Marriage in recovery: A text from an old friend who thinks I"m single

‘I’d like to do something a little risque, a tad secret, a bit daring and very dishonest.’

An old friend whom I saw last year has sent me a text asking if I would like to go out for a drink. I can’t remember if, when we met at the party, I told him I was newly single. All the same, he was more handsome, cleverer and funnier than I remembered him to be in our teens. All of the things I might put in the “looking for” section of online dating blurb.

The text is a year too late. But last year it was a few months too early because all I could think of was R.

A few weeks after we split, out of a vain sense of curiosity over how many enquiries I might receive, I signed up to a dating website. Within minutes I had created a profile and sat back satisfied that I’d avoided cliche in the “About” section, and uploaded a photograph that actually resembled me.

As I clicked on to the website I saw, to my horror, that my photograph appeared in a sidebar alongside the main news page of a very popular website. I had also, in error, used my real name as my username and it appeared in leering capital letters next to my picture.

With all the words fused together, the suffix 34F (age, gender; terrible box-filling error) made it seem like I was flaunting my chest size like a glamour model. After a flustered 10 minutes trying to find the “delete my account” section on the site, I disappeared. Possibly the quickest debut and end to the search for new relationships the world has ever seen.

But now – to this old friend who essentially might be a good suitor if I wasn’t otherwise married – I wonder what I should reply? I’ve always been far more comfortable with receiving rejection rather than handing it out. He is only asking me out for a drink, and yet I still do the thing that marks me out as a coward: I tell him I’m working abroad for two months.

Part of me knows that this is because I find it hard to be honest. Most people might say: “Would have been great but I’m actually back with someone now.” But I keep it vague, perhaps because part of me thinks that if R were to royally mess up and become the impossible drunken husband again, then the chances of finding a sure-fire happy date to get over the heartache of not being with him any more would be hard to stumble upon, and oh, wouldn’t a drink with a nice, funny, handsome, clever old friend, be a rather lovely antidote to post-relationship misery?

Then there’s the awful admission somewhere in my mind that I’d like to go for a drink with my old friend and tell no one. That I’d like to do something a little risque, a tad secret, a bit daring and very dishonest, with the forethought that it was morally OK because we would only be chatting and at the end of the evening I would turn to him and say, “That was lovely but I probably forgot to mention that I am still married.”

Which is far madder than anything you could think up, I know.

The truth is, I miss doing bad things. Most of the time it feels good being good: I like to wake up with a relatively clear head; I’m able to move from one day to the next without always catastrophising a situation; I mostly manage to avoid the self-admonishment that results in me eating half a cake or telling the children to bugger off.

R admitted last week that he found being sober tiresome. What followed was a series of lugubrious days of us trying to avoid each other because we realised that we’d reached some sort of recovery zenith, and it was pretty bloody boring. There was no peak at which to feel jubilant. Early days it is, but I sometimes feel in 20 years we will have to mark whatever progress has been made with a less than remarkable “This is it, folks!” plaque.

Optimism is a hard one for anybody in recovery. In the slow days, it’s like reminiscing about a long-term relationship with someone you once loved passionately, who was not good for you in the end, and who you decided to stop seeing but still adored. The aching heart won’t abate. Sometimes a song or a smell or a city will remind you of all that you had. And you will feel the intense loss over and over, every time the memory is reignited. I know R feels this. And I feel it too.

We both miss being free, and sometimes we miss being bad. While a drink or a kiss with somebody new won’t make us feel any better in the long term, there’s no denying that it could be fun.

Marriage in recovery: A text from an old friend who thinks I"m single

How text messages can eradicate waiting times

A text messaging services can engage the difficult younger demographic who make up the vast majority of ‘do not attends’, writes Tom Whicher. Photograph: Sebastian Pfuetze/Getty Pictures

Has there ever been a much more explosive problem in the NHS than waiting instances?

Progress has been manufactured in much more latest times, but figures published by the government in March for the January time period show a reversal of these hard-won enhancements. About 2.9 million men and women had been waiting for remedy in the first month of 2014, up by 362,000 from January 2013.

Figures also show a rise in the quantity of patients in England who had not been treated within the NHS target of 18 weeks between referral to remedy, from 143,741 in January 2013, to 189,179 in 2014.

As one particular of the most substantial-profile targets in the NHS, managers are underneath pressure to throw sources at attempts to carry down breaches, this kind of as employing additional employees to chase patients to make sure they attend, and frequently putting on extra clinics at a expense of around £600 a throw. Offered that the typical hospital runs about 200 additional clinics, this bill could finish up at an additional £100,000 a year. Even if person hospitals are in a position to meet targets in this way, it really is clear that these techniques are unsustainable given the unrelenting squeeze on NHS finances.

It is towards this backdrop that some hospitals are commencing to recognise methods that simple daily engineering can assist. DrDoctor has been operating with a variety of hospitals and clinical commissioning groups across the United kingdom to introduce an automated text messaging method that saves time for staff and tends to make access to appointments easier for individuals.

For instance, providing individuals the choice to adjust, accept or acquire option dates by a 1-word text message has pushed down ‘do not attend’ (DNA) charges at Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals NHS basis trust by twenty%.

We are now embarking on a trial at the trust that will text offers of cancelled appointments to patients on the waiting listing. The believe in was hit by twelve,700 late cancellations inside of two days of the appointment time at Heatherwood outpatients in the final year.

We proposed the move soon after our survey at the believe in found that sufferers needed updates on reserving modifications by way of technology that they are familiar with. The huge majority – 91% – of patients would accept last-minute appointments if a cancellation freed up time, even with much less than a couple of days notice.

Early pilots indicate that we can refill greater than 50% of cancelled appointments by means of the DrDoctor method. We are confident that figure will increase when we roll out to include more substantial numbers of individuals and appointments.

Often referred to as “slot utilisation”, the smart use of hospital appointment data and the technological potential to flag up totally free time can ensure generating good on targets isn’t a costly venture. Employing SMS, smartphone and eventually on the internet portals which patients can accessibility as effectively as professionals, is a far far more efficient way than manually sorting by way of patient information and instances, and frees up time to concentrate on improving the quality of care sufferers receive in other techniques too.

This ease of communication is transformative for patient experience text messages and automation perform for most sufferers. Mixed with on the internet solutions, for individuals with smartphones or PCSs we can engage the hard younger demographic who make up the bulk of DNAs. With the vast majority of administration automated, reserving teams can now target on the frail or at danger sufferers who need to have an additional human assisting hand.

We are forever getting told that the NHS is lacking in innovation. Imaginative use of existing technologies and giving individuals greater details will go a lengthy way to minimize the consistent dilemma of missed appointments, late cancellations, and the failure of some trusts to meet 18 week limits on waiting times. It won’t fix all difficulties, but it would be a effectively-required start off.

Tom Whicher is co-founder of DrDoctor

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How text messages can eradicate waiting times

I make an awful discovery in R"s text messages

It is wrong, it is incorrect, it is wrong to be looking at his texts I say, by means of tears. But I can not stop.

At 3am, a tiny drunk, exhausted and previously feeling the early results of a hangover, I discover that R is seeing an individual. I’m not purposefully nosing around for clues of his extramarital shenanigans I’m buzzing with joy soon after a friend’s celebration and have neither the vitality nor wish to rifle by way of R’s coat pockets for indications of deceit and desperation. I arrive property singing with enjoy for my buddy Emma, the party host, who was still dancing when I crept out of her residence and into my taxi. I want to say goodnight and thank her for a great evening. I look in my bag for my phone but realise I have left it charging in her kitchen.

This is why I creep into the bedroom in which R is sleeping (he has been babysitting) to use his mobile phone to message Emma. I scroll down his mobile phone contacts for her amount and see the get in touch with historical past – they have been speaking just lately and regularly. I seem at a latest text message that suggests she is far far better acquainted with R than I had imagined.

Emma, my close good friend, flirting with my husband? It appears bizarre that she is calling him “mon amour” and sending him strings of kisses to sign off. When I study a couple much more messages, I realise that the Emma I think it is, is not that Emma at all. She is an additional Emma, a girl I’ve in no way met.

Trembling, I consider the mobile phone downstairs to the kitchen and sit at the table. The dancing fairy lights around the mirror bathe the space in hostile blue, flashing frantically in sequence. They look to mimic my feverish compulsion to stab the mobile phone screen with my finger, as I open message soon after message from Emma to R, and R to Emma. There is so much to study and I am amazed, simply because R is usually so scrupulous about deleting outdated things.

It is incorrect, it is incorrect, it is wrong to be carrying out this, I say, by way of tears.

But I cannot stop. There is something rather exhilarating about currently being faced with all of this information, the truth and the tricks, the stuff I had absolutely no thought about – a seductive desire to learn what has been going on. And nevertheless I know what the ending will be for me: when I study the final message the entire physical exercise will truly feel nihilistic and sad.

There are sexy texts, caring texts, scheming emails that speak of R and Emma’s specific comprehending of each and every other messages that say they would like to run away with each other. “Aren’t we negative doing this behind our partner’s back?” kind conversations.

There are complete paragraphs focused to extreme flattery – all the sentences sting my soul. And when I read a couple of beautiful issues that R writes about Emma, I think of the times he has explained equivalent things to me. In one particular message I am the subject. They mention a time when they held hands in the back room of a pub and talked about me.

“Me!” I cry with disbelief, in my echoey kitchen. A woman holding my husband’s wedding ringless finger, talking about me? I actually do start massaging my eyelids tough because if you’ve ever accomplished this, you will know that the discomfort is distracting.

The once satisfied night is swallowed up complete and replaced with an aching sense of reduction and powerlessness. I want to bang my head towards the wall, but I will not. I put the cellphone down and stroll upstairs. I enter the area the place R is and touch him on the shoulder. My thoughts is already complete of cliches: “We need to have to speak.”

“Tomorrow,” he says, crossly. “I need to get up early for work.”

Then I say, “I know about you and Emma.”

Moments later, he follows me downstairs to the living area.

“How significantly have you had to drink? Never do this to oneself now,” he says.

“Why? Why didn’t you inform me about this when I asked you all those occasions if you have been seeing any person else? Does Emma know that you tell me you enjoy me and that you don’t want anybody else?”

I can’t perform out whether I want to throw something heavy at his head, or crawl into his arms.

“I am just so, so sad,” is all I can say.

R turns to leave the room almost as rapidly as he’d come in, saying: “We are separated and this has completely practically nothing to do with you. Just get some rest.”

I make an awful discovery in R"s text messages