5 ways to tell if you are a roller derby widow

uk roller derby

 

So your partner plays roller derby? Here’s how to tell if you’re a roller derby widow… and look on the bright side!

So you thought it would be fun for your woman to pick up a new sport. Now you sit in a house full of sexy hosiery wondering when you’ll see them again. Acknowledging you’re a roller derby widow can be a challenging time fraught with confusion and loneliness.

Know that you are not alone! The mourning process is real. Every widow’s experience is unique, but you may recognise the following:

Are you a roller derby widow?

1. Denial

Many of us are ashamed to admit that, early in the derby widow experience, it is actually exciting. Your home is often filled with your partner’s hilarious teammates. Your lover’s fitness is advancing at an astonishing rate, she’s taken over changing tyres, and she seems to have found an inexplicable comfort with firearms. When she drags you to the local all-night roller disco, you beam with pride at her skating skills.

2. Anger

It’s 9:30 p.m. and you haven’t seen Madamoiselle de Derby since yesterday. The house is littered with skates or wristguards that smell like week-old roadkill that previously subsisted on a diet of limburger. She’s spending all her time doing ‘tracking stats’, writing ‘line-ups’ or glued to some messageboard discussing the merits of taping make-up sponges to her blisters. Then, when you slump off to the pub to drown your sorrows with your mates, she rolls in two hours after you, red-faced and laughing about the ‘after party’.

3. Bargaining

You are a product of the modern age, no? You can handle this if she’ll just give in a bit. But your attempts to keep Wednesdays for ‘us’ time and coax her to take the summer hols somewhere where she can’t visit a local league just aren’t making it go away.

4. Sadness

You miss her. It’s common to experience ‘what if’ questions at this stage, like ‘what if I had just encouraged her to join something more delicate, like street fighting or kendo instead?’

5. Acceptance

Hard as it may be to understand this, you’ll eventually learn to embrace your roller derby girl. You may start to realise that your mates crowd round with anticipation to hear about the latest pile-up at practice, that when you finally watch a bout it feels like your first rock concert, or that you’ve tried on the referee stripes and have developed a taste of your own for the track. The women of the roller derby are a rare breed who will find the derby with or without you. All you can do is thank the derby goddesses who reside above, and start working on creating that sign for the next bout.

Helen Fury says: “This article was approved by my own dear derby widow”.


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