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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

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Original poster

why is being alone so bad, and how do we empower people?

20 replies

TooAswellAlso · 15/02/2016 10:23

Yet another friend has posted on FB about a new relationship, weeks after their long term marriage has ended.

Why is it that women in particular don't seem to see any success in being alone? Why do we seemingly need a man "to give us our smile back" to "make us feel wanted" to "make us happy".

Do we really have the ability to conduct a healthy relationship barely weeks after a long term one has ended, when we haven't had the chance to digest fifteen years of hurt?

What is so bad about being alone? About saying no to dating because it's a month post break up? Of learning to enjoy our own company and learn to live independently before becoming a couple again?

I'm really struggling to be supportive and happy for people, which is making me into a pretty shit judgemental friend I admit. But what's so bad about being on your own for a few months?

OP posts:

wannaBe · 15/02/2016 10:37

Ime it is actually men who struggle to remain alone and tend to move on as soon as is possible.

That being said, I think that if someone has come out of a long term bad relationship there is something to be said for going out with a few people just for the fun of being with someone, going out and having a good time. After all, just because she is seeing someone now doesn't mean that it will necessarily last or that they will be in it for the long hall.

When my marriage ended I wasn't looking for a new relationship. But then my DP came along and we clicked and are still together nearly three years later (in April). I would never have gone looking though, but equally wouldn't have dismissed him on the basis that I should be alone for any period of time. Conversely my EXh had signed up to a dating agency as soon as he could, and is now engaged to and living with the first person he met on there and they have a three month old.

Not sure it is anyone's place to judge...

QuiteLikely5 · 15/02/2016 10:40

With all due respect why not look at your own life instead of others and see how you can improve it?

Your emotional energy imo would be spent much better that way

Original poster

TooAswellAlso · 15/02/2016 10:45

Wannabe I don't think there's a set time as such, but surely four to six weeks is a very quick time? When there are children, access times, arguments, money, separation.

Maybe as I have more women friends than male, but in all honesty the men I know seem to take longer to find someone new than the women. The number of introducing to kids, fast 2nd marriages, new babies I've seen recently seems to be increasing. I just worry for a lot of them they end up repeating the mistakes that happen first time round, as they haven't had time to digest or look at what happened the first time. I know I walked around kind of shell shocked for the first few months, getting used to the first time I did things as a single parent etc.

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Original poster

TooAswellAlso · 15/02/2016 10:47

Quite likely, I'm not quite sure what you mean. My life is rather ok thank you, and can't say I've used a lot of emotional energy on this - I posted here as id seen yet another post on FB this morning. And thought it better airing it here than there!

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QuiteLikely5 · 15/02/2016 10:54

You said your judgement of others in this instance is making you a bad friend so stop focusing on things which don't affect you and quite frankly are none of your business

Do this and you will be happier for it.......

This is an advice place y'know

BoboChic · 15/02/2016 10:57

Humans are designed to mate and live in families.

Original poster

TooAswellAlso · 15/02/2016 11:01

Ah I see quite. Sorry didn't see it was that part you were referring to.

I am ignoring it right now, I can't "like" it, but I'm not interfering if that makes sense? And I'll listen when/if it goes wrong.

But I'm surprised how fast people do it - how often do we see given out in these boards the advice to stay alone for some time? Not to keep jumping from one relationship to another?

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Original poster

TooAswellAlso · 15/02/2016 11:02

Bobochic maybe they are - but so many seem to think that's a sign of success or happiness in life. Which isn't true. And often means they walk straight from one shitty relationship into another.

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SoThatHappened · 15/02/2016 11:15

Ime it is actually men who struggle to remain alone and tend to move on as soon as is possible.

I've found that too. As soon as one thing ends, they are out looking for another.

SoThatHappened · 15/02/2016 11:16

but so many seem to think that's a sign of success or happiness in life. Which isn't true.

I beg to differ. We are all looking for that special someone. Who the hell wants to be alone and never be loved and touched by manometer person. It's as lonely as hell being single.

kaitlinktm · 15/02/2016 11:19

I am 60 and have been single (after a divorce) for 13 years. At first I was too shell-shocked to even think of looking for someone else - and also I lacked (and still do lack) confidence. If I couldn't make it work after 29 years, what was the point? Also felt that my job and teenage DC should be my main focus and concern.

I now don't think I will ever find another partner - not sorry for myself here, just accepting that this is how it is. I am OK on my own and do like lots of things about my single life, but I can't help comparing myself with a friend (same age) who divorced at about the same time and purposely put herself back in the dating game. She has been happily with her partner now for ten years and they are very well suited.

On the other hand, being as how I am an old gimmer, three of my contemporaries have died and left widowers and I can't help feeling rather sad that with a year or less of the deaths of their long-term spouses, all of these men have moved on to other partners. Also, I can't help noting that all three have chosen women a good 10+ years younger. I am probably being unreasonable and a bit jealous though.

Original poster

TooAswellAlso · 15/02/2016 11:24

But sothat having a relationship is surely not the only thing we strive for in life? The only thing that makes us happy or successful? Surely we aren't all ambling around unhappy and aimlessly until that "special someone" comes along?

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VertigoNun · 15/02/2016 11:24

I found the longer I have been single the more I can't see myself sharing my life again. I am so selfish now no man would want me. I was a 50's housewife type who wanted to make her man happy. I just wouldn't be like that again.

Original poster

TooAswellAlso · 15/02/2016 11:26

Kaitlin being in my thirties I have no experience to share. But I have seen older widowed women find love, indeed one of my grandmothers remarried in her late 50s and had many happy years after a period of what must have been 20 years on her own.

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Original poster

TooAswellAlso · 15/02/2016 11:27

Vertigo I completely understand that!

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pocketsaviour · 15/02/2016 11:36

In my experience also, it has been men that tend to very quickly leap into something new. However, it's possible that men tend to just fall into casual arrangements whereas women get emotionally invested in what is essentially a rebound relationship.

Nothing wrong with going out and having a good time and proving to yourself you've still "got it". Important to keep a distinction though between what is just fun, and what is something with potential.

Thinking about my exes. From 4 major LTRs in my life. 1: First one was shagging someone else already when we broke up. 2: He was having an EA already and made it physical within a week of me leaving. 3: My husband was very bitter when we split and repeatedly accused me of having someone else (suppose that was easier than accepting it was his shit behaviour that made me want to leave.) I moved out end August, by Christmas he had someone else, and moved in with her the following April. 4: He left me for another woman.

So actually my H waited the longest, thinking about it! Yet it really stung at the time. Because we'd been married, I suppose.

By contrast, in 1: I waited about 3-4 months then started seeing someone. (I was in my teens.) 2: I had actually met my H which was why I left, so didn't exactly cover myself in glory. 3: I remained single (and not looking) for 2.5 years. 4: I've been single for 3 years since the end of that one, and no intentions right now of changing that.

I enjoy being alone. I like being accountable only to myself. I have good colleagues to chat to every day, I have my adult DS, and a very few carefully-chosen close friends/family members. My cat gives me all the physical closeness and companionship I need.

SoThatHappened · 15/02/2016 14:12

But sothat having a relationship is surely not the only thing we strive for in life? The only thing that makes us happy or successful? Surely we aren't all ambling around unhappy and aimlessly until that "special someone" comes along?

I've done the career thing, the solo travel thing, I can be successful by myself and I AM successful by myself.

I WANT to be with someone. I have never really been in a LRT. Just bits here and there with YEARS of being single and alone.

I am sick and I am tired of it. Never being touched by another person, not having a date to things, not able to go many places or go alone as friends are all loved up or married. Sick of waking up alone and having no one to curl up on the sofa with.

I have no children and I am getting too fucking old to meet someone based on the comments on the dating thread and on here etc.

Original poster

TooAswellAlso · 15/02/2016 14:45

Sothat

Yours was by no means what I was referring to in my OP. The way you worded it sounded like nothing else but a relationship mattered and I'm sorry if I took that wrongly.

I was very lucky I guess that my stint of being single longer term (four years) I already had children so wasn't looking for that as well. I can't imagine how hard it can be being single without children or anything when that's what you want.

You cannot be too old! Are you on the dating threads?

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Original poster

TooAswellAlso · 15/02/2016 14:49

DP was a bit of a jumper from one to another. Long term girlfriend he left for his ex wife. Within six weeks of that marraige ending he'd found someone new. They then married. Now he looks back with the benefit of hindsight and says that ex 2 should never have got that far, but it should have been more "a bit of fun" but it all soon got swept along.

He was single nearly a year when we had met. Had bought his own house, was adjusting to living alone (something he had never done in 30 years) and spending time one on one with his child. He needed that time to not jump into something feet first again.

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Fadingmemory · 15/02/2016 17:43

I love the freedom of being single. Coupledom would spell being limited and trapped for me. Each to her/his own though.

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