I know my dating choices are not exactly mainstream although I would challenge that statement even though I just made it! But I get the same question thrown at me from all directions over and over again ! Don’t you want to meet ‘someone?’ Groan!
The question usually emanates from another older female and comes with a concerned and patronising pat! Beam me up! As the protest forms on my lips in the form of a very big Noooooo! I still find my inner voice asking myself the same thing ..”well don’t you ?” Grrrrr..Get thee behind me inner voice.
Despite being very happy with my life most of the time ( there are days!!) this damn question always causes me to rewind and remind myself how I got here. What bloody annoys me is the person asking the question usually has a ‘someone’ and is using me to make sure that she’s got it right and I’ve got it wrong!
Well let me explain …try and get your head round this! ‘Someone’s‘ take many forms and just because I don’t have a permanent man attached to my hip opening doors and helping me get the shopping, pay bills and getting my car serviced it doesn’t mean that I can’t be happy fulfilled and a completely rounded female! There is more than one way to make an omelette.
I had a ‘someone’ when I was eighteen I married him and had three great kids! He unfortunately unraveled and after he had numerous affairs and left me black and blue I decided that his love affair with the booze meant more to him than his family. It wasn’t all bad of course and I gave it twelve years but enough was enough !
Enter ‘someone’ number two and ten years younger than me. A passionate and volatile affair that spanned eighteen years full of highs and lows. Finding a someone that could see ME past the three children I was devoted too was a miracle ( or so I thought) . We had a son of our own to complete the family but things were hard.
I am a loyal person and do not love easily but I gave this man the best of me. He was demanding and became debilitated with a back injury leaving me the breadwinner and manager of our lives. Whilst I was busy keeping us afloat he was licking his wounds and when the painkillers he was on took him to another planet I couldnt keep up with his need for attention and reassurance. Enter my friend and neighbour to help mop his fevered brow! Their affair conducted in the utmost secrecy and spanning five years broke me!
So broken but not dead! I decided that I had had enough of a ‘someone’ in my life ! Time to put myself first and live a little. So began my perpetually single life. This is where the joy begins..yes Joy..sorry people! I am not leading a sad and lonely life!
I have had many ‘someone’s’ over the last nearly ten years ( has it really been that long.?) I have loved! lived! and danced to many a tune. But the tunes have all been my own. I answer to no one and my conscience is clear! I am not going to pretend it has all been plain sailing. I have had my fingers burned and there are times when I wish that I could spread the load. But and its a big but! the freedom to make my own choices and live my own life and be happy and fulfilled is not reliant on having a man beside me.
Being in a conventional relationship does not define who am it never did! But the constraints and ties it created prevented me from being myself! I was always trying to be there for someone else who as it turned out was never really there for me! They were too busy looking after their own needs.
I’m not bitter and twisted about the men I chose to be my ‘someone‘ my ‘husbands’ Yes I may punch the air in triumph when I hear that my Ex husband and my Ex friends relationship is on the rocks But who wouldn’t? That’s just human nature, it doesn’t make me a bad person. Would I want married life again ? Not on you’re Nelly! Not right now! but i’d never say never. Who knows what life has in store for me.
In the meantime I am making hay while the sun shines. If that involves the joys of dating younger men, earning my own money and spending lots of time with my family and friends and trying new experiences and challenges whenever they arise then Amen to that!
I don’t need a ‘someone’ because I have a ‘someone’ and that ‘someone’ is me!
