The wife

When a New Single is introduced to a man in a social setting, makes idle small talk about the sporting team their kids are in together or whatever, why does the man always feel the need to mention his wife if the conversation lasts longer than 12 seconds?

We're not predators and they, almost always if not always, overrate their appeal anyway.

The stereotype

I was explaining to someone I know a little bit that I lust for a dishwasher, to which she replied 'Why haven't you put one in? Oh, because you're renting.'

I explained that it wasn't as simple as that. It's because there is no space in the kitchen as is and I need to build a new kitchen to accommodate a dishwasher, but besides that, I'm not renting.

By way of explanation, everyone owns their house where we live. But she looked at me, shocked, and said 'Do you own that?'

I guess people just don't expect the single mothers to though.

That sort of single

I think it says a lot about the way I regard life after divorce, or at least my life after divorce, that when I chose the title for this blog and my concept of 'New Singles' that it didn't even occur to me that the term had 'looking for a date' connotations.

Being a New Single is so much more than that.

The victim card

Newly divorced women (and especially the not so newly divorced) who play the victim card do themselves and the New Singles subset of the sisterhood a disservice.

No one is enriched or empowered by chatter about how badly done by 'we are'.

The challenge is to get on with it as best we can and not use our circumstances as an excuse for anything.

Henrietta Taylor

Henrietta Taylor is a New Single. She's the author of Lavender and Linen (Harper Collins 2007), a memoir about moving to Provence after the death of her husband and building a new life for herself and her children. I loved it.

How many times?

How many times every week, month, year do New Singles have to answer questions about dating?

Am I seeing someone? Have I met anyone nice? Do I think I will ever marry again?

It really starts to get irritating when it becomes a daily enquiry.

Answers to above. No, no and not before the answers to the first two questions are not no.

The force

I read somewhere the other day that there are 40 million divorced women in America.

40 million anythings is a force to be reckoned with.

Time travel

Time travel is part of life as a New Single.

Most of the time it is back to the fifties where schools require both parents' signatures and insist on calling long-divorced women 'Mrs'.

Sometimes it's into the future that we are all working hard for. The picture of that future life is what sustains us.

Getting on with it

The message of this blog, not just this post, is undeniably 'getting on with it'. It should equally be that 'sometimes that's easier said than done'.

Even if you've been a New Single for years, you can still have days, hey weeks, when it's tougher than usual.

The secret is to acknowledge you've hit a stumbling block, take a little time to think it through, then continue on your previous path of 'getting on with it'.

Unbroken homes

All New Singles have had their households described as 'broken homes'. It is a particularly vicious attack but usually used unthinkingly. It hurts but surely no harm is intended.

I am sure smug married people don't really think that the life-altering decisions we make to become New Singles, always always with the best interests of our children in mind, lead to homes that are 'broken'. It is simply more likely that their experience of life to date hasn't allowed them to think outside their square.

What New Singles with children to raise by themselves know is that they have moved from broken homes dominated by failing relationships and dysfunction into unbroken homes where there is room for peace and optimism and the brightest of futures for everyone living there.

Welcome New Singles

I've been a New Single for six years. It's no picnic being single again after years of marriage and never expecting that single parenting much less New Singledom would be part of my reality.

It is a life of dodging stereotypes of 'broken homes', 'single mothers' and being a third wheel in social circumstances we once fitted into.

But life after divorce or whatever is about getting on with it and I invite you to join me in rising above the negatives and embracing life as a New Single.