Stop In The Name Of Love

Pumping the brakes on Mr Stable’s advances, Sarah realises how far she’s come since her divorce

- Sarah Quigley

Although I’m not a gingerbread-coloured President with a pathological mistrust of anyone carrying a different passport, I’ve imposed some travel bans of my own. Mr Stable will stay on the other side of town until he’s a card-carrying legally verified single, and I will stick in my own neighbourhood to avoid any Close Encounters of the Accidental Kind.

Being encircled by a new, invisible Berlin Wall doesn’t make me feel trapped. Instead, I feel a kind of freedom. Now I have time to sift through various thoughts – and uppermost of these is how we’re always in a hurry to start the next phase of our lives, which sometimes leads us to replicate exactly what we had before, ‘only better’. The speed at which Mr Stable is attempting to organise a second, similarly stable existence, lining me up as the next long-term life partner, makes me uneasy. Having dismaying proof that ‘til death do us part’ isn’t always manageable, my still shaky divorcee’s heart isn’t ready to say ‘forever’ again just yet.