The Tightrope Walk of Being A Single Parent

I’m in love. I have been in love with the same wonderful woman for going on eight months. Well, technically seven, but this is our eighth month. I always add that, because the accomplishment feels so profound and singular to me. This is the longest relationship I’ve had since my marriage, and if I may be so bold, it is going better than that relationship ever was.

Yet, I am plagued by sadness on nights like tonight. It is the sadness of not having completely reconciled my past life with my present. Or more specifically, the one thing in my past life that I want to hold on to: my children. I have cut out many friends, acquaintances, even family members who remind me of that past. It is what my therapist tells me is part of “the many steps I have taken forward”, she always reminds me it has been many, even though sometimes it feels like the bad times of my past are hanging over me, ready to pounce, to take me back to the lonely, depressive days I spent so much of my life living. My therapist assures me that the amount of progress I have made means that going back to the past would have to be a deliberate choice, and it is one I definitely don’t want to do, so, as she would point out, what do I have to fear?

At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a real possibility that I was going to be forced back into military service since my job had been setting up and working in hospitals and more relevantly, my job involved working on ventilators, which were in high demand. Due to how long I had been out of the service, I was on the back end of those who could be called back, yet my job title was one of the most in demand for re-enlistment. But luckily, the threat passed and I wasn’t bothered. It was a reminder that there are choices one makes which even when you have seemingly dealt with it, can come back to snatch away your present life.

The current example of that are my children. I hate thinking of them in that way. They are indispensable parts of my being, but when I look at the life I have built now, I realize that they make me an anomaly. I have told the woman I love that I sometimes feel like the Jude Law character in “The Holiday”, who pretends to be a bachelor on his nights when he is without his kids, but then inevitably must return to being a father, and ultimately, his two lives can never co-exist because he first and foremost and forever is a father. I have found love and yet, my love has to exist on a different plane than my truest self. We have taken baby steps to rectify that, with smashing success. She met my oldest and they hit it off immediately. My oldest, however, is an adult and free from the challenges I face with their younger siblings.

But while we move down this path carefully, thoughtfully, and deliberately, on nights like tonight I am saddened by a fact that I struggle to ignore. Tonight I had a good evening with my children, while my girlfriend and her friends had a fun night out themselves. But so did my other friends, the ones I have made in just the last few months. The kinds of friends who I struggled making during the darkest days of my divorce. These friends are also childless, like my girlfriend. The one single parent friend I have has, without any explanation, created a barrier between us. This friend has, for the last few months, been acting weird. It has seemed like every week she was going on a trip or spending a weekend partying. I know there are issues going on at home, and she is clearly running from them. I had lunch with a mutual friend recently and they too have been shocked by their behavior. I reached out to her yesterday and she gave me a cordial but very curt reply. And yet, she is the one friend I have who could understand the weird loneliness I feel when I recognize that my having my kids puts a distance between me and the people who have made my life happiest since my divorce.

It is a strange dynamic. I don’t want the separation. I want my new friends to be part of my children’s lives. I want to be able to participate in the celebration and joys of my childless friends without dividing myself. But that is asking a lot of people. It is asking a lot of the woman I love, and what I know is the right thing for our relationship, that is, to take it slow. To be intentional. To make her feel as comfortable as possible with the situation. Yet I am only in a state of discomfort. Because I can’t be my entire self. I feel guilty when I invite my friends to hang out when my children are around. A few of them have without any issue, but I shouldn’t feel guilty about that. I wish children didn’t freak people out who don’t have them so much. However, I was the same before having kids. It is awkward, I sympathize with that. Yet it feels like a tall order to express that the awkwardness people feel about your children hurts. It hurts that my being a parent is an “issue” rather than an accepted fact that is blasé. It hurts that showing my full self is something that can only be done in piecemeal. I’ve done the opposite though. Previously, I’d thrown another person who wasn’t ready into the deep end before they could swim, and I’ve seen the chaos that causes. I just wish it didn’t have to be that way, especially after my love told me that seeing the glimpses of me as a father deepened her love for me. I know its the right thing, I just wish it didn’t also make me feel left out.

I think of my friend who is going through a tough time. She also had kids young. She also is in an arts world with largely childless friends. And her choice appears to have been to go all in on escapism. I don’t want to escape the kids who give my life a greater meaning. I spent enough time evading my problems, my responsibilities, and I spent enough time treating my kids, at least in my mind, as “baggage” instead of as gifts.

Single parents spend a lot of time meeting other’s where they are at, at the expense of asking others to do the same for them. It is what makes dating another single parent seem easier. But we got some damage, real damage, and you can’t lean on another dysfunctional people to heal you. The path I am on, with these friends, and with my partner in life and in love, has given me more joy than I have felt in years. The irony is that it is also lonely sometimes. It is hard in those lonely times to remember that it’s temporary. They’ll meet my kids soon enough, and our lives can be unified. But for tonight, I feel the push and pull of my two selves — the dad and the single man — and it breaks my heart that happiness often carries a hint of melancholy.

I am not alone in that. My girlfriend shared pictures from her event tonight, and told me how romantic the place was. We talked about visiting it together. Even though she didn’t say the words, I know she missed me. She was experiencing a fun time and I wasn’t there, just as the opposite had been true for me. That is the beauty and sadness of love. We can’t always be together, even if in our hearts, being together is all that we desire.