Sad about how life has turned out

[Cinno]

Can't help but feel sad about how life has turned out as a single mum. I know I'm suppose to pretend to love it but I can't, I hate it and I'm so lonely and miserable it's not early days so no it won't "get better" I hate it the more time goes on. How do you get over the fact life hasn't turned out how you'd hoped?

https://www.gingerbread.org.uk Have a look at this group OP. They’ve been going for decades and have helped support thousands of parents in exactly your situation.

OP hasn’t blamed her children once. She has said that she’s feels lonely, and alone, struggles with money and time. Not once has she blamed her children for her sadness.

They are 13 12 10 and 7

OP, I have to say you seem like an incredibly negative person. That isn't all your circumstances. Every time someone suggests something positive, you shoot it down or have a reason why it wouldn't work or isn't good. If you have that mindset, then nothing will make you happy. I don't know if you were like that before your ex left, but it sounds as if you are depressed.

Because I've sat there for 8 years and wondered how I could change things and there is no way. These are not suggestions I haven't already thought of after almost a decade. The only thing I can see changing it is when they grow up and are adults, but I will be old then.

OP I feel desperately sorry for you. You sound very low & bleak in your outlook.

Your kids are clearly teens & they obviously have significant issues too. Are they receiving the help they may need? It seems all three of you are profoundly isolated & that's not good for any of you.

Is your worry really about the kids now? Can school help you access family therapy which may help them to have more relationships?

I feel you're being very evasive in your answers & that may reflect that the real problem is not just that your marriage broke down but that your children are isolated & not living a fulfilling social life appropriate to their ages.

I may be way off the mark & apologies if I am.

Crossed post as you were sharing that you actually have 4 kids & their ages. That's a lot to cope with op

You say your youngest is seven. Were you pregnant when your ex left?

Cinno do you have a job?

I don't want to sound like a government minister but one of the things that I really valued when I was bringing up my children on my own, was going to work. Dropping the kids off at school and knowing I was going to go to a place where I was valued and liked, was incredibly good for my ego and self-esteem.

Knowing that I'd have a bit of a laugh with colleagues at work, do something valuable with my time and get paid for it to provide security for me and my kids, was a major factor in ensuring that I didn't get depressed and lonely and unhappy with the sheer grind of being a single parent. I almost felt like work was a break from it and I loved it. And doing part time work enabled me to keep my skills up and gradually as the kids got older, increase my days so that now I'm back full time and back on the career ladder (albeit a lot lower down than I would have been if I hadn't been a single parent).

What is your situation regarding work?

So how do other people in similar circumstances manage it then?

You say you're not interested in hearing advice like 'reframe it' but how exactly do you think other people do it without doing exactly that?

I've often said on threads like this that tit was a line from The Shawshank Redemption that stuck in my mind - you can either get busy living or get busy dying.

And that really is your choice.

You say you'll be 'old' when your youngest is an adult. How old is 'old'. I'm 50 and I'm certainly not 'old'. I mean, I'm.not 30 anymore but I'm not old and my life is over.

She's 8 in a couple of months and yes we broke up when I was pregnant.

My son's school isn't the best and it's got a bad reputation in trying to move him to another school but there is no spaces. Other children have friends they just don't do sleep overs I'm not friends with the mum's from their primary school.

I had my children later and had over ten years as a single mum, working full time and juggling all my DC’s alone. I chose to remain single as I really had to devote everything to work and them, that was all of my fifties. It was terribly hard and sometimes lonely, there were no overnights with anyone. As they got older we started going away on more student style back packing holidays - rather than family holidays where I was ‘in charge’. We slept on trains and in hostels and ate inexpensively in local cafes. It was wonderful and opened up new horizons and got them hooked. While they were students and since they’ve invited me along to some of their trips. I’m even going on one later this year. Mother and child back packers are made very welcome as we are bit of curiosity. Friends who I didn’t see a lot of during children’s teenage years are back, we started going out for lunch when children younger and now do occasional festivals too. I drove this all by suggesting things and organising them and the kids and friends were happy to go along with it. In my early sixties when my youngest was at university I met someone and in the last two years we’ve had a wonderful time. The ten years were tough as anything but I never gave up and my life is so different know. My ‘best years’ were certainly not behind me. Please keep going, there are things to look forward to

What about joining online communities (other then mumsnet) that you can talk to online and develop friendships that way? I don’t know what interests you but there may be online chat groups?

i think you’ve become so down that you don’t believe it’s possible to change things and that’s a really hard place to be. I think once you find something that will help you break this negative spiral you’re in, you’ll begin to see that change is possible. It’s slow and hard at times but possible.

@Cinno You have 4 kids and are a single parent, it must be tough. This won’t help you, but if you have daughters, this will help them.

My grandmother sat me down at 14/15 and told me “you can never trust a man”, make sure that you can do everything yourself , enter a career than enables you to pay for housing , food, childcare without a man .

Also, women need to thing long and hard whether having 3,4,5,6 kids is a good option because there is always the potential for a man to get up and leave. It’s much easier to rebuild and become a single mum of 1 or 2, rather than 4 or 5.

A family friend had 6 kids in 6 years with her husband who was having multiple affairs and eventually left her. You always need a plan B in case you become a single parent.

What age are you? What age will you be then?

Do you work? What do you do while your children are at school? I’d there a social element to your work or any colleagues that you could engage with?

That sounds very much like the life I carved out with my children.

I find this really sad.

The worst years of my life where when I was childless, I just floated around meaningless and completely alone.

I had 'friends' and dated but honestly I could have fallen of the edge of the earth and no one would have noticed or cared for months they would all just assume I was off somewhere else.

My kids are my whole world, my reason for existing and getting up every morning, they literally rely on me for life, they notice me constantly and love me no matter what... they are literally 'my people' and certainly didn't 'end the best days' (even when I was a single mam doing it alone).

And that is almost exacrly the advice I have given to my daughter too.

That's my life now with kids though, if I died no one would notice, and if I did no one would have them they would go into care. Hardly a great thought!

I hear you OP. I'm totally on my own with my 8 year old. I'm lucky to have my parents close by but my son has extreme separation anxiety so it's not really worth the upset to send him for sleepovers regularly.
I've had to reduce my working hours because of his SEN and it's hard for us to get out and about because of his anxiety, so our life can feel very limited.
I've tried dating, but when you don't have another parent doing EOW it's pretty much impossible.
I understand the feeling utterly trapped and not being able to imagine how the future looks. I've reconciled myself to not looking for a relationship until my son is a lot older, and am not planning to ever live with someone agajn, so am doing a lot of grieving for the fact I'll never "raise a family" with someone.
I was so high achieving at school and uni, but a combination of bad choices, abuse, late diagnosed ADHD etc means I've really not achieved much in life, am absolutely skint and in debt and can't see a way out.
I know people will say that's a choice and there are things I can do to change it, but it's incredibly hard when you've got a child with intense needs 100% of the time.

OP, do you work? You need to find time for yourself, somehow. I’m a single parent to one child only but because she has multiple health issues sometimes I’d take the odd day off work so I could just stay by myself at home for a little bit.

You’re overwhelmed - if you can, sign up for counselling. I did it last year after my DD again put off moving out plans because I was just so tired. I was single for 10 years too so I do get how the loneliness starts creeping up on you. It’s not easy.

I work from home and won't be able to change that and don't want to anyway as that wouldnt make me feel any less sad I'm sad how life turned out and how I am raising children alone as a single parent as it's something I would have never chosen

@Cinno raising 4 kids alone for a decade and counting, with no help does sound incredibly hard and I don't blame you for being worn down by it. DH's mum had to raise 3 kids on her own from when they were little BUT she had her mum on hand to help with childcare, and their dad paid maintenance and had them on alternate weekends. You don't have any of that so i can't see where you'd find time for yourself really.

The only thing I can say is that this isn't permanent. It does feel like a long time and that your best years are past but if you live till 80, 10-20 years of hardship doesn't define your life or future. And while your younger years may be past, they were not your best. Being older doesn't mean the quality of your years is worse, and actually it can be more liberating and easier getting all your parenting done when younger and reclaiming life once older.

The best way to deal is to stop thinking about the life you wanted. If you didn't know any other way of life, you wouldn't know what you have now is terrible. It's the comparison and past view that makes you focus on the shortcomings now. Accept your life now for what it is, focus on it being temporary (the way we all knew being the horrid teenage years were temporary), and find little joys each day to make it bearable. That won't be easy if you're not naturally a glass half full kinda person, but you can think of little wins you can incorporate every day that make the time go by sooner. Maybe gardening, or knitting/crochet, or learning a language, or playing a game online, or finding an online community for a hobby, joining a residents or community page on FB, starting a selling business of amazon or etsy, and getting more involved in a little project that your children can help with too.

There's lot of ways for cash and time strapped single parents to feel less isolated but it does take some imagination and more effort than feels fair. It is however the only option as there aren't any quick fixes until your DC are old enough to need you less, freeing up time to date.