Best of: 200 episodes of The Divorce Podcast

200 episodes of honest, hopeful conversations about divorce – here are the moments that stayed with us.

To mark our 200th episode, we're looking back at some of the conversations that have meant the most – to us and to you. From day one, The Divorce Podcast has been part of amicable's mission to change the way people separate, making divorce kinder, fairer and a little less lonely. This special episode brings together the honest, funny and moving moments that capture exactly why we do it.

In this episode, you'll hear from:

• Ella Kenion – on co-parenting, and why the thought of an ex meeting someone new can still sting
• Emma Campbell – on the emotional weight of single parenting
• Emma Reed Turrell – on the difference between kindness and people pleasing
• Hal Cruttenden – on how hard many men find it to open up
• Jonathan Fitter-Harding – on the day-to-day reality of 'nesting' and co-parenting with kindness
• Ebele Okobi – on grief, growth and an unexpected reconciliation

This episode is for anyone navigating separation who could use a reminder that they're not alone – and a lovely place to start if you're new to the podcast.

So many of you have told us how much the podcast has helped over the years, and that means everything. If someone you know might need it too, please share this episode with them.

Trigger warning: This episode touches on themes that some people might find distressing, including serious illness, bereavement and times of low mood. If you're affected by anything discussed, you can call Samaritans free on 116 123, or text SHOUT to 85258.

Meet our guests

Ella Kenion is an actress with a long and varied career across stage and screen, with highlights including 'The Outlaws', 'The Detectorists' and 'Midsomer Murders'. 

Emma Campbell is an author, speaker and podcast host, known to her Instagram followers as Limitless Em. 

Emma Reed Turrell is a psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, podcaster and author of Please Yourself: How to Stop People-Pleasing and Transform the Way You Live and What Am I Missing? Discover the Four Blind Spots That are Holding You Back and How to Overcome Them.

Hal Cruttenden is a stand-up comedian, actor and podcaster. In his latest show, Hal Cruttenden: Can Dish It Out But Can't Take It, he discussed the devastation of his divorce - after 20 years of marriage his wife left him.

Jonathan Fitter-Harding is a proud dad of two, a creative entrepreneur and one of the key people behind Pride Canterbury - the main LGBTQ+ event in the South East.

Ebele Okobi is the principal of Revolutionary Projects, an advisor, board member and maker of good trouble with 25 years of experience leading global teams across tech, consumer brands and arts institutions.

More divorce resources

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We're giving away a copy of Kate’s book amicable divorce. To enter, just email us at hello@amicable.co.uk with the subject 'The Divorce Podcast' by the 30th of June, and we'll pick a winner at random. 

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#SeparationStories

Transcript

Kate Daly 0:05

Hello and welcome to the Divorce Podcast. I'm Kate Daly, a relationship counsellor, divorce specialist, and co-founder of Amicable, the online legal service for separating couples. This is a big one, our 200th episode. To celebrate, we've pulled together some of our and your favourite moments from the last 100 episodes. We look at relationships and separation from the emotional, legal, and social angles, and invited experts and special guests to share their stories and tips for ending relationships in a kinder and better way. So many of you have let us know how helpful you found the podcast over the years, and that means everything to us. So if someone you know might need it, please share this episode with them. If you're new here, well welcome. You've picked a great place to start. Before we begin, a gentle heads up. Some of today's conversations touch on themes that might be upsetting, including serious illness, bereavement, and times of low mood. So please look after yourself as you listen. And you'll find some support organizations linked in the show notes too. We're kicking things off with the wonderful Ella Kenyon, an actor with a long and varied career across stage and screen, with highlights including the outlaws, the detectorists, and midsummer murders. I like this conversation because it's funny and it's honest in equal measure. And Ella doesn't shy away from difficult subjects. Have a listen.

SPEAKER_05 1:38

And I'm gonna be really honest. What he did was just awful. But I would be devastated all over again if you met someone. He's not with this, but you see, he's she kicked him out six weeks after I did. So he's been on his own ever since. And I uh I and it's awful because I don't want him. Of course, I I really genuinely I don't. And I know he doesn't want me. He's made that very clear. But why the hell is that? Is it my ego? I don't know. I just would find it, I would. I'd be hurt all over again. So I, you know, I obviously need to go back to thinking.

Kate Daly 2:14

I think it's because it's an it it puts some distance between you, doesn't it? At the moment, you can still co-parent and you've you've still got a sort of that three connection, haven't you? You, your son, and him. If someone else comes into that, the possibility is then that becomes diluted. So you might not want him as a romantic partner, but you it sounds like you're integrating as co-parents really well. And you know, you're able to go and do nice things together for birthdays and stuff. That then forms a different kind of bond, but nonetheless it's a bond. So when another family comes into that, you're having to reshape all of those bonds, and you got that sort of unknown feeling of who might be coming into your, you know, blended family and all of that kind of stuff. So it is tough to navigate and it is difficult, and it I'm not surprised it brings up those kinds of feelings. Next is Emma Campbell, an author and speaker, known to many of you on Instagram as Limitless M. Emma has lived through so much surviving cancer and a traumatic separation. What really stayed with me was her honesty and how she found her separation even harder than her cancer diagnosis. And she's so open about the emotional weight of single parenting.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

It's three different individuals with three different personalities, three different relationships with that person who's no longer there, one daughter who's the impact of an absent father is different on a daughter than in a son. You know, one son is particularly sporty, so I know craves the kind of football dad kind of sideline thing. If I could help myself and probably then as a result would help them, I would just kind of drop my shoulders, trust it. But instead it's like, you know, this kind of and I've worked I'm working so hard to kind of take some to exhale occasionally. And because the weight of responsibility is enormous. And I probably make it harder, but the emotional weight of responsibility I feel every single day, especially at this point, they're 15 and you know, we really are in that that kind of they're out in the world more. I'm finding it incredibly challenging at the moment to just not kind of crumble, despite all the good things that are happening in life, not crumble at the weight. And I've got to keep these three slash four people mentally, emotionally on track, get them through school. And and I I'm yeah, certainly as we speak today, I'm finding it loving my freedom. You've got higher expectations than me.

Kate Daly 4:36

I just concentrate keeping mine alive at the moment. Living in London with a 16-year-old son and an 18-year-old daughter, both with their own different issues and problems. I just find it completely uh overwhelming.

SPEAKER_06 4:49

And it's not something that no matter how many good friends or what a lovely family you've got, it sounds like you've got both, and I feel like I've got both. It's the absence of another parent who cares about your children in exactly the same way you do that creates the stress and the pressure of it. And there's no amount of friendship or loving family that can take off that pressure from your shoulders. You have to just bear it and get on. And it is exhausting. So I see you and I feel your pain. I understand that part of it.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Thank you. And one thing I just I know we're talking a lot, but one thing that I think other people listening might resonate with, I realised over the years, you know, in these in these challenging moments, in these moments of feeling this kind of what I'm what I'm carrying is, and I think then that's affected my kind of style of parenting or kind of almost just almost feel like I'm not parenting them sometimes, just letting them exist and just getting through each day. But the feeling has been I need to love them to make up the the areas where there isn't that um source of love.

Kate Daly 5:52

You've got to do twice as much love, haven't you, to compensate. Yeah. Yeah, which isn't always the healthiest thing. Then there's Emma Reed Turrell, an author and psychotherapist. In her episode, she opened up about her own divorce for the first time and explained what role people pleasing plays in divorce. That's something we don't talk about very often. This episode is full of helpful tips on how to spot people pleasing and put a stop to it. I know so many of you found it useful.

SPEAKER_04 6:22

I think it comes down to why you're doing it and what would happen if you didn't. And people pleasing tends to come from a place of fear. If I don't do this, what's the repercussion going to be? That there's going to be a consequence if I don't do it. Kindness tends to come from a position more of neutrality. I'm doing this for someone else.

SPEAKER_06 6:44

Yes, irrespective of what they come back with or what the consequence of doing it is. I'm doing it because it's a good thing for me to take it.

SPEAKER_04 6:52

It feels like a good thing to do, and I want to do it and I have it to give. I think that's another important distinction. It's in my gift to give it. Whereas so often people pleasers are way into their emotional overdraft, begging and borrowing from tomorrow to pay the debts that they've made promises about today. So they don't have it to give. So I'll often see a people pleaser at a point of burnout, which we wouldn't see from kindness, because if someone is a kind person, if they behave kindly, by the very nature of them being a kind person, they will be included in the number to whom they are behaving kindly. So there has to be that sense of give and take within kindness that I think can sometimes be missing in people pleasing.

Kate Daly 7:34

Comedian Hal Cruttenden, a stand-up actor and podcaster, brought real heart to this episode. You may know his show, Can Dish It Out But Can't Take It, where he found the funny side of divorce. But on our podcast, he goes a bit deeper. There's humor, of course, but there's also a lot of truth too. And for this one, I hope it gives the men listening permission to open up a bit more.

SPEAKER_03 7:58

Until my divorce, no one knew anything about problems in my marriage. I think I might have told one friend the year before we broke up that we'd had this moment. And then I kind of brush it off when he next asked, going, How are things? And I went, Oh, it's fine, it's fine. Because I felt because you basically make too many men do this thing of having not, it's not that their wife is their best friend, which is a nice thing to say. It's their only really intimate friend that they really can share everything with. And I don't know, again, I've I've not read enough psychology books. And I always, whenever I'm having this conversation, I always go, I like to pontificate on things. But I I think it's to do with competition. I think it's to do with not wanting to be seen as vulnerable, not wanting to you feel like you're slightly am I being slightly disloyal to my wife by bringing up by marriage with a friend and letting them know about something that she might not want sharing.

SPEAKER_06 8:46

I pretty much promise you, women do not have that same feeling. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 8:53

And I know my wife absolutely talked to everybody because since then I've met friends who've gone, oh yes, we you were having a terrible time, weren't you? About five years in. And I went, Were we? I mean, literally friends. I don't, you know, so so yeah, so so there was a lot of chat. I have got better male friends now. I still think, I don't know. I still don't know if if if I if I got married again, if I was in a very long, intense relationship again, whether I would still share everything with another friend. I might do. But I also think I might slip into the whole thing going, well, the best friend is the person I'm with. So I think it's just uh women are so much better at being empathetic. And again, this is huge generalizations. I have one of my best friends is is a woman from uh drama school, and who I've been friends with for 30 years, uh 35 years, and she probably hears the most of what I'll share with people because she's a woman. And yet, I mean, men are trying so hard, aren't they? We are doing that, mate. Do you want to talk about it? All those sort of chatty ads, and you go, oh, we're just so bad at it. We're just just not we, I mean, especially my generation, I think the younger generation, I think this is all improving. I went, you know, I was sent to all boys' private schools where, oh my god, I remember every single time I, you know, the the the three times I cried at school as a little boy, where, oh, I'll I'll they'll just go, you do not do that. So you learn that you're shutting off part of yourself with in male environments.

Kate Daly 10:19

Jonathan Fitter Harding shares one of the most practical conversations we've had. Jonathan's a creative entrepreneur and a proud dad of two, and he and his ex-partner have a nesting co-parenting arrangement. I loved getting into the real nitty-gritty detail with him. The next bit contains some really useful tips.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

So for our situation, we've got a so we've got our kind of house, we've got the family home, and then we both have our separate places to stay. And every Saturday at that midday, we do a changeover. So the person who is then moving in. So if I've had the week off out of the house, I'll then come back at about midday, take over from the kids. Ben and I all might have lunch together, or we might take the dog for a walk with the kids, or we'll just have a catch-up if we haven't seen each other during the week or had uh had much of had much communication. Then we essentially do a handover. I say goodbye to the kids, I let the kids know if I'm going to see them at all during the week so they have a heads up and so they're they're not wondering or feeling anxious, and so they can kind of have a plan. I then pack all my kind of bits that I need for the week and then head over to my place. Uh, and then vice versa on Ben's week. And we also obviously have to, whilst the house is one thing, but then it's not just the house, you then have to deal with things like money and bills. And so we we have an app that we use and we have a way of tracking our spending. So for during the week, anything that I buy for the house or for the kids, like food and that kind of stuff, we track it on an app and then kind of once a week, once every other week, that person then gets the money spent back from our kind of pot, our joint accounts that we still have at the moment. And that works really well.

Kate Daly 12:01

Let me just dig into that a second then, because obviously I'm trying, I think I want to understand this in real practical, nitty-gritty detail because I think this is really important stuff. So let's say you go to Sainsbury's or wherever, and you do a weekly shop and you've bought some shaving foam for you along with the rest of the shop. What happens to that?

SPEAKER_02 12:19

So we uh again is all about being kind. Is shaving foam the end of the world? No. Is it really expensive? No. Is it something that Ben might use? Yes. So that would all go in. If I was going to buy a really lovely bottle of aftershave that I keep in my cupboard in the house, no. That's not Ben might have a problem with that.

Kate Daly 12:43

Okay. So you've got your own space in the house, then you've got personal space that you don't go into. And so you've got the communal space, but within the house, there's like personal zones effectively.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

Well, no, in a way. Yeah. So we again, and funnily enough, I was listening to your podcast talking about having space and having your own things and what you share, what you don't share. And yes, if we're both in the house for some reason and the other person's having a shower, I won't go into the bedroom because it's all very open. We've got like an en suite and things. And so if I need to go in, I would, I would knock. But what we do is so we've both got new partners. And for instance, uh last weekend my partner was down, Lewis, and we stay in the guest room. So in my week in the house, I would stay in the guest room with Lewis. And then if no one's here, I will go to what is our master bedroom. And vice versa, when Ben's here, um if his new partner was here, Ben would stay in the guest room with his partner. And so our kind of we've still got it's our space. So when we're here on our own, I don't want to lie in a bed that Ben and his partner have laid in. And vice versa, Ben doesn't want to lay in the bed that I've been in with my partner.

Kate Daly 13:56

So there's some real thought gone into the personal boundaries around this, then by the sound of it.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

Yes. Yeah. And even, you know, and it's and it's all come from, don't get me wrong, we haven't sat down this and got this on the first try. There has been plenty of that's not okay, that made me feel really uncomfortable. What can we do to make us not feel uncomfortable with that? So for instance, we both have our own sinks in our bathroom. And if Lewis is over, he'll use my sink. He won't use Ben's sink because at the same time, Ben doesn't want to come home to a sink that he didn't leave it the way he, you know, he left it. So, and it's just it's those kind of things. Again, it's bit is that consideration.

Kate Daly 14:37

And finally, Abele Acobe, who's held senior roles at OpenAI, Meta, and Nike, but it's her divorce that takes center stage here, and it's very moving. The conversation stood out to me because it's not the usual separation story, but one with a twist at the end and a reconciliation. To finish this lineup, this is how Abele realized that there was something more to her and her ex-partner's relationship.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Short of along, she started talking to me about her grief and she said, Hey, did you go to therapy when you lost your brother? I said, I totally believe in therapy. And she said, Yeah, okay, cool. But did you go? And I said, And I believe in it. I think people should go. She's like, So you did to go. She said, No, the reason, the only reason I'm asking is because there's this phenomenon of when you lose someone, that you then try and do everything to protect yourself against that hurt. And sometimes that means pushing away the people you love the most. And I remember her having this conversation with me. And then also the week before that, she'd happened to see my husband and I be, or my ex-husband and I, because we were at this artistic event. And she said, Who's that guy? And I said, Oh, it's my ex. And she said, Your ex. And I said, Yes. She said, No, that's not, that's not ex-energy. I said, No, no, no, we've always been friends. She said, No, no, no. I said, and she said, No, I know what I saw. And so, anyway, out of that conversation, when she told me that, I felt like I had been, I felt like someone who just met me had seen me really deeply. And so two things happened. One, I had this like real strong sense that I needed to tell Rich, like, you need to follow your purpose. If that means that you're an artist and you never make a penny, that's what it means. Do you have to do that? So that was, I think that was a really key thing to go to him and say, I see you. I see who you are. And I think you have to do that. So, regardless of whether we are together or not, you have to do that. But then I had this real deep realization, wait a minute, was part of why we were apart and part of why I didn't have any energy around it is because I was protecting myself against what it feels like to love someone who you're always afraid, like deeply afraid that you will lose them. So that realization, then we started spending time together, first as friends. And then we went to, this is gonna sound really, but I we went to Venice because I had been a patron for Sonia Boys, who's the first um black woman to represent the UK at Venice. And so there was a closing event in Venice. And I said, Hey, you should come because you're an artist and you should hang out with artists. We're gonna go as friends. And so we went to Venice, and you know, Venice is beautiful, it's like one of the most beautiful romantic. And so I think we went on a Thursday by Sunday. We were more than friends. And so I remember flying back and being like, well, so what does this mean? But then realizing we couldn't tell the kids. So we were sneaking around behind the kids' backs. So we would get a babysitter and like have the big the kids at my uh at Rich's house, and then we'd be on a date at my house. Like it was, it was very slapstick, like the whole situation was very slapstick, but this, but it also was actually quite cute. It was quite like this thing of like getting to know him again in a different context and also.

Kate Daly 17:46

You've had the sort of scales pulled from your eyes almost, so you can see him for the man he is. And he has the opportunity to step into that character, doesn't he? And to and to play his part properly rather than getting sidelined by work, job, whatever it was that was holding him back from reaching his artistic potential.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

I also think that the time apart was really good for both of us in that we developed and grew as people. I had my own developing and growing up to do as well. And I think there is a way that when you're in a long-term partnership, sometimes you're not, it's not on purpose, but because of there's just a way that sometimes you can keep each other from growing in the way that you need to. So I would always joke, like, I actually recommend a divorce to so like so many people should get divorced, or it's like spend time apart.

Kate Daly 18:35

That's it for our 200th episode. Thank you truly for being here to listen to all of them. To mark this occasion, we're giving away a copy of my book, Amicable Divorce. To enter, just email us at hello at amicable.co.uk with the subject of the divorce podcast, and we'll pick a winner at random on the first of July. As always, for separation and co-parenting support, please visit amicable.co.uk, where you can explore our resources, or you can book a free advice consultation. You can find me on LinkedIn and Instagram, and you can hear more about new podcast episodes by subscribing for updates and visiting thedivorsepodcast.com, or you can just find us on your favourite listening platform. Don't forget we'd love to hear how we can help further. So please share any questions on divorce separation and co parenting with us at hello at amicable.co.uk. Thank you so much for listening. Share it with your loved ones if you think they'll find it helpful. And here's to another 200 episodes.