P U A K PUK Romance isn’t dead – it’s just not always as easy as it once was. We delve into the secrets to a long-lasting relationship with the digital parenting superstar duo, Mother and Papa Pukka, who reveal their top tips to rediscover your long-term love... Writing | Gemma Calvert
W
76 • happiful.com • March 2020
During the hard times, Anna, 38, credits her hubby – fellow journalist Matt Farquharson, 43 – with being her rock. She recalls with heartbreaking clarity when she first miscarried in A&E. “Matt just held me and that was the point where we got married – not the day I was worried about favours, the live band, and 5,000 Scrabble tiles spelling out our guests’ names,’ she says. “We got married in a hospital ward during one of the darkest moments we’ve experienced together.” But by the beginning of last year, Anna and Matt’s solidity had weakened. Confused by the seemingly gaping chasm between “I do” and “The End”, and tired of daily frustrations with each other, the couple became disillusioned by marriage.
“It’s easy to cruise along and think ‘everything’s fine’, but you let little disappointments go, and ignore things that should be dealt with – that shortness with your partner, that sarkiness about mundane nonsense, starts to build and affect someone,” explains Matt, aka Papa Pukka, whose hilarious take on fatherhood has turned him and Anna into digital parenting royalty. Anna agrees. “It was never one thing, it was an amalgamation of things that were chipping away at our happiness, and wearing down on what was once a really shiny thing,” she says, adding that
Photography | Emily Gray
hen does the gloss dull on a shiny, happy marriage? For author, presenter and journalist Anna Whitehouse, it was precisely eight years and two children after saying “I do” – the moment she discovered one of her husband’s jagged toenail clippings in her cosmetics bag. “That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” admits Anna, whose filter-free parenting blog, Mother Pukka, has become a go-to for frazzled parents. Over the past six years, Anna has “cracked open the very real issues” of her life, sharing her innermost feelings with her 241,000 Instagram followers, about everything from five miscarriages, PTSD, anxiety and postnatal depression, to working in pyjamas, getting “spangled” with her mum on a rare night out, and swimming with two kids (FYI don’t do it).
