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Lone parents

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Original poster

Mums with partners making ignorant comparisons!!

60 replies

sleepylion · 30/09/2008 20:38

Lately, I'm getting super annoyed by mums in partnerships claiming that their life is just like that of a single mother! It really gets my back up and I have to bite my tongue! They talk about their partner coming home late etc. As if that even comes close to what we experience 24/7!!

Mostly it drives me nuts, because it gives me the feeling they have no idea just how valuable the input of their partners is. Like they take them for granted.

Can they even know what it's like to do everything alone. Including watching your child's milestones alone, and praising your child alone, food shopping alone, eating dinner alone, sleeping alone. Tying to do the d.i.y alone? Don't they know what it means even to share the weekends with their partners? To go walking, to see their partner make their baby laugh, to make decisions together? Watching their baby grow together? Even if their partner is busy and late home. Big deal. At least he comes home in the end! We have to live day by day knowing noone is going to walk through that door.

I don;t go around moaning to these friends. Not at all. BUT, a little imagination on their part wouldn't go amiss. I just dont appreciate them suggesting that they are in any way close to being in the same boat as me!! That's just bloody ignorant. I feel sad thats i'm angry about it, and kind of let down, as I thought of these people as friends before all this. But these statements make me stand back and feel a rift.

Does anyone else know how I feel on this one?

OP posts:
fransmom · 02/10/2008 09:59

ooh get you!!! dd at her dads but i have no money again!!! bloody typical

ttfn xxx

allgonebellyup · 02/10/2008 17:43

lostdad - do you wanna hook up???!!!

And no i cant get back together with my ex, i begged him a million times, then he went and had a baby with someone else

PoppyFox · 02/10/2008 20:05

Blimey lost Dad. That is sad. About the dog. Get a cat? They don't mind being on their own. Can you walk a cat though? Go to the park with your cat and smile at girls who go jogging??

Skramble · 02/10/2008 22:00

Sorry but split with exH last year but I did feel like a single parent before for many years,
watched childrens milestones alone,
ate dinner alone,
shopped alone,
slept alone some of the time,
diy myself,
gardening myself,
never shared weekends,
never went walking together,
made decisions myself,
never felt we were bringing up the children together.

Yes he would come home eventually but to be honest it was like having a lodger that liked my children. When he left my DS reassured his little sister by saying well you hardly see daddy at all.

I don't think going down the woe is me route does anybody any favours and I think to be single is better then being in a loveless marriage. I often felt lonlier when he was there than when he was away working.

You could compare finances too but I have half as much money coming in now I am single but strangely enough twice as much to spend.

ShyBaby · 02/10/2008 22:42

I dont think you can ever compare it.

I dont have anyone to help me with decisions on schools etc. My ds was about to be sent to a school where he would have been beaten daily (roughest in the area, im not kidding). Did his dad care? no. He never even took a interest, in fact, he told him to "toughen up" and laughed at him.

His dad has no idea what dyspraxia is and cant be arsed to look it up.

He attended his first school play when ds was 10 and that was only because I purposely shamed him into it by asking him in front of his gf and invited them both.

My dd has never met her father. He refused point blank.

I have no support from their fathers at all. I haven't seen dd's dad for five years since the day he disappeared.

So how is, having a partner who works long hours and brings in a wage being like a single mum? Its not.

Short survey:

  1. do you lie in bed at night on your own, petrified that someone may break in? Do you jump up wielding an iron bar at the slightest noise?
  1. Can you phone/speak to the other parent to seek advice on your child/make joint decisions?
  1. If your child was very ill in the night, would your partner take them to hospital?
  1. Can you go to the toilet without your kids killing each other?
  1. Could you go to the shop at 9pm to get something you had run out of?
  1. Do you ever have a cup of tea made for you?
  1. If you were so ill with flu you couldn't keep your eyes open, would you have to drag yourself up and look after your kids, cook tea, tidy and clean your house, put them to bed? All on your own?
  1. Can you cook a meal without a child swinging from your leg because you're ignoring her?
  1. Can you go to work a job you hate, that actually makes you ill, where you're treated like an idiot 5 days a week because if you dont, its a life on benefit?
  1. Do you have a cuddle sometimes?

Its wank. My ex was an idiot. But I have to say, life was easier with him.

Skramble · 02/10/2008 22:49
  1. Yes as was often not there.
  1. Not really he was never involved in the kids activities or whatever.
  1. Yes I suppose he would have had he been there.
  1. Think this question is more to do with kids behaviour not about being single, but exH wasn't there to let me get showers or pee in peace.
  1. Yes but only because shop is across the road exH wasn't often there at night.
  1. Ok did get occasional cups of tea but never meals or any other domestic type things, DS makes me a cuppa and it means the wolrd to me more so than a parter ever could.
  1. Yes I would have had to as exH would not have taken time off work to let me be ill.
  1. Again exH would not have been there so did all that with kids in tow, exH never there at dinner time, but would appear later and eat.
  1. Yup was doing that then and now so no change there then.
  1. Didn't really have any meaningful cuddles or contact.

God I am so much better off now.

AMAZINWOMAN · 02/10/2008 22:53

Skramble, I agree I think it is much better to be a single parent through choice, than to feel like a single parent with lots of anger and resentment.

All the anger and resentment that you have cos partner is a tosser, isn't there anymore, and you can use this energy on the children.

ChasingSquirrels · 02/10/2008 22:55

you can't make an across the board judgement based on your own experience. there are some single mums on this thread saying that yes, actually this was true for them.

i also think you can't compare single parents with ex-partners who are involved in their childrens lives to truly single parents.

AMAZINWOMAN · 02/10/2008 22:56

But I think there are two types of lone parents,

lone parents with support
lone parents with no support

the second one, is just ongoing stress, with brief lovely moments from the children to keep you going

ChasingSquirrels · 02/10/2008 22:57

agreed - and that support can come from many places, but obviously if it is coming from an involved co-parent, who has the children regularly and is involved in their lives, then the practical stresses are reduced.

Skramble · 02/10/2008 23:00

I think lots of people have lots of different circumstances and I think you do yourself no good looking at everybody elses lifes to compare and complain if they state they are not happy with theirs. I don't think we need to be thrasing out a heirarchy of who has the worse deal really.

Each to their own and all that, try to find the joy in what you have, change what you can if you are not happy and find ways to deal with the things you can not change. Try to have empathy for those around you who are not happy with their lot in life but do not strive to show how much worse your life is as it will only bring you down.

Kewcumber · 02/10/2008 23:01

but even the "no suport" isn;t a fixed line is it - I mean I'm lucky I do have lovely supportive reinds and family but it isn;t as involved as a suportive ex-partner who doesn;t live with you who considers himself to be a parent.

Some of these posts just make me glad that I am happy and not too worried about whether I have a partner or not. Sometimes I get lonley and sometimes I am stressed, but generally I am reasonably content and quite often really rather happy. I'm not sure thats anything to do with being single or not being single - I think I am just lucky that the strange mish-mash of people who contribute in their own way to our life help it work well enough most of the time.

ShyBaby · 02/10/2008 23:01

Ok im going to pick up on number seven

Flu doesn't last one day.

So do people who have a partner, if they have flu for...oh, about 3 days is the worst part i'd guess. In those three days they have to do everything. Absolutely everything?

All the cooking, all the cleaning, washing up, shopping, bathing the kids, helping with homework, putting the kids to bed, all after a day at work? With no help at all, not even a cuppa? Not even a conversation. An empty house all night after the kids are dragged taken to bed?

Then when they wake up and feel a tad better, there's still noone there. On it goes, for years (bitter me)

Kewcumber · 02/10/2008 23:03

but even with all my contentedness I do get irritated when perfectly ordinary women in perfectly ordinary mariages make the "oh I may as well be single". Some people (generally the ones who don't know they're born) are just irritating - avoid them!

Kewcumber · 02/10/2008 23:07

I een occasionally get dragged into "competitive hardship" with one single friend who persists in telling me how hard up she is...

She earnes 25% more than I do, and her ExH pays for her DS's private school fees AND the mortgage payments on her 5 bedroom house. She has a live in au piar and her mother has told her that if her ex stoped paying the mortgage at any point her mother would pay it for her.

What can you say?! "Oh dear you must find cutting back on your skiing holidays very tough"

Kewcumber · 02/10/2008 23:08

funnily enough we have drifted apart a leetle over the last couple of years...

ShyBaby · 02/10/2008 23:08

I pay men who work all week, and all weekend and I must admit, I wonder how their wives dont get pissed off.(I certainly would).

But they are not living as single parents, it is not the same at all.

NappiesGalore · 02/10/2008 23:09

i think people trying to identify with you and compare likenesses with you are trying to be nice.
its probably a good thing to recognise it when people are being nice, no? even if they are clumsy about it. better than them not bothering, no?

onlyjoking9329 · 02/10/2008 23:15

i think being single is better than being in a loveless relationship where your soul and confidence is slowly eroded.
i wasn't in a loveless relationship thou and thats what makes it so bloody hard for me personally.

Skramble · 02/10/2008 23:15

NappiesGalore I think that is a much more positive way to look at it. I think it is imposible and pointless to make judgements and comparisons, perhaps some of those married woman with what look like Ok relationships really would be better being single who knows. I know I was and I know many people looking in from the outside thought all was rosy and well and were shocked when he left me.

ShyBaby · 02/10/2008 23:16

Hmm..dont know. When I was 7 stone I would go into the pub toilets and complain about my figure (because I actually thought I was fat). Same as all the other girls.

Never worked out at the time why I was getting so many hateful stares.

Now im over 10 stone I get it

Kewcumber · 02/10/2008 23:22

"Now im over 10 stone I get it" - and if you go down that road we could fall out BIG time ...

Look for what you are happy with in your life, try your best and do whatever you can to make yourself and the people close to you happy.

As many have siad - very littel good comes form tyring to "prove" to yourself/others that you have it harder. It just tends to focus yoru mind on all the negative stuff.

I do occasionally crack and make a mild retort which is usually "oh we consider that a 'high-quality' problem in our house" works quite well if said jovially.

NappiesGalore · 02/10/2008 23:23

agree skramble... no-one knows whats going on behind closed doors really.

being widowed from a partner you love must indeed be unutterably difficult for quite a long time, if not forever oj. and if it isnt forever it maybe feels that way anyway. i think it would be difficult for anyone who hasnt had that experience to find anything supportive or friendly to say that wasnt naive or upsettingly ignorant. part of what makes it all so lonely no doubt. i hope you find a little more peace and a little less pain each day/month/year. x

ShyBaby · 02/10/2008 23:32

No what I meant was. To me, I didn't like my appearance. The same as the other girls in the mirror, who were curvier than me. To me, we were all the same, same hangups.

but they were probably looking at me thinking what a complete tosser I was.

That's kind of how I feel when a woman who is married/has a partner says they feel like a single mother. I always think, but no...you are so much better off!

Im guessing that doesn't make much sense?!

Kewcumber · 02/10/2008 23:33

OJ its a million times easier for me to look back and think "thank god I'm not with that dickhead partner". I also haven't had the sense of one-ness of fitting or contentedness with any partner for a sustained period. How ridiculous is it of me to to say that in the same breath I'm so terribly sad about the loss of your man and yet jealous of what you experienced with him. It must be a torture for you at times.