Love me Tinder

When you end a relationship you are subject to lots of advice and sooner or later that advice seems to be 'go and get laid'. This is something that's easy to say from the comfort of a long term relationship where the prospect of casual dating may seem fun and even glamourous but the prospect of actually doing off the back of your life being wrenched apart is totally different. 

However, after a few months of separation I was coerced in to joining Tinder and my god it's a bloody cesspool. I have not used any kind of online dating in the past so I had no idea what to expect but nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to encounter. 

First of all are the guys who just put it straight out there by posting profile pics of their boners, or are just naked- clearly looking for deep and meaningful relationships there. Then there are the straight up misogynists who proudly state in their profiles they are only interested in women who 'take care of themselves' whilst making no statements about personality whatsoever. You also have the piss heads whose profile photos are a blurry mix of nights out with friends and you have no idea which one the guy is - ok that might make the first date kind of interesting, if he sobers up for long enough to actually make it. 

Men are also have no idea what they want.
'I'm not interested in girls who are materialistic' - has a picture of him next to a sports car which is clearly not his by the way he awkwardly posing next to it but not actually touching it. 
'I don't want anyone shallow and into their looks' - has pictures of himself topless in the gym mirror. 

So you trawl through a slew of pictures whilst seriously considering celibacy or becoming a lesbian when you decide you might as well swipe right. Oh you got a match - yeah don't be fooled- as it turns out you're not the only girl who's picky and guys have cottoned on to this fact and play the odds. They swipe right on mass and hope that one of those will swipe them and then decide if they like them or not. I had quite a few matches but didn't actually communicate with many of them and after one guy wanted to send me pics of his torso (yes I think that was euphemism) I pretty much stopped using it. 

I had actually started chatting to one guy and we did go on a date, which was terrifying, but it was ok and although I didn't see him again it was good to have gotten that one date under my belt. 

It wasn't until a few weeks later that the app got opened again whilst on a drunken night out with my friends. Much wine was had and apparently lots of swiping was done and I think don't most of the swiping was me - honestly married people have much lower standards than actual singles. So when I actually got up the next day with the mother of all hangovers and checked my phone I had a slew of Tinder activity and worryingly from guys as young as 25! Someone had been messing with my settings. I went in and sent a few apology messages to people saying that I couldn't in good conscience date someone who was born whilst I was in year nine at high school (shudder). However, the swiping did result in me connecting with someone from my past. It was totally freaky but we really clicked and I spent the rest of the day messaging them from my hangover pit. 

We met, we started dating, it was nice. We existed in a bubble and that was safe. 

The problem started when other people started to factor in to the relationship. Until that point I had been somewhat conscience of my motives for dating but I tried not to think about it too deeply. However, once that safe bubble that was just the two of us burst I couldn't help but get caught up in my head and all the doubts started to creep in. Why was I dating? Was I trying to prove something to my ex? Was I just delaying some deep seated emotions from the spilt? Were my feelings real or just transference?  Let me tell you when you suffer from anxiety this kind of stuff will make you ill - I mean physically sick. 

I knew it was me and my problems and it wasn't him. He was great, if I could Weird Science myself a guy he would pretty much be it, but I just wasn't in the right place. We mutually decided to call it a day as we are both dealing with the aftermath of separation and there is no timetable for recovery. It would be so much easier to bury the doubts and carry on but that's not fair on anyone and I would just be doing what I'm accusing my ex of, running away from my problems. My problems don't stem from any residual feelings for my ex but from my own beaten down sense of self that you get from years of being in a shitty relationship. I need to be absolutely sure of my feelings about me before I go looking for someone else again. 

So I'm giving myself time to just be me and find out who that is. Who knows where I'll be in 3,6,12 months time but I'm not going to rush it and risk losing someone great again. 

Abigail's Party

In the few days after my husband had dropped the bomb that he wanted to leave I took some time for myself to deal with the shock, however I took a small amount of comfort from the fact he had been honest (when backed into a corner so I'm not sure if it really counts). I had my birthday to get through and I wanted to put on a brave face for my son. 

The previous weekend I'd tried to arrange for us to go out for a family meal to celebrate but my husband was being difficult as he's on some stupid diet where he won't eat any sugar or carbs. He said he would come but not eat anything which to me sounded stupid and in hindsight was probably just a way to avoid going out. Also the diet never seemed to be an issue when going out with his gym buddies.

I finally managed to get him to agree to go out when I suggested going to a new smokehouse. This is probably a good time to mention that I'm vegetarian and as you may know a smokehouse is all about meat. Had I known later that day he was about to drop the leave bomb on me I would have told him to shove it in his smokehouse. However, it was booked and my son was excited about it as we had hardly spent any quality time together as a family because 'Daddy's always at the gym'. I felt I couldn't back out but I made it very clear that he was on responsible parent duty and I was on cocktail duty. 

The meal was better than I anticipated and I made the best of it for my son's sake even though my husband was sat there looking like he'd rather be anywhere else. I had made a promise to myself that I was going to make this work until the New Year and if it took some compromise and cocktails to get there I was prepared to do the work. I just tried to ignore the sour face next to me and put my energy into making sure me and my son had a good time and we did, even getting a free milkshake (it was called a Slim Shady because it had M&Ms in, it took an emabarrassingly long time for the penny to drop on that one). 

We got home and I put my son to bed as my husband got ready to go back out. I gently reminded him not to get in too much of a state as he had to drive us to London to go to the Harry Potter Studio tour we had booked months ago. 

I'm a huge Harry Potter fan and I had wanted to go for years but we wanted to wait until our son was old enough so we could go as a family and this was finally the weekend I had been waiting for. I shovelled on some make-up and smile and headed out determined to enjoy it. He once again had a face like a slapped arse but I wasn't going to let him bring me down, if he wanted out then that was up to him I was going to have fun on my birthday with my son. I had a pool of strength that I was drawing from because I knew that I just had to keep going for a while before we could start moving forward in what ever shape that might take. I wanted to be brave so that we could be amicable at the end of all this and continue to have a good relationship with our son with as little bad feeling as possible. 

At this point it was only my Mum who knew what was going on and he said he didn't want to tell his family. I was feeling very alone and in the difficult position that I couldn't tell anyone else in case it got back to his family. I suppose it was making it feel quite unreal and I was in a little bubble able to protect myself from the reality that was about to bear down on me. However, my bubble was about to burst. 

The beginning of the end

Five days before my 39th birthday my husband told me he wanted to seperate. I remember the room spinning a bit and I felt like I'd been lit on fire. I thought I was going to be sick and I just wanted to run away.

I'm not going to pretend that this was a bolt out of the blue, things had not been right for a long time. We had been spending more and more time apart, I'm a home bird but he was staying out until the early hours and coming home drunk more and more frequently.  I put it down to a mid-life crisis as he has a big birthday coming and I wanted to give him the space to work through it but I couldn't help sense there was some more going on. 

I had confronted him a number of times about it but he just brushed it off even when his behaviour was becoming quite extreme. He was living life like an 18 year old, ignoring his family responsibilities, leaving the house in a state as his drifted in and out and spending most weekends out and leaving me at home with our child. 

I now know he was trying to push me into leaving him as he was too cowardly (his words) to talk to me about it. If he treated me badly enough I'd walk away and he could move on with his hands clean, does this sound familiar at all? 

I knew deep down this was the case and my anxiety had been getting worse over the last few months as I was waiting for hammer to drop. I tried to ignore it but it was just getting worse. I was isolating myself from friends, family and work so I didn't have to face fact that my marriage was heading down the crapper. But I can tell you now ignorance is not bliss. 

It finally happened when I cornered him about our problems and he dropped the news that he didn't want to be with me anymore. He admitted he'd felt like this for a long time but was to weak to admit it. I asked him if there was someone else but he said there wasn't and it was just about him. He wanted to live his life for him, without the responsibilities of a grown-up (well wouldn't we all but we have to live in the real world). He had been living a selfish life for months, leaving me to do the lions share of the housework and childcare, and this was the life he has now chosen for himself. 

I asked him to go and see a counseller with me and he agreed. I thought it best that we try and deal with whatever happens next in the most healthy way possible and that would probably best be achieved with some impartial help. We have a family holiday booked to go to Lapland at Christmas and I didn't want to add to my son's inevitable heartbreak by telling him that as well as his parents splitting up he would also not get the holiday he'd had been looking forward to for a year. We both agreed that what ever happened he had to be at the heart of any decisions we made and that he would always come first. 

I left the room in a state of shock, I hadn't really processed what had happened. I didn't sleep much and got up in the middle of the night as I didn't want to spend the night staring at the ceiling. I watch TV until it was time to get the family up and I got my son ready for school. I opened up my laptop ready for work and I just broke down. I called my boss and explained what happened and she was very understanding and told me to take a few days. I called my Mum and she came over and comforted me. I felt totally lost, I didn't know what to think or feel or say. I think I sat in silence for most of time my Mum was here, now I know I was in shock. I'd had the rug pulled out from under my life and everyting was about to change but at that time I didn't know that was worst was yet to come.