Relationships After Divorce

I find it rather strange comparing my life now with the one I led just two years ago.

Relationships after divorce can either lead you into a repetition of all the same mistakes, including finding yourself getting hitched to a partner who is like a clone of the spouse you have just ditched. Or you can find yourself in a completely brave new world if you take a leap of faith and change the way yourself as well as your matrimonial status.

In most ways, Ruf is nothing like my ex. Tactile, demonstrative and sexually insatiable, he is the veritable testosterone-charged epitome of masculinity with the softest of centres. And yet both of them retain a childlike ‘small boy’ innocence and vulnerability that just makes my heart melt. It has been extraordinary how, over the past few months, I have found myself calling my lover by my son’s name and my son by my lover’s. Their behaviour is sometimes so similar.

Being able to spend more time with Ruf means that I also get to spend more time with his friends. Whereas my previous life was one long whirl of social engagements that centred around the needs of the children in our circle, now the majority of people are childless.

This means that days do not need to be so structured. If we don’t eat at a set time, it doesn’t matter. If we meet a friend in the street in the middle of the day, we can go for a pint without having to factor in any details other than our own adult desires. Saturday nights can be spent in the pub without the worry of a babysitter or the inhibiting knowledge of a 6am start with sleepless offspring.

And, of course, deciding to spend the day working on the intimacy of our relationship from the depths of a warm duvet can happen without advance planning. Invariably there is nothing that cannot be shifted to tomorrow.

I find my whole attitude to life is changing. I am relaxing and learning to be more adaptable. There is still the small matter of my work, but I am lucky in that I can fit most of it in around the things that I want to do by changing my hours away from the usual 9-5 routine.

I was a full-time mother before and I never realised the stresses and huge amount of energy involved in keeping a home and children running smoothly. I was exhausted emotionally and physically every day but, like a hamster, I just had to keep running. As fast as one job was completed, it would be looming again the following week because household chores are an inexorable and never-ending routine. There is always laundry, ironing, dirt and dust.

Living alone, I find that I can plan things so that those onerous tasks are nowhere near as pressing… just by ensuring that I discard my dirty clothes into the laundry basket, put stuff back in the same place every time and clean up after myself as I go along.

Not forever worrying about keeping things clean and tidy means that I am mentally less repressed and generally less obsessive/compulsive. This, in turn, means that I am more receptive to the pleasures of the ‘afternoon delight’. It’s the complete opposite of a vicious circle: the realisation that the more I indulge in such physical activity, the more mentally content I become.

It is important to ensure that your relationships after divorce take you forward to a better place, not trap you in the same discordant Purgatory as the previous marriage.

And this can be down to the choice of a more suitable partner but is more likely to be the result of a complete change of attitude in the way that you respond to life generally.