As told to Holly Bullock

I’m Braonain and I was once a stay-at-home girlfriend, but my days looked very different from the glamorous lives I’d see played out online by other women in my situation. If you were to take what’s on TikTok and Instagram at face value, you’d assume the daily routine of every stay-at-home girlfriend was a constant procession of smoothies, reformer pilates classes and shopping trips. Sounds aspirational, doesn’t it? But I was wary from the beginning.

I say I was a stay-at-home girlfriend, but what I mean is I was an accidental stay-at-home girlfriend – and this distinction is important. I’m American and my boyfriend was English: we met two years ago when I was living in England and working as a nanny but, soon after, I had to return to Utah to start a different nannying job. The distance was gruelling, and flying between countries every six or eight weeks was unsustainable. After a year, I decided to quit my job (I’d still create content for my TikTok account on the side, which I’d been gradually building over a few years) and move to England to spend the next six months living with my boyfriend near London. The only catch? I’d be on a tourist visa, which means I wouldn’t be able to work. Going in, I was excited, but I already knew this new life was going to feel strange.

“I was an accidental stay-at-home girlfriend – here’s why it’s definitely not the dream”