I was acutely aware that somewhere between the school run and ballet classes, we’d lost our romantic connection.
My husband and I divorced three years ago. It was around the time our children left home and we found ourselves as a couple again: but this time, greatly changed.
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After months of living like strangers, I decided to end things. It hurt him deeply but, for me, the divorce felt like a weight off my shoulders.
They say the grass is greener on the other side but, if I am honest, things haven’t been as rosy as I’d hoped. Despite dates, I haven’t met anyone and the loneliness is creeping in.
Recently, I bumped into my ex at a party. He had a new air about him and seems to be thriving. It brought back old feelings and I can’t help thinking I made an awful mistake — I miss him terribly. I don’t know how to make things right. Is it wrong to want to get back together?
It can be very difficult to adjust to your children leaving home and I’m not sure you’ve acknowledged that fact, either to yourself or your husband.
Your decision doesn’t seem to have evolved over years of realising you had little in common, but rather a sudden realisation that excitement was passing you by. Perhaps, deep down, your changing circumstances made you feel uneasy about growing older and your husband was yet another reminder of the passage of time.
Did you ever talk about what you might do together once you had more freedom? It sounds as if you expected your husband to morph from being a busy dad to a romantic hero in one bound and without him knowing that’s what you wanted.
Even if you’d both been thrilled at the prospect of having so much more time together, you’d hardly have gone straight back to the giddy early days.
Most people are only too happy to replace romance with loving companionship. Being just the two of you again, after years of parenting, is unnerving and it takes hard work to reinvent yourselves as a couple.
Your husband would probably have needed some instruction from you about how to proceed. Can you really say you tried to tell him how you felt or get to know him again?
If he’d been keeping you from realising your dreams, then I suspect that, three years on, you’d have been well on the way to realising them. Instead, you seem to have mistaken the cosy domesticity of your daily life and his steady support for boredom.
It’s telling that you found your ex more attractive once you were no longer seeing him regularly.
I suspect you know yourself better now and want a second chance. He, in turn, sounded genuinely pleased to see you and seems capable of forgiving you.
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But you are going to have to do some soul-searching. You seem to like quick fixes and acting on impulse. It didn’t take you long to end your marriage and set about trying to meet a new man.
The most important thing you have in common is your children: put them at the heart of all you do and you’ll have a partnership that will last you a lifetime — whether it’s under the same roof or not.