Asking for a friend

Your problems solved by The Midults

Q:Dear A&E, I’m 58 and have been happily single for years, but now it’s getting me down. It hit me hard in my 40s, when I realised I’d never have children, and I seem to be going through another period of grief about my single state, and the realisation that I’ll never have grandchildren. I’ve been alone for most of the past year and when this is all over, I don’t even know who I’ll celebrate with. I had counselling in my 40s and never fathomed a ‘reason’ for all of this. Do you have any advice you can offer? — Resigned

Dear Resigned, apart from the deadly consequences of Covid, one of the crueller aspects of this crisis is the way it has thrown our lives into stark relief. It’s a different kind of FOMO – no one is having the time of their lives – but happy, financially secure families have certainly looked like they are at the winner’s table, laden with their freshly baked sourdough, veg boxes and board games. But they must be in the minority.

Mostly, the Covid torch has shone light into the corners we’d rather not investigate, forcing us to feel things we’d rather not feel, exposing the inevitable cracks in our emotional glassware, illuminating our cobwebby concerns about the way our lives have been constructed and forcing us to wonder whether it’s too late, too dangerous, too hopeless to make any changes.

We have felt the loss of possibility. We grieve it.

You, Resigned, are going through a triple loss. There’s isolation grief, where you rail against the loss of your freedom. There’s celebration grief, where you worry that when everyone else steps out into the sun you won’t be able to feel its warmth. And then there’s grandchildren grief. So painful to feel that where you were once reconciled, you are now splintering again.

But our relationship to our circumstances changes. You are not the same person you were at 40, so it might be useful to revisit all that stuff from before. We sometimes resist going back into therapy to look at the same circumstances, but life is all about context. And context constantly shifts.

For the other griefs. Well. It takes so much energy to be single, as you will know. It takes energy to be alone, to run your own home, to self-motivate (and this is really hard right now when everyone is hibernating). It also takes energy to arrange to see people, particularly friends with families, who pull up the drawbridge and say, ‘Oh we are just going to hunker down together.’

So here are our thoughts. Get your hands on the peerless Julia Samuel’s book This Too Shall Pass, which is full of stories of change, crisis and hopeful beginnings. Samuel is a therapist, a grief-specialist, who in spite of the heartbreak she’s heard in her consulting rooms, believes that we can always survive and thrive. Because, Resigned, you are not going to feel like this for ever. That’s not how life works. You back yourself into a corner, convinced that you are going to always feel this way, and then you start to believe that’s why you are single: because of a miserable inability to cope. It’s an awful and untrue vicious cycle. Feelings are not facts.

Remember also, Resigned, that there are many people holed up with a partner and wishing they weren’t.

Now arrange brisk walks with a friend and go, however hard this may feel. Flex that muscle and pound the park every day and feel like you have a right to your place in the world. Pick up the phone when you feel good so that it will be easier when you feel bad.

And by the way, Resigned, you are not dead. You might be 58, and it might be lockdown three, but the world is gradually reconfiguring and who knows what is waiting for you once this is over? New friends, new divorcées, new gatherings, the new abnormal. There will be a whole raft of opportunities. They may be different because we will all be different.

But change is your friend. And change can surprise you.

Remember that there are many people holed up with a partner and wishing they weren’t