Being single at fifty hasn’t been easy. I mean, I didn’t exactly want to be single at this age. When I was younger I pictured myself well settled with my family in a beautiful country home complete with a GMO free organic vegetable patch, mature fruit trees, happy animals and festooned with flowers in springtime. My loving partner and half-grown children would be at my side. My partner and I would both be happy and successful in our careers, and actively contributing members in our community. Sure, we’d all occasionally fight, but we’d always work our out differences before the end of the day and finish it with a loving “Good Night” to each other like we used to hear and see on “The Waltons” television show when we were young.
At about this time in life we’d be entertaining the possibility of working abroad — the idea being to provide our family with culturally enriching experiences, you see. Our children would be happy, well-adjusted and successful in school. They’d have tons of friends who would gravitate to our home because we would be such a “hip” and “together” family. In short, we’d be the epitome of 21st Century domestic bliss and family success.
But this was not to be the case.
For such life endeavors it takes at least two people to make the dream come true and if your husband and partner doesn’t share them, well, you might as well say goodbye to them — at least for the time being.
I decided to become single when I realized that we didn’t share the same vision and dreams for our future. It’s not as if I didn’t tell him from the beginning what mine were. I had. I took his nod as tacit agreement for the agenda. I didn’t realize that his passivity was just a way of smoothing over any potential disagreement between us.
He had his own plans — which were to stay put and rot in the dilapidated suburban house he inherited from his mother and that we called home. And he wanted our children to do the same. This agenda gradually became clear to me over time. Years previously, when I originally decided to move in with him, we agreed that it would be for two years, possibly three. During that time, we would work on the place with the goal of it becoming a rental property. Then we would buy our dream country home.
I essentially traded a lovely and conveniently located intercity flat surrounded by an urban wildlife preserve for the regimented rows of seemingly endless tract homes. Eight years later we were still there. While some work on the house occurred on the interior, it was still the shame and laughing stock of the entire neighborhood for its lack of demonstrative “pride of ownership” — especially the yard. The husband’s way of dealing with the overgrown weeds and bunch grass was to spray a bottle of Roundup on everything and then to just let everything die. The backyard was a positive nightmare. The inside still did not have a functioning master bathroom with working toilet after nearly eight years . . .
The Backyard…
Now, you may deride me for not helping out. I actually did help out a lot – both with physical labor and financially. But, I did not have the finances to bankroll all of the work that needed to be done, and I did not have the time or know-how to do the much-needed work myself. You see, my Ex stopped working two years after I moved into the place and my career was requiring that I work long hours and travel a lot. I was exhausted.
The fact that he spent so very little time on the place, given that he HAD the time, should have been a red flag. But I remained in denial until one fateful November day in 2012.
Right before Thanksgiving, I spotted on the back of the local newspaper a group of beautiful wine country properties for sale. One in particular jumped out at me with its gorgeous organic garden, acre of planted vineyard, art studio, barn, artist renovated house — and reasonable price. It was a dream come true.
I was already in heaven before even seeing the place. I could just picture the boys climbing the trees, getting themselves grimy, mucking away in the nearby creek and, after much rough play, they would proudly present me, along with their weary smiles and muddy hands, crawdads they’d captured. A vision of myself wearing overhauls, a straw hat, with pitchfork in hand mulching the vineyard instantly appeared. And I could just see our own award winning small appellation on the horizon of possibility. Our rosy cheeked, adolescent boys would hungrily gorge themselves on fresh organic strawberries straight from the garden patch in the waning summer months, while my husband and I lovingly sipped our appellation with friends on the covered wrap around veranda. Sigh…
We visited the place the day after Thanksgiving. I remember vividly our family arriving up the lane under the arching canopy of bay and oak trees. When I spotted the fruit laden apricot and the pomegranate trees I turned to him and exclaimed “Oh my god, this is it. It’s perfect. I want to grow old and die here.” It was even better than I’d expected. He remained impassive and obliquely supportive. The kids got out of the car and rushed to go play in the creek…
In Contrast
I was not able to purchase the place because it sold before I could pull the finances together. I was devastated. His reaction is what triggered the events that followed: “Well, I wasn’t really interested in maintaining fences anyway.” I was shocked. The comment came across as somehow trite and deeply dismissive. He had never expressed any misgivings about living in the country in the entire 30 years I had known him and in the previous 12 years we had been together. I found his reaction disrespectful of the grief and disappointment I was suffering. It was at that moment I understood that, at a very basic level, we really did not want the same things in life and really had no clue about each other.
But these conclusions didn’t develop on their own, they accumulated over time — and such was the case here. While the dream for a small wine country estate with my loving husband and children went POOF, the final nails began to close in around the coffin that would contain our marriage.
Being Single at 50 