The Dispatch
No XLVIII · Separation · 5 min
The first 30 days after she says it's over
A blunt field guide to the first month after the conversation. Sleep, paperwork, the kids, and the part nobody warns you about.
No · · FAMILY
When the parent is still difficult
I was sitting in Mum's lounge room on a Saturday at 11:30 in the morning, ten minutes into a visit, and she had already told me three things. That I'd put on weight.
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · FAMILY
Power of attorney with an ageing parent
I was sitting at Mum's dining table on a Saturday at 2:14 in the afternoon, with a manila folder I'd printed at home and a pen from the kitchen drawer, and Mum had her glasses pushed up on her head and her arms folded the way they had been...
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · FAMILY
The wills conversation no one wants
I was sitting opposite Mum at the corner table at the cafe on Beach Road on a Sunday at 10:36 in the morning, and the sun was hitting the water and the place was about half full and a kid two tables over was crying about a babycino.
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
Dating again at 40, the first month
I downloaded Hinge at 9:14 on a Wednesday night, sitting on the end of the bed in my new rental in Northcote, with a glass of tap water on the bedside table because I'd forgotten to buy anything else.
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
The apps as a divorced dad
I sat at the kitchen bench at 10pm on a Sunday with four dating apps open on four browser tabs and a spreadsheet (yes, a spreadsheet, I'm that guy) comparing what I'd put on each one. Hinge had a profile half-built. Bumble was empty.
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
The first date after 15 years
I parked the car around the corner at 4:47pm on a Sunday in May, sat for a minute looking at the dashboard, and ran through a mental checklist that would have been laughable to my 26-year-old self. Wallet. Phone charged. Breath okay.
28 Apr 2026 · 6 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
When she asks about the divorce
She asked me on date two, in a wine bar in Carlton on a Tuesday at 6:30, exactly halfway through my second glass of pinot. "So what happened with your marriage?" The way she asked was kind. The question was still a knife.
28 Apr 2026 · 6 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
Meeting her kids vs her meeting yours
We were nine months in when she said, on a Wednesday night over the phone, "I think it might be time for the kids to meet". I was washing up in the kitchen with one earbud in and a tea towel over my shoulder.
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
The six-month rule after divorce
I was three weeks out from the day my wife and I had said the words to each other in the kitchen, the words that meant the marriage was over even though neither of us had told a lawyer or a parent yet, and a friend at the pub leaned across...
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
The marriage going quiet, the honest signs
I was standing at the kitchen bench at 10pm on a Tuesday in September 2023, rinsing two wine glasses in silence, while my wife loaded the dishwasher behind me, also in silence. The kids had been asleep for an hour.
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
The resentment list and what to do with it
I was running on the path along the Merri Creek on a cold Wednesday morning in May, breath fogging in front of me, and I was doing the thing I'd been doing for three years without admitting it to myself, which was running through The List.
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
Couples therapy when only one of you wants it
I was sitting in the car outside a small terrace in Carlton at 6:42pm on a Thursday, eight minutes early for the first couples therapy session of my marriage. My wife was inside the house already.
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
The three months of trying, explained
I was at the kitchen table with my wife at 9pm on a Sunday in late autumn, the kids in bed, two cups of tea between us, and we were about to do the most adult thing we'd ever done in our marriage, which was agree on what trying looked...
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
Realising you're gay at 45
I am forty-five years old and I am sitting in the car in a Bunnings car park, staring at the steering wheel, and the thought that has just arrived will not leave. It does not feel like a thought.
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
Coming out with a mortgage and three kids
I worked out I was gay on a Tuesday and on the Wednesday I opened the banking app and looked at the offset account, and the two facts sat next to each other on the screen of my brain and refused to make sense together.
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
Telling your wife: the coming-out conversation
I am sitting on the end of our bed at quarter to ten on a Sunday night, with the bedroom door closed and the kids asleep down the hall, and my wife is brushing her teeth in the ensuite, and I am about to say a sentence that will divide our...
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
Telling your kids about coming out
I am at the kitchen table on a Saturday morning in late winter, eight months after I told my wife, and the three kids are eating toast in their pyjamas, and the conversation I have rehearsed for six weeks is about to start with the...
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
The first week of being out
I am walking down Smith Street on a Wednesday at lunchtime, eleven days after the kids found out and four days after the last of my close friends got a phone call, and I notice halfway down the block that I am breathing differently.
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
When the extended family doesn't take it
I was sitting on the back step at my brother''s place in Wagga, holding a beer that had gone warm, when my father walked past me on his way to the car and did not look at me. He had not looked at me properly for eight months.
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
The bisexual conversation
I sat in my therapist''s small green-walled office in Hawthorn on a Wednesday afternoon and said, for the first time, the sentence I had been refusing to say for nine months. I said: I do not think I am gay. I think I am bisexual.
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
Finding your people late
I walked into the back room of a pub in Northcote on a Wednesday night, forty-seven years old, in the only "going-out" shirt I owned, and stood at the door of a queer book club with my hand on the doorframe like a kid at his first day of...
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
The relationship after the coming-out
I told my wife on a Saturday afternoon and on the Sunday morning we made the kids pancakes and on the Monday she asked me to move into the spare room and on the Tuesday I did, with a small overnight bag and the good pillow.
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · RELATIONSHIPS
The five-year mark after coming out
I am sitting on the back deck of the house I now live in, in the inner north of Melbourne, on a Sunday morning in autumn, with a coffee that has gone cold because Daniel is talking and I am listening and the dog has put her head on my...
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min