relationships

In which I ponder…time is a healer and other bullshit (Part One)

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There are a lot of myths out there about relationships, love, heartbreak and dating, and many of them are widely believed and quoted, but immensely unhelpful. I can’t claim to be an expert at relationships (although I was with someone for 21 years so that must count for something, surely?) but as it turns out, I am an expert in the other three, so as a public service I thought I’d give you my thoughts on some of the more popular bullshit that people will tell you. All based on my personal relationship experience, my study in psychotherapy and my own years of therapy.

(There are so many of these, I’m going to spread them over a few posts, so here’s your first installment)

Disclaimer 1: you may vociferously disagree with some, or all, of this, and that’s ok.

Disclaimer 2: just because I know this stuff doesn’t mean I do it all. But I feel like knowing it is two-thirds of the way there.

Myth 1: Time is a healer.

Nope.

Wouldn’t it be nice if, just by the steadfast passing of time, all your most painful psychological wounds could be healed? It’s a compelling and attractive idea, so it’s no wonder people will tell you this, but it’s also absolutely not true and if you believe in it you will be doing yourself a disservice.

The reality is that time is only a healer if you do the work of healing. This means really honest self examination, probably therapy and being willing to confront difficult feelings about yourself and your experiences. Of course, the passing of time does make things less raw, less of a continuous, preoccupying pain but that is not healing. That’s just memory fading, and life moving on. You’ll start to feel ok again. You’ll be telling yourself you got this, you’re moving on. Time is indeed a healer.

If you have a wound though, it’s still there.

The problem is that if you just let time pass, what you learn to do is to protect that wound. You keep it safe from ripping open, from becoming painful again. Instead of confronting and working through your pain, you stand in front of it in a constant state of high alert looking for anything that might be a threat.

At its worst, this behaviour will prevent you from getting into the sort of relationship you seek, as to potential partners your distance and unwillingness to leave your command post will look like a lack of interest and a problem with commitment. You’ll be left wondering why your relationships never work out. But eventually, you’ll start to feel more comfortable. You’ll probably get into a relationship again. You’ll look pretty functional just so long as not too much is at stake and you don’t – through the feelings you are developing – start to feel vulnerable. Relationships require both the willingness to be vulnerable and courageous – Brene Brown is great on this, so I won’t go on about it. But once you start to feel vulnerable you start getting nervous. You’ve got to protect that wound. You need to keep looking out for any signs of danger. And then when you perceive that a threat is there, you can’t help but to let fight or flight kick in. And that’s when it will all start to go terribly wrong.

The thing is that, when you are in flight or fight, the oldest, most prehistoric, most unregulated part of your brain kicks in. Your autonomic nervous system can’t tell the difference between an imminent attack by a sabre tooth tiger and the fact that your boyfriend didn’t notice you’ve had your nails done. Your heart races and you get that horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach. But most importantly your thoughts become scrambled and before you know it, you’ve persuaded yourself that he doesn’t love you, that you’re fundamentally unlovable and you’ve thrown in the towel. Despite any real evidence to the contrary. Self sabotage 101.

The good thing though, is that your wound is safe.

Or is it?

The only way to prevent all this is to be brave. Confront that fear, do the healing. See the therapist, read the books. It will take time. But at least at the end you might be healed.

Myth 2: No one can love you until you love yourself

Annoyingly true.

In the past I didn’t believe this and it annoyed the hell out of me when people said it. This was mainly because it seemed so difficult. How could I love myself when the people who should have loved me didn’t? Surely the answer to this was to get someone to love me, which would provide irrefutable proof of my lovableness? And then I’d be able to relax into loving myself.

Nooooooo…

The problem with not loving yourself, being unable to see your own strengths, your beauty, your worth and your contribution is that living with self loathing and a sense of being unlovable is a pretty bleak place to be. And so we look to others to reassure us that we are ok. We try all sorts of ways to feel loved and to feel validated. At its least concerning level, we diligently document our brilliant lives on Facebook or Instagram, carefully curating the posts so that our inner pain can never be discovered, and drop subtle hints about the more difficult things in the hope that someone will be interested enough to ask if we are ok. And then we stand back and watch the likes come in. The more likes we get the more liked we are, right?

At its worst, we get into a relationship with someone and then make them responsible for making us feel loved. But this is way too much of a responsibility for another person, even if they actually do love you. For one thing, if one partner has healthy self esteem, it creates an imbalance in terms of the focus of the relationship – because rather than loving one another equally, one person gets burdened with loving their partner enough to fill up the emptiness they feel about themselves.

But also, if you haven’t done the work and are still running to a script that tells you that you are unworthy and unlovable, loving you is going to end up like pouring love into a leaky bucket that will never be filled. Because that voice is really loud – loud enough to make sure that you never feel loved, no matter what – and you’ll be on the lookout for signs that support your world view. You’ll find yourself ignoring things that you should be noticing – the small acts of love that take place every day – and focusing on the bits and bobs that prove you are right to think that you’re unlovable. You will end up feeling resentful that your partner doesn’t love you enough and your partner will feel confused and exhausted. And they will also feel unloved, or at the very least, unsure – because your focus is not on loving them, but on ensuring that they love you.

And every time you feel unloved, that ancient bit of your brain is going to kick in again and you’ll start behaving like a crazy person.

Learning to love yourself is hard, and sometimes the relationship you’re in is part of why you don’t. But it’s more likely to be a bit more ingrained than that – in that you’ve ended up in a bad relationship because you never actually learnt to love yourself in the first place and you’ve accepted what you think you’re worth.

Again – the only way to avoid this is to do the work. Do the therapy. Practice self reflection. And be really honest with yourself about how you might have contributed to the things that go wrong in your relationships. This doesn’t mean you should take the blame – this just means being really clear about what was your shit and what was theirs and then focusing on working on yours only. Don’t worry about theirs. Don’t even bother telling them about it, tempting though it is*. That’s their journey.

And if you’re finding it hard, fake it until you make it. Shout down that voice in your head and tell yourself every day, every time you feel like you might be waivering, that you’re beautiful, you’re clever, you’re enough*. Or whatever it is that you need to hear. Eventually, if you work hard, you’ll believe it.

Myth 3: If it’s meant to be, it should be easy

Bullshit.

News flash people: relationships are hard.

When you are young, things seem so straightforward. Almost from birth we are sold the idea that we’ll meet someone, fall in love and live happily ever after. Simples. For some people this happens and that’s wonderful. I actually have quite a number of friends who met as young teens and here we all are in our 50th year, and they’re still together. I’m going to assume that they are happy – certainly they are happy enough to still be married.

However, I’m going to hazard a guess that, despite what their Facebook feed might suggest, most of those couples will have been through challenging times. They will have let one another down over the years or disappointed one another. They will have been bored and wondered where the excitement has all gone. They may have had moments when their head has been turned by someone else, and some of them may have acted upon those feelings.

But they are still together.

This won’t be because it was easy. It will be because they chose not to give up, and to ride the storms.

The reality is that all relationships are difficult – even the good ones. And when you enter into a relationship older I believe it gets harder. Maybe your previous partner left you for someone else. Maybe they treated you badly. Perhaps you had an affair which destroyed your marriage and left you deeply regretful. Whatever the reason, you will enter your next relationship with a certain amount of baggage.

Even if, as I’ve mentioned above, you’ve been doing the work, exercising your new found self knowledge in the context of a new relationship can be tricky. Perhaps you had trouble setting boundaries with your previous partner – but now you’re so keen not to make the same mistake, you’re laying down the law like a dictator with your new one. Or maybe your last partner told you that you didn’t help out enough around the house, so now you’re in a domestic frenzy almost permanently, but constantly looking for reassurance that your efforts have been noticed.

I think that the main thing you can do to make relationships easier is to acknowledge that they take time, and that it might take some years to get used to one another on a really deep level. And that there are going to be times when you feel like it would be better just to walk away.** I’m not talking about relationships that have just begun, of course. I’m talking about relationships where the limerence has gone, you’re committed and you’re into the day to day business of being together. But if you hang on in there, roll with the punches and learn together, maybe you’ll be able to laugh together in 20 years about what nightmares you both were at the beginning.

Myth 4: Closure

Again – bullshit.

People often talk about needing closure at the end of a relationship, and in my view, they end up torturing themselves looking for it.

This is because what they mean is that they want to try to understand not the things they did, but the things their partner did.

I’m here to tell you, that’s never going to happen. You are never really going to understand, and it’s not your business anyway.

It’s hard to enough to understand why we do the things we do ourselves, let alone start thinking we are going to be able to understand the internal machinations of other people. Even people we’ve loved.

The only thing you can do – and really the only useful thing you can do in terms of future relationships – is to work on why you did stuff. Because, unfortunately, no relationship really ever ends because one person was the embodiment of evil and the other was an angel. We all contribute to everything, and believe me, you will have done things. The things you did, don’t in any way condone or explain the behaviour of your partner – they are responsible for that – but you can learn from them. You may decide you would do some of the things you did again in similar circumstances, but you might think that there is also some stuff you can work on. I’d be surprised if you don’t.

So instead of closure, look for acceptance and then learning. Accept it’s over. Accept you’ll never know why your partner did this, or said that. And then learn from it all.

*I will admit to being particularly bad at this

**of course sometimes that might be true, and I’m not at all advocating staying in a relationship where you’re not happy. But make sure you definitely can’t be happy before you end it.

In which I ponder…decades

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Last weekend – the 1st April – marked 10 years since we left the UK for a new adventure in the sun. If it wasn’t for the fact that the children have doubled in size and gone from primary school kids to adults I’d have trouble believing it, but in other respects our previous life seems like a very distant memory.

As a family of four, although we were sad to be leaving our family and friends, we were certain we would not be returning home. We wanted to make a new life, start again, challenge ourselves – and anyone who knows me well knows that this sort of thing excites me. So even though I knew leaving everything that was familiar to me was a risk – for many reasons – I was still keen to do it. It would be easy to mistake me for one of those people who believes that if you change everything externally – your home, your job, your country – then internal things will change too. Like your relationship. However, I wasn’t stupid enough to think this might be the case, and I figured that if I ended up divorced then Australia was as good a place to do it as anywhere.

After all, everything seems better when the sun is shining, doesn’t it?

In the event, just when I thought that miraculously distance, some good weather and beautiful beaches had done it’s job, everything fell apart in spectacular fashion, and it turned out that the sun didn’t make a whole load of difference.

At first I wanted to go home. I was desperate to go home. I was lonely, and frightened and heartbroken. But the idea of returning home – packing up and making such a momentous decision on my own – was overwhelming. I’d never made a decision of that magnitude on my own. And I knew that taking the children to other side of the world, where they would rarely see their father was not in their best interests. Inexplicably, even though at times I hated his guts and would happily have stuck a fork in him, somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do that to him.

The longer we didn’t go home for, the harder it got. The children cemented their friendships and got to critical moments in their schooling. I started a career which I enjoyed and in which I was successful. Eventually, I too started making new friends and developing a life removed from and separate to my old life. We bought a dog.

But the pull to return never went away. I didn’t sell the house in the New Forest. And every time I visited I became convinced that going back would be – conversely – the way forwards. My family* want us to. And we miss them so much. My friends want us to. And we miss them so much. When I’m there I think that’s what I want too – it would be so easy to be there, in my house, with my best friends round the corner and my family not too far away. It’s confusing. It’s all so familiar.

So why haven’t I done it?

Well…this weekend I decided that we should celebrate these 10 years in Sydney. We came for a new life and we certainly got that. We came for a better life, and in many respects my life is indeed better. We came for a challenge – and we got that in bucket loads. I’m finally at a place where I feel proud of what I’ve achieved. Things didn’t turn out how I expected, but I’ve raised independent, resilient, smart, awesome young adults. I’ve established a career in a new country. I’ve made a new home and new friends. And I’m a new person – stronger, more confident, more independent**. I have become myself.

It’s been a hard lesson and a long road, but I’ve learnt how to be me…

The children and I spent our decade anniversary evening surrounded by friends in the most iconic of Sydney spots, in the shadow of the Opera House. I had so much fun and I felt blessed to have such wonderful people in my life. I realized that I am not lonely. My life is full. I have my moments – of course – but life is good.

And I think I have to recognize that the reason I haven’t gone back is because I don’t want to.

Because I’m already home.

 

 

 

 

*except my dad. And I suspect that’s because he wants to live here himself

**with better shoes and hair

In which I ponder…being liberated

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This won’t come as much of a surprise to my married and partnered friends – but there are some very liberating aspects to being single.

The one that generally springs to mind is that I – in theory – could have sex with anyone*.

Obviously in practice this is neither as true nor as desirable as you’d think. Both George Clooney and David Beckham are sadly unavailable, for example. But also sex is not the thing that most single women miss most in the absence of a relationship. For example, I am more frequently vexed that there is no one to help with the garden and deal with the admin tasks relating to the car then I am about the absence of a willing and naked man in my bed – although if George Clooney turned up unexpectedly I probably wouldn’t get him to phone the RTA** to sort out my green slip.

All that being said though, I am, for example, in the enviable position of being able to buy whatever I want (so long as I have the money for it). Now I realize that for many people this is also true when in a relationship, but shopping for things other than food – and sometimes even for food – was often a bone of contention in my marriage, and over time I resorted to a variety of forms of subterfuge to disguise any shopping trips. I don’t think we were very unusual in this regard, and to be fair on my ex husband, I probably had more shoes than I needed. Or than anyone needed really. But who hasn’t swapped the fancy designer bag of clothes lovingly wrapped in tissue paper for a plain old carrier before they got home or said ‘what – this old thing? I’ve had it for ages!’. Or is that just me…

I can also just get a dog if I want one (a decision I regret regularly, even though I love the daft dog. Where’s a husband when you need one?!). I can move house whenever I want – and believe me, I have. I can have as many cushions as I like on my bed and no one complains. I have all of the wardrobe space to myself, and dinner no longer has to consist of meat, potatoes and two veg. If I want the light on to read, there is no one there to complain about it.

All awesome, I think you’ll agree.

But I’m learning that in fact, something which filled me with fear and dread in the early years of singledom is turning out to be one of the best rather than the worst things about being alone.

For the first few years after my ex husband and I separated, I didn’t go on any holidays, other than to visit family and friends in the UK. How could I go on holiday alone?? This is something that should be done with a family, or at the very least, a partner. Besides, I’d been on holiday alone once and it had been a disaster – years ago I’d taken myself off to Spain to ‘think’ after finding out about one of my husband’s affairs and I am here to tell you that ‘thinking’ is pretty much the worst thing you could do for yourself in this situation. I spent most of that week either crying alone or crying to my friends (at enormous expense) on my mobile phone. Crying in Spain alone is not preferable to crying at home with some friends who might distract you every now and again from your navel gazing. Crying alone in Spain means you have nothing else to do other than torture yourself about what ifs and might have beens and oh my gods…

Understandably I was not keen to repeat this experience. So I didn’t go away. I thought I would wait until I had a partner again.At the time it seemed like a good plan – after all, how hard could it be to meet someone? Soon I would be all loved up again like a normal person, and I’d have my holiday partner for life.

Five years on, I knew I was going to significantly reevaluate my plan. I still didn’t have a partner. And I still wasn’t going on holidays apart from with family or the kids. I could see that the children were not going to be wanting to go on holiday with me for much longer, so what was my plan? What if this is it – I’m on my own forever? Is my plan never to go on holiday? No weekends away? Am I never going to go to all those places I want to see – Sardinia, Corsica, Mykonos, Bora Bora, Vietnam and all the rest – because I don’t have a special someone to go with?

And I realised that if this was the plan, it sucked big time. And I also realised that the only person who would actually be preventing me from doing all these things was me.

So here I am, on one of many weekends away alone I’ve been on in the last year, and it’s fine. More than fine. It’s great. I can do what I want. Make my own plans and change them at will. Get up early or late. Eat three square meals a day or eat nothing.Spend ages staring at the same painting at a gallery or scoot through barely looking because I’ve already determined that I’m not keen on anything in it. The possibilities are endless and I feel not just liberated but finally as if I am fully in charge of my life.

And I haven’t cried once.

*although for some people that was the case actually when ‘happily’ married – and that, my friends, is why I am no longer married…

** the fact that it was only when I proof read this piece that I realised I had put NRMA here instead of RTA should give you some indication of how badly I need this help…

In which I ponder…how to be friends with single people

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being-single

 

When I was married, I thought of myself as being well liked. We had lots of friends, hosted and were invited to lots of social events, and as well as a group of close friends – both in Australia and in the UK – we had a broad network of other friends and acquaintances with whom we would occasionally catch up. On the social front, life was good. We had been in Australia for only a few years, but we had a great group of friends – our Aussie family – and I thought we would be there for each other through thick and thin.

I was unprepared – in the extreme – for how this would change when my marriage ended.

These days I could count on one hand – and still have a few spare fingers – the friends I have retained from that time. And I have to say that this loss of friendships has, over the long term, caused me more pain than the divorce itself. It was clear that my marriage could not continue, but the end of so many friendships took me by surprise.

This may all be in my head, but it seems to me that when you are single, people think, at some level, that you are a bit of a loose cannon. For me, this was most evident when it transpired that a friend of mine was of the belief that I was involved in drug selling, despite having had only very limited and short lived experience of smoking marijuana in my late teens and never having touched anything since. I don’t even drink caffeinated  coffee for goodness sake.

But there are other signs. When I was married, we would frequently have friends over and much alcohol was consumed. Generally speaking, those who were driving would stay sober whilst their other half got a bit merry and loud, and everyone had a great time. I’ve noticed that single women getting drunk is viewed rather differently though. Judged is probably a better word to describe it really – as though their being a bit inebriated is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how wild they might really be and that they are only barely keeping a lid on their debauchery.

I refuse to be one of those women who believes that the reason that they are no longer invited to ‘couples’ events – which is virtually all events – is because the other women think they will try to take their man. Partly because I’d never do it, but also because it suggests somehow that you believe that you’d be attractive to your friend’s husbands. The reality is – as I know far too well, unfortunately – that if your husband is the sort of husband who would sleep with, or run off with, one of your friends – or any other woman in fact – he won’t care if she’s single or not. And nothing you do, and no amount of trying to keep single women away from him will stop him.

I think the reason that single women become outsiders is simply because people like symmetry. They are a couple and they want other couples in their lives. They also like stability, so they don’t want someone around who might up end the apple cart by introducing someone into the mix that everyone doesn’t like.

When you become single, you don’t belong in the social group you used to belong in. You’re a special category – perfect for coffees, girl’s lunches, girl’s nights out and not much else. Weekends away with groups of friends is out for you – unless all your married friends come away with you for a girl’s weekend. It gets so that you virtually never get to speak to a man unless you’re on a date or in a business meeting. And I like and miss men – not just as partners but as people generally – most of the time without a single thought of getting them into bed. Throughout my life, pre marriage and during my marriage, I’ve always had close male friends. One of my closest, and best loved friends is a man – who is thankfully single or else I’d probably not be allowed to speak to him either.

So – in the interests of public education, I’d like to share a few top tips with you for being friends with a singleton…

  1. Never assume that your single friend won’t want to join in something that is otherwise all couples. We’re used to being single – we’ll probably cope. Every single woman has had a friend tell them that the reason they haven’t been included in something is because they thought you wouldn’t feel comfortable. If you find yourself having that thought, first consider whether it is actually you that won’t feel comfortable – and then having done so, give your single friend the opportunity to decide for themselves whether the event is likely to make them feel uncomfortable or not;
  2. Don’t assume that your single friend only ever wants to see people of the same gender as them. Personally I really miss family style events where there are couples and children and I am very rarely invited to them* – and I think this is probably more acute for those of us who don’t actually have any family in the country;
  3. For most people who get divorced, fundamental material things about their lives change. For me, I went from not working to working full time and I moved house to be nearer to work so that my children were alone for shorter periods before and after school. I was very much busier than I had been previously and found it hard – although I really tried – to balance the need to do my job, be a parent and run a household alone as well as try to manage my social life. These changes are on top of the challenges of the end of a significant relationship and can often cause tension in friendships. Try to bear with your friend while they make these adjustments – the likelihood is that they value and want to retain your friendship but it’s going to look different to how it was. And be prepared for things to take a while to settle down;
  4. Try to avoid prioritizing ‘couples’ events over social events with your single friend, particularly if you’ve already made arrangements to do something with them. All of my single friends complain – and I’ve also experienced this – that there is a hierarchy of invitations, and doing stuff with single people is at the bottom of it. It’s so far at the bottom of it that there is an assumption that we understand that couples events take precedence, so people are often quite open about cancelling or postponing an arrangement with you on the basis that they have now been invited to something with the other half and sometimes the kids. I can’t think of another way to describe it so I’m going to come straight out with it. It’s rude. And often really disappointing.**
  5. Think of your single friends occasionally on those days when traditionally you’d be all en famille. Check in with them to say hi, and if they are alone and it would be appropriate to your family circumstances, ask them if they’d like to pop in. It’s likely that they will say no as they wouldn’t wish to intrude, but just to know that someone thought of them is probably enough. This is particularly true of single people who have shared care arrangements for their children, and so might be spending some special days completely alone;
  6. This doesn’t happen to me so much anymore as the few friends I’ve retained know me pretty well, but don’t assume that if you’ve arranged to go out for a drink with your single friend that they are wanting to drink 6 months worth of sparkling and have their biggest night of the year. That’s you wanting to do that, because you’re on a girl’s night. For us this is possible any night we go out so it’s more likely that we’d like to have a couple of glasses of wine and a good chat, getting home in one piece and waking up the next morning with a clear head.
  7. Related to the above – don’t be afraid to go out for a drink with your single friend. They’re not going to get drunk, chat up some hot guy at the bar and abandon you in the dodgy end of town. They can do that any night, and if they do, they are probably not a good friend regardless of whether they are single or not.
  8. And lastly – if you are a singleton who has now found love, don’t forget your single friends. If they are good friends, they will be thrilled that you are happy, but they still want to be part of your life.

 

*in Australia. When I’m back at home in the UK with my friends who have known me forever this doesn’t happen. I’m not sure whether this is a function of the longevity of our relationships or whether this is a cultural difference between the two countries

**again something that I don’t think would happen to me in the UK but the same applies – is it the length of the relationships or a cultural difference?

In which I ponder…delayed gratification

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saucepans

 

Long ago, when I first moved in with the boyfriend who was to become my husband, then the father of my children and then my ex husband, my mum decided she wanted to buy us a set of saucepans.

She embarked upon this with the same method and enthusiasm she has for other projects that involve the purchase of anything beyond a few florets of cauliflower. Much research was done, extensive meta-analysis of all things saucepan and many, many phone calls to me to tell me in enormous, death defying detail about saucepans she eventually did not buy.

I wanted to tear my hair out. Or possibly hers. Why did she have to make such a meal out of everything? Why could she not just go out and buy a set of saucepans like a normal person, rather than causing me to lose the will to live on a regular basis regaling me on the subject of badly constructed handles and poorly fitting lids?

In the end, we were presented with a box of really rather unremarkable saucepans. These saucepans were, apparently, the perfect storm of kitchen implements – just the right quality, just the right number of pans and at just the right price. Mum was pretty proud of herself and we were mainly pleased that we were never going to have to discuss saucepans again.*

This evening, some 26 years later, I made dinner with those same saucepans – which still have every single handle and lid in tact and look like they will last for at least another quarter century.

It’s got me thinking about the importance of taking your time to decide what you want and to make the right choices.

These single years have been lonely. There is no doubt about that. Divorce can be isolating at any time in life but experiencing it when you’re a new immigrant with no, or very few, real, reliable, longstanding friends around and no family, creates a new layer to feeling alone that can eat away at your insides.**

There were moments, early on, when I might have been tempted to go along with something – with someone – because I was so afraid of being alone, I would have been able to persuade myself to ignore the instinct that was telling me – ‘no….he’s not the one’***

But I knew they weren’t the one, and I also knew I wasn’t ready. Being alone – learning to be alone – is important. Especially after the (spectacular) breakdown of a long marriage. I knew I needed to spend some time processing what had happened, so that I could take responsibility for the things that I had done to contribute to it, and to get clear in my heart, as well as my head, about what wasn’t mine to torture myself about. I needed to try to understand – as best as you can ever understand the actions of another person – what had happened, so that I didn’t inadvertently repeat the same mistakes. And I needed to rebuild my self esteem so that I would know that I deserved better, that I was worthy of someone who was worthy of me.

It’s been a long wait.

But maybe, like saucepans, relationships are more likely to be high quality and lasting if you take your time, do your research and don’t settle for second best. There’s no rush. Because it’s starting to look like the old adage might be true – that the best things come to those who wait.

*of course that was incorrect. We had unwittingly started a never ending discourse on saucepans. How are those saucepans I bought you going? Did you cook this in my saucepans – the ones I bought? etc etc…

**when it would be way more useful for it to eat away at your outsides, rendering you sadly lonely but satisfyingly and alluringly slender

*** OK I still am. But I’m still not afraid enough…

In which I ponder…ageing and ageism

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cate-blanchett-cover

So I’m in Canberra at the Australian Association of Gerontology’s National Conference and I have to say that I’m feeling a bit bleak.

Not just because I’m in Canberra*, but also because I’m finding out a lot of very worrying information about myself.

Here I am, a mere 18 months or so off being 50 and feeling quite dynamic really. I feel like my career has taken off again over the last few years, that I still have a lot to give and that there is still a fair bit of progression/promotion left in me. I feel better about my body than I probably ever have. And I’m probably fitter than I was in my 30s. If you ignore a tendency to forget what I was talking about, I think my mind is generally as sharp as it’s ever been. It’s certainly more full of stuff anyway.

But apparently, things are not looking good for me. I can’t tell you the number of times over the last few days that I’ve checked in with a speaker to see what they mean by ‘older’ and been told 50. The Older Women’s Network starts at 45 for God’s sake! And suddenly I feel old and relegated to the scrap heap.

The news everyone has for me is not good either. I am apparently more likely to be discriminated against at work, passed over for promotion and unable to find employment after being retrenched. As a woman, if I am single, over 50 and living in rental accommodation (oops) I am at significantly higher risk of homelessness after I retire than other groups. Of course my disease risk is much higher too, and I’m more likely to be lonely and lack social connections, especially if I’m single – and the news there is not just the tragedy of being Billy No Mates but also the added bonus of a research study that has shown that weak social connections has the same impact on our health as smoking, and increases your risk of death by between 50% and 90%. Awesome.

There has been some good news though. Older people (in this particular study, they meant over 65s – yay!) are the biggest growth group in online dating and the evidence is that they are having lots of sex with multiple partners (again yay for ageing!). However the reason we know this is that there has been a 50% increase in the incidence of sexually transmitted infections in the age group (oh…). It seems this age group, who often have had only one sexual partner in their life prior to divorce or bereavement, missed out on sex ed and see condoms only as barrier protection against pregnancy and not against disease. Thankfully, there are people working on addressing this.

On the other hand though, another study that was presented found positive correlation between sexual activity and physical intimacy, and happiness in older people in Australia**, so despite having gonorrhea, all those over 65s are probably feeling pretty perky.

I don’t want to think that all the future holds for me is loneliness, unemployment, homelessness and a nasty case of syphilis. I think you’ll agree that would be disproportionate. It’s hard to believe that my career might already be over (one of the speakers talked about reaching the peak of your career around 50 and then opportunities diminishing. If that’s true, I’m in trouble), and although I’m currently in retirement from the dating scene, I do try to keep an optimistic outlook – either about eventually meeting someone, or having a great life on my own.

However, I am a bit concerned about how our demographic changes and the ‘grey tsunami’ that’s on its way will work against the backdrop of a society that so values youthfulness. Which is where the photo above of Cate Blanchett comes in. Cate was born within a year of me. In the photo above she has been clearly photo shopped so that there is not a wrinkle in sight. She is as lithe as a teenager. Now to be fair, even when she hasn’t been photo shopped she is exceptionally beautiful, but really that’s the point. Magazines exort us to look younger, they try to sell us clothes that are modeled by girls who are as young as our daughters, and promote images of older women that are unachievable and what’s more, dishonest.

And how does all that play out in real life, for the normal, single woman who is knocking 50? Well I was recently out for dinner with a male, single friend and we were discussing male attitudes to women’s bodies. I was initially reassured when he was telling me about how much he appreciated ‘real’ women’s bodies with curves and imperfections and the maturity that older women bring. But later when we were having a laugh and comparing online dating profiles, it turned out that the age range he had specified started at 27 and ended a year before my age. He’s 5 years older than me. So when it comes to it, they say – hey – I see your wisdom, your emotional maturity, and your valiant efforts to hold back time and be the best version of your 48 year old self that you can – and that’s great and everything. But I’ll trump that with some pert breasts, some shapely legs and a flat tummy unravaged by pregnancy and childbirth*** thank you very much.

Where will it all end? Who knows? Tomorrow I have Elder Abuse – what’s so special? Existing legal protections and Re-imagining Ageing to look forward to. I’ll let you know if there is any better news…

*by far the weirdest city on the planet (oh ok – Australia), but I have to say it’s growing on me. Everything is so new, and so planned, and so very neat. And there are nooks and crannies and gardens with lots of public art. So not so bad.

**Seriously. Surely no one was surprised by that?

***and the Peroni, KitKat and pack of Pringles from the mini bar I had while writing this

In which I ponder….Lemonade

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So…it’s finally properly and completely over.

Although we’ve been separated over 5 years and divorced for almost exactly 1 year, I have only just today received our court stamped financial settlement.

I’m neither happy nor sad about it really. It’s good to know that I will no longer be lining the pockets of lawyers, and that I at last know what the future is likely to look like financially. I’m never going to be rich but I’m not going to be poor either, and that’s fine. I won’t have the sort of life I would have had if I had remained in the marriage, but for every material thing I’ll no longer have, I’ll have a ton of happiness to which I previously would not have had access.

There was no fighting about the settlement – I took what I was offered, and I didn’t ask for more. But I was careful to seek legal advice throughout the process so my decisions – although often against the advice of my lawyers – were well informed. The most important thing for me was to maintain my integrity and find a path through what was equitable and fair, and what was enough. In the end I went for enough, because what I was offered was enough. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life feeling that I was lucky that my ex husband was so successful. I want to spend the rest of my life knowing that I’ve worked hard and that with hard work comes rewards.

It would have been easy in some respects to fight – and certainly that was what my lawyers were hoping for, since it would have lined their pockets. But if you should ever find yourself in a similar position, make sure you consider whether the psychological and emotional toll of the process would be worth the potential financial gains. I was constantly aware of the incongruency of feeling envious about the fact that my ex appears to live in such comparative splendor given that I have spent my entire career working to improve the lives of the disadvantaged. Why should I be entitled to anything better than the actually very nice life I already have?

But envy is an insidious thing. It creeps up on you as you scroll through your social media feeds, watching your friends living the life you expected to have post childrearing – exotic travel, holiday property purchases, renovations, rediscovering romance with your loved one. It mixes up with anger and takes you back to a place you thought you had left. Then I realized that my envy was really just a disguise for the grief I was experiencing for the life I had lost, both present and future, that I thought was going to be mine and ended up being one of the casualties of divorce. And I was reminded, again, that nothing is guaranteed, nothing can be promised, and that you have to make your own luck.

Even without fighting though, I found the process draining and demeaning. In addition to my inner turmoil about the above, the system seems to consider that the material assets built up over the course of a 21 year relationship belong to your husband, who may, out of the goodness of his heart, decide to give you some. Then you are supposed to be grateful and consider yourself lucky.

I refuse to be grateful.

I am grateful for my beautiful children, and I am grateful that I have the means to support myself going forwards – but everything I have taken from my marriage is part of what I helped to build up and as such I have taken my share. I am not lucky that my ex husband is successful – we (he and I) are lucky that over the course of our relationship we jointly built up a life and careers from which we will both continue to benefit.

Now I can start the work of really planning how I will protect my financial interest going forwards – something that I should have been doing all along.

I already know that leaving my husband is the best thing I ever did for myself. I’ve never regretted it, although I’ve found it hard to process. But I will no longer torture myself over what was done, or not done, or could have been done. I will not wish for the life I would have had, or mourn the one I’d left. I will race forwards in life, reaching out for all the opportunities I would have missed, all the adventures I would not have had, all the lovers I would not have kissed.

And should I ever find myself in a similar position again – God forbid – I will simply channel Beyoncé…

“This is your final warning…

  You know I give you life

  If you try this shit again

  Gonna lose your wife”

 

 

In which I ponder…sex and thenearly fifties

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zac-efron-spray-down-baywatch-set-01

It is a sad fact, universally acknowledged, that my next significant birthday will launch me into a half century.

I can’t say that I am thrilled about that.

I approached my 40th birthday with some excitement. Life was going pretty well thank you very much, and I felt like reaching this milestone would finally allow me to join the ranks of the proper grown ups.

In the event, things worked out rather differently to how I had imagined. At the time I was writing a different blog, and I wrote about my fortieth birthday here. You can read it if you like…

Anyway, I’m feeling rather less positive about being 50. It’s as if in the decade between turning 40 and turning 50, I’ve rushed along developmentally, succeeded in becoming a grown up and then peaked too soon and joined the geriatrics. All in one very fast decade. When I went to renew my drivers license I was not allowed a 10 year one – because I am too old. Perhaps they think I will not make it through the next 10 years so there is no point in me wasting time and money on my drivers license. Or perhaps they think I will lose my marbles. Who knows. All I know is that it made me feel very, very old.

But the other thing that makes me feel very old – and very tired – is the idea that when I turn 50 I might (probably) still be single. Not that being single in itself is so bad, but because there is something – in my mind anyway – so deeply tragic about dating at that age that I’ve decided that when that time comes I shall retire gracefully and invest in some cats. And perhaps some knitting needles.

In the meantime though*, I continue to be a woman in her late 40s who often finds herself on dates with men who are around 50, many of whom are very interesting. I really don’t have anything against dating men in this age group except for one thing – they seem to have little or no understanding of female sexuality.

Take, for example, a recent unhappy experience, which sadly has not been unique – either to me, or to other single girlfriends.

I met a man on an online dating site. He was funny and we had some shared interests, so based on that I agreed to meet him on a Sunday afternoon in a café. We met and the conversation flowed freely over a pot of Earl Grey Tea. And then, after we’d finished our tea – just the one pot – he asked me whether I’d like to go round to his place – with an unmistakeable glint in his eye which sadly I’ve seen way too often.

Now, had George Clooney or Zac Efron** turned up that café, there is chance that I might have viewed an invitation to join one or other of them (or maybe both of them!) at their place with some excitement. I might even have suggested we give the Earl Grey a miss and get right to it.

As it was, the man sitting across the table from me looked like a fairly average 50 year old. Balding, a bit of a paunch and slightly suspect dress sense. None of this stopped him, of course, from being interesting, even potentially attractive, given the chance to get to know him. But the thing is this. When you are a balding, slightly overweight man who has reached his half century and is wearing a shirt that screams ‘I don’t have a partner and haven’t had for a while’, you are going to need to do more than provide me with a pot of Earl Grey Tea to facilitate the removal of my underwear.

The reality is that at our ages we can’t just rely on our physical presence and a cuppa to provide enough of a frisson to persuade someone to join us in the bedroom. Or at least men who meet me can’t, and I suspect I am not alone.

It’s not that men who are 50 are not attractive. It’s more that actually they have so much more to offer than they allow me to discover if they move straight from cups of tea to bedroom gymnastics. It’s going to be rare that you meet a man in my age group who – by virtue purely of their physicality – makes you stop in your tracks and try to drag them off to the nearest boudoir. But I’m sure that – or at least I hope that – there are men who are willing to let me get to know them, and are interested in getting to know me, so that we can both discover what else we have to offer beyond our now less than perfect bodies that might make us want to find out what’s beneath our clothes.

But that takes a bit of time, gentlemen, a bit more effort, and more than a pot of tea.

*because I’m not actually 50 until 2018, but I’m preparing myself psychologically

**my fantasy man. Inappropriately young, but such a fine specimen of a man I’m pretty certain no one is really immune to his charms. Not that I’m seeking someone who looks like that – chance would be a fine thing! That’s a picture of him up there, in case you don’t know who he is. You’re welcome.

In which I ponder…being present and finding what you’re looking for

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Anyone who is dating will know that the question we are asked most often is

“So…what are you looking for?”

In my naivety,  at the beginning of this journey, I thought people were asking me what sort of a man I was looking for – and frankly I had no idea. I’d chosen badly once, but I didn’t want to see all future men through that lens, because it seemed so negative. I found you frequently met people – men and women – who had a long list of things they knew they weren’t looking for, and they were nearly always all the things they had ended up hating about their previous partner.

I say ‘ended up’, as it’s a sad irony that often the very things that we once thought were appealing and attractive about people often end up being the things that in the end we can’t stand. For my own part, for example, I originally loved my ex husband’s lack of emotion, as I came from a family which could fairly be described as being emotionally labile. But after 21 years, I realized that this lack of emotion was not actually a cool, calm and stable disposition, but literally the absence of any sort of emotional landscape – and it’s very hard to have a meaningful and connected relationship with someone like that. Or at least it is for me.

Anyway – I digress.

Later, I came to realize that the ‘what are you looking for?’ enquiry was, in fact, code for ‘are you up for one night stands?’. I suppose it’s helpful to at least ask – and this often happens well before you’ve met I person – and it does mean that no one is wasting their time. But the last couple of times I’ve been asked it, it’s got me thinking.

Once upon a time – long, long ago (i.e the last time I was dating, over 20 years ago), this was not a question people asked. When you were dating, everyone knew what that was – you go out on dates with someone and you see how it goes. If it doesn’t go well, you stop dating and you find someone else to date. Repeat. Simples.

These days it all seems to have all become a bit unnecessarily complicated.

It seems to me that there are now two answers to ‘what are you looking for?’ and they both sit at extremes of the relationship spectrum. On the one end there is just looking for someone for tonight, thanks very much. And at the other end there is the search for ‘the one’ with whom I spend the rest of my life.

Now, it can’t just be me who is thinking that actually there is a lot of space between those two choices.

But more importantly, it occurs to me that whether we decide we are looking for something fleeting or something long term, every time we discard someone because they say they are looking for something different, we miss the opportunity to just let something grow. In the old days, occasionally one night stands led to long and happy marriages – probably because people weren’t obsessing about where this was all going. People didn’t go into relationships with an agenda – or at least I don’t think they did. And sometimes they would be taken by surprise and find themselves falling in love with someone at a time when it hadn’t occurred to them to be thinking about the long term. Certainly that happened to me – I was at University and couldn’t have been less interested in finding a husband, but I met a man and 3 years later we were married. And although it didn’t work out terribly well, we had 21 years and 2 beautiful children to show for it at the end.

But more importantly, while we are fixated on where the relationship might go, right from the beginning, we cannot claim to be being present. And by not being present, we risk enjoying the moments, which might be incremental and which, in fact, we do not know to where they might lead.

I’d like to advocate a dating movement. We could call it ‘Present Dating’. We just forget about our agenda, about finding what we’re looking for. How about we just enjoy the moments? We stop asking about what people are looking for, and we just go on dates and see how it goes. If it’s fun and you enjoy one another’s company, you carry on dating until you don’t feel like that anymore. And that could be tomorrow, next week, next year or never.

Just like the old days.

 

In which I ponder…Fakebook

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I still know one or two people who don’t use Facebook.

It’s my experience that people who have not succumbed to the questionable joys of the worlds largest social network are a bit proud of themselves. Smug even. And sometimes they imply that simply by eschewing its pleasures they are somehow on a higher intellectual plane than the rest of us – as if refusing to be part of it means that they spend their time, Jean-Paul Sartre-like, contemplating life’s deeper issues while us Facebookers waste our lives sharing photos of our dinner and pictures of kittens.

It’s far more likely that, like the rest of us, they are actually just watching trash tv and putting a load of washing on.

Personally I really like Facebook. As an emigrant, it has allowed me to keep up with friends and family, and for them to keep up with us, in an easy, instant way. It has meant that our connections across the miles have stayed strong. And I’ve been able to reconnect with people from school and University with whom I almost certainly would have lost touch without Facebook – given that I move so much. It’s actually been a massive pleasure to see how well everyone who went to my very ordinary state comprehensive school in the North of England has done.

But one of the criticisms often aimed at Facebook*, and those of us who love it, is that people just share the pictures and thoughts that make their life look marvelous, when actually we all know that our lives are relatively mundane. Facebook is full of pictures of lovely days out, declarations of love and admiration for other halves, and exciting news about the successes of our children. You rarely see an outright, all out ‘my life is shit and you should all fuck off’ post – and we all know we all have days like that. It’s almost like there is an unspoken law about it – no matter how grave your problem, on Facebook you are required to put a brave face on, be inspirational, and only occasionally allude to the darker moments in life.

So are we all inauthentic, shallow people posting only the best of our lives on Facebook? And does all this inauthenticity lead to a general malcontent leading to too much comparison – which can leave people feeling their life is not good enough, or lacking in some way?

I’ve been thinking (pondering even**) this question this week. An old friend of mine from the UK nominated me in one of those Facebook photo things, where you have to post a picture daily for a week of something ‘every day’ in your life. The thing that got me thinking is that in nominating me she said ‘because you always seem to be doing something interesting’.

Now on a quick survey of my Facebook page, this does seem to be borne out. My feed is full of photos of beautiful beaches (can’t help that – Australia is so beautiful), events attended, children’s achievements and lovely friends caught up with. I only post the stuff that is either interesting or beautiful. I admit it. You could be forgiven for thinking that I am always doing something interesting.

The reality, of course, is much less glamorous. In between all this interestingness there is going to work, housework, arguments with teenage children, broken washing machines, milk that’s gone off, more going to work, and long hours spent alone watching rubbish on the tv when you know you could have been reading your book if only you could summon up the energy to get off the sofa and find it (and more importantly – your glasses).

But is this all a bad thing?

At times in my life when I’ve really been struggling to see the positives, I have found three things, in combination, have really helped – exercise, meditation and a gratitude diary. Taking time out at the end of the day, every day, to reflect on those things for which I am grateful makes a tangible difference to how I feel about life generally. When you are doing it tough, it’s easy to allow yourself to get into a problem-saturated frame of mind, not noticing the good stuff anymore, and gratitude diaries refocus the mind to a more positive outlook***.

And it’s not just me. There is a body of evidence, and in particular, research done by Professor Robert Emmons that demonstrates the great social, psychological, and physical health benefits that come from this practice.

Since Facebook started their daily ‘memories’ feed, I’m always curious to see what it puts up from 5 years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the breakdown of my marriage. You’d really hardly know that my life was imploding from the posts and photographs, apart from the odd oblique reference or cryptic message. And that’s a good reminder that even when things look really bleak, good stuff is still happening – the sun is still shining, the world is still beautiful, your friends and family are still amazing, your children are still making you proud every day.

So how about we stop seeing Facebook as Fakebook, and start seeing it as a enormous, global, online gratitude diary in which we favour the positive over the negative and celebrate the good things – big and small – that happen everyday? Who’s up for that? Because actually, those of us who have access to Facebook, have got it pretty good. The media is full of information about what’s wrong with the world – and there is plenty wrong with it – but we have a secret. At the same time as all of the fear, uncertainty and inequality we are bombarded with everyday, we also know our lives are boring, wonderful and beautiful in all their predictability, and we want to share them.

 

*Of course, the other big criticism of Facebook is that the ‘friends’ on Facebook are not ‘real’ and that the quality of those relationships is superficial and might be a barrier to developing meaningful friendships in the real world. I beg to differ though. Facebook has meant I have remained connected to people with whom I would otherwise have lost contact over the years, and I’ve actually made new, real life friends through it as well. I have two friends who I met on Facebook – one because she was selling clothes which I bought, and we became friends, and another because we both commented on a webcam at the Quay in our hometown in the UK from neighbouring suburbs in Sydney. And when my daughter recently started at a new school in a new suburb and was feeling very isolated and lonely, a young man she had met once at a party but then added on Facebook (as young people do) passed her in a corridor, recognized her and then messaged her to say hi – was she ok, she must be new, if she needed anyone to hang out with to let him know. And now they are best friends. So there. Facebook is good.

**see what I did there?

***it occurs to me that this contrasts significantly with our global approach to news, which is largely negative – as we are told that the good news stories don’t sell, and almost that good news isn’t actually news. It’s hard to believe, when looking at Facebook, that if the people controlled the media – rather than the Rupert Murdoch’s of the world – that the news would be so dark, when our personally controlled news feeds seem to make so much effort to stay in the light. But that’s probably a whole other post…