The Wonderful World of The Single Mum

As many of you will know from reading my Blog, it has been 2 years since I became a single mum and it has been a rollercoaster ride. In the last 6 months though I have really embraced the fact that my life is my own and me and my girls are happy so that’s what matters. Every so often my ex works out of the area and as such is unable to have his alternate weekends with the girls, well we are now reaching the end of a 3 month period where he has been away, which means it’s been 3 months of not having to worry about the separated parents politics.

Anyway, what I am trying to get out here, is the fact that next weekend I have to go and spend a few hours with his family, and then a fortnight after, he is home, and then it goes back to the alternate weekend crap. I actually thought that by this stage I would be counting down the days till I had some time to myself. Maybe, had I managed to find a guy crazy enough to take on me and the kids, things would be different – but I honestly don’t have a clue what I am going to do with myself when I don’t have the girls for a weekend. Worse than that, in the summer they are having some of the holiday with him too, so that’s 2 weeks of me, myself and I! Ok at least I have my job now, but my kids are a pleasure, not a chore. Even when they are being pain’s, I love them being here. I had my kids within a marriage, which I thought would last forever, I never factored in having to wave goodbye to them every other Friday afternoon! I did it for 20 months and I don’t want to do it any more! I can say it’s nice to have a break, I can say it’s only fair to him (although actually what he did to me he did to the kids too and sometimes that makes it even harder for me to justify his right to see them), but at the end of the day this is nothing to do with him, or anything that happened to lead us to this situation, it’s me emotionally. I don’t want to have to get used to being without my kids for x amount of days of the year. I don’t want to have to explain why me and Daddy no longer live together, why Daddy now lives with someone who had always been referred to as an “Aunty”, I don’t want the one up man ship “We do that with Daddy”, all the time. I just want what I’ve had for the last 3 months and that’s an easy family life with me and my girls!

Ok please don’t think I will change what the arrangement is. I am always conscious that it is down to the girls to decide if they want to see Daddy and at this age they are both too young to really make that decision. When they get older, if they say they don’t want to go then I would never force them. And I won’t make them feel guilty for enjoying the time they have with him. I also won’t try and influence them into not wanting to go, or saying things to Daddy. No I stand by the fact that kids should not be used as tools when a relationship falls down. All I am saying is that these last 3 months have made me realise that until the girls are old enough to see him when they want, I am going to have to live with this whole access malarkey and I really don’t want to! I’ll try and keep busy and try not to dwell on it but if anyone has any tips on how to deal with weekends and time without the kids, then I would love to hear from you!