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Help, business ideas - even separation ceremonies - on offer at UK's first such event
Sarah, whose husband recently chose to announce that their 35-year marriage was over via a terse email, is deep inside Britain's first divorce fair and she has an important matter on her mind. Does her pink top really suit her or would *another colour work better?
The 58-year-old, who prefers not to give her full name, arrived at the event yesterday seeking a mixture of emotional solace and practical advice but was briefly sidetracked by one of the more esoteric among the 50 or so stalls set up inside a Brighton hotel.
"It's the psychology of colour, apparently – not just what suits you but why you feel the way you do about shades. It's a bit self-indulgent, I suppose, but I've only just emerged from what you could call bunker mode, living day by day. After years as a wife and mother I'm beginning to think for myself again. And I've always hated orange. I wonder why?"
Officially styled the Starting Over Show, the event aims to offer the *newly single, the soon-to-be single and the long single but still bitter or perhaps confused, nuts-and-bolts advice and more varied assistance, all under one roof. Lawyers and financial advisers rubbed grey-suited shoulders with *chiropractors, reflexologists and a *"spiritual psychotherapist" with a *sideline in tarot card reading, while a series of stalls offered childcare-friendly business ideas.
If things are amicable, separating can be cheap – one company exhibiting offered "DIY divorces", starting at £68. And for the truly sanguine, there is a "separation ceremony" conducted by a colourfully robed minister from the Rhythm of Life interfaith church, intended to end a marriage as it began, with an exchange of vows followed, optionally, by a party. It also offers a version where only one partner has to turn up.
Organiser Susie Miller based the event on one held in Austria, although she omitted the DNA *testers and private detectives, preferring to keep matters more positive. Having endured her own marriage break-up, Miller says her wish would be for each of the 140,000 or so divorces each year in the UK to be, so far as possible, "collaborative and healthy".
Paula Hall, a relationship psychotherapist with Relate, one of the few non-commercial exhibitors, said her organisation welcomed the fair in the hope it might help destigmatise divorce.
"I think as a concept it's a really, really good idea," she said. "I think we are accepting divorce more but perhaps losing an understanding of the pain and complication that comes with it. There is a bit of a myth that because it's happening more often, it's becoming easier to do."
And despite the relentlessly cheery message of many the stalls, emblazoned with words like "empowerment" and "self belief", there was no escaping the sheer scale of emotional burden carried by many who paid £5 to attend the fair. More often than not most of the comfy armchairs dotted around the hall were occupied by people rummaging in a handbag for a handkerchief with which to wipe away sudden tears. Each tale of woe was sadder than the last.
Alison, 56, originally from Yorkshire, travelled from Athens to try to deal with the aftermath of separating from her Greek husband of 28 years. "It sounds like an odd thing to say, but it is nice, it is helpful, to see so many others in the same position. I'm very sorry they're in the same position as I am, but in Greece it's very closed and here it's much more open in asking for help," she said.
One of the few men attending, tattooed and crop haired, was so concerned about being potentially identified that he declined to give a name or even an age. "My wife has just told me I've got to get out of the house and I haven't got a clue what to do," he said, his eyes moistening. "I thought I mainly needed practical help here, but it's the support which is most helpful. We've got a lot of friends in common, a big social circle, and people don't want to hear me pouring my heart out, they don't want to have to take sides. I'm talking to friends and just welling up – it's embarrassing for them and embarrassing for me."
Others, though, were feeling the *benefits. Jane Peachment, 47, from Reading had come for advice on dealing with the legal implications of splitting from her long-term partner and father of her children, who she never married. But then she found herself drawn to the tarot table. "I've just had a reading. The cards, apparently, said that everything was going to work out and I'd made the right decision. Funny, that."
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