Adele Parks
After a failed first marriage the writer found true love the second time around
Jim and I have been together for 18 incredibly happy years. We are extremely good together. We love and care for each other with a robust commitment that can absorb weeks of well… ordinariness and even the occasional blistering row.
I hope and pray I’ll be with Jim until the day I die but I, probably more than most, am aware that wishing alone isn’t always enough to make a relationship last. I have been married before and was divorced by the age of 32, which was never my expectation. My parents have been married 58 years (and counting). That was what I was hoping for.
However, when my first marriage fell apart, I was forced to reflect on how a seemingly perfect relationship had gone wrong. Two amazing careers, a stunning home and an active social life hadn’t been enough the first time around – or maybe (I now realise) it had been far too much. We put all our energy into keeping up the appearance of the ideal lifestyle and we had little energy left over to cherish each other.
Jim and I met just months after my first husband left.
Hurt, and single mum to my 10-month-old son, I definitely wasn’t looking for love and recommitting. I was still reeling from the shock. However, despite the divorce, I still believed in the
value of long-term relationships. I just hadn’t expected to meet someone so splendid, so soon.
The first phase of my recovery was when I accepted it was over. There comes a point when you decide – sink or swim. I couldn’t grieve forever, dwell on my loneliness, obsess and worry. I decided that at his best my ex was too good to have to live with a woman he no longer loved. And at my worst I was too good not to be loved.
I’ve clung to that life lesson and I urge anyone who finds themselves unexpectedly and unwillingly single to really remember that. You deserve to be loved.
I was reluctantly dragged to a birthday party as my first night out as a single woman. I didn’t want to be there. Everyone else was in a couple, which just felt like salt in the wound.
Then I met Jim – a real eyesacross-a-crowded-dance-floor experience. My first thoughts were puddle deep. He was (and is) so attractive and an incredible dancer, I simply thought he’d be fun. But once we got talking, I realised there was far more to him than that. I found him enthralling from the off. He turned out to be funny, accepting, kind (he didn’t blink when I said I had a baby at home). We agreed to meet up for a proper date the day after next. Time enough for me to change my mind. But I didn’t.
My friends said Jim was ‘only rebound’. Some thought he’d kick-start my dented confidence or allow me to let off a bit of steam, others started buying shares in Kleenex and warned me no good would come of the relationship.
Oddly, I had a lot more confidence in us from the get-go. He just seemed like the person I should be with.
Second-time-around relationships are raw and real. You have to deal with a lot more than a regular dating couple. My son was always my first concern. I worried that Jim would miss his happy-go-lucky single life and find a life centred on playgroups and baby routines overwhelming at best, mindnumbing at worst.
However, Jim not only accepted the ‘package deal’, he embraced it. I think he surprised himself when he fell in love with not only me, but Conrad, too. Jim wanted to give Conrad everything, and indeed he has. They adore each other. Eighteen years on, Conrad is very firm about Jim being his dad. Parenting is in the nurture, not nature.
That said, we dealt with the fact that there was a significant ex who still had to be included in Conrad’s life in a meaningful way. Added to all of this, divorce has financial implications. I was still writing, but had taken on a massive mortgage to buy our home off my ex. It wasn’t easy.
Any one of these issues can break a couple, but we managed. There were disagreements and blunders, but following my divorce, I was clearer on what I wanted from my relationship. I was resolute I’d learn from my past mistakes and make this work.
When I married the first time I can’t remember us discussing anything big or important. We were very young and lived in the moment. I knew his views on which brands he liked to wear, consume and be surrounded by, I knew his favourite restaurants and films, his friends’ birthdays.
“I hope and pray I’ll be with Jim until the day I die, but I’m aware that wishing alone isn’t always enough”
However, five years into our marriage it became clear that we disagreed about some fundamental issues – the value of my career, how many children we should have, where and how we should raise said children, what we should spend our money on…
The differences in our views, once exposed, proved to be insurmountable.
The second time around, I made sure I was clear on Jim’s views on all the above and more. Before we got engaged, we discussed everything we could think of; scenarios weird and wonderful.
How much contact with exes was appropriate? Contact with mine was necessary – we have a son. Contact with his exes was frowned upon. We discussed who he should save if a life and death situation arose – me or my son? Son, obviously. We mused over what sort of gifts were acceptable at various anniversaries, drawing lines on a scale from neglectful to flash. We discussed, in detail, what we’d do if we only had five minutes left to live and if we have 50 years left to live.
I believe communication is key to all relationships. Honesty, trust, patience, forgiveness, shared interests, different interests and hot sex are, I think, all part of the mix to a successful long-term relationship, too. This list is not complete. Every couple needs to find out what’s important to them.
Making romantic time for each other is even more important now years have passed. No one appreciates you making the effort quite like the person who understands just how much of an effort it is to finish a day’s work, manage homework and bedtime and still wave a mascara wand.
The lovely surprise is that occasionally we do stumble across an old story that we haven’t told each other before, although mostly we share views on the things that we believe in now and the things that we hope will happen next. We progress together.
Since I divorced, a number of my friends and family also have. Divorce is part of our society. We live a long time, we’re offered a lot of choices, put under a myriad of pressures. I don’t think I am the gold standard for many things, but I think I do demonstrate that you can be not only happy second time around but happier. You can get better at marriage, the way you get better at anything you practice.
Adele Park’s new novel, Lies Lies Lies (HQ Harpercollins, £7.99) is out on September 5. See Express Bookshop on page 77.
“Before we got engaged, we discussed everything we could think of; scenarios weird and wonderful”