How Do You Learn To Enjoy Being Single?
Brief backstory to start with. Married at 19, first kid at 20. 26 years and three more kids later my ex decides this isn’t the life she wants. We spend a year separated and figuring things out, but once the dust settles I’ve got the kids and the house and she’s moved back home. All that to establish just how not used to be alone I am. Excluding a semester in university housing I’ve never been on my own in 47 years.
I hear so much advice about learning to enjoy being single. That it’s important to get to a place where you might welcome a partner but you don’t need one, that you’re perfectly content to live the rest of your days in solitude. But that mindset is so far outside anything I can imagine. Maybe it’s because my marriage wasn’t terrible. We had some bad fights over the years but it wasn’t constant. The last few years I felt abandoned, like she was completely emotionally disconnected. I was unhappy, but I wasn’t miserable, and I never felt things were irreparable. Maybe if I’d been the one to decide things were over, that I was done with the whole marriage and romance thing, then I wouldn’t struggle with this so bad. But as it stands all I want is someone to spend time with.
Not that I’m so desperate that I’ll just take whatever comes my way, I’ve learned my lesson on taking the time to make sure something is real before committing to it. But I just feel this void. Every time I’m out with friends or at a family event it just feels like I’m going through the motions, playing the part of a happy well adjusted divorcee. Meanwhile inside everything just feels wrong, like the machine is running but there’s a cog missing. Every experience just feels follow without someone there to share it with. And I’m honestly terrified for the future. I’ve got a little over four years until my kids are out of school. Maybe a few more before I’m an empty nester depending on what happens with college. Then I’m on my own, truly.
I’m trying. Time is a premium when you’re running a household of five, on top of being an introvert who’ll find any excuse not to be social. But I keep looking for things that will fit my schedule that I’ll enjoy doing. I’m planning a solo road trip for a week while my teens are with their mom for the summer - which I’m honestly more apprehensive about than anything but I’m committed to.
How have y’all reconciled this? How do I learn to live for myself, when my entire life has been spent living for my spouse and kids?