Episode 8 - Always the Bridesmaid

Lynn has been with her husband since she was 18. He’s kind, patient and clued up about menopause, and lately that’s exactly what makes her want to scream. She’s picking fights over nothing, her GP brushed her off, and she’s asking the question so many women are afraid to say out loud: is this menopause, or am I falling out of love? Multi-award-winning menopause coach Julie Court joins Harry and Emma to answer Lynne’s letter: how to go back to your GP prepared (and why a symptom checklist changes the conversation), what perimenopause actually is (yes, you can still have regular periods), what helps if HRT isn’t for you, and how to rebuild your confidence when your body has changed.

You'd expect the hardest part of a breakup to be the heartbreak. For a lot of women it's the exhaustion: the kind that sleep doesn't touch, that often arrives months after the worst is over, just when everyone expects you to be fine. Louise George works with exactly that. She joins Emma and me to talk about post-stress fatigue, why the body keeps paying for a crisis long after it's passed, and what it means to listen to your body rather than the voice telling you to push on through. Emma describes it perfectly: like a ship in a sci-fi film, shutting down everything except life support. We talk about why that happens, what letting go actually looks like when you're running on empty, and how you start bringing things back online, one system at a time.

Helen was married for 21 years. Nine months ago she found out about the affair and she left. Everyone told her she was doing the right thing and nobody argued. What she has now is a phone she checks too often and a friend called Denise who keeps telling her things she hasn't asked to know. He isn't at the house. He isn't working. He's on somebody's sofa twenty minutes away. And Helen lies awake at four in the morning wondering whether he's registered with a doctor, whether the car is taxed, whether his mother got a card in May. She has the cleanest permission anyone has ever been given to feel nothing at all, and she still can't stop. We talk about what that actually is, because Helen is right that it isn't love and it isn't guilt. It's the responsibility that quietly accumulates over twenty years, until you find out you weren't two adults running a house. You were running it and he was living in it. Then some of the unsent messages. The hoovering one. The two people who both froze. The woman who came home from karaoke and wished it had been him. And one that made Emma cheer.

Season 4 continues with Episode 2, an introduction to Bhavna Radia. Bhavna spent years as a divorce lawyer before moving into coaching, and she talks to us about where the early pull towards law came from, what happened when she went through her own divorce, and how she now works with women using both sides of that: the professional training and the lived experience of it. She also explains Mesher orders, which come up constantly and are understood by almost nobody until they're sitting in front of one. A Mesher order lets the family home stay unsold after a divorce, usually until the youngest child finishes education or turns eighteen, at which point it's sold and the proceeds split. It sounds like a solution and for some families it is, but Bhavna is clear about what it costs the person who stays in the house, and why it's worth understanding properly before agreeing to one.

Did you miss us? Or didn’t you notice we’d been gone? Well, nevermind because we are back!