single parents

In which I ponder…teenagers

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(I have loads of drafted unpublished posts and I found this the other day. I imagine I didn’t post it because it might have caused offence to said teenage offspring. They are both out of their teens now, and this still rings true, so here it is).

teen_whisperer

 

Unless you have teenage children, you really have no idea how stupid, emotionally unstable and embarrassing you are.

In the glory days when they are young, you are perfect. You’re the best Mum – the prettiest, the cleverest, the kindest. You can do no wrong. Children have fights in the playground over who has the best mum or dad.

Then, overnight – and without warning – you become persona non grata. It starts with the rapidly dropped hand in sight of the school gate and the cheek turned away as you lean down for your goodbye kiss, and is followed up quickly by eye-rolling and a reluctance to be seen in public with you. Then before you know it you are – apparently – a fully fledged psycho.

I’m happy to say that these stages of teenager-dom are close to being over in my household. In fact, one of my children is no longer actually a teenager, and has moved out to his own place. But I do still have one hormonally charged resident sharing my home, and although I’m fortunate that for about 98% of the time she is absolutely the light of my life, during the other 2% she comes close to driving me to the sort of psychosis she thinks I exhibit anyway.

I read somewhere once that teenagers are particularly sensitive to changes in the volume of voices. I hope I did anyway, as every time I am even slightly irritated I am accused of shouting when I’m pretty sure I am not. The problem is though that then we get into a cycle. Because originally I was mildly irritated about something like – oh I don’t know – the sink being full of washing up when I got home from work. But then I’m irritated about the fact that what we seem to be debating now is not whether it is reasonable to fill the kitchen sink with your redundant plates and mugs – often along with uneaten food – but whether or not the amount I am ‘sooooo upset’ about it is commensurate with the crime, which apparently hadn’t been anticipated*. And if I’m not careful, I can then find myself shouting things like – ‘if you want to see me soooooo upset I can do that if you like’, and I end up looking like the teenager while she sighs and does the washing up.

So the other great thing about being the parent of a teenager is not only that you can be stupid, embarrassing and emotionally labile, but you can be a complete loser as well.

This dynamic is made more difficult by being a single parent. If you’re still happily ensconced in wedded bliss with the other parent of your teenager – or maybe even if you’re still ensconced but not necessarily happily – you should have at least one other adult in the house to support you during these interactions. How I’ve longed for someone to say ‘don’t speak to your mother like that’. Also what your teenagers don’t realise is that when they say we are being unreasonable, horrible, or difficult, we are often wondering if we are or not. Am I an awful parent? Am I? There is no one to debrief with, no one to back you up, or to discuss where you might be going wrong, or could take another approach, and it makes it all that little bit harder.

I have been extremely lucky that my own teenagers have been largely lovely**. We’ve even reached a stage where sincere apologies and reparations are made after there has been an incident. But as a parent, I’ve learnt that you also have to be prepared to apologise when you’ve overstepped the mark, and that admitting that sometimes you’re not sure, or you find it hard seems to build trust and understanding. It’s ok not to be the expert, to be fallible, imperfect. And to be honest – whilst they are struggling with never being a teenager before and all that brings, we are also struggling with never having been a parent to a teenager either, so we’re going to make mistakes. When you do this, of course, it does mean that you’ve gone full circle from superhero to real actual person, but it also seems to open up the door to a new type of relationship – a more adult and authentic one. And you teach your children that it’s ok to make mistakes so long as we learn from them – the first stage of which is admitting them.

Of all the phases of parenthood, these teenage years are the ones with the highest anxiety. You must let go, you must allow them to start to assert their independence, go their own way, take some risks. Even though every fibre of your body is saying ‘stay home with me, where it’s safe!’. I have successfully traversed the nail biting experience of knowing your child is in another country alone, of first forays to nightclubs, of driving with their friends down the coast for the weekend. Every parent of a teenager will know the horror of the unanswered call, the text message with no response and of waking up in the early hours of the morning and discovering their teenager is not yet back from their night out in the city.

I’m no expert, but I’ve tended to allow a higher level of independence than many parents, often out of necessity rather than choice. As a single working parent, I couldn’t drive my children everywhere, and we live in a major city. They’ve been navigating the public transport system near and far for years, and learnt to drive right in the city centre (literally terrifying for everyone concerned). My son was at school in the UK, flying back and forth on his own. Both children have made the long trip to and from the UK alone – the first times only just in their teens. I like to think that these experiences have contributed to making them the independent, brave, adventurous young adults they are today.

However, on the rare occasion, I’ve put my foot down with regard to what I’ve felt was an unreasonable request. And when the inevitable onslaught of begging, and accusations of unfairness and being horrid etc etc has begun, I’ve asked them this. Do you think I am saying no to this because I’m a dreadful person who just wants to ruin your life (as suggested) or….could it be something else? Then I’ve made them tell me why. And of course, it’s because I love them and I want them to be safe. Even very bolshy teenagers seem to find it hard to remain quite so indignant in the face of this. And if they carry on being rude or difficult, unplug the internet and take the modem to work with you. If nothing else it will make them come out their rooms.

I would say though that it’s also my experience that teenagers often ask to do outrageous things in the hope that you will say no, in order to absolve them of the embarrassment of declining to do so, even though it would be achingly cool or would ingratiate them with someone cool if they did. I’ve been happy to be the fall guy and have everyone think I’m a bitch – to the extent that we even had a code which would tell me in a text message that I should say no, prior to the call asking me. I won’t tell you what that code was so as not to embarrass my kids, but you should think about setting one up with yours.

So if you’re currently parenting teenagers, good luck! But remember – like all those other stages, even when it feels like it’s lasting forever, it will be over before you know it. And then adulthood beckons – so enjoy them while you can.

*even though I have repeatedly, since the beginning of time, been expressing irritation at said dishes in the sink…

**well I would say that wouldn’t I? But it’s true.

 

In which I ponder…decades

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pico-iyer-quote-home

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…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….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…rising strong

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perfectprotest-brene-brown-300x200

On Thursday evening I went to see Brene Brown speak at the State Theatre. If you’re not familiar with her, she’s a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, who has spent the past thirteen years studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame. But for most people who’ve heard of her, it’s mainly because she did a TED talk called The Power of Vulnerability, which is one of the top five most viewed TED talks in the world, with over 25 million viewers.

I first saw that talk soon after leaving my husband, and as the wife of an addict, it hit a nerve. It was the first time I had heard someone articulate what I instinctively had known about my husband and I’ve worked hard since to try to ensure that my life is authentic and brave, and that I surround myself with authentic and brave people – because I’ve learnt that is where the joy is.

So on Thursday night, Brene talked about the ‘Shit First Draft’ – or the way our instinctive emotional responses to triggers lead us to make up stories to try to explain our feelings. To illustrate this, she told a highly amusing and rather familiar story about her reaction to her husband once coming home, looking in the fridge and saying ‘we don’t even have lunch meat in this house’.

Now, I know how that would have played out in my house.

But the point she was making was that the stories we make up are all about us and our frailties, and really nothing at all about the person who has triggered us. So she had made up that her husband was shaming her for being a bad wife and mother and for failing at wife-ing and mothering. And further that he wanted to make sure she knew she was being shit at both – when there was really no need to do that because she already knew. When all he was actually doing was saying there was no lunch meat in the fridge, which was disappointing because he was really hungry and he’d been thinking that eating some lunch meat* would be good.

The reason she reacted in the way she did was that, in common with many of us, she has an internal narrative running that says she is not being a good wife or mother and that essentially she is not enough. And now I say – find me a working mother and/or wife who does not have this story running a loop in their head on an almost permanent basis. Or is that just me and Brene?

Anyway, she told us that the way to try to mitigate this type of reaction was to own it, to recognize it, to name it. So in this situation you would say

‘So the story I’m making up here is that you think I’m a terrible wife and mother, and you think that my failure to purchase lunch meat is evidence of this, and you want me to know this so that I can feel terrible and know that I am terrible’

And the idea is that when you say it out loud, the subject of your ire at least has an idea of what is going on for you, and can reassure you that you’ve got that wrong (assuming you’re not married to an asshole). In addition, saying it out loud will sometimes give you access to the absurdity of what you’re thinking, and you can start to recognize patterns.

I thought this was excellent advice. I’d been to the talk with one of the Julie’s and we talked about it over a couple of glasses of nice sav blanc in the bar afterwards, and I thought I was definitely going to implement this in my own life, because I reckoned that sometimes I did this sort of thing. Not often obviously. Just sometimes.

It was therefore rather regrettable that when I got in the following took place…

I walked in the door at 11pm to be greeted by a slightly grumpy teenager who wanted to know if I had printed her textiles project. I had, but it was still in the car – which in my house is 56 steps up a cliff away. Realising you’ve left something in the car is annoying at the best of times here, but if you’re tired I’m not exaggerating if I say it can be traumatizing.

So neither of us wanted to go up to the car, and it turned out that she had been waiting for me to come home because the textiles project wasn’t finished and she needed the printing to complete it. She hadn’t told me this before, but she did now, and she wasn’t that happy about it.

I was immediately pissed off. Properly pissed off. Angry is probably a fairer description of how I felt. And I said a number of things that I won’t repeat here, but did not exactly cover myself in glory. I may have slammed a couple of doors.

Then I realized what I was doing.

The story I was making up was that Anna thinks I’m a terrible parent, and that I’m letting her down, particularly by staying out late with a friend doing something I enjoy when I should be at home being a good parent, and that she wants me know that. She wants me to know that I am not enough. She wants me to feel bad.

I actually have quite a large body of documentary evidence that would suggest that this is not what my daughter thinks. I have cards, little notes, gifts. She actually thinks I’m the best mum anyone could ever have. I think she’s even used the word inspirational**

Of course the reason I think my daughter is thinking that is because that’s what I think. And I acted angry when actually what I was experiencing was shame.

So I went and had a chat with her. I told her that I feel a constant tension between pursuing the things that help me to have a happy life, and being the sort of 100%, 24/7 available parent that deep down I think I ought to be. And I’ve felt like this ever since I had the children, but even more so since I left their father. Because although I’ve never regretted leaving him, I know that the children have not benefitted from the loss of that nuclear family unit, and I very much wish that I had been able to provide it. If I was to have chosen a life for them, it would have been with a mother and a father who loved each other and a family life where I was mainly at home, not working long hours as I do now, and that there was all the stability that life means. It’s what I would want for them now as my children, and later when they might have children.

But that’s not the way things have turned out and I feel bad – guilty – about it.

The thing is that I could have stayed with their dad. I could have carried on living with him – I’d got used to the way our life was. I was unhappy. Very unhappy. There was a big empty hole where the love should have been. There were the women. And the rest. I was on anti depressants to treat the anxiety that is eventually unavoidable when you never feel confident that you are cared for, or enough for 13 years. But I’d lived with this for 21 years. I probably could have carried on living with his behavior.

The problem was that I couldn’t live with myself if I stayed.

I stayed way longer than I should have done, because I wanted to know I’d done all I could – that I would be able to look my children in the eye knowing they were hurting, and say ‘I honestly did my best. I gave it my best shot’.

I think the time has come to let go of that guilt. I may have been the one who ended the marriage, but it wasn’t my fault, and really my ex had left emotionally many years before I watched him walk up the road with a suitcase. If I could have given the children the family they wanted – that indeed I wanted – I would have done…if I could have done that without sacrificing my sanity, my potential for joy and my self esteem.

In the end I decided that I couldn’t, and I’m going to live with that.***

 

 

*what even is ‘lunch meat’?? Wasn’t it Winston Churchill who said that Americans and English people were ‘two nations divided by a common language’?

**this led me to reflect on what an utterly uninspiring life I actually lead. All I’m really hoping is that I might eventually inspire one of my children to remove the collection of damp towels and rotting food from their bedrooms. Then my work will be done.

***which leads me to Brene Brown’s latest book in the title ‘Rising Strong’ and what it means to be brave and brokenhearted.

In which I ponder…being normal

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being-normal

I was recently having a conversation with my ex-husband in which he suggested that the ‘normal’ thing to do in my situation would have been to partner up with someone again by now.

This took place in the context of a discussion about our (as yet undecided) financial settlement, and as a contribution to that discourse especially I think it has little merit. The answer to my concerns about my financial security going forwards is never going to lie in becoming dependent, or even partially dependent, on the income of someone else. I’ve done that once, and to be honest it hasn’t worked out terribly well. If I had one piece of advice for any women embarking on a new romantic partnership, it would be to behave from a financial point of view always as though your loved one might be gone at any time, in the blink of an eye – along with his income, his pension and his superior economic power. No matter how confident you are that it will last, or that even if it didn’t, he would look after your interests financially. I hope that the generation my daughter is growing up in will learn this lesson from their mothers, who are nearly always left financially disadvantaged by having prioritized parenthood over earning and career.

However, I digress…

This talk of ‘normal’ got me thinking. And anyone who knows me, knows that thinking is something I do rather a lot of.

What is ‘normal’ anyway? Being single is becoming more and more common. Does that make it normal? The Australian Bureau of Statistics predicts that the number of single person households in Australia will increase by 4.3m in the next 25 years – an increase of 65% – and that 54% of those households will be single women. Not that abnormal then am I, statistically speaking?

But more than that, I don’t subscribe to the idea that my normality is based upon my relationships with other people, particularly since that can create a veneer of said ‘normality’ which, when you scratch just beneath the surface, reveals something not quite so normal at all. My own marriage was a good example of that.

The thing is that I suspect my ex husband – along with many other people – takes some of his personal validation from the fact that he looks so normal, with an apparently healthy relationship, good job, nice home. Other-esteeming, they call that. Some people are unbalanced by people who refuse to conform to these social norms, or won’t let them define them. To be fair, men haven’t exactly been beating down my door offering to relieve me of my financial burdens, but I’ve not been in any rush to settle down, and these days I wonder if I will. I have a level of freedom that I’ve previously never experienced, and I am defined by no one except myself. I like that. Anyone who joins my life is going to have to deal with that.

My sister once said to me

“The thing about you is that you’ve never needed anyone”

I think I’ve mentioned this before here – but I was quite offended at the time. Now I think I understand better what she meant and I realize that to a certain extent it’s true, and not necessarily a bad thing (although I’m pretty certain her intention was not to flatter).

I don’t need anyone. It’s true. But not needing people means that those I have in my life have been chosen – for themselves and not just because they are able to meet a need in me. In doing so, I give them the freedom to choose me, or not. I think that’s healthy. My people are there because I have an authentic, real connection with them, they know who I am without the veneer of ‘normality’ and we chose one another. And we continue to choose one another every day.

If that’s being abnormal, then so be it. Seriously – who cares?

 

 

In which I ponder…flying the nest

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Flying the Nest.jpg

 

My son’s entry into the world was not what I had planned for.

Rather than the relaxed, relatively drug free delivery I had been planning, where he would be born accompanied by music and soft lighting, he was dragged into the harsh clinical light of a hospital room surrounded by doctors and nurses, with his chord wrapped twice around his neck and his heart intermittently stopping. Just below his right eye, he still bears a scar from this very first experience of the world.*

Not long afterwards they took him away from my bedside, moved me into a single room so that other mother’s would not be upset by my crying and told us to be prepared for him to die in the next 24 hours. They took Instamatic photos of him so that we would at least have something to remember him by and told us that he had a very serious heart disorder.

When, after a thankfully relatively brief sojourn in neonatal intensive care, they allowed us to bring our son home – with the proviso that if he turned blue we would call an ambulance immediately – I slept fitfully, like a coiled spring, the slightest sound from his crib beside my bed causing me to wake up in a panic. Only I could keep him safe and keep him alive. Or so I felt.

That same boy, some 19 years later, is now about to start studying at Sydney University, news that he received at a hostel in the Czech Republic, as he is currently travelling around Europe, on his own. His heart still doesn’t work properly but seems to have been much less of a problem than was predicted. Fingers crossed.

There is a part of me that thinks – I did it! I got him through life successfully, and now he is flying the nest. Well done me. Well done him. One more to go, and then the world’s my oyster.

But the reality is that I’m terrified.

I had always assumed that this stage of my life would look quite different. I expected to be financially secure, able to fully reap the benefits of having had my children relatively young, and enjoy my late forties and fifties by combining work with the ability to see a bit of the world without the expense and responsibility of young children. I can see other friends reaching this point too. It always felt like this life development was kind of a pay off for a job well done parenting, and the quid pro quo for the sadness that parents naturally feel when the intensive part of their job is over. It would probably be a good distraction too.

In practice though, my financial situation is the least secure it’s been since I was in my early twenties. Having once thought my Ikea days were over, I now find that if I survey my home, I struggle to identify anything much that wasn’t purchased there. Like many other divorced women of a certain age, I am contemplating working until I am 70 in order to service a large mortgage on a small property in a suburb the people I used to know have never heard of, and will probably never visit. I’m not expecting there to be much in the way of spare money for exploring the world, or much time, given that I’ll be working.

And more than that – who will I spend my time with? Children flying the nest might have provided an opportunity to reconnect with your partner and then enjoy adventures together that you couldn’t afford before you had children. But now it is just going to mean an actual empty home.

I’ve thought about all this way too much lately. I think most of it is just fear because my future looks very much more uncertain than I would have expected at this point in my life. But at the same time, I’m conscious of how lucky I am to have ever been in the position where I thought my life would be different to this. I know how privileged I am to have the life I have anyway. And so whilst I feel afraid, I also feel reproachful – which is then rapidly followed by guilt for not being more grateful.

I suppose the trick is to try to stay in the present and appreciate each moment as it happens – without too much reference to what was, or might have been.

And I suppose the lesson is that – if I allow myself to look back for a moment to George’s birth – things rarely go to plan, but they can still turn out beautifully in the end.

So I’ll keep holding out for that happy ending – whatever that is.

*If you think that’s bad, you should see my scars…

Stop all the clocks…

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When I was seven years old, my best friend was a little girl called Jodie. She was more adventurous, outspoken and courageous than me, and I loved her for it. We rode our bikes together across the Lincolnshire countryside – so far from home that later, when we both had children of our own, we were appalled – had sleepovers in the garden, and wrote our names and the date on the wall of a cottage in her dad’s timber yard.*

In 2002, Jodie was diagnosed with breast cancer, but treatment put her into remission, so she and her husband Jim and their two small boys forged forwards in life, embarking on the renovation of a beautiful but virtually uninhabitable Grade II listed property. The return of her cancer and a terminal diagnosis was a devastating blow to everyone who loved her but especially to her young family. Jodie had always been stubborn and tenacious, and she used the same bloody minded approach that had ensured her business success to confront her illness. We used to joke that she was too stubborn to die, but really she was just determined to see both her children start school.

Jodie died in 2005 when her boys were 5 and 6 years old. She had fought a brave, hard fight but in the end the big C got the better of her.

***********************************************************

So it was with devastating and heartbreaking irony that today we laid her eldest child to rest, having taken his own life. A beautiful, intelligent boy of just 16 years, much loved, with so much to offer the world.

There are some things for which nothing can be said. There are no words of comfort available, nothing which will make it better, nothing which will make it go away. There are some things which can only be borne, not gotten over.

At Jodie’s funeral we had known what was coming. Jodie had asked me to deliver the eulogy, and my writings had been vetted in advance. She had organized the ceremony with Jim. But it was still hard. It was still heartbreaking. In the church today there was little that I recognized, and I can only think that I got through that day in a blur.

But there is no possible preparation for what we had to do today.

His dad said that George had not been able to see the point of life. But if he had asked me I would have told him that the point was in the hundreds of people in the church today, at his grave, and at his wake. It was in the gatherings of the last two weeks, as his family supported one another to get through all the arrangements necessary after the (always untimely) death of a child. It was in his close group of school friends, as they let off balloons in his memory and put together slideshows of photographs of his life. It was in the eulogies bravely delivered by his devoted father and by his best friend.

Because the point of this life is quite simply love.

Hold your children close tonight – and every night.

**********************************************************

*it’s still there

In which I ponder….internet dating

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online-dating

Whenever I mention my intermittent use of the Tinder app, my married and partnered friends get a bit excited.

“Oooooo,’ they pant, ‘ isn’t that the site for – you know – hooking up?!’

Newsflash partnered people. They all are.

RSVP, the virtually Amish eHarmony, bars, restaurants, supermarkets, laundromats. All hook up sites should you wish to treat them as such. I know married people who have picked up other married people at black tie events when at least one spouse was present (but not as present – or should I say mindful – as perhaps they should have been)*. Sex is everywhere if you care to look for it.

Most of my single friends have experimented with most of the internet dating sites that are out there, including Tinder. When you narrow things down geographically, they all have virtually the same people on them anyway. On eHarmony you see guys who give the impression that only violins, candlelight and marriage will do, but on RSVP the same man might say he is looking for something fun but long term, and on Tinder he’ll just upload a picture of himself holding up a very large fish and message you saying ‘DTF?’**.

A good friend of mine recently published a book about his experiences using Tinder. You can buy it on Amazon but I should first warn you that it’s one of the most explicit books I’ve ever come across (and one that is extremely uncomfortable to read if you know the person involved). I should probably also reassure you all (hello Dad) that I’m not featured in the book as a love interest but my thoughts on internet dating are included.

I told Mike about my theory of dating in the 21st century, where technology has disrupted old rules and despite appearing to be more egalitarian than ever in terms of gender, dating is actually working way better for men than for women.

The thing is that 21st century dating is the least judgemental (amongst single people – I’ve talked about the partnered people view of the world and particularly single women before) it’s ever been. People are out there looking for love, but some of them are just looking to get their sexual needs met for the night, and that’s ok too, so long as everyone is honest about it, and playing safely. Yay for the liberation of women and for being liberal***.

The problem however – in my view – is this. I think men are evolutionarily predisposed to look for multiple sexual partners – so they can spread their seed and keep the place populated – that sort of thing. Women, on the other hand, are evolutionarily predisposed to seek security, safety and protection – despite the fact that the 21st century woman (including myself) generally doesn’t feel they need this. These days, this manifests itself as looking for someone who is willing to make a commitment and not likely to trade you in for the next vaguely attractive looking thing to pass their way.

For men and women in my age range – let’s call that from say…40 to 55 – internet dating, and apps like Tinder, mean that we don’t need to waste precious time hanging out in bars hoping that amongst our co-drinkers there is, miraculously, another single person who, even more miraculously, likes you. We can sit on our sofas browsing available men or women and flirting up a storm, even though we’ve got our pyjamas on and removed our make up and bras many hours ago.

Frankly, this is awesome. At the beginning of the dating journey, hanging out in bars is fun, but it doesn’t last long. The reality is that life is calling – full time work, children, and running a household alone are not compatible with this way of life for any length of time. It doesn’t take long to realize that the main attraction of something like Tinder is its efficiency.

But. And it’s a big but…my experience is that many men – in fact the majority of them, are ill equipped to deal with the sheer variety and apparent availability of women that the internet appears to provide***. There is the constant worry that someone better might be just around the corner. Technology has turned women into commodities, and whereas when they are younger men seem to be prepared to trade variety for family and children, once their marriage is over there is little incentive to do this again. Women, on the other hand, mainly continue to look for that commitment from one special person regardless of where they are in the lifespan.

Once upon a time, the way women wielded power over this tendency in men was to only offer sex after marriage. I’m not suggesting we do this (otherwise there is a good chance I’ll never get jiggy with anyone ever again), but it seems to me that the only way to put this particular Pandora back in the box is to all close our legs once again….

*we shall not say who this was…

**for those who are not familiar (hello again Dad) – “down to fuck?”

***I very much do not mean liberal in the political sense

****I’m talking in generalities here. No need for any of the very lovely men I know to get upset

And now for your viewing pleasure, I have uploaded screenshots of some of my more amusing interactions with men from dating websites/apps:

dating screenshot 1 revised

This one is all me being awesome at internet dating. Literally no idea why I’m single.

Dating screenshot 2 revised a

Gerry is just a tad needy don’t you think?

Dating screenshot 3 revised

Tim isn’t so much into outdoor pursuits. Unless they are of the carnal type I’d imagine.

In which I ponder…validation and embarrassment

/ howtobemeagain / 3 Comments

embarrassment

My previous blog, which had had over 20,000 visitors by the time I stopped posting, was specifically about the experience of emigrating and full of chatty stuff about family life in a new country.

When I started this one, I didn’t have a clear idea of what it would be, except that I wanted to write. It’s simply evolved over time.

I’ve ended up banging on about my marriage and my divorce and indulging in a level of navel gazing that I thought I’d left behind. And although I enjoy writing it and I don’t find it troubling to do so, there is something I’m finding kind of challenging.

It’s a bit awkward really.

Because what I’m struggling with are the comments, particularly those on my Facebook page where I share it.

I’m absolutely fine with the lovely things people have said about the quality of the writing, and how much they enjoy reading it. It’s fabulous to know that people are connecting with it, and – in some cases – looking forward to each instalment. And it’s also great to know that it’s being quite widely read – so far in 31 countries.

However, I do find all the lovely things people say about me personally a bit mortifying. Now, you will have to bear with me on this – because I do tend to over think things a bit. But I’m a bit worried that people might believe that the purpose of the blog is to seek validation about myself and what happened. And it quite emphatically isn’t.

You may or may not know that I did post grad study in psychotherapy, eventually qualifying to practice. As part of my training, I had to take part in group therapy for two years, and through this process I learnt something interesting about myself. Well, actually I learnt a number of interesting (to me anyway!) things about myself, but I’m only going to bore you with one of them.

In group, members had the opportunity to say difficult things to one another in a controlled and safe environment.* And although I didn’t particularly enjoy hearing that sort of thing, I wasn’t massively disturbed by it either. It almost felt comfortable. Conversely, if someone said something really nice to me, I literally wanted the earth to open up and swallow me whole. I never entirely resolved what that was about, but I get the same sort of feelings when I read some of the comments. And today there were so many of them I had to remove the post from my wall.

I know enough to know that this is related to a lack of self worth.

But I’m also a realist.

And the reality is this. I’m really not inspirational or amazing or an especially good single parent, or an especially forgiving person.

In the last few years, there have been days – many of them – when I have definitely won no prizes for my parenting. I am no better at being a single parent than 99.9% of all the rest of them. I do what parents do whether they are single or not – I do the best I can for my children, and some days the best I can do is not that special.

And over this period of rebuilding my life I have been far from inspirational or amazing a great deal of the time. I have said vile things. I have railed against the world. I have been self pitying. I have bored my friends (and myself) with my tale of woe, my ‘why-me’s?’ and my obsessive picking over certain events. I have lost friends and rejected others.

As far as forgiveness is concerned – well that’s a journey I’m still on. I have forgiving moments and they are becoming more and more frequent. But there is still a way to go I think.

I’ve come out the other side of it a more cautious, more independent and more confident person. I’ve gained a level of self knowledge and ability to self reflect that I didn’t have before. And I try hard to understand human behaviour rather than judge it.

But I still don’t really like it when people are nice to me.

I’m a work in progress. I’ll let you know when I’m done…

*in the first week of group, we were invited to say if we thought we were going to have a problem with anyone. One of the members immediately said they thought they were going to have a problem with me – which is funny because I’d also sensed that I would have a problem with her, although, despite having permission to do so, I would never have said. I’m English you see. And here we are 6 years on and she’s one of my closest friends…