We hear a lot about women and divorce: the woman ends up alone – generally with the children. She has little money. She loses social status. She finds it hard to socialise (she has the kids). She suffers from a loss of confidence, loss of economic security, finds it hard to get work (she has the kids). On and on it goes… I went through a separation and found that these stories all resonated with me.

However, I have also found myself listening to men’s stories of divorce as well as women’s. I used to think that men came out better from it than women; that they pick themselves up more quickly; they cope with the loss of their children in a way that most women find almost shocking; they move on to new lives, new wives, new children.

Certainly that seemed to me, aged 11, to be the case when my own parents separated. The next time I saw my father a few weeks later, he’d swapped the family estate car for a brand-new, two-seater, sporty number. I will never forget seeing the shock and hurt on my mother’s face as he drove up to the front door.