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Dear Roe,
I have just broken up my relationship and I am devastated. My marriage ended a number of years ago and I thought I would never find love again. Just when I least expected I met an incredible man, one of the most beautiful men I have ever known. Our friendship blossomed into a beautiful relationship. He understood me better than anyone, he was gentle, supportive and so kind. After a couple of weeks of knowing him, I felt like we had been talking for years. I didn’t think love like this existed and had never been happier.
As a single mother, I have struggled at times to handle the pressure, suffering with maternal guilt and always trying to do the right thing for everybody except myself. It seemed to me that the only way for me to be fair to me and my young children was to end my relationship. Now I am so confused and sad, I feel like I am asking so much of him to take on all the complications that come with my life following a broken marriage.
I love him dearly, but I am worried I have caused so much hurt that it might be too late. He told me he would have to walk away and respect my wishes, but did not want to lose me and that he loves me more than anything.
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We have not been in contact for a couple of months now and it feels like a lifetime. I just don’t know how to take the leap forward for myself and my children. I am terrified I might get hurt all over again.
Do you know that scene in rom-coms where the lead character is belatedly realising that they’ve made a huge mistake letting the love of their life spend New Year’s Eve alone/walk out of their Notting Hill bookstore/leave for America after performing an adorable rendition of All I Want for Christmas Is You, and their most sassy confidante speeds up the process by shouting something like “Girl, run to him!”?
Allow me to cast myself in the role of your most sassy confidante.
Your marriage didn’t work out, and I’m sorry that it was difficult and that it left your confidence battered. You haven’t given the details, and maybe your marriage was desperately unhealthy or abusive or there were some extraordinary circumstances around it that are leading you to call it “broken”. Or maybe it just didn’t work out, like so many marriages and countless relationships don’t work out. Maybe it’s not an indictment of you as a person, and is simply just a fact that that relationship wasn’t meant to last forever.
Either way, please stop framing your marriage and divorce as this unbearable burden and complication you must endure alone. Your marriage ending can simultaneously be one of the biggest life shifts that you have been through, and a very common experience that any decent person will absolutely understand.
Dating a divorced person with children might come with added responsibilities and considerations, but these aspects can be extra, while not extraordinary. You’re dating adults – grown human beings who are capable of discerning their own boundaries, limits, capabilities and desires. You’re not tricking or trapping anyone into staying with you. The people you date are free to leave if you and your situation are not for them, or – in the case of the man you were dating – free to be ecstatic to be with you, excited about building a relationship with your children, all in for the whole package.
This man was your friend before you started dating, knows and understands you, your past and your family life. His decision to be with you was fully informed. Pushing him away wasn’t saving him from anything, it was simply keeping both of you from what you want: being with each other.
It’s clear that marriage, motherhood, and maybe some pre-existing esteem issues have made you believe that you don’t deserve what you want, that you take up too much space, that you are inherently a burden, that your life should revolve around shrinking yourself down and serving others. This is what you need to work on, the belief system you need to change - the belief system a lot of women and mothers need to change. You need to learn to accept that you deserve love, that you deserve happiness, that your needs and desires and search for love and fulfilment are as important and as valid as anybody else’s.
Think of all the people you love. None of their lives are perfect; none of them come without their own past, their own insecurities, their own “complications”. You don’t believe that they are any less worthy of love and happiness for having lived and loved and learned – so stop believing that you are.
A therapist might be able to help you with that. And so might your children. Think of what lessons you want to teach them regarding love and happiness and parenthood. Do you want them to grow up thinking that if one of their relationship ends, they have failed and don’t deserve another chance at love – or do you want to teach them that relationships can be important and valuable no matter how long they last, and that holding onto the ability to love and be loved is beautiful and brave?
Do you want them to think that having children means sacrificing everything - or do you want them to see that parenthood isn’t about loss, but gain, and can not only co-exist with but be elevated by a parent’s capacity to respect and pursue their own needs? Do you want them to learn that getting hurt once inevitably means staying hurt forever – or that life involves a cycle of hurting, and healing, and being brave, and trying again, and that the trying again isn’t just inevitable, or necessary, but maybe the whole point?
Lead by example. Be brave, be loving, be open-hearted. Believe in your worth so that your kids grow up knowing that they should, too. And if they ever tell you that they’re scared of being hurt, scared they’re too much, scared they don’t deserve love, tell them about the time you chose love over fear. Tell them about the time you chased love down like they do in the movies.
Girl, run to him.
Roe McDermott is a writer and Fulbright scholar with an MA in sexuality studies. If you have a problem or query you would like her to answer, you can submit it anonymously at irishtimes.com/dearroe. Only questions selected for publication can be answered.