Dear Fiona: how do I make a house mine again after divorce?

Dear Fiona,

I’m living in a house that I bought and decorated with my now ex-husband, who moved out to a new flat three months ago. The reason I’m still in the house, and we didn’t sell it and both buy somewhere new, is because it’s close to the children’s school, and it’s their home, and I didn’t want to impose more change on them than necessary. However, I didn’t realise that it would make me feel as stuck as I do. My ex left everything that was ‘ours’ here – so he’s got new furniture to go with the new flat, and to add to that, his career has suddenly ramped up a level, and he’s got a new girlfriend.

Whereas for me, nothing’s changed. It’s suddenly feeling ‘groundhog day’ and slightly depressing, because it sometimes feels like someone is missing. For example, only three sides of the kitchen table are filled, and the armchair that my ex always sat is exactly where it ever was. To redecorate, however, would be disruptive – and counterintuitive to my efforts to minimise change for the children (they’re 12 and 10, if it’s relevant). Also, I can’t afford it, and I’m worried that the children would see it as an attempt to eradicate their father from the house that was once all of ours. And I’m not really sure what I’d do differently.

My ex had strong ideas about colour and functionality but I liked his ideas once, and I used to love our home. Admittedly there are a few things I’m less attached to, and maybe a couple of room colours (the kitchen is quite dark) but there’s nothing actually wrong with them. And there are some things which have really happy memories attached to them, underneath everything else.

So what you advise? I have bought new bedlinen and pillows – I’m not completely inept – and even experimented with sleeping on the other side of the bed, but that didn’t stick as I prefer being closer to the window. Is there a decorating equivalent of a post-break up hair-cut, that’s affordable? Is repainting too much? I feel guilty enough about the children as it is: this situation is not something I imagined or hoped for, for me, or them. So maybe I’m asking for a decorating fix that they won’t really notice. Or maybe I just do it really slowly?

Love,

Stuck-in-a-Moment XX

Dear Stuck,

Thank you for your letter – which I think lots of readers will be able to identify with, even if they haven’t, like you, just gone through a divorce. But certainly the end of a relationship exacerbates the feeling of longing for interior change (or, indeed, a new-start haircut) and there’s reason that we crave it. Physical change creates a tangible shift which can bring about a mental shift, too. According to psychologists, it sends signals to our brain that we’ve taken control and are moving forward, which inspires the same in other areas of our lives, too. In other words, change can be a crucial step in moving on.

Your sign-off references a U2 track – sticking with the musical theme, know that the four times-divorced great American country singer Tammy Wynette famously sang about changing her hair and her interiors in wake of a break-up. I mention that song, Another Chance, because within one of the verses are pertinent lessons regarding the latter:

Let’s look at the first line and consider the fact that our lives evolve: children get older and need less floor for playing and more significant desks for homework. We might go from working in an office to working from home to returning to an office. Occasionally taking time to examine how we live, and analysing what could or should be altered about our home’s layout to bring genuine benefit is a necessary exercise – and that is a point that could be made to your children regarding some change. It’s not about expunging the past, it’s about looking forward to the future.

But with this, any rearrangement should also be made with a view to taking up the space that has been left unfilled. There’s joy to be found in Tammy’s closet-claiming; “I loved designing a built-in wardrobe for my bedroom whose sections were tailored exactly to my needs. It brings me satisfaction every time I look at it,” recounts Virginia Clark, House & Garden’s Digital Director. And the artist Pauline Caulfield took over her ex-husband Patrick Caulfield’s studio in the house they once shared, recommitting to a passion that has since seen her achieve significant success.

So, could the kitchen table be pushed against a wall, or, replaced with one that is round or oval? The original might work as a desk or art table somewhere else – and in that vein, perhaps the armchair that nobody sits in could be relocated to somewhere it will be used? Regarding your bedroom, I know you’ve tried switching sides of the bed, but “I immediately moved my bed, which shifted my perspective,” recounts interior designer Olivia Outred, of the period after her ex left. This idea can be applied to other rooms, too – and with that, where art is hung. When you are sitting on the sofa, are you looking at the picture you most want to be seeing? The professionally advised approach would be to draw up scaled diagrams of your floor plan and play with cut-outs of the major pieces of furniture – but I know that when I’m so inspired, I tend to forge ahead, collecting ornaments and pictures together in one place, before starting again as if from scratch, creating new juxtapositions from old friends. The fresh view can be invigorating, and can “stop the nagging reminder that things went wrong, and all the guilt and horror that goes with that,” says Olivia, who advises combining the moving of stuff with “a dramatic and energetic clean. It helps to shift the air, to get rid of stale corners where arguments happened, or where hopes and dreams were squashed.” Don’t, at this point, worry whether the colours work, or about leaving holes in walls.

For the next step is the giving of that chair to charity, which I read as being more about aesthetics than goods dispersal (though it can be both). “I think the principal pleasure in having my own space after years of sharing with my husband was having the freedom to do whatever I want, with no negotiation, and it’s still something I enjoy years later whenever I get the urge to paint my sitting room pink,” says Virginia. This is the moment for that – and you can fill in those holes as you go.

Plus, a new wall colour might be the closest equivalent there is to the new haircut you asked for – though arguably, it’s safer. You have to wait for a newly peroxide sharp-bob-with-fringe to grow out; paint can simply be painted over. But change this significant (assuming you’re switching between, say, Farrow & Ball ‘Hague Blue’ and Farrow & Ball ‘Babouche’, rather than two similar shades of off-white) will, as you say, be noticed by your children – so here I’d like to introduce the idea that they might not view it as rejection of your ex-husband, but, rather, as inspiring. Olivia recalls, after her parents separated, “coming home from school to find my Mum painting garlands of flowers on the wall around her bed. This seemed like a metamorphosis to me.” My fellow agony aunt Philippa Perry, in The Book You Want Everyone You Love* To Read, advises choosing guilt over lingering resentment, “for you will discover your world does not fall apart”. You’ve retained your children’s home and school – so I think you can move on from colours your ex-husband chose, if you want to, and view them as the hang-ups of the final line of that verse. The children might decide to repaint their own bedrooms, alongside. And you could even, if you think you’d enjoy it, work with a colour consultant who will doubtlessly have interesting ideas you’d never have arrived at alone.

But if you are worried about its being too much (and you know your children best), there are less dramatic changes in hairstyle (say, highlights, or having a longer-length layered fringe cut in) and comparable interior tweaks. You can start tiny: I’m a firm believer that the route to a more optimistic outlook runs through new tea towels, a really good bath oil, and jugs full of supermarket daffodils. Then there are smaller colour changes – painting the inside of bookshelves, for example – as well as choosing new cushions, lampshades and a pretty table cloth. There’s reupholstery (another solution for that armchair), recutting curtains to turn them into blinds, adding a pelmet, sewing on trims, introducing a wallpaper border, putting a canopy over your bed and finding a new bedspread, and maybe swapping out something you’re less attached to for something to which you feel a sense of connection. Within them all are opportunities for deriving great pleasure from decorative detail (which might prove the metaphorical icing on the cake of the functionality you mention), as well as self-expression. For “one of the great lessons that comes out of separating from someone is how to remember (or find out) the things you really like, and decorating can be a brilliant means of reminding yourself of your tastes,” says Virginia, who has hung her sitting room with pictures “loosely relating” to her Classics degrees. Alexandra Tolstoy has been able to indulge her appreciation for folk-painted furniture, something that the father of her children “wasn’t keen on” – and now deals in it, too, via The Tolstoy Edit. And Tammy, well; she filled those reclaimed closets with tighter jeans, and whatever it was she wore for her new dance lessons.

But whereas Tammy made all her changes in “two short weeks,” I think we probably have to allow her room for creative license. In real life, know that there’s no fixed timetable; the psychological benefits come from instigating change, not completing it. Often there’s merit in your instinct to take it slowly – it gives you time to do your research and enjoy the process, as well as ensuring you preserve the positive connotations that you mention in your letter. To which end, know that there is plenty of precedence of maintaining continuity, too: Pauline recently had her sofas recovered and the fabric she chose is almost indistinguishable from that selected by Patrick years ago. “It’s not that I’m hanging on to the past,” she explains. “But Patrick and I had similar ideas and taste, and I love it.” Change – and rate of range – is a spectrum, and we each find our place on it.

I hope that this has helped and given you some ideas, and that you soon find yourself falling in love with your home, once again. For there are, I’m sure, many more happy memories to be made there in the future. Incidentally, I generally find Tammy a much more uplifting listen than U2. Although I like to think those Irish balladists were right about one thing: “it’s just a moment; this time will pass.”

With love,

Fiona XX