For now, Jessica’s career in law is on hold, she instead has a job in social media and works from home.
She also posts about her experiences on TikTok, regularly using #wag and #waglife.
“My career can be picked up at any time – whereas his career is right now and you’ve really got to take every opportunity,” she says.
“As much as people say it’s a glamorous lifestyle you do make sacrifices so your partner can have their dream and get themselves as far as they can in football.
“At the end of the day, as much as I’m involved, it’s his career. That means in order for me to support him properly I can’t get emotionally involved.”
This includes not getting too emotionally attached to where they live.
“We usually rent newer houses that are a blank canvas so we can make them our own, although this last season the accommodation was provided furnished by Argyle,” she says.
“We put a lot of Xavier’s toys and garden stuff in storage and referred to our Plymouth accommodation as ‘the holiday house’.
“It can be hard when he asks us to get things like his trampoline which we don’t have with us.”
Owen’s career is always the priority, Jessica says.
“When Owen was at Oxford he had one year left on his contract and I loved it there,” she says.
“But the best thing was for him to go and get game time somewhere miles away. So we moved.”
While Premier League footballers can earn tens of thousands of pounds a week – sometimes hundreds of thousands – life in the lower leagues can be very different.
“When you think ‘Wag’ [players’ wives and girlfriends] and you think ‘footballer’, both of those terms come with this stereotype that our lives are easy,” Jessica says.
“People also put League One players in the same bracket as Premier League players.
“In the Premier League they’re often set up for life – we can’t live in that way because we have to prepare for life after football.”
Adding to the uncertainty of where they will be playing is also the possibility or relegation or injury.
“When we were at Portsmouth, Blackpool was still his parent club and they got relegated,” says Jessica. “Owen wasn’t even involved that season, but his wage was still affected.
“You have to be prepared for everything. You just can’t live outside of your means.
“But it’s still a really fortunate position to be in.
“Luckily, Owen’s been good with injuries. There are some players who they get injured in the last month of the season and they’re out of contract.
“In football things can be really positive or really negative.”
The uncertainty also affects their children – four-year-old Xavier and two-month old Etta.
“Now that Xavier is growing up – he’s fast approaching school age – another thing that will have to be added into the mix is his stability,” says Jessica.
Even normal things like organising his recent fourth birthday party aren’t always straightforward.
“We couldn’t plan to have a party in Plymouth with balloons and cakes etc because we didn’t know if we were going to be there,” she says.
“Instead we planned a party near my family in Stoke-on-Trent – we needed to make something work regardless of what happens with Owen’s job.
“As much as I worry about Xavier and Etta, I also think how amazing it’s going to be for them when they’re older to be able to tell their life story and say they’ve lived in all these different places.
“I think it’s teaching them a good life lesson that they don’t need to be tied to one place.”
She says they have made every move a positive experience.
“We’ve said to Xavier that we might be moving soon and when we do we’re going to get his bike back out of storage,” says Jessica.
“That way he knows that moving is a possibility and hopefully he’s not thinking about what he’s going to lose but what he’s going to gain.
“The fortunate thing for us is that Xavier loves football. He gets a lot of excitement as well from the new strips and the new chants and all of that kind of thing.”

