dating in the dark

Dating in the Dark by @suzymiller

Those first terrifying tentative steps into dating after 10 years of solid coupledom and 6 years of motherhood seem, looking back on it, like scenes from an old black and white comedy. Not just any old comedy either – one without any sound except the relentless plug of the piano and a plot line that threatened at any time to tumble from absurd humour into a heart-rending tragedy.

And the main narrative of these comedies? Dating sites and speed networking of course – de rigeur for the modern single woman, who wants a wider choice than that offered by the beer soaked local hostelries or the few loan single men brave enough (and smart enough, if they want a ratio of 10 women to 1 man) to Salsa in the village hall. Keeping those delights as part of my ‘social’ life, I took those first bold steps into actual concerted dating via the enticing promise of online shopping for men.

Well to tell the truth, I was harried and coerced into it – having had enormous fun helping my friend create her profile and do pick and mix online, it was only right that I created my own profile and dived in. It all made good sense – using the search facility to avoid guys who are smokers or not interested in children, or who in any way contravene the ‘non negotiables’ list we all need to write for ourselves and stick up on the fridge so we never forget them.

But then there were those horrible gaps when no-one responds, those endless profiles that all begin to sound the same – it was great for reminding me that dating should be a game, fun and involve large doses of humour, but when it came to wanting to seek out a long term life partner it just seemed strangely like taking the long way round.

I’ve attempted to Salsa with men half my height, counselled drunken suitors in the local pub, snogged a lovely man at a bus stop thinking “my god I’m 40 what if someone sees me?” and then remembered that these are things I didn’t do enough of when I was 20. Dating sites led to many conversations but only a couple of dates, mainly because of fear and finding too many things wrong about someone by just reading their profile, and being in too much of a hurry.

So I’m beginning to think about the old fashioned way – matchmaking. And I guess that is what a modern dating agency provides. The cost initially put me off, but then I reasoned that a man looking for a relationship rather than just a distraction, is more likely to put his hand in his pocket, so why shouldn’t I?

The old silent film of relationships going in circles has come to the end of the reel, and now I feel ready for the quirky romantic comedy, in full technicolor and the promise of a happy ending.

So it’s no-more supermarket shopping for men for me. Spending my summer evenings instead down the allotment sowing seeds, enjoying the sunsets and remembering to water occasionally. And wondering if perhaps, by signing up with a dating agency complete with proper interviews and, most importantly, real human beings to support the process and give advice rather than just `dating tips’ on a website, I may find myself not weeding alone in the future. Still fancy snogging at the bus stop though.

Suzy Miller is the creator and producer of the Starting Over Shows which provide information and inspiration to people dealing with life changing situations such as divorce and relationship breakdown.

This blog is also posted on the Dateline Platinum website – see blog and comments here……

more than one way to get divorced?

Thank you to Jane and Glenn who share their individual divorce experiences of the legal profession. They really made me appreciate the high quality of legal advisers we had at the Starting Over Show in March and currently on our website.

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Without resort to a doctor

A diary entry from 2008 which is as pertinent on this day in 2009 as it was back then……

I wrote in 2008 to a friend “We let our romance die without resort to a single doctor. Let’s not make the same mistake with our friendship”.

One of the most shocking realisations post breakup can be that even if you strive for a healthy post relationship amicability, their can be little encouragement from outside forces. “Just let go and don’t invite contact”; or “don’t you think you are being a bit controlling? Why do you `need’ to stay friends?”; or even “isn’t staying friends with your ex a bit weird? After what they did to you?”

And there is the crux of it. Who did what to who – a determined mission to apportion blame, is a natural pursuit of the media, society at large and even your best friends. So striving to form a friendship with your ex, especially if the break up circumstances were morally unpleasant, can be quite disturbing to others. Just because you may have made the leap of understanding that blame,whether before the divorce judge or before your bedroom mirror, becomes an irrelevance, others can be uncomfortable, even downright threatened, by such an absurd need to be `friends’ despite it all.

Yet who of us has not had friendships that somehow withstood disagreements, long distances and even betrayal? Even if we need to create some distance for a time, love of any kind is too precious to be left out in the cold for too long.

The key to it all, for me, is accepting three facts:

1/ The old relationship must be allowed to pass. Some may laugh at Shamanic rituals of burying the wedding dress on the top of a mountain, but anything that helps you let go and move on is a gift.

2/ Understanding that forgiveness, of yourself or others, is not required. Some things are, let’s face it, unforgivable.

3/ Not expecting an apology of any kind is also imperative to success.

With these three barriers cast aside, suddenly the possibility of a brand new relationship becomes possible. OK, it may not have the trust and familiarity of your original relationship, but time truly can work miracles, especially if you have understood that people who are afraid, unhappy or under great pressure, will not always behave like angels. Understanding your own humanity and weaknesses opens up your eyes to seeing clearly the humanity and weaknesses of others, in a non-judgemental way – even those who have really hurt you. And accepting your own part in the dance, with humility rather than shame. Then apology becomes a gift rather than a justification for the other persons moral high ground.

And when the break up is without rancour and spite? Even more reason to `stay friends’, yet just as difficult. Ending one relationship and beginning another (for that is what is involved) can benefit from skilled advice. There are relationship `doctors’ out there who can see the patterns of behaviour, spot the scripting that we have of how we see ourselves and what we believe is possible of ourselves and others. They can help us see our relationships from another country, another planet even, until we begin to see that by changing our expectations, and asking the right questions, an `impossible relationship’ can become a supportive one. Those of us who have experienced parenting classes, or been through personal self development, will know first hand the miracles that can occur if only we allow them to happen.

When I am ill, I rarely visit my GP, but search out my own remedies, or seek help from like-minded healers who will get to the root of my sickness and help me to create my own cure. I hope I can find the courage to protect the special friendship I have with my current `ex’, by finding a relationship doctor who will help us to move away from one relationship and create a new one, through letting go, accepting ourselves for all our weaknesses and foibles, and loving each other without conditions. An ideal? Why strive for anything less….

LAST NIGHT IN THE PUB….

2007

Brian was really very upset about me ending the relationship. For a while, I thought he was going to transform into a bunny-boiler. But my suggestion that he get some counselling seemed to shock him into ceasing the 3am text messages, in which he bewailed the fact that I had not given the relationship a chance.

I knew we might have different views on the subject of love when I asked him to qualify `unconditional’ – my usual barrage of `but what if’s’ resulted in Brian re-qualifying his answers to such an extent that he defined no less than three different versions of `unconditional love’. Personally, I believe that there is only one kind.

When my kids’ father left us over 3 years ago, and was in a state of depression and numb confusion, I remember telling him that the children still love him, and will always love him. Nothing he does – infidelity, dishonesty, self-destructive incompetence – was of any concern to three young children under 8 years of age. I wanted him to hang on tight to that realisation because I knew it was the only thing that might reduce some of the effects of his guilt, and encourage him to make his role as father the bedrock of his emotional rehabilitation.

It’s one thing to have your partner leave you, but to disappear and leave behind his children held far greater terror for me. A cruelty to the children that I would feel responsible for, and had to do everything I could to prevent. Our children’s unconditional love at this time was both a source of deep pain, knowing we had failed them, and also the only distant light of hope in a strange, dark new world.

It was not the only time that I had to face the fact that the man I had fallen in love with, was not truly in love with me. A recent year long relationship had ceased – the first since my children’s father had left – and before going out with Brian I was cheesed off and angry that my previous boyfriend could be so foolish not to appreciate how lucky he was to have my love on offer. I was uncomfortable with the fact that yet another man could be offered so much – all that I had to give – and yet turn it down.

So I had a pretty good idea of what Brian would be going through when I made a complete hash of breaking up our two month-old relationship, because I knew that something was `missing’ in the relationship and didn’t believe I would ever find that missing thing, whatever that thing was.

I made things even worse by telling him that I knew all about how he felt and gave seasoned advice on how he would avoid unnecessary pain by staying away from me, giving himself time to grieve for the relationship before starting a new relationship as friends, maybe even going out with someone else. I’m surprised I didn’t get a smack in the mouth.

So what is Brian doing that is so different to how I reacted when I snatched back my heart and went into a woeful sulk? It was the three pints of Guinness I drank last night with my previous boyfriend that made it all come clear. Having given up on trying to continue the friendship we had and `moving on’ – or sleeping with someone else, which often comes to the same thing – we can now manage small doses of each other and for my part, there is great relief in that we have become almost like strangers. Now we can start again being mates and, so long as I do not peer too long into his eyes lest I fall in, I can even manage to get mildly drunk and know that I will still go home alone. A major achievement, I can tell you.

I used to think that if you love someone then you will accept anything – even the fact that they do not see you as their sole mate. And you offer them yourself as second best, and pretend that you can deal with it because you love them. But what kind of a gift of love is that? “Ok, I love you SO much that I will take up space in your life meant for the woman of your dreams (who according to you is not me) and sleep in your bed, drive away loneliness and make sure you have someone on your arm so you are not the only one of your mates without a girlfriend, and all the while I shall be ruining the opportunity for you to go and find what you truly do want in a sole mate, and discover that special love. I shall effectively sabotage your future life just because you have been misguided enough not to realise that the person you seek should be ME…..”

These days, that all sounds to me like neediness, selfishness even. It certainly doesn’t sound much like love.

My interpretation of unconditional love is the letting go thing. You know – if you really love them, you let them go. Well, like most of these old sayings, it’s true. It’s also very liberating, to know that you can go on loving someone forever even when they are not the person who will become your life partner. But the one person I cannot explain this to, is Brian. He’s still too lost in his own emotions and anger at not being allowed to give what he wants to give. But if he really does feel what he says he feels, hopefully he’ll learn to let go and allow love to fill our future friendship, and not use it as a weapon of guilt.

The only reason I feel optimistic that he will not end up stalking me but will finally understand what `unconditional’ really means, is because, like me, he has children. It’s one of the most important lessons they teach you. I still have a long way to go to be quite as good at it as my kids are, but I reckon I should get plenty of practice over the next few years.

Don’t let divorce mess up your career

Nicola’s starting over story

I started divorce proceedings in January 06 after my husband came home one weekend in December and announced – quote – ‘I want children but not with you. There’s no-one else’. He disappeared back to Plymouth the next day.  I believed him for a few weeks, the epitaph of 12 years together  – me being an unsuitable mother for his future children – hanging around my neck like a millstone. That is, until First Direct bank informed me he’d withdrawn cash in Birmingham when he said he’d been in Plymouth. Ironically, they sent me the apology letter, so I guess they were responsible for me initiating my divorce.

I was a year into my degree at that time.

My husband had arranged for me to complete a placement in Plymouth, where he was based. One emergency NHS loan later and I went to Devon to complete my placement, much to his chagrin.

Things turned acrimonious quickly. Although my husband promised to support me through the degree, he soon started to cut money off.

My husband offered me a cash sum in May 06, which was less than 50% of the equity in our house.  He was furious when I didn’t accept his offer. He then refused to sign my NHS bursary form – his signature was required as we were still married. In the end, his CO intervened and took it to the post office himself.

We had a house in Hampshire which we rented out and the proceeds paid for my rented accommodation in Manchester.  He’d apparently forged my signature on a letter to our tenants, relinquishing my role as landlady and arranging for the rental income to be paid directly to him.

Faced with the prospect of homelessness, I felt I couldn’t continue with my degree on several occasions. My wonderful family and friends and supportive University staff helped me through the dark times. I was on track to get a first and whilst it was so near, the stress of his behaviour took its toll. My willingness to continue turned on a sixpence.  However, At the AR hearing, the judge ordered my husband to pay the money back and to continue to pay my rent until after I was expected to graduate.

I graduated in July 2008 with First Class Honours. I was also awarded the prize for best student in the year which meant the world to me. It was the happiest day of my life. I really didn’t think I’d make it.

“If my story can help others then please feel free to use it.
I really believe my now-ex was jealous of my achievements and took every opportunity to thwart my chances of success. I’m an ordinary person and if I can do it, I’m sure others can! I know I would have had more faith if I’d seen or heard that someone else in my situation had made it.
Kind regards,
Nicola.”

Share your inspirational story with us.

Contact sos@startingovershow.co.uk

Why one person wants to be at the Starting Over Show this March….

Hi Suzy,

I was in Brighton staying at the Ship on Friday night with some girlfriends for a birthday and I picked up the Sos leaflet about the show on the 15th MARCH.

I have been seperated from my husband for 5 years now after he started an affair and left after a year of indecision as to what to do about it. I have always wanted him to come back – feeling as if he has left a void for me and my 2 children (15 and 11, then 9 and 6). I feel true love for him despite all the hurt he has caused us.

On 4 occasions (almost yearly), having sometimes met other people and not seeming to make myself feel the right way about them, and his relationship with the same woman often not working out as he had planned, we have almost got back together, but each time he has gone back to her as I believe her to be the most powerful out of us two women. I still love him very much, and reading your article ‘a strange gift’ has helped me realise I am not alone feeling that and that I can use that love to help the children in keeping us ‘ healthily and positively apart’.

Now I am not a weak person. I am a freelance food stylist, preparing food for photography and writing recipes for magazines and books. I love my job and all those I work with. I have many friends and I love to help others. I spend alot of time with friends and doing what I can for others makes me feel ‘needed’ and making, what I believe to be the best, for my children also gives me that sense of responsibility and purpose that I seem to desperately need to be at one with myself.

I took the children to Australia last year for the whole of the school summer holidays and I take them every year to the Isle of Wight Festival – putting my own tent up and down!!! (I read your article in eve magazine!) I know I do so much with my life now that I would never have done had I been with my ex still. I run my sons football team and have done for 4 years etc….. but I still have a void. I keep ridiculously busy with so much – but I know its to distract my thoughts from my failed relationship.

I feel happy and I feel motivated but still something is not right and I dont necessarily feel that a man would make that better – which is why I am not actively looking and rarely have done!

Having picked up your leaflet I feel hugely inspired and excited about such a show and I will most definately be there. Meeting others with similar situations could most definately help – which is something I have not done – not in a therapy situation anyway and its something I feel the need to do. Workshops sound a great idea for the show too. I feel so able to help others and do so as much as I can, but helping myself emotionally is not as easy!

Many thanks for taking the time to read this

An inspired SOS ticket holder!!

Emma

Being left behind…..

2006

One minute we were having a `girl to girl’ secretive conversation in the bathroom so the boys wouldn’t hear, and the next, my 9 year old daughter was in floods of tears. Finally, I had decided to give her an answer to the constant question: “So, Mummy, do you have a boyfriend yet?”

I had managed to have a year long relationship (recently ended) without the kids having a whiff of what was going on. They suffered enough when my 10 year relationship with their dad ended, why should they live through any more of my mistakes. I like to keep things separate.

But this new chap, (let’s call him Brian), had managed to infiltrate his way into the family with amazing dexterity. He had already swopped DVD’s with my children, giving them some of his kids’ films to watch in return and spare clothes from his youngest son were currently being sported by my 7 year old. My daughter was not fooled – she could see something was going down.

I had decided to confide in her. The boys were not included only because I was afraid of the implications of me coming out the cupboard about having a `boyfriend’. I knew that the kids were so keen to have a full time father that I didn’t want to give them false hopes. I rarely have `girl’s talk’ with my daughter –something else I must work on – and she seemed excited to share this secret with me and old enough to accept that this was a new relationship and that we were not yet `in love’.

But suddenly, here she was, in floods of tears as I stood by bemused. She began to blurt out past events, rewinding the clock back almost three years to the day when her father had left. I was shocked and confused at the meteoric mood change and bewildered by how me having a boyfriend could trigger her most painful memories.

“I remember you crying when Daddy left” she blubbed. “And when we woke up in the morning he wasn’t there in bed when we came in to cuddle him.” I comforted her, still searching for a logical connection that would give me a handle on this situation. This was the first time in three years that she had opened up some of her pain and let it out so directly. I waited.

“I don’t want anyone to leave us again” she explained, and it was all suddenly so obvious that I felt angry at myself for not having seen it all before. I realised that despite spending three years telling all three children that their daddy left me, not them, the sense of abandonment was so strong that the fear of it happening again was as alive as it had ever been. Once again, I felt the guilt of having brought them into the world into a relationship that had not been strong enough to give them what they deserved – life long security as part of the package of feeling loved.

I reminded her of how daddy never left her but continues to see her every week and loves his children very much and she put on a brave face but I knew that the hurt went too deep to be fobbed off by my attempts to console her. What I had interpreted on the surface as a childlike longing for both parents to live at home, had been exposed to be three years of fear of abandonment that she could carry forward into adult life intact, a gift from both her parents. I wondered what crept into the dreams of my two sons, who had also seemed to cope so well with the family break up, as they sunk into sleep each night. Knowing you are loved by both your parents is one thing, feeling that they will never desert you is quite another.

We carried on the bedtime routine and I sung them all songs and hugged them all tight. That night I told `B’ that I would not be joining him with his kids at a family party he had invited me to – it was too early. My children will never act as barriers to my future happiness (far from it), but just because I am human and will make mistakes in the future as I have done in the past, the potential for making mistakes that will impact on them is on my mind. So there is a tightrope to be walked. Allowing new potential relationships to blossom, yet at the same time, acknowledging that just a little more thought, time, and ruthless honesty with how I grow those new relationships could make all the difference. It could affect the kind of relationships my children seek out for themselves in the future.

Credit Crunch Survey

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Starting Over by Anna Pasternak

For me, part of the thrill of getting married was the relief of never having to go on another date. Thank you, hubby, from the bottom of my heart that I do not have to fire up my married friends search engines for “eligible” or “available,” nor suffer the angst of “will he call or won’t he?” A trip to the altar in a family tiara put paid to that. Or so I thought. Yet three years after I threw my bouquet in the air, as if celebrating a win at sports day, I was poised to go frog kissing. Again.

I think that’s one of the most daunting things about Starting Over. Your belief that you had reached the cosy domestic destination of commitment and compatibility and had laid that anxious, unsettled, always-searching-for-him-or-something-better part of your life to rest. Then there is the sheer disbelief to surmount that it didn’t work out and you have to go out there all over again. Dating Groundhog Day, only this time you are older, wiser, cynical and tired.

Oh and emotionally you feel not just bruised but broken. Yes, divorce can literally break a woman’s heart. American research published in The Journal of Marriage and the Family has revealed that women who divorce are 60 per cent more likely to develop heart disease in later life. Men showed no increased risk. Maybe because men tend to boomerang into some grateful bints bed just to prove that they don’t have a problem, whereas women tend to take longer to break through the ice of our own shock and feel our feelings. And there is nothing like the end of a marriage or long relationship to unearth buried emotion with volcanic force.

When I left my husband after fifteen miserable months of marriage – I knew with gut-wrenching clarity on my honeymoon that I had not married my soul mate (aka the right man for me) – I went home to stay with my mother. For weeks I lay on the bathroom floor, literally too humiliated to move. I sobbed so much I broke tiny blood vessels beneath my eyes and some days I hyperventilated as I couldn’t breathe. I just couldn’t stomach my stupidity. That I had been so hung up on the wedding, that I had over-looked the marriage. I was more in love with my Italian crystal tiara, than the groom at the altar. How could I, the bright girl with the University degree and promising professional future, have got my personal life so wrong?

The sense of failure was all consuming. Marriage was the first thing I had ever failed at in my life and it hit me hard. But actually, it was the making of me. I didn’t settle for less than my heart’s desire – and wreck not only my life but my poor ex’s – I had the courage to get out. And with that move came a growing awareness of a stronger sense of self. Knowing what or whom you don’t want is not just part of discovering what and whom you do want but who you are. I know it’s a cliché that you tend only to grow through adversity but it’s true. Crippling disappointment and aching pain force you to grow up. To get real about life; that it isn’t some ruddy fairy tale and that happy ever afters aren’t inevitable.

Yes, Starting Over isn’t easy but nor is settling in an unhappy or suffocating situation. And the greatest gift of Starting Over is the burgeoning belief in your self that you can survive. Three years ago, I was left a single mother to a 2 year old. (My relationship after my marriage didn’t work out either despite the birth of our daughter. That’s not uncommon, apparently. Figures from the Office of National Statistics show that 39 per cent of all marriages are remarriages for one or both parties – and 60 per cent end in another divorce.) We weren’t married but we were in a committed relationship. Or so I thought. Anyway, after he left, I used to lie awake at night paralysed with fear about my new sense of responsibility. Not just caring for a child on my own but having to shoulder the running of the house alone. I live in an old cottage in the country and didn’t even know how to light a fire. Or re-set the central heating. Or pay the Council Tax. I was a domestic cripple. I remember when the boiler broke down, trying to find the oil tank in the garden in the night with a torch to read the oil levels to an emergency plumber on the phone and wanting to lie down on the damp ground in my nightie and scream. But I coped because I had to and along an arduous way, I acquired a whole new set of skills. Lighting a fire now? No problem. Surviving Starting Over makes one feel invincible. Fewer life scenarios hold fear because you’ve been to rock bottom and eventually climbed out and that is utterly liberating.

Of course to get to the safe place of feeling secure within oneself as a single person and not part of a couple takes time. So much more time than you initially imagine. According to some sources, it takes half the length of the time the marriage lasted to recover. Grief, shame and regret aren’t linear. They tend to erupt when you least expect them. Two months after my daughter’s father left, our sixteen year old dog died and I didn’t stop crying for three weeks. The sense of loss and the intense heavy pain in my stomach wouldn’t lessen, whereas for the month after my ex left, I never shed a tear.

Finding your separate identity is a lonely business. Your friends get compassion fatigue as their lives move on. And so must yours. Then, one day, when you least expect it, you realise that you, too, are sick to death of your sad story. When you’re bored by your own drama, you know that you’ve taken a quantum leap in healing. You’re not obsessed (as I was for years) by what you see as the failures of your past and you suddenly see the promise of a fresh future. You start living for today, as opposed to regretting your past. You forgive the most important person in all of this – your self – for the part you played, the decisions you took – and you realise that how people treat you is their karma. How you react is yours.

Starting Over is about realising that the clouds will pass if you don’t try and chase them away. And the silver lining is that along the way you discover who you really are. Not who you were. I’ve left and I’ve been left, so I’ve Started Over twice and I feel twice the woman that I was for it. I’ve learned that empowering strategic spiritual tension whereby you hold on to yourself and let go at the same time because we can’t predict the future. But endings can only mean one thing; new beginnings.

(Anna has based her popular novel ‘Daisy Dooley Does Divorce’ on her own life experiences. Read about the book on our book review page, or click this link to buy the book now:)

a strange gift

Unplanned Solo Parenting

It’s a January morning in 2003 and I can’t bring myself to take the kids to school. What will I say when someone asks me “How are you?” The answer, you see, is just not the stuff of polite conversation.

“W E L L… My partner of ten years has just dumped me. I was supposed to live with him into old age. I had no idea he wasn’t happy. I loved the bastard. But that was only the half of it – he has dumped me with three kids under seven. With not enough savings to build a realist future…..

With no job.

With a house that was going to be sold to pay off debts.

With no pension.

With a fortieth birthday coming up that year….. Fucking hell.”

Its now almost a year later. I’ve been in the bath, listening to Alanis Morissette and her passionate angry lyrics, and trying to cry. This is one of my latest self-help ventures, a continuation of productive attempts to turn a major emotional disaster into a life enhancing success. Getting to where I am now has been an interesting process.

Alanis is singing it all for me – “I recommend getting your heart trampled on to anyone” (in my case it felt more like a machete job); “waiting for deliverance” (the “oh God somebody please come and rescue me” stage); “I don’t want to be a band-aid if the wound is not mine” (Jesus – how can he save me – he’s got more emotional baggage than I have!); “The cross I bare that you gave to me” (No-one can do that victim-thing better than a woman scorned). Anger and pain that seemed to shred me from the inside out. A slow, crippling, crumbling of the core of my body that I didn’t even know existed within me. For me, this was my first taste of bereavement.

Obviously, after all that had happened, my shattered sense of self worth was screaming for a shag – but fortunately, the offers on hand were by people who seemed even more lost and confused than I was. I managed to steer clear – more by luck than judgement – through that first clichéd hurdle. I went through the “oh, he’s bound to realise what he’s done and try to make another go of it” phase. But he didn’t. Meanwhile, I was experiencing the early stages of panic attacks, and a weird sensation that time was moving far more slowly than it ever had before.

It finally dawned on me – I was in grief. I had never had any one truly close to me die before, but this was the closest thing. I had lost a whole life – past and future. Gone in an incomprehensible instant. Always thinking it might reappear around the next corner – but gradually realising that that part of me was gone forever. So I did what my many wise friends were encouraging me to do – I got real.

I had the blessing of so many fantastic friends – friends I didn’t even know I had – who gave so much more than just emotional support and the time to listen. They were brave enough to be honest with me – comments like “God, what’s happened to you is so awful I can’t help laughing” were strangely helpful. I also loved the response from one dear friend, after the guilt I had been feeling of dumping such awful news on my family and friends. When I told her that I was now joining the club of single motherhood, she said with great passion and absolutely no tact – “FANTASTIC!” But my friends also prevented my tackling of the mundane realities – possible financial holocaust; children torn out of school – from leaving me devoid of hope, and they helped me to believe that the world still had some good stuff waiting for me up ahead.

I was fighting. I moved out, got a place to rent, started panicking about my future. But I was still the victim fighting against the odds – and the trouble with that is you just never get your act together, because it’s always someone else’s fault. It’s only when you face up to the horrifying reality of a situation that you can truly take it in hand – and own it. You make it your own. It’s no-one else’s fault or responsibility if you don’t make things work out. I looked the worse case scenarios of every aspect of my life right in the face – and made whatever provisions I could. And somehow, by making that appointment with the loan parent advisor with my youngest child screaming throughout most of the interview (no toys provided or changing room), applying for State Benefits and enrolling the kids in schools I hadn’t previously wanted them to go to – took the fear away. It didn’t mean “that was it” – it just meant I was taking back some control. And you know the amazing thing? Even though it took a real leap of faith, and a good helping of black humour, to really start taking control of my life, the more I did it, the more I believed it was going to work out somehow. And the most amazing thing for me was, that other people seemed to be drawn in and they began to believe it too.

Strange as it may sound, but it was the children who helped the most, because they forced me to take back control of the present. I didn’t have the luxury of descending into total emotional freefall. There were these very strong brave little people who needed me to make things work out for them. They kept me sane in other ways too. When your partner has acted as if the past ten years was merely a passing of time without any emotional consequence, you really begin to question whether you have imagined the whole thing. But the children lie as physical evidence of something beautiful that no mid-life crisis can obliterate.

A good friend sent me off on an excellent motivational course. Boy was I ready for that. It was like someone had handed me a load of really useful tools to continue turning my life around even more dramatically than I already had done – and getting rid of all those stupid self-limiting beliefs that I didn’t know I had. Now that I wasn’t a `mother of three in a stable relationship with a house and two cars”, I had the opportunity to become anything I wanted. Of course, I could have done all that before, but oh, the children are so exhausting and the house has to be finished and the list of excuses for not thinking about my own personal growth were endless. People would ask me “how do you cope on your own”. But strangely, having one less adult to care for actually made my life easier. Also, not having to bear the burden of someone else’s unhappiness that neither of us had really been able to acknowledge – well that was like a massif weight lifted from my shoulders. I got rid of all my excuses and allowed myself to dream of what I wanted with ambition instead of frustrated regret. I had become free. I had become myself again.

I did have one tricky problem for a while. No one tells you what to do with your ex-partner. You’re supposed to hate and despise them – they are the reason behind every sorrow in your life. It was all so horribly negative, and somehow, the children took me from the bitterness of the usual break-up mentality and gave me every reason to fight for something better. When you have a living reminder of unconditional love each day, it makes you question the quality of the love that you think has now broken your heart. And that was yet another revelation – it’s not `love’ that causes the pain. Love is a good thing. What causes the pain – and so many problems within relationships of all kinds – is being `needy’. That was not a person I wanted to be any longer.

After ten years of learning to live with someone in love, in seemed so crazy just to give it all up because I now wanted to find a new way to live with them – albeit separately. I finally realised that posing ‘unanswerable questions’ and re-examining the past ad nauseum were clearly not getting me anywhere. I decided to let the love that had kept us together for ten years be the guiding factor with keeping us healthily and positively apart. The children were a constant reminder that anger and self-pity and doubt and fear – in other words, parenthood – can all be balanced with, well, love.

I was lucky enough to be able to put down a deposit on a house and get out of the Benefit trap – thank god for interest-only mortgages. I make the house `work’ for me by taking in lodgers, though some of my friends are keeping a book out on how long each one will last. I enrolled on a training course that takes up almost every Saturday for the next two years and THEN organised the childcare, knowing that was the only way I would make it happen. I am home schooling one of my kids and loving it.

I would not change anything in my life. I never realised that being single was such a natural state, and the more I enjoy it, the more I know that I will end up eventually with someone who is happy and motivated and probably want to hang around for a while, because they will be with me because they want to be and not because they are afraid to be alone. Meanwhile, I am enjoying a social life I would have felt was positively indulgent during my previous life as happy housewife. Of course I do sometimes miss man-cuddles, and I definitely miss sex. But God, if there wasn’t anything to miss everyone would stay single forever.

The kids and I had a drink at the pub today with their dad. And I played him at pool – and lost (but not badly). It was good. I still get those deep unremitting pains sometimes – especially when the first Christmas and New Year struck – but the pain starts to take on a familiarity that makes it somehow less debilitating. I don’t know what the future might bring, but I know that at least the past is not going to fuck it up for me.

I’ve been lucky to have an ex-partner who has been financially supportive and taken on the role of fatherhood with an ever-increasing confidence and enthusiasm. Things could have been a lot worse for me and for some people they are. I have learnt that being with three young children, either in or out of a relationship, is not a chore or a burden. Even though it is hard sometimes, it does not stop you from living your life to the full. Parenthood, in any form, is a gift.

So I’m sitting in the bath and I’ve finally managed to blubber a bit, and I’m wondering how to describe that odd feeling I have when I’m all alone in the house and the kids are quiet in their beds. A kind of familiar feeling that seems to be growing stronger all the time – that precious time that I have for myself. I think I can only describe it as – “Freedom”…

Suzy Miller

Producer of the Starting Over Show and creator of Travel Guide for Divorce

(Published Juno Magazine 2006)

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