I am worried about Sarah. It’s very unhealthy behaviour from her, and I’d say it’s fairly certain she has been reading this forum. I googled ‘Tanya Burr cheating’ after she started throwing out those accusations and this thread was the first thing that came up after some generic ‘Tanya Burr and Jim Chapman have divorced’ articles, so I’m guessing she’s done the same with the same results.
With that in mind, I don’t want to drag her. For whatever reason she clearly is not very happy — happy people simply don’t obsess about their partner’s ex or stranger' opinions. Whatever you think of Tanya, she has clearly moved on with her life and has only ever had kind things to say publicly about Jim since their break. She has done relatively few interviews, and the main one she did was about her own life and the new future she was creating. I’m sure it helped a lot of women who may have gone through a divorce or serious break up to see a light at the end of the tunnel, and I don’t see why she should have to keep silent about her fear around that big life change — especially as she made it so clear it was not about Jim himself by saying he was still her best friend.
Ironically, the main message Tanya gave out in that interview was that she regretted oversharing online and had chosen to live more privately as a result — something Sarah could learn from.
Sarah I’m sure did receive a lot of negative attention at the start of her relationship with Jim given how soon it was since he had announced his divorce after so many years with Tanya. They built their relationship in the midst of this intensity — Jim fresh from a painful break up, Sarah newly in the public eye, the pair of them getting a lot of speculation thrown their way. It probably felt like them against the world and they bonded over this shared sense of injustice that people could judge them or think it was all a bit soon. It could be that proving everyone wrong (that she wasn’t a rebound, that Jim was ready to be with someone new) was at least a part of what kept them together. Sarah certainly derived satisfaction from it, she went back to reply to nasty comments on one of the first pictures they appeared in together a year later to 'remember the utter crap that was said.' Three years later they’re engaged and have a daughter and house, this should be their happily ever after where they settle down. But perhaps it feels a little flat now that they’re just living out the tiring life of new parents and don’t have any more drama fuelling them forwards. Perhaps the ‘us vs Tanya’ thing has become a toxic way to bond since it was forced on them when they were first together. Maybe since she was introduced as the new girlfriend after Tanya, three years later she remains paranoid that everyone is comparing her even when they’re not. Jim’s family and friends as well as strangers online. I worry she doesn’t have much of a support network of her own, if she did surely they would advise her against this behaviour. She should go to therapy if she isn’t already.
Sarah, if you’re reading this, please take care of yourself. Delete instagram from your phone and stop looking up what people irrelevant to your life are saying about you. It will all blow over in a couple of weeks and people will move on to the next thing. Don’t let insecurity stop you enjoying the first precious year of your daughter’s life. Having your attention taken up by such petty matters will affect her more than a bot comment she’ll never read. You’ll never get this time back.