Quite a few of my closest mates are not the women I had imagined would become lasting friends. The woman I sat near at work two decades ago, but didn’t truly get to know until we had both left the company. The woman I wasn’t keen on for the first few years of school, but grew close to as we hit teenage years. And the woman I used to be married to: my ex-husband.
It would be disingenuous to suggest that it has not been a long and sometimes rocky path to reach the relationship that we have. But I can honestly say that it is now one of my most cherished friendships, and one quite unlike any other. We were friends for a few years before we were a couple, and we went through a lot while married for nearly four years, during which we had our son.
There were painful rounds of IVF, a mix-up with lab results while I was pregnant, which meant that, for several weeks, we didn’t know if the baby I was carrying was mine. Luckily, he was, but the trauma remained. Then there was my being sexually assaulted on a train. And throughout it all, my ex was a kind, attentive and thoughtful partner. We felt like a team.
Then, for a few painful months after the birth of our son, in 2017, the love between us changed into something that I found confusing, then isolating and then, at last, liberating. It took a while for my ex to articulate what she needed to about having to transition. And I found that time extraordinarily painful – largely because I didn’t quite understand what was going on, and was trying to work out if it was anything to do with me.
I could not be a lesbian any more than she could not be trans.
Then – once I knew – there was undeniable fury. Why had I not asked more, sooner? Why had she not told me more, sooner? And why do we live in a society where speaking these truths about ourselves comes at a price so high that it can seem easier to say nothing at all, for so long? The only way forward was to separate – I could not be lesbian any more than she could not be trans.
But, while I was still grieving for the relationship we had once had, I did not find it as hard as I had expected to find a path towards a new one. The experience of IVF and the strange mix-up with our test results had taught me how wobbly, how permeable some of the certainties I had had about being a woman, or being a parent, were.
Yes, our bodily reality is a huge part of being female, but I knew the pain of feeling, as a woman, that my body was letting me down, disappointing society, somehow not representing all that I felt I was or could be.
I knew what it felt like to take hormones and ‘meddle’ with science in order to achieve the life I wanted – in my case, one in which I could be a mother. And, having had weeks to consider that my embryo might already have been born to someone else, or that I might be carrying someone else’s, I realised that being a parent – and, indeed, being a mother – does not begin and end with the day you give birth. And nor is that the day when a woman is made ‘real’ or ‘complete’.
Now, although my son calls only me Mummy (my ex has a different, affectionate nickname), he happily chats about how his is a family with two mums. And, because my ex has proven to be an engaged, supportive, fun and inspiring co-parent, I have no problem with that. As I see it, the title is earned. And it is in the spirit of this comradeship that our new friendship has been forged. We live apart, our son living with me, but all of us spending weekends together, and we see each other several times a week.
These days, we share confidences about body image, or sexism at work, or family dynamics – the same as I would with my other women friends. I was the one to point out, when she was baffled by the suggestion she ‘smile more’ in a professional environment, that that was a consequence of being a woman. Welcome to the whole deal. We now have a shared experience of the tedious, everyday prejudices women often face: being patronised by an electrician, receiving an unwanted catcall on the street, discovering how we look is all too often where others can place our value. It is these shared experiences, and the knowledge that our family is valid, that have helped our friendship to flourish.
We are not, however, leading the rainbow-bedecked, Brighton-based dream that some might imagine. Sure, we have, over the years, bought each other make-up, borrowed the odd belt and discussed the quandary of our lockdown hairdos. But, as we all know, a true friendship needs more than such clichéd moments.
Years of listening to each other, supporting each other as parents and respecting the differences, as well as the similarities, in our experiences is what has enriched the relationship. The steel frame of friendship upon which our romance was built has remained, revealing its solidity as the rubble of our marriage crumbled around it. She is not the friend I ever expected to have, but she has become one of the women I cherish most in my life.
‘Some Body To Love: A Family Story’ by Alexandra Heminsley is out now (Chatto).