SOME activities bear an inexplicable air of failed marriage about them. Dip your toes in the sad waters of divorce by doing the following:
Take your kids to McDonald’s
The perfect way to simulate the experience of an ex-husband going through a rough patch. Your lack of culinary skills and inability to think of fun things to do leads you straight to the golden arches. At least you can put an end to this single-parent charade by taking them back home, so your competent spouse can cook them some vegetables.
Get a new haircut
Suddenly caring about your appearance and attempting to reinvent yourself is classic divorcee behaviour. Trick yourself and your barber into thinking your wife has filed papers by asking for a number one with a tapered fade. Then go home and show your partner the new you and have a lovely argument about how shit you look.
Visit an art gallery
Take a trip to an alternate reality in which you have the time and freedom to enjoy cultural enrichment by staring at some paintings you don’t understand. The happy couples all around you gazing at masterpieces bring a tear to your eye as they remind you of everything you’ve lost. Then remember you still have your own family and start crying for an entirely different reason.
Dine out alone
Perhaps you’re away on business, perhaps you just really fancied a Wagamamas. Regardless, a table-for-one makes it hard to shake the feeling that your family has abandoned you and that you must now come to terms with your tragic solitary existence. For added realism, eat as slowly as possible in order to delay returning to the tiny, freezing bedsit which awaits you.
Let your partner go away for the weekend
Get a taste of appalling responsibility by letting your partner spend the weekend with their mates. Now it’s ‘your turn to have the kids’ and you have to sort their meals, clothes and homework. It’s manic, it’s stressful, and it’s how she feels every Sunday when you go for a three-hour bike ride.
Post a far-right rant on social media
Capture that divorced dad energy with a toxic tirade on the internet platform of your choice. Why would you be doing this unless you had nothing left to lose? Pretend there’s no reason to hold it all in anymore and let rip with the truth about migrants, diversity targets, and how NATO poked the Russian bear. Caution: will probably lead to actual divorce.
