I’ll admit, I never gave any thought to what it would be like to be a single parent. It’s not a scenario I ever believed would apply to me. I was happily married to my husband and we had been together for almost 14 years. Unless the unthinkable happened and he died unexpectedly, there could be no plausible scenario where he wasn’t part of raising the two children we had adopted together. Even if we divorced, there would be shared custody, shared responsibility, two parents dividing up the workload in an equitable manner no matter how things played out.

Have you ever had a moment in your life that profoundly changed everything? I mean, absolutely turned the entire thing on its head to the point you realise nothing, and I do mean nothing, will ever be the same again? I have. That moment will be forever etched into my memory. I still feel it in a visceral way. A confession. Words spoken that unlocked Pandora’s box and there was no way of going back. No carpet would be big enough to sweep this under, and some things simply cannot be forgiven and forgotten. As the implications began to unfold before me, I felt the floor give way beneath my feet. My life, our lives, the lives of our family were suddenly and irreversibly altered. If you had asked me at the time, I would have said they were destroyed. With time and a lot of painful growth and healing, I can now see that it wasn’t the end for us. Just an extraordinarily difficult lesson, some of which is still being learned.

So what’s it like being a single LGBT parent? It’s a question I get asked a lot...

It’s lonely if I’m honest. Being an LGBT parent in the first place sets you apart from heterosexual couples. I’ve often felt like I never quite fit into the quiet day-to-day life of the other parents on the school run. When I was still married, we would get invited to the odd thing as a couple, with other couples. Dinner parties, barbecues, maybe the annual Christmas party. But I always envied the camaraderie that many of the mums on the school run seem to have. It feels like there’s a shared experience between women raising children that makes it easier for them to bond. To acknowledge one another and forge friendships. I see you. I know your struggles. Perhaps it’s in my imagination but I always felt excluded from that energy. I’ve been lucky enough to adopt my children since they were babies. My son was 30 days old when he came home to us, and my daughter was only 2 days old when we got her from the hospital. I’ve done the night feedings. Changed thousands of nappies. Dealt with teething, learned to swaddle, been up all night with fevers. I navigated the terrible twos (and threes). I made my own baby food. I pushed a double stroller around, learned how to navigate car seats and even flew internationally with two kids under two years old. I’ve earned my stripes just as much as any other parent. I’ve been a Mum and a Dad. But still I feel excluded. I don’t quite fit the mold, especially now it’s just me. And so, I have to make twice the effort to be included, and often for a fraction of the results.

The difference between parenting alone and parenting with a partner isn’t twice the work. It’s exponentially more difficult the same way having two kids instead of one isn’t twice as hard. When there’s nobody else there, you become responsible for absolutely everything 100% of the time. My kids were 10 and 11 when my ex and I split. At the time, I was the one with the career and the job that earned most of our income. I worked 60+ hours per week, while my ex took care of much of the day-to-day running of the house and our lives. It was an agreement that worked well for both of us. And he was very good at his part. I could count the number of times I’d had the kids overnight by myself on one hand. It was terrifying. Both of these human beings who had already been through so much in their lives were counting on me to hold everything together while we were all still navigating some complex life changes. I’d like to tell you I stepped up to the plate and handled it beautifully. But I didn’t always. It was messy at times. I wasn’t always stable and steadfast. But I can honestly look back and say I did the best I could at the time. And we survived, albeit with a few new scars.

My social life took a major hit. I suffer from social anxiety anyway, but my ex was incredibly gregarious. I was happy to ride on his coattails when it came to making friends. It seemed effortless to him and he was always meeting new people and arranging barbecues or dinners. Most of that dried up overnight when he was no longer around. But then there’s also the logistics of trying to go out when you have two kids. I couldn’t go out for more than an hour at a time without either taking them, or trying to find someone to watch them for me. My Mum was great. She stepped up to help out before and after school so I could manage work. She made dinner for them and me. I would leave the house at 7am and usually not be home until well after 6pm. But she was in her late 70s at the time and it was hard work for her. It didn’t leave much capacity for coverage outside of work. I felt guilty asking for more, so I limited my requests. I still feel the need to do that today. Although at 13 and 14 they can be left to their own devices for a few hours, I have to ration my overnight requests. When you have a partner, you travel together and take the kids. You can give each other breaks, take a night off, divide and conquer. When you’re single, you suddenly realise you have a need to socialise by yourself. Or god forbid, try to date. It’s almost impossible to make yourself available in any kind of meaningful way. Even now, I’ve been dating a guy for a few months and he spends 90% of the time we spend together at my house. It has to be that way and he understands it, but I know it’s a sacrifice for him as well. He spends less time at home than he would like, and ordinarily I would encourage an arrangement with greater equality. But that’s the cost of spending time with a single parent. There’s always four of us in any relationship. I miss the spontaneity of being able to do things at the drop of a hat instead of planning weeks in advance.

One of the other things I miss the most is having someone else to sense-check things with when it comes to parenting. Especially as my kids get older and into the teenage years, I find myself having conversations and disagreements that feel foreign to me. Am I being unreasonable? Am I being too hard, or not being flexible enough? Could I have handled that situation in a better way? How would you have approached it? I’ve got two kids sometimes arguing the sky is orange, and there’s nobody here to confirm that it’s still blue. I’m not ashamed to admit that sometimes when they’ve sided together and had a go at me, I’ve gone to my room, closed the door and cried. Those moments feel so lonely and so big, and there’s nobody on the planet who understands it the way a co-parent would. My 13-year-old daughter has just found a new boyfriend who I am insisting upon meeting at the house today to have a little chat. I have to be good cop and I have to be bad cop. What’s the right line to take? How much freedom should I allow her? Only I get to decide that. I am all things to everyone all the time. I’m both Mum and Dad. Breadwinner. Cook. Seamstress. Cleaner. Tutor. Punching bag. I’m the one who has to show up no matter what. But more importantly, I am the one who is responsible for the way everything turns out.

So should I turn to my community for support? Which community? Because I don’t quite feel like I fit anywhere. As a single gay man with two teenage kids, I definitely don’t slot into the LGBT community very easily. Trying to date has been nothing short of comical. So many gay men lament that they would love to have kids. But when they are faced with the reality (what do you mean you can’t drop everything and spend the night going out and getting hammered), they balk. For someone who has never had their own kids or spent any time raising them, to try and slot seamlessly into a family with two teenagers is asking a lot. I get that. But again, that’s my reality. And where does a single gay male go in the straight community where they feel like they fit? I don’t really mesh with your average group of straight guys and sometimes I don’t fit with a group of straight women either. Although I was amused to be invited over to drinks with a friend from choir recently and there I was the only male in a group of 13! I don’t get invited to do couple things as they want to do things with other couples. I still feel like I’m sometimes seen as a threat by male partners. I’ve tried gay badminton which is great, but it’s mostly couples and I can’t really go and socialise afterwards because I just used my adult-away-from-home-time playing the sport.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all bad. I am still exceptionally grateful that I was able to become a parent in the first place. And I wouldn’t change my experiences if I could. Although I have to admit I would never have chosen to be a single parent. At the end of the day, the experience has brought me much closer to my kids than I was before. For better or for worse, I am the primary caregiver and that creates a bond that feels unbreakable and didn’t exist before. They still have some communication with their other Dad when he’s stable, but sadly they are learning as I did that he cannot be relied upon for any length of time. And although it’s a double-edged sword sometimes, the knowledge that my kids are becoming the people they are with the help of my parenting brings an immense sense of pride sometimes. And a little embarrassment at others!

For other members of the LGBT+ community who might be reading this and wanting a family of their own: I can’t recommend it enough. There is no greater accomplishment I could ever make in my life that will surpass raising two human beings who needed love. There is no other relationship past or future that will ever compare to the one I have with my children. But our community needs to embrace families more. We have always had one another’s backs and it’s time to adapt to the changing face of LGBT+ families as more of us become parents.

So, what’s it like being a single LGBT parent? It’s everything I’ve just told you, usually all at once with no pause button.

Later today, I’ll open the front door to a boy I’ve never met, who wants to date my 13 year-old daughter. There’s no co-parent in the next room to trade a look with, no shorthand for you take good cop, I’ll take bad. It’ll just be me, deciding in real time how much dad and how much friend the moment needs, hoping I get the ratio right, knowing I sometimes won’t. That’s the truest answer to the question, more than anything else I’ve written here. It’s standing in a doorway alone, doing a job built for two, and working out how to make it work with half the resources.

Pandora’s box doesn’t lock back up once it’s open. Nobody tells you that part. But nobody tells you the other part either — that once everything’s out, you’re the one who gets to decide what to build with what’s left. I didn’t choose this life. If you’d asked me back then, I’d have told you it was ruined. But I’m the one who’s still here, still standing in doorways, still showing up. Most days, that turns out to be enough.

At this point, I would hope your response would be either “good for you” or “so what?!” But being around him, and sharing parts of his lived experience, has opened my eyes to something. I may be a racist. Perhaps for some of you reading this, that’s no surprise — I am a white male of a certain age. But I can assure you it came as a shock to me. I’m gay! I have a mixed-race daughter, I’m dating a Black man — how could I possibly be a racist?! But before you pass judgement on me, you may want to have a think about your own subtle ideology. The beliefs that have been etched into your psyche since the very beginning. Because what I have come to learn is that racism comes in all shapes and sizes, and much of it is so subtle that you may not even realise it’s there. And that it’s coming from you too.

What really opened my eyes to it was the recent case of Jason Arday. For those who don’t know, he was a Cambridge professor — the university’s youngest Black professor — who resigned in early August after weeks of media scrutiny over plagiarism allegations and questions about his biography. A week later, he was found dead at his home, in what’s being reported as an apparent suicide, though the exact cause hasn’t been officially confirmed. His family said he’d been subjected to “a campaign of sustained abuse” in the years since he took the job, and that the misinformation surrounding him became too much.

My beau was very upset when he heard the news. I hadn’t been following the story, if I’m honest, but as he explained the nuances of it, I became upset too. Because there are clear signs of a double standard here. Just three years before Arday’s case, a white Cambridge professor named William O’Reilly was found to have lifted large sections of a student’s essay and published them as his own. A tribunal ruled it negligent rather than deliberate, and he stayed in his post. You probably never heard about him. It wasn’t big news. A recent investigation by The Emancipator found 30 news stories in 12 days about Arday from US outlets alone, and none about a white colleague facing separate, more serious misconduct allegations in the same period.

I’m not saying Arday didn’t commit plagiarism — I haven’t seen the evidence either way, and neither, really, has the public. What I’m saying is that he received a level of scrutiny and opinion a white academic accused of something similar simply didn’t. Whatever the findings turn out to be, that gap is worth thinking about. At worst, he should have lost his job. He should not have lost his life.

Interestingly, the academic who accused Arday of plagiarism, an American researcher named Nathan Cofnas, has just been suspended himself — not by Cambridge, but by Ghent University in Belgium, where he’d moved after Cambridge’s Emmanuel College cut ties with him back in 2024. That dismissal followed a blog post arguing that in a true meritocracy, Black representation in academia would “approach zero.” (Cambridge’s own internal investigation into the complaints against him, for what it’s worth, cleared him of discrimination.) He’s since described himself as a “race realist” who believes genes play a “non-trivial role” in intelligence differences between racial groups. Well. He certainly sounds impartial!

You can see evidence of this kind of bias everywhere, if you look closely enough for it. As a white man, I have to open my eyes to see it. As a Black man, my boyfriend has to tackle it every day.

We recently stayed in an Airbnb together. I noticed his profile picture was just a landscape and asked him about it. “I don’t want to get turned down for rental properties,” he said. That makes my heart sad. He’s lovely — clean, responsible, exactly the kind of guest any homeowner should be thrilled to have. But he worries that if they see his face, they’ll say no. That by seeing the colour of his skin, they’ll say no.

As a gay man, I’ve faced my share of discrimination. I’ve been called a faggot while holding hands with another guy, from a passing car. I’ve had people ask which one of us was “the mum” when my ex-husband and I adopted our kids. But I have the luxury of hiding that part of myself if I choose to. People of colour don’t have that luxury. Neither do women, or people with disabilities, or anyone else discriminated against for something they can’t hide. I’ve tried to imagine what that’s like, and I can only guess at how frustrating it must be.

I always thought racism was obvious — big and loud. That’s why I assumed it couldn’t possibly apply to someone as educated and open-minded as me. Racism was using a slur, or refusing to serve someone because of the colour of their skin. It was crude jokes, steely looks behind people’s backs, snide comments to your white friends. Only now I’m realising it’s not just that. The subtler undercurrents might be doing the most damage, precisely because we don’t notice them. If you’re not aware of your own bias, you can’t change it. It’s the way people avoid eye contact. It’s crossing the street to avoid someone you’ve decided looks threatening, or holding your bag a little tighter. It’s the shop assistant who serves the white customer first, even though the person of colour got there earlier. It’s the racial profiling that leads to a bag check or a traffic stop, the promotion that goes to your less-deserving coworker, the parent who quietly disapproves of who their child is dating. It’s paying too much for a car, or not getting the Airbnb you wanted to rent.

But if I’m honest, dear reader, when I look hard enough, I can see some of those behaviours in my own life. I recognise those biases from time to time. I invite you to stand in front of the mirror and take an honest look at yourself. What do you see, if you really look closely?

Here’s where I think we’ve gone wrong. We’ve built up such a stigma around racism, and homophobia, and transphobia, and whatever your least favourite discrimination is, that we’ve stifled the very conversation needed to fix it. I’ll admit it: I’m often so scared to ask a question about race that I just don’t. I’m so afraid of accidentally offending someone by asking about their transition, say, that I avoid the conversation altogether. I don’t think I’m the only one who feels that way. I’ve been asked questions about being gay that could easily be read as offensive, but I’ve always tried to treat them as a chance to educate rather than a reason to shut someone out. Unless someone is deliberately trying to be offensive, why wouldn’t I respond in a way that doesn’t make them feel like they’ve committed a grave sin?

“Which one of you is the wife?” “Neither of us, because we’re two men. We both bring different skills, opinions and experience to the relationship, the same way a heterosexual couple would.” That’s an exchange that hopefully educates, rather than one that shuts the other person down as ignorant and leaves them fearful to engage next time.

But I understand the fear too, because I’ve been on the other side of it. I once described a man I found attractive as “exotic.” I meant his facial structure was striking, and I meant it as a compliment. He was deeply offended, and no matter how much I tried to apologise and explain myself, he wouldn’t accept it. We never spoke again. That interaction did teach me something, but it also left me more fearful, and less willing to bring up race at all — which is exactly the trap I’ve just described. Was it his job to educate me? Probably not. But if avoiding one bad conversation means I stop having a hundred good ones, the silence wins, and so does the bias nobody named.

So I just spent 7 days in a confined space with my 2 teenage children and my mother. This could have been a recipe for disaster, if I’m honest, but it actually turned out to be a very positive experience. The kids were really amazing. I was worried that the lack of PlayStation combined with sporadic wifi coverage might have resulted in less than optimal behaviour, but they took to it like lifelong sailors. Likewise, the time with my Mum was great — let’s just say she has a tendency to overthink everything! So we stripped her of all responsibilities and plied her with wine and a Kindle, which is usually a good way to get her out of her head. The bonding time was just what we all needed.

For my non-UK readers, let me explain the premise of a canal narrow boat. As part of our history, canals were a key component in transporting goods around the country before the advent of steam trains. They were winding waterways, dug entirely by hand, that allowed long narrow boats up to 70' in length and a maximum of 7' wide to be pulled by a horse while carrying tons of cargo. They were the semi-trucks of their day. They use locks, which fill and empty with water to go uphill and downhill using the simple physics of gravity and buoyancy to lift and lower the heavy boats. The locks are just wide enough to fit two boats side by side with a couple of inches to spare. Over time and through progress, the canals fell into disuse and they began to be adopted by leisure boaters. The boats transformed from sturdy cargo haulers to houseboats with galleys, beds, showers and toilets. These days it's basically an RV that floats. They have diesel engines that chug slowly, and the whole journey takes place at walking pace. It's serene, peaceful, charming, and no matter how hard you may try to fight it, you will be forced to relax. It's impossible to do anything else when you're travelling at that speed.

We picked up the boat in Napton in central England. We turned right onto the Oxford Canal for a brief time before joining the Grand Union Canal, which would be our home for the remainder of the trip. The first day, we travelled about 3 hours before mooring at a lovely village named Braunston. The great thing about canal trips is that you are completely self-sufficient. The boat has limited electricity, hot and cold running water, a fridge, oven and stovetop. So that night we cooked our own dinner and ate it overlooking the cut. The other great thing about canal trips is that you are never too far from a pub! So if you plan your stops correctly and don’t feel like cooking, you can always find a decent pub meal.

My friend Joey joined us the next morning for a day trip. As we had 13 locks to negotiate and a 2,000-yard tunnel, his timing was impeccable! He’s also fantastic company as well as a handy crew mate, so I think a good time was had by all. It took us about 9 hours to travel approximately 8 miles with all the locks, and by the time we moored in Weedon, the pub was calling our name. It was a lovely place to moor, but slightly diminished by train noise, as the mainline runs right next to the canal.

Our journey continued south along the Grand Union. The following day was mostly lock-free, which makes life a bit easier, but it did include the Blisworth Tunnel, which is the longest navigable canal tunnel in the UK. At over 3,000 yards, it takes almost 45 minutes to get through. Remember how I mentioned the locks are just wide enough for 2 boats to squeeze into? The tunnel is the same width, and so passing another boat along the way requires nerves of steel. Breathe in, everyone! Stoke Bruerne is a quintessential canalside village, and we decided to forgo cooking that night and have dinner at one of the two pubs. The weather was spectacular, and I think it's hard to beat the beauty of the English countryside when the sun is shining.

The next day, we reached the turning point in the village of Great Linford in Milton Keynes — also the place I grew up, between the ages of 2 and 10. Back where we started, you see? As luck would have it, I accidentally moored in front of a pub, so we felt it only proper to have dinner and drinks there. I mean, it would have been rude not to, right? It was a warm night. There were herons on the bank, bats flitting around us at sunset, and I felt enveloped by the close, humid air that warm summer nights in England sometimes bring. It was perfect. Family. Closeness. Satisfaction. Peace.

This holiday can also be measured in hats (not knots), as those of you who follow my social media posts will already know ;-). Following my diagnosis of melanoma in June, I’ve become a bit more responsible with my sun exposure. Steering a narrow boat requires sitting on the back of the boat with no cover for hours, and the forecast was for lots of sunshine, so I bought myself a beautiful straw hat and lots of SPF 50 especially for the trip. As we left the marina, a gust of wind snatched the hat right off my head and into the water, where it promptly sank. I was devastated — it hadn’t even lasted 5 minutes. Fortunately, there was a backup in the form of a sailor’s cap brought along by Joey, meant as a joke, but it ultimately became my staple sun hat for several days.

Along the way, we befriended some other boaters travelling the same route. On the 4th day, they were putting on glitter and sparkly outfits for their kids, and they had the most incredible hat. Seeing my excitement, they let me borrow it, and for a while I felt the loss of my original hat a bit less. It may, however, have been a bit flamboyant for everyday use.

The saga of the hats came full circle on the 5th day of the trip. A guy I have been seeing came to join us for dinner, and to my utter delight, he had a replacement for the original hat on his head which he had bought to replace my lost one. He even bought a clip on chin-strap so that I wouldn’t run the risk of losing it a second time. So sweet, and he definitely won me over that night! So there again we are back where we started. Same hat as the beginning. Which on the surface could look like no progress at all. But again, it was the journey that mattered. The feelings, the new friendships, the thoughtfulness, the caring gift. The hat was just a metaphor.

So the next time you find yourself right back where you started. I invite you to ask yourself this question: Have you really made no progress at all, or have you in face gained something? Friendship? Love? Growth? Experience? Learning? Does it matter that you are back where you’ve been before, or was the journey that got you here what matters the most?

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It shouldn’t have come as a big surprise really. I’ve spent a lot of my life in the sun, and I haven’t always been fastidious about sunscreen. I was born in the seventies. Brits of that era didn’t worry so much about these things. When you hail from somewhere that has 364 days of cloud cover, you drink up the sun as thirstily as you can on the rare occa…

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Before any of it, I wrote a couple of children’s books during lockdown. Stinkerton McPoo Goes Exploring — about the world’s gassiest dog and the trouble her nose gets her into — has sold around 20,000 copi…

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Up until the end of October 2022, I would say my life was what most people would describe as success…

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I have been fortunate enough to be a parent for over fourteen years. I have navigated nappies and night feeds and first days of school and homework battles and puberty and heartbreak and all the ten thousand ordinary extraordinary moments that make up a childhood. Somehow, despite everything we’ve been through and knowing full well that it was coming, having both of my children becoming official teenagers feels a bit disconcerting.

Two teenagers. In my house. Simultaneously. If they start working together then I’m totally screwed!

I stood in the kitchen on Tuesday morning looking at my kids and thought — when exactly did this happen? And more pressingly — is anyone going to help me with this? Because it turns out the answer, as it so often is in my life, is no. Just me. Just us. Just this small, fierce, complicated, wonderful family of three figuring it out as we go.

What I didn’t know on Tuesday morning was that the week ahead was going to test that quite so thoroughly.

The Week

I’m not going to tell you the details of what happened this week. Not because I’m protecting myself — but because some things belong to my children and not to the internet, and I made a promise to myself and to them when I started writing publicly, that their stories are theirs to tell. Also, if it does ever get into a court of law, I would like to keep some plausible deniability! Let’s just say it has involved alcohol, vapes, public urination, a police visit and a run-in with another parent.

What I will get into detail about with you is how it felt, and how I handled it.

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I am incredibly grateful. You put faith in someone you don’t know and offered support in a way that’s genuinely meaningful — not just to me, but to my kids. It’s not just the financial support, although God knows that helps! But also the feeling that comes from someone being willing to pay to read my writing. I feel a sense of pride, responsibility and an enormous amount of gratitude that my life experiences and my words have resonated enough to connect us together. Out of adversity, something meaningful is rising. The proverbial phoenix. That means more to me than I know how to properly express.

Thank you.

Now. Let me tell you what actually happened last weekend.

The Morning Everything Changed

I’d be lying if I told you I never check my view count. Anyone who tells you they post on social media without caring how it performs is probably not being completely honest. When you’re trying to build something — trying to reach people, trying to make something matter — you watch the numbers. Of course you do.

The post I wrote to launch this Substack was one I genuinely hoped would do well. I had a decent following across my platforms, but for very different reasons — the morning run crowd, the thirsty ones, the parenting community, the LGBT+ followers. I knew this was going to be a slow burn. I wasn’t expecting fireworks and I was trying to keep my expectations in check.

I keep my phone on sleep mode overnight now. I learned that lesson a while back — I have followers across the globe and the notifications were genuinely driving me insane. Midnight Snapchat group calls were becoming a semi-regular occurrence. Different time zones mean different hours and my phone used to buzz through the night like some kind of over zealous sex-toy!

So when I woke up the morning after posting, it wasn’t the sound that told me something was different. It was the quantity of notifications.

Hundreds of Threads notifications. Dozens of Instagram notifications. The kind of number that makes your stomach drop slightly before your brain has even processed why.

I opened the post and I opened my eyes wider.

209,000 views. In twelve hours.

My previous most successful post had 187,000 views — total. In its entire lifetime. This one had already passed that overnight while I was sleeping.

I sat on the edge of my bed for a moment. Just sat there. This required coffee.

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Last week I had no Substack. I mean, if I’m really honest, I didn’t even know substack existed until a week ago. I went to the library and picked up a book to help me learn more about AI. That book led to some great brainstorming, which ultimately led to this. Now this week I have more than three hundred subscrib…

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It didn’t come from a stranger on the street. It didn’t come from a politician’s soundbite or a tabloid comment section. It wasn’t yelled from a passing car. It came from another child. A classmate. Someone my kid sees every single day. A supposed friend. Maybe that’s why when it landed, it had so much impact.

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If any of that resonates with you — you’re in exactly the right place.

I’ve been posting snippets of my life on social media for a while now. The morning runs. The haircuts. The occas…

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