Mum was trying to make a very clear point to her newly single daughter... (and friend.) And her point was that that we were 29 years old and time was running out... We needed husbands, and we needed them quick!
Oh god... not again, please..! Both my friend and I were bruised, aching and bashed up from recent splits... She from the reasonably amicable but terribly sad end to an eight year relationship, and I from the hideously acrimonious split from my husband of seven years... Neither of us was in the market for fresh heart-ache.
The article didn't make for encouraging reading and the upshot was that girls who didn't marry the bloke they'd spent their twenties with were... not to put too fine a point on it... screwed. It suggested that by the beginning of their thirties decent men were either a.) snapped up or b.) realising that life without wifey and babies had a helluva lot to offer a single chap of independent means.
Apparently all that was left to us two silly girls who'd ditched the blokes we'd snared at 21 was a lifetime of 'enforced independence' or to wait for the first round of divorces... By which time the men available to us would be a.) coping with life alone, b.) embittered c.) broke from child maintenance payments and d.) unwilling to commit to us in the way they had done to their ex wives ten years previously.
Depressing stuff. So much so that my friend and I all these years later still refer to it as 'That Article'... Worst of all, it was written by a man... a man who claimed that he just wanted to clue women into the truth about men.... he said we needed to face facts... We just weren't 'viable' in the way we once had been. According to him there was nothing to be done now that we had missed our window apart from steeling ourselves to become benevolent/ wicked stepmother figures at some indeterminate point in the future. His line? "See you by the swings in ten years time, ladies."
The idea of it just seemed ghastly... and my friend and I thought of adding a slug of vodka to the morning coffee as she screwed up the article and binned it. Was this really it? Was this as good as it gets? Had we really thrown it all away?
Well, in short, the answer is: No, of course it's bloody not... and of course we bloody haven’t!
Four and half years later and I'm not sure where the time went, but these days I have someone rather wonderful in my life and I often find myself thinking back to that article years ago. I can only assume that despite the fact that My Lovely Man conforms to many of the points made by that angry male journalist in his joyless article back in ‘07... (30-something, separated, single dad, caught up in work, a bit bashed around by life and love)... that he is simply... well, a better sort of man than old journo' gave some men credit for.
MLM and I are not an 'easy option' in each other's lives: we each have kids from a previous relationship; we have demanding jobs; our exes are still complicated factors in our lives; we don't have the time for each other that we'd like to have... it's tough loving someone so much and having to very often come in second, third or fourth place behind all of the other responsibilities in life... hey, we really don't look good on paper... but actually what the angry journalist forgot to mention is just how beautiful the second chance is...
So this is about that: love the second time around; love in the time of parenthood.
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