Listener Week: Marriage & friends, Library cuts, NICU babies, Intergenerational friendships

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Paris. So, if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts.

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It can be. It can be. Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to the programme. It's listener week, the time where we hand the reins over to you to cover the stories you want to talk about. And so many of you have

been in touch with the things that really matter to you. There's still time to share your story if you want to get in touch with us. We'll have those details coming up in a moment. But let me tell you what we have on the programme today. We'll be hearing from one listener who says that cuts to library services are misogynistic because the majority of people who work in libraries and

those who benefit from them are women. Plus, we'll be talking about so-called good enough marriages. Those are the ones that challenge the notion of the perfect partner and instead have realistic expectations about relationships. So we'd like to hear from you on this. Do you have a good enough marriage? Maybe you thought it would be a fairy tale and were shocked by just how hard it actually

is to maintain that partnership. Are you happy to have settled, even though it isn't perfect? Or maybe you didn't settle and left the marriage. Do get in touch.

You can text the programme. That number's 84844. On social media, we're at BBC Women's Hour. You can email us through our website too.

Send a WhatsApp message or a voice note. That number is 03700 100444. And on most smart speakers, you can say, Alexa, ask BBC Sounds to send a comment.

Looking forward to hearing what you have to say on this. Plus, we'll be talking to two mothers who are calling for more help for parents whose babies have had to spend time in neonatal intensive care units. And we'll hear from a 22-year-old and a 76-year-old who are best friends.

They say this intergenerational relationship works brilliantly as they get to see a very different take on life. So we've got plenty to talk about today. But first, if you're married, I've got a question for you.

How much of the detail about your relationship do you truly share with your closest friends? Well, it's something that one of our listeners would like to discuss more openly with her friends. Now, she wishes to remain anonymous, so her words here have been voiced by an actor. But this is what she had to say.

I feel like the M word for marriage is the next big taboo after the M word for menopause. and that there is not enough space to talk about this in our society. We're brought up from childhood to believe that marriage is a happy ending through fairy tales and stories,

continuing into adulthood with endless books, films, and lately TV programs such as Married at First Sight. But does this make our expectations too high? Many couples are different in private to how they are in public

as they feel they have to put on a united front. when I try to talk to my husband about the behavioral things he does that make me unhappy and resentful he shuts down straight away and tells me we'll need to get divorced this is very upsetting as I don't want to get divorced but just to discuss his behavior so that we can build on

the good things we have together resulting in a happier marriage I have also suggested therapy but he will not participate in this I therefore find that I have nobody to talk to about my marital problems. My husband and I have been married for over 20 years and our children are just about to leave home. Our social circles and support networks are made up of other couples

that we have met through bringing up our children over the years. I feel that because we were accepted into the group as a family, by revealing a weakness in our relationship, this would make me feel vulnerable within the whole friendship group. And it would also feel like a betrayal of my partner. I also believe that nobody wants to be around a bickering couple and so we have to put on

a united front to friends and family. I would feel a lot stronger if I had the support of my other female friends but I worry that it would damage the relationship they have with him. Do any other listeners find themselves in a similar situation where talking about the reality of marriage is a bit of a taboo subject? I wonder how many of us are just making the best of a good

enough marriage. So the views of one of our listeners there, we've got lots to get into on this. So we're going to discuss this with psychotherapist and author Julia Samuel, and also Natasha Lunn, who's the writer of Conversations on Love, who also I should point out is a trained celebrant too. Welcome to Women's Hour to both of you. So we've heard our

listeners experience then. Natasha, what are your thoughts on this? What do you think of this idea of marriage being as taboo as the menopause maybe used to be to talk about. And a trainee celebrant, just to point out, so I still have a lot to learn, but I'm definitely something that I've been thinking about.

And it's funny because I wouldn't have said this, I think, maybe before I wrote about my own marriage, because I do talk about everything with my girlfriends. But when I was writing my book, I wrote a scene about having

a sort of drunken fight with my husband. And I was surprised by how vulnerable that felt and how I didn't necessarily want people to judge him on something I might say because it was sort of very much one moment in time.