Seven year hitch

The seventh anniversary for many couples can sound alarm bells for choppy waters ahead. But it wasn’t infidelity that made this one a disaster. Tom’s lost his job. Again.

I dragged it out of him during the celebratory meal we’d planned to thank my mum, freshly arrived from the States, who’d taken the kids for a couple of days while I got on with my first week in a new job. The weather was glorious and I’d floated home, pleased as punch with my professional progress after a few late afternoon beers with my new work colleagues.

Flush from beer and suddenly profligate due to pay rise and payout, I commanded my waiting family to take an Uber to the trendy BBQ restaurant, Climpsons, which has sprung up under the arches near London Fields, rather than sweating it out on the bus. But Tom was tetchy. It didn’t take me long to wangle why.

It was Friday 13th, rather fittingly. After months and years of rolling with the punches, this one floored me completely, even though it wasn’t entirely unexpected. Given my celebratory mood, and the sunshine, the full impact of this body blow took several days to hit me. The repercussions will no doubt last months.

He kept it from me all day; all the while I texted merry updates about my own day’s progress -only the fifth in my new role.  Wanting to protect me from myself, still in a tenuous situation after my own recent redundancy, he knew I wouldn’t take it well.  To say I’m at the end of my tether may be only slightly stretching the truth. But only a week ago I wrote of a sense of calm that had befallen since the cord was cut at my last workplace and I’d been able to rest, recuperate, find a new direction. Naturally, this post, the happy one, got lost down the back of the internet never to be see again; and out of frustration, newly busy and to spite my face, I logged off for a while, hence my lengthier than usual silence.

But ultimately I’m still in recovery mode. It’s fair to say that I’ve had more than my shares of troubles since I married Tom – and a fair few before I met him to boot – many over which I have no control, for all there are some I do. This is the fifth job-related crisis in as many years, between the two of us. The first, at the zenith of the financial crisis, and fairly well documented here and elsewhere, changed our lives forever.

Thus scarred, it’s hard not to overreact when the future looks uncertain again. But as well as rocking the boat of my mental health, our recent redundancies have also offered something of a lifeline, as much as they nearly tipped me over the edge. Money. Cold hard cash. And with it, a safety net that would have been previously out of our reach.

It’s not a dead cert that Tom will be back in the market anytime soon, but promising leads mean he’s fast tracked his positive attitude, stay-at-home itinerary of painting and fixing before he once again gets sucked back into the city rat race. Having said that, his isn’t the only firm reducing headcount. The market in which Tom operates has never really recovered from the financial crisis. We could be back in it for the long haul. The penny pinching, downtrading, make and mend do was one thing. I can cope, just about, with that. But the fallout goes much further. Lat time it very nearly destroyed us, our marriage, and that’s what scares me the most.

At least, this time, I’m in more control. For now, we have a buffer; a financial buffer that could, with luck and judgement, could turn into a windfall. So until I know which way it is blowing, it’s a waste of energy to panic, although that’s never stopped me before.

For now at least, I can a deep breath, and keep treading water in the hope that, rather than sinking us, this new development might be the opportunity we’ve been waiting for lift ourselves out of this quagmire of market forces, rather than allowing myself to get into the state of drowning sorrow over the ebb and flow of our liquidity that marked my seventh anniversary of my marriage to Tom..