Mini Episode 10: I'm nearly 40, just left my 7.5 year relationship, and I worry I won't find someone 'in time'
For today’s mini episode, we have a question that inspired me to remember a time when I struggled with childlessness. Both the struggle with the decision to have a family, and the letting go of the hope of having one too.
They write:
I'm nearly 40, just left my 7.5 year relationship, and I worry I won't find someone 'in time'
Tune into the episode wherever you listen to your podcasts to hear Jackie ponder our listener's question and give her own personal experience navigating similar feelings.
This podcast is produced by More Good Media.
Episode Resources:
Jackie Kai Ellis: Website / Instagram
You & I Podcast: Website
Resources on finding trusted professional help can be found here.
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Welcome to You & I.
I am Jackie Kai Ellis and it’s my genuine hope that through sharing our most vulnerable stories, we know, in the moments where it matters so much, that we are not alone.
DISCLAIMER:
It needs to be said, I am not a professional, just someone with some personal experience to share. I do hope this is helpful, but as always, take the advice that resonates and ignore what doesn't. And don’t hesitate to seek out professional help through a trusted source. We’ve provided links on our website in case you need them..
QUESTION INTRO:
For today’s mini episode, we have a question that inspired me to remember a time when I struggled with childlessness. Both the struggle with the decision to have a family, and the letting go of the hope of having one too.
They write:
I am 37 and currently starting the process of leaving my 7.5 year relationship. This incredibly life-changing decision comes with many layers of sadness, fear, anxiety, excitement, hope, worry, and a multitude of other emotions that keep me up most nights. I wish I was still in love with my partner so that we could start the process of family planning, but sadly we have slowly moved into a deeply loving friendship and no longer a romantic partnership. We plan to remain close, but it’s time to part ways.
The biggest point of anxiety moving forward stems from being nearly 40 and starting over while knowing I deeply want to have children, ideally of my own. I worry about being too “old” to get pregnant, about not having mothers my own age to raise my children alongside, of not finding someone “in time” who also wants to have children later in life, or if I do find THAT someone, they will already have children. I know I should be more open-minded to the idea of being with someone who already has children, but deep down I would really like to share in the experience of becoming first-time parents with my partner, rather than it be some they have already experienced with someone else. I find it difficult to find women who relate to my situation, and feel extremely lonely and lost.
With all that said, my question is a general wondering if you have any thoughts or insights you could pass along.
With love, H.
ANSWER
Dear H,
“Congratulations.” That’s what someone said to me once when I told them I had just left my 7 year marriage. I probably looked confused because she quickly explained to me that making such a heart-wrenching choice, one that I could never have taken lightly, one that likely even hurt me to make, and that coming out the other side of that decision, conquering, finding some small sliver of clarity, and in the end choosing what I felt deep down in my gut…that this decision was hard fought and hard won…and that it deserved a fulsome congratulations.
I remember exhaling a sigh of relief, knowing that with her, I didn’t need to justify something that I felt some amount of shame about. I didn’t need to tell her a long story to prove I wasn’t a quitter, that had I found another way I would have stayed, that it was amicable, that we were both better for it. I was already exhausted from repeating the story, so that I wouldn’t lose even more love than I already had. When she said “congratulations,” I felt the permission to feel happy as much as I felt sadness, grief, loss, and fear.
So, in case you need to hear it as much as I did. Congratulations to you too.
Untying the knot of a 7.5 year relationship is complicated. As we unravel the tapestry woven over time, we feel, again, each thread of joy we’d once shared. We relive the moments of tenderness. Our insides shake with anger from that argument or remorse for that callous thing said. It’s a very slow undoing, not constant, not linear. It never truly leaves us because the building of the relationship and the tearing apart of it becomes part of who we are and who we become.
And yes, on top of the many emotions that are unearthed from what was once a foundational part of our life, anxiety comes hand in hand with all the new unknowns…all the decisions we thought had already been made, are now unmade and thrown up in the air, in suspension.
I left my former husband at 32. He had decided a few years into our marriage that he no longer wanted children, something that I had wanted for my entire life to that point. Being a mother was my sole purpose for existence at that time. And though I didn’t end up leaving him because of this, the part of me that still longed for a child, a part of me that I’d hidden and denied in the following years I chose to stay, that part of me thought, maybe now that I’m leaving, I’ll have a chance at motherhood.
For years after we broke up, I focused on work, on fun, on rebuilding my life as a whole. I traveled, taking solo trips to far-flung places on my bucket list. I built my career and made friends that eventually became family. I dated, but met no one that I really wanted to start a family with. And at one point, life was so “perfectly mine” that I wasn’t even sure if I wanted children anymore. I felt like I’d lived a carefree, childless life for so long, I questioned if I was even capable of the sacrifice it would take.
At 36, I had my fertility tested. It felt like time to decide whether I wanted becoming a mother to be a priority. But, I mean, what would that even entail? Just finding someone, anyone? So much of it was out of my control. I questioned how important this actually was to me and what I was willing to sacrifice. But as a woman, this question is often just…hanging around, if not overtly imposed on us. It was a heavy thought constantly in the back of my mind, strangely like the feeling of having to deal with an overflowing garage that holds a decade’s of collected junk. I needed to open that door and figure out what desires stayed and what old ideas needed to be thrown out despite sentimentality or simply because it had always been there.
So I figured testing my fertility would be a logical first step. If I was not able to have children, the decision would be made for me. Well, it turned out that I had perfectly normal ovaries for a 36 yo, though the doctor emphasized that 36 wasn’t necessarily fertile, so advised me to begin as soon as possible if I wanted children.
I thought carefully. I considered having a child on my own, through insemination. But I realized that I didn’t want a child so much that I would want to do it without a partner. I toyed with the idea of freezing my eggs, but I decided that wasn’t for me, partly because if I never met someone I wanted to parent with, then these eggs, the hope and dream of what they could have become could eventually haunt me. I couldn’t bear to imagine myself having to finally decide to let them go. Maybe I just wasn’t strong enough to hope that deeply, I’m not sure.
In the end, I decided to leave it to chance, and adopt if that ever felt like the right decision for me. And I decided I could be happy with or without children.
Even though this was true, there was still a longing deep inside me, one that was too painful to even admit to. When I turned 40, I cried. I cried for days. It seemed so out-of-the-blue at the time, I was happy with my life, without children. I thought I had already mourned the idea of being a mother. But you see, I believed I had missed my chance at motherhood. 40 was that arbitrary age I had decided was my fertility “dead end.” And despite the many stories of older mothers, I believed that the day I turned 40, my ovaries just packed up their belongings and retired somewhere warm with other ovaries their age.
It was unexpected but completely understandable that I was crying, crying deep guttural sobs because I was mourning not the child I wanted to have, but the possibility of one, the choice to have one. I realized that even though I was happy, I was also sad. Both emotions lived in me. After my birthday passed, I remember walking by a sweet children’s store in Paris one day and felt nothing. I passed the store window without looking and smiled at this almost imperceptible action. I knew that before, I would have looked and maybe even stopped to notice and imagine the tiny denim jacket on my future baby. That I didn’t think to do that made me wonder if it meant I was truly at peace with childlessness, and I was happy about it, even proud, and also a bit sad that it meant even the hope of hope was gone.
I did end up having a child at 43. A very beautiful “accident.” But that’s almost beside the point because that’s my story and you are at the precipice of your own unique experience. I won’t patronize you by giving you some vacant “don’t worry, everything will all work out.” That many women have children into their 40s, that you’ll find “that someone” at the perfect time. I won’t tell you this because I don’t know. The fears are real, and the anxiety is real, they should feel, at times, paralyzing because something you want so badly is on the line. And who can really promise “it’ll all work out”?
What I will say is, you are not alone in this. I have felt many of the same anxieties you feel, and I know so many other women have too. I know those very fears, the what ifs, I understand not even bearing to hope all the hopes and dreams buried in me. I know what it feels like to mourn the loss of a life I had once imagined, and then to mourn the hope of that life too. But I also know how it feels to be at peace with my childless life, what it meant to be excited about all the possibilities and experiences I wanted to live without children. To be at peace with life taking wild turns, and learning what it means to live a life wider and deeper than I could have dreamt for myself, places I’ve discovered precisely because of those wild turns.
I will also say you are not lost. I know you are not lost because you’ve just chosen to walk off a 7.5 year path you knew, and you’ve navigated yourself here, where you stand. It’s just that your life has taken a wild turn and you don’t feel safe where you find yourself yet. Give it time, and trust that you are not lost but in the midst of guiding yourself.
I won’t lie to you and say I was always happy in the years after I found peace with childlessness, or that I didn’t think of having a family ever again. I did. But looking back, it was a really fulfilling, soul expanding time, worthy of each day I lived because I chose for it to be. I made it so.
So even though no one can promise you it’ll all work out, the good news is that no matter what happens, you have the capacity to promise yourself.
END:
Thank you H. I hope you got something helpful out of this…if anything, know that you’re not alone. You see, we all struggle, mourn, yearn, question, laugh and cry. No matter our age, background, or titles, at our core, we are all not so different, You & I.
OUTRO: [music]
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Music ends
This podcast was produced and edited by More Good Media.