Hello Again

An observation of a changing relationship as husband and wife.

From raising a young family ‘we’ were not the priority, all of our spare time was given willingly to ensure our daughters had the best childhood we could offer them. Our names lost to the generic ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’, I’m not sure we even knew who each other was any more, apart from the person we lived with who didn’t put the top on the toothpaste tube, didn’t empty the dishwasher etc……

With the girls heading into their late teens, they are starting to spend less time with us and more time with friends and thinking of moving to University which will leave a huge void to fill in our lives…..once they are gone…what if we were going to be ‘that couple’ who sit over a meal in silence, or have nothing in common anymore…. we could quite easily go along and hope that it’ll be ok, or we could try and rediscover who we fell in love with all those years ago, try and remember the hopes and dreams we shared…..and work hard to try and change our relationship and avoid becoming ‘that couple’.

Our marriage isn’t falling apart, we get along, and the house runs well but is that enough? When I have shared the work in this project so far, I’ve had so many women commenting and saying this resonates with them or this is one of their fears, or they have been through this part of their lives already and it gets easier, it’s comforting to know I’m not alone. So, I hope as much as it’s the beginning of the project, that it helps other women realise that this is perhaps a ‘normal’ stage in a relationship.

This is the first part of my project, looking at how Geoff spends his time, thinking about what we used to enjoy together, what he used to enjoy when he was younger and strengthen our relationship from there.

I’m using large format photography to reflect and document a new phase in our lives, concentrating on Geoff and his place in the family to begin with. I hope to continue this series over a long period of time to evolve as our relationship and circumstances change over the coming years.