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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

Everyone’s happy but me

6 replies

Klobuchar · 30/11/2018 20:14

Ok, bit of background, sorry if long.

Me, H and 2 DCs moved to a different continent for my job about three years ago. H also managed to continue the job he had been doing by working from home and travelling a lot. About six months after we moved here, I found out H had met a woman and for want of a better term, had been having an emotional affair with her. He ended it and we stayed together for another few months but the whole thing had shone a spotlight on our entire marriage and it really wasn’t working for either of us so at my asking, he agreed to move out for a while and got a six month lease on an apartment a few streets away. We still saw each other regularly and did family stuff together (kids school stuff, weekend days out) etc and talked A LOT about our options and what we wanted but at the end of the six months, neither of us wanted to get back together and he moved into somewhere more permanent and yes, began dating the emotional affair woman.

Fast forward to now, 18 months on from that and H is in a full relationship with this woman now and they have set up home together in the town. Our DCs are over the initial shock of their parents separating and now happily flit between our houses, they have bedrooms at both and can come and go when they please, there’s no formal custody arrangements or anything. I’m delighted my kids have coped so well and the situation doesn’t seem to have affected them too much. DD is 17 and has just started her last year of school and will be off to college in a different country next year, DS has four more years of school left then the plan is he will go the same, so I’m here for another 4 years at least as I want DS to finish his secondary education here, then after that I will probably sell-up here and go back home. But that’s four years away. And by then I will only be four years older. I don’t have any close friends here, my family are all thousands of miles away, though we do visit and they visit us.

I bear no ill-will towards H any more, our relationship had run it’s course and we both deserve more.

My question is, when is my happiness coming? Have I had it already? Is this it for me? I don’t want to be married to either H or anyone else right now but being on my own seems to have greatly restricted what I do and my plans for the future. I’ve been part of a couple almost my entire adult life and when I wasn’t, I was young with lots of friends. Now I’m middle aged and more or less alone. Is this what it’s going to be like forever?

OP posts:
category12 · 30/11/2018 20:40

It seems to me you have a choice to continue as you are and plan for moving back in 4 years, or throw yourself into life where you are, looking to build a good social life, make friends and perhaps meet someone, and take the risk you'd have to choose between moving back and them when it comes to it.

I favour living your life now, not putting things off - tomorrow may never come, and all that.

Klobuchar · 30/11/2018 20:57

Thanks. I’ve returned to work after a year’s sabbatical and I’ve felt better since then, I feel a bit more like my old self.

OP posts:
Singlenotsingle · 30/11/2018 20:59

Make the most of it and do all the things that you weren't able to do before. Before you know it, you might have another partner and have to go back to compromising.

Klobuchar · 04/12/2018 00:06

I don’t know what I want to do, working that out is probably the hardest part. What even is there to do? Dating fills me with utter dread and to find someone else just seems an impossible task right now. I don’t even know if I want to be in a relationship right now

I’m not desperately unhappy but I do have my moments when I wonder how on Earth I got here and how I can ever change things. I know I have a lot to be thankful for but sometimes I can’t believe I’m not living with H anymore, getting on with our lives and planning for our retirement line we used to. I don’t want him back or anything and I don’t hate him. The only time I ever feel any real animosity towards H and his girlfriend is when I see how happy they are. I don’t begrudge him his happiness but I do feel hard done by that maybe my happiest days are behind me when his are right now.

OP posts:
LemonTT · 04/12/2018 00:32

No OP I am sure you are younger than me and lots of people who found and continue to find happiness in life. Saddness and hurt too but these are part of life. Without them we don’t grow and change, do different things. Just remember happiness isn’t just found in a relationship with a man (or woman) and not even in just being a mother.

I always think Its an odd response to separation or divorce is to try to keep things the same or as near as damn it. In the aftermath of a life changing event, surely there is no better time to shake things up a bit or a little. Maybe lots of littles.

Imagine a you, that is not the wife and mother you were, but a different and new you. One you aspire to be but never thought you could. What would she be like. Visual that and then think of things you need to get there.

I think maybe you are in the happy groove of being a mother but you are stuck in the rut of being a wife. Become a new vibrant single mother. It doesn’t need to involve dating.

AgentJohnson · 04/12/2018 09:38

I think maybe you are in the happy groove of being a mother but you are stuck in the rut of being a wife. Become a new vibrant single mother. It doesn’t need to involve dating.

This

Long term relationships are comfy, which makes them easy to hide in if you’re not careful. This time is a great opportunity to invest in you as separate entity from wife and mother. Coupledom isn’t the holy grail, being comfortable in your own skin should be where your ambition lies, with the added bonus that being happy in yourself makes you more attractive and more able to spot charmers/ chancers etc.

Your happiness starts when you decide, not on some arbitrary date in the future, which practically speaking, wouldn’t be any different then now except for being in a different geographical location.

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