband, I agreed, with the proviso that I would have full editorial control, and write the whole piece myself. Of course, broadsheets and their online offspring need clicks and they need to be polemical to attract the comments that keep their SEO value high.

So I wasn’t totally surprised – although I felt let down –  that my piece, a discussion about how different types of relationships are becoming more normal and socially acceptable, and how I have managed to assimilate the love of more than one person into my life, despite it being against societies’ norms – had been given a rather sneering headline and standfirst.

The article is thankfully behind a paywall, and as such, the comments have limited to a handful mixed bag of the anticipated ‘selfish’ to ‘honest’, and so, far, the response on Twitter has been overwhelmingly positive. My blog has attracted record views – I knew it would be controversial, and the aim was to draw attention to my blog, so to that end, it has been successful.

It goes without saying that it took an inordinate amount of courage to go public with something that may invite judgement and has the potential to damage my family, and for the editor to provoke this on my behalf – a friend of mine – feels at worst, a betrayal, and at best bloody, typical. I simply hope that readers go beyond the stand first and read the piece before they form judgement on the way I live my life. I will post the full, unedited article later on today, but at the moment, I’m having an omelette made by my boyfriend.

As they say, you can’t make one without breaking eggs.

I appreciate the support of any new followers, so thanks for taking the time to read and to attempt to understand. I am also sad that the picture, which had been taken over two nights, in which we had invited the photographer, who had said the resulting image would be “a record of the rapport between photographer and subject on the night” to dinner and gone for a drink, had been chosen specifically, out of hundreds of shots to look as louche and debauched as possible, and the bowl of pasta I had hoovered up, shattered after work, on our second night of sitting, has taken centre stage in a moment of relaxation. But then you can’t control the lens through which another person views you.

Oh, and we don’t all share a bed, by the way. That’s artistic license on the account of the subeditor. But then, I’ve worked as a sub. And in her shoes, perhaps I would have done the same. Perhaps, in mine, so would she.