Lucie Loves... Life // How blogging broke my marriage and my advice to other bloggers in relationships
According to a tweet by Jen Thorne aka @BeautyJunkieLDN, that I happened up last week linking to a post on her blog. I’m an OG blogger. OG stands for Original Ganster. (I'd initially had it down as Old Girl! Lol!) All I know is that I’m one of the original bloggers, having started my blog back in the summer of 2009. This was prior to blogging exploding from just being a delightful hobby, to really becoming a thing — nevermind a viable (and sometimes lucrative) career option.
Like many of my OG blogger peers, I didn’t start a blog to make money. To be fair, we didn’t know we could...
In fact, I did it out of sheer boredom. I did it to fill my time, whilst holding down yawnsome temping job after temping job. I was fresh out of uni, all starry-eyed and clutching a first-class degree in BA Hons Visual Communication (Documentary Photography), and had just been introduced to the Apple iPhone 3GS and the Tumblr app.
Over the 8-years I grafted hard to hold down multiple full-time jobs, alongside my life as a hobby blogger. And it wasn’t easy, it still isn’t. Like anything in life, in order to make it work, you have to give it your all.
My blog documented everything from my daily ongoings and professional career highlights to more time things like personal relationship milestones, my engagement, planning my wedding, and the wedding itself. I got sucked into the world of sharing everything.
It’s sad to admit, but looking back now, two years on from my break up, blogging may very well be one of the straws that broke my short marriage’s back.
In 8-years I went from having a blogger boyfriend to a blogger ex-husband, having finalised my divorce in July 2017.
In the final days of my relationship, I’ll never forget the email off my husband which said, in black and white:
“When I get home from work, I know you are concentrating on your new venture but I’ve mentioned it a few times to run and give me a kiss and it’s not happened, or it’s been “I’ve just got to finish this blog post.” Or a kiss whilst you’re looking at your screen and not me. I sometimes feel less important than your blog/work and now you must feel the same with me.”
Take note, people. Life is too short to not speak up about something if it’s making you unhappy. Communicating how you feel is one of the most important skills you can have.
My commitment to my blog and work wasn’t the only factor to cause my relationship to fall to rack and ruin. Nope, there were other forces at play. But, for the purpose of this blog post, I’d like to use it as an example for all the bloggers and blogger boyfriends, bloggers and blogger girlfriends, newly engaged bloggers, and newly married bloggers out there who might be turning a blind eye to their partners needs, as a result of pressures to post regularly, get that shot or stay up late to get done something done.
There is sometimes underlying, unspoken envy or jealously, feelings of being unimportant or ignored, but if we don’t talk about it, how can we address it?
So if blogging broke my marriage, why do I still do it? And has my attitude towards it changed? I continue to blog because, as a documentary photographer — it’s something that I cannot switch off — I get a kick out of helping people, and so created a photo diary of my life, in the hope that — in some small way — it might inform or inspire someone that stumbles upon it.
However, I’ve learnt the hard way that you cannot live life at 200mph, attend every blog event, bar opening, restaurant review, fashion show, photo shoot and press trip and still expect to juggle multiple balls at the same time, and not drop anything. Something’s gotta give.
My advice to my post-break up self:
(and to anyone else who’s experienced/or is experiencing any of the above) would be:
Learn to switch off more (physically, mentally and technologically)
Prioritise your time and attention
Get over FOMO — learn to say no — you can’t be, do or please everything and everyone.
Be present with the ones you love.
Accept the fact that having a private life is probably one of the most wonderful things in the world and that you should cherish those moments you have behind closed doors
Savour the meals that don’t make the ‘gram, it’s often the the unpublished moments, conversations and experiences that make us who we are.
Update 15:01 - Monday 8th Jan
Ok, so I pressed publish and have received an angry message off my parents and a call of one of my best friends, both saying that I wasn’t / and am not to blame for the break up. I know this, and I do not blame myself in anyway. He was unfaithful, no longer wanted to continue the relationship and I wasn’t prepared to be anyone’s second best.
However, I thought it was worth sharing that if there was any grain of truth in his email and this was how he felt — whether it was an excuse or not — it was what he said and I’m sure many other partners of bloggers may from time to time feel like that too.
What I think I need to add to this post is that I do not in any way, shape or form think that my blogging was solely the cause of the break up. A good marriage should be about having a loving, supportive partner, someone who understands that times are occasionally tough, and that a marriage isn’t easy — it’s something you have to work at.
Still interested in being a blogger?
We’re looking for contributors to join the Lucie Loves Team. If you’re interested in giving blogging a go, but feel daunted about where to start, get in touch! After blogging for 8-years we’ve built up a vast network of PR agencies, which means that we receive exciting blog opportunities and invites on a daily basis that you might be interested in.
We’ve also recently migrated our blog from Tumblr to Squarespace. I hope you like the new redesign! A massive thank you to Joe Mitchelmore for the new logo and look & feel, Yeshen for the Squarespace consultancy and Zeynab for assisting with the content migration.
Get in touch if you would like to find out more. A lot of the opportunities are London-based, but there are also some that could be done remotely.
If something in this post has resonated with you, or you feel that your relationship(s) have been affected in some way by your life as a blogger, I’d love to hear about it (anonymously, if you prefer) or in the comments below. It’s only by talking about things like this that we realise we are not alone.
Thanks for reading.
Lucie x
Interested in finding out more about blogging? Take a look at these posts:
What I’m wearing:
Trousers - Zara
T-shirt - Boobs T - Never Fully Dressed
Earrings - Topshop
Photography - @IamJamesBarley