We increasingly started to lead different lives - he was church and garden, I was busy with a toddler and my friends. I was also pregnant with our second daughter and full of youthful life. I had good times with my todller but I envied my friends still at university and visited them often. I even went on the youth group weekend away from back home - not quite believing I was actually a vicar's wife and supposed to be grown up now, I really wasn't grown up at all. I felt like a cheat in an adults role! My husband spent his days shut in the study and I asked him several times - 'isn't a vicar supposed to go out visiting old people or something?' He said that was soooo old fashioned, the job was not so simple anymore and didn't I understand anything about his job? I had to say no not really. I couldn't work out what on earth he could be doing all week every week in there.
He did still garden - usually (definitely) when it was time to feed and bath our daughter and later daughters. He never ever did those things. I got cross that we didn't share that, at least sometimes anyway. I couldn't understand why he didn't want to enjoy those times with them either. He was at home all the time so he had great opportunity that other dad's would have loved but he never ever joined in. I would get them in bed and then cook for us. He always had other things to do so I was always alone.
That is very significant because it was the beginnings of me feeling lonely and unhappy. I thought marriage was teamwork where you enjoyed each other's company and did things together. He, I think, saw it as doing separate roles to make the whole thing work. But his thing was not my thing. I did things that helped him and the family like cooking, washing, ironing and bringing up the children while he did his work and the gardening, watched TV and read books. I questioned the amount of time he spent in the garden instead of playing with his children or talking to me. He would say 'God has given us this garden and it is up to us to look after it and maintain it and keep it lovely.' F*kin b*llocks I thought - and what about the people 'God' has given you - don't they count?
