For All the Single (& Separated & Divorced) Ladies

It's Friday, I'm (not) In Love, WeekTwo

This essay is a modified, updated version of my Valentine’s Day post last year. You can read the original version, “The F Word in Relationships: I refuse to call my 30 year marriage a failure because it did not last forever” here

Photo by Muesli on Unsplash

Three years ago on Valentine’s Day I was reeling from a break up.

I was fifty seven years old. I was two years sober from alcohol. I had spent the prior few weeks leading up to the breakup in emotional agony. I was still very much in love with my then boyfriend. Yet, I knew the breakup was necessary for me. I hurt in my head; in my thoughts: I would miss his friendship, his cheerleading (he and I were each other’s number one sober support) and of course, his love.

I also hurt in my heart: I had an actual ache in my chest.

Since getting sober and feeling all my feelings, I had begun to feel in my heart chakra.

Photo by Giulia Bertelli on Unsplash

Initially, I felt this new sensation when I was falling in love with him: a glow-y, aura-like, radiating warmth in my chest, and now, here I was feeling a similar sensation, but with a radiating ache in my heart space. The emotional pain from this breakup felt just as painful, if not more so, than my first break up at seventeen years old.

Dating in midlife is not for the faint of heart: falling in love in my fifties has brought with it new highs and breaking up in my fifties has brought with it new lows.

As I age, I continue to be struck by moments of comprehending the meaning of old adages I have heard throughout my life, but didn’t fully get until I was living it:

I was in heart ache: literally.

In my five years of sobriety, I have had four significant romantic partners…and four significant breakups.

Today, I am sixty years old. I am five years sober. And I won’t say I am reeling from yet another breakup, but after ending my recent two year relationship, I am adjusting to being single again.

On a day in which our culture celebrates and honors romantic love, if you are not in a romantic relationship, you may be questioning yourself and maybe even feeling a bit less than <.

If you were in a relationship that recently ended, you may be feeling sad, hurt, angry ~and maybe even a bit like a failure.

If you are going through a separation or divorce, you are probably on a hellish roller coaster of emotions that I would only wish on my worst enemy.

If you are a widow, you are also probably on a hellish roller coaster of emotions: anger, grief, loneliness, abandonment, depression, anxiety and my heart goes out to you.

And if you’re in a marriage or relationship that feels, well, less than Hallmark or Hollywood happy, you may be feeling that you-or your partner-are doing something wrong.

You may be wondering, “What is wrong with me? “ or “What is wrong with my partner?” You may be asking, “What is wrong with my relationship? It isn’t like _________ ‘s and _________’s. Fill in the blanks with your compare and despair relationship ideal, which I hope you know isn’t real and isn’t ideal. If the relationship is comprised of two humans, it is just as flawed as yours.

You may be wondering, “What was wrong with me or my relationship that it ended? “

We need to shift how we look at romantic relationships-especially longer term ones. Our life spans have grown exponentially in the past century and many relationships and marriages do not last “forever,” and nor should we expect them to. 

Not all relationships that don’t last forever are “failures.”

If the bar by which we measure relationship success is, “Did it last forever?,” we are using the wrong metric and asking the wrong question. 

I was in a marriage that lasted about thirty years. We met when he was eighteen and I was twenty. Together, we put ourselves through college, paid for our wedding, traveled, moved across country-twice, raised two beautiful, mostly healthy and I hope, mostly happy, daughters together until they were 20 and 23. We decided to end our marriage in our gray years, he was 52 and I was 55. We were kids when we met, had a very good life together for many years, and we will always be a part of each other’s lives through our children. I am deeply grateful for our life and family we built together.

Despite the gradual growing apart and a lot of pain we put each other through before we euthanized our marriage, I refuse to call those decades together a “failure.”

I understand that when a couple says, “I do,” they generally intend to stay together for the rest of their lives. However, a few statistics indicate that few marriages will last forever. ¹

• Celebrating 60 plus years of marriage is rare, termed the diamond anniversary

• Only 2% of currently married individuals can claim this milestone

• Only forty-one percent have made it to their silver (25 years) wedding anniversary

• Only 8% have made it to their golden (50 years) anniversary

So why are we still operating on expectations from and life expectancies from the past?

When people entered marriage in 1925, just one hundred years ago, the average life expectancy for a man was 57 years and 60 for women ²-or about the age that gray divorce is hitting many couples today. Current life expectancy for men is 74 years and for women, 80 ³

Why is marriage the only thing that when it ends after ten, twenty or thirty years, society judges it as a failure?

Do you know how long the television show, Friends, was on air? Ten years. From 1994 to 2004. Easily considered one of the most popular and successful sitcoms in history, Friends earned 62 Emmy nominations and six wins. When it ended, we were collectively sad and mourned its loss, but no one would ever call that show a failure. No one whispered, “Eesh. I wonder what happened. Who screwed up? What’s wrong with them? I can’t believe it didn’t keep going until one of them died.”

Do you know how long the Broadway play, Cats, ran? Seventeen years, from 1983-2000. And that was just the American version. It was nominated for eleven Tony awards and won seven. I don’t think anyone will ever call “Cats” a failure for not lasting forever, either.

About a year after my marriage ended, I met and fell in love with the sober man I shared about above.

Our connection felt magical. It felt soul-matey and spiritual. It was a high. It was a low. Was it a replacement addiction? Maybe. Probably.

Was it healing? Definitely. Was it hurtful? Yup. Also that. It was a charcuterie board of all the emotions from the emotions wheel. And…as you know, it did *not* last forever.

And it was sooo healing. It was what I needed-until it wasn’t.

I refuse to call that relationship a “failure” either. Why?

Because I grew so much. I learned so much-about me, about men, about love, about love addiction; about anxious and avoidant attachment; about sobriety whack-a-mole and how easy -and how common- it is to fall into the well of other numbing behaviors and addictions as we attempt to pull ourselves up from the bottom of the original one. Hello, binge-eating, texting men I shouldn’t, doom-scrolling on socials until my eyes look like swirling targets a la a hypnotized Bugs Bunny, and the most insidious of all-being co-dependently AMAZING to everyone around me -but me.

This sober relationship was the bridge back to myself and eventually to other -at first unhealthier and then healthier- relationships. This first sober relationship was a balm to my very bruised soul-and to my hugely wounded ego.

After my marriage ended, I wondered, “Will anyone ever love me again?” and possibly more terrifying, I wondered, “What if I never have sex again?” The love I received in this relationship healed parts of me that no amount of therapy could. Hell, the sex alone gave me a body confidence (in my fifties!) that I never had-not in my slim twenties, my settled thirties, or even in my sexually liberated forties.

Our culture is very harsh on relationship “failures.”

“My relationship failed” can easily translate into, “*I* failed.”

When relationships end, instead of asking, “Did this relationship last FOREVER?”, we should instead ask these questions:

Did I take a risk?

Was I vulnerable?

Was I brave?

Did I let myself be fully seen?

Was I willing to fully see my partner?

Did I ask for what I needed?

Was I honest with my partner?

Was I honest with myself?

Was I kind?

And more importantly, we should ask these additional questions to measure relationship “success:”

Did I grow?

Did I learn?

Did I laugh?

Did I love?

Today, whether you are single, separated, divorced, or in a relationship, I hope you do something loving for yourself.

Today, I hope you do something loving for someone else-for a friend, for a family member; for your significant other, for a coworker; for a stranger.

Today, I hope you look at yourself and any past relationships through a lens of loving kindness.

And today, I hope you look in the mirror and say,

I love you.

You are enough.

You are not too much.

You are not a failure. 

You are lovable.

You are worthy. 

Because…you are.

Love,

Rosemary

Thank you for reading my heart filled words. If you enjoyed this essay-if it spoke to you in some way-please hit that little heart button and “like” it. It would mean a lot to me and it could help someone find my words who needs to read them.

Now you: are you single? Divorced? How long did your marriage last? Do you consider the ending of your marriage a failure? Have you dated in midlife? Gone through a break up in midlife? Have you dated while sober?

I’d love to hear about your experiences and thoughts in the comments. And if your words feel too tender to share here, please feel free to direct message me. I am a good listener.

If you have not already, I would be genuinely grateful if you supported my work by becoming a paid subscriber. 

If you would like to invite others to read my words or find our community, I would be honored if you shared this post.

In honor of February, the Month of Love, TODAY, Friday, February 14th, NOON-1 PM EST I will host a Zoom for women. DM me for the link. 

This Zoom session will focus on loving ourselves: the challenges around that and how we can make time-and believe we are worth the time-to love ourselves and to live more fully into who we want to be. 

I will open this Zoom session with a focusing inward through a meditation or tapping, share a reading and offer several journaling prompts. For those who would like, there will be time at the end for sharing. 

I call this women’s community we will build together FLY :

Finally

Loving

Yourself

I hope to see you there and I hope to see you FLY.

1. Bowling Green State University Center for Family and Marriage

2. Source: University of California, Berkeley

3. Source: Centers for Disease Control