3 Things I Stopped Doing In Relationships With Men To Protect My Peace
Miljan Zivkovic | Shutterstock Well, people, it’s happening! I have entered the ominous waters of post-divorce romance. I didn’t make a conscious decision to do this. I didn’t get on any of the dating apps. I didn’t ask anyone to set me up. I didn’t wake up and say, “This is the day!”
As I have told the man with whom I now exchange upwards of 25 text messages daily, I was really doing JUST FINE. I felt emotionally fulfilled by my relationships with family, friends, and the broader community. I was thoroughly enjoying my own bed and my own room. I wasn’t particularly craving physical intimacy.
Even when my higher power decided to mess with me by sending not one, not two, but three different noticeably attractive men to my house over the course of six weeks, one to examine my roof, one to fix an electrical problem, and one to tune up my furnace (where was I, a movie set?). I found that despite persistent attempts, I couldn’t successfully fantasize about any of them.
For months, I felt the same way about romance as I generally feel about hamburgers. I knew they were out there if the craving struck me, but I was getting along perfectly fine without them. It also bears mentioning that it’s much easier to find a satisfying hamburger than it is to find a satisfying romance, and I didn’t have the time or energy to seek out either.
Well, sigh… that all changed. These last months have reminded me why we make such a big friggin’ deal about romantic intimacy. I feel simultaneously giddy and annoyed. Giddy with that butterflies-in-my-stomach feeling that I thought I’d never experience again, and annoyed with myself for feeling giddy. Because, unlike my boy-crazy high school self, I know better now! I know how romance ends! It ends with a 46-page legal document, an empty bank account, a broken sense of self, and stains on the underside of the toilet seat that even an overnight soak in baking soda and vinegar can’t eradicate.
But here I am: swooning, starry-eyed, and stumbling around in a near-constant state of heightened physical excitement. And despite the multiple alarm bells ringing in my head, I’m embracing the adventure. I forgot just how nice it is to feel desired. To desire someone else. To feel a connection that intersects intellectual, emotional, and physical planes. To giggle and share secret smiles with myself as I walk down the street.
I’m well aware that this headiness won’t last forever, well aware that I’m throwing caution to the wind, well aware that I could be setting myself up for devastating heartbreak. But also, I’m okay with that. I know this romance won’t actually end with a 46-page legal document, an empty bank account, a broken sense of self, and stains on the underside of the toilet seat that even an overnight soak in baking soda and vinegar can’t eradicate.
How do I know this? I could say it’s because this man is markedly different from the man I married, or any of the men I previously dated, which is true. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t someday break me. Really, it’s because I have three very clear guardrails when it comes to what I will or won’t do in a romantic relationship. People love to tell me: Never say never. But I’m pretty confident.
Here are the 3 things I stopped doing in relationships with men to protect my peace:
1. Get married
Rodrigo Rodrigues | WOLF Λ R T / Unsplash
This one will come as a surprise to no one who has read my previous stories. I’m not anti-monogamy, and I’m not against long-term partnership, but why any financially independent woman would willingly submit herself to remarriage, unless for a purely practical reason, like needing healthcare, is entirely beyond me.
You know what’s not in any way attractive or romantic? Being a wife. It’s a colossal drag, really. Even under the best of circumstances, I simply wouldn’t trust myself not to default to my patriarchal conditioning while re-assuming the role of wife. And it’s not a role I want to play again, ever.
As I pointed out in a prior story, it’s extremely telling that the initiation of breakups outside the context of marriage is split evenly across genders, even when couples are cohabitating, but that seven of 10 divorces are initiated by women.
If I could give one piece of advice to any woman considering marriage or remarriage, it would be this: Do NOT pass GO! Do NOT collect $200!
In fact, save yourself the money you’d spend on a wedding (and the money you might spend later on divorce) and invest that instead! Put a down payment on a condo! Donate it to charity!
Save yourself the hours you’d spend planning a wedding (and the hours you might spend later on divorce) and plan a block party instead! Travel with your besties! Volunteer in your community!
The knowledge that I will never legally tether myself to my romantic partner is as freeing as the knowledge that I will never be financially responsible for him. As a case in point, I just learned that my ex-husband is about to part ways on bad terms with yet another employer. My first gleeful thought?
NOT MY PROBLEM!
2. Co-parent while cohabitating
I originally titled this section “cohabitate,” but the truth is, I’m not sure how I’ll feel after (if) my kids leave home. I can’t say yet whether cohabitation is off the table for perpetuity, though any living arrangement must include my own space and be embedded in a broader communal context. I can say with confidence that I don’t ever want to co-parent with a man under the same roof again.
At present, my romantic life and my mom life are two distinct entities, and I love that. Because you know what’s even less attractive than being a wife? Being a mother. We spend the early years encrusted in other people’s bodily fluids and the later years looking into the whites of our children’s eyeballs while being told time and time again, in no uncertain terms, that we’re wrong and oh-so-cringe.
My romantic partner happens to reside 2,800 miles away, which is about the right distance for my current capacity in life. For the foreseeable future, our relationship will exist in text messages and hotel rooms. I find it’s vastly easier to feel like a desirable being when I have not just rescued furry blue bread crusts from behind the couch, and when someone else has washed the sheets and made the bed.
I’m not opposed to integrating these two lives in some form or fashion down the road, but I don’t need to introduce another dual roommate/parental figure to our family life. I step-parented a child while cohabiting, and I don’t wish that role on anyone, nor do I wish to be subject to a romantic partner’s opinions, however well-intentioned, about how I parent my children under my own roof. That ain’t attractive.
Ideally, I’d like my kids to have access to an entire community of co-parents, so to speak, and maybe my romantic partner will be one of them. He is already a devoted proverbial uncle to an entire community of kids.
He just doesn’t need to live with us. For his sake and for mine.
3. Clean up after him
Daiga Ellaby / Unsplash+
This one applies literally, yes. More crucially, it applies metaphorically. The biggest mistake I made in my marriage was convincing myself that I was “helping” my husband by protecting him from the consequences of his own actions. I got involved in all kinds of things I had no business getting involved in, and I felt pretty good about myself in the process.
Granted, I often benefited, too. Having combined my finances with a man who couldn’t hold down a job, it wasn’t just in his interest to write letters to his various employers demanding severance packages and threatening lawsuits. It wasn’t just in his interest to “edit” (i.e. write) his college essays and cover letters and resumes. I could rationalize every decision I made to poke my nose where it didn’t belong, especially since, unlike me, he’d had a hard life and didn’t benefit from white privilege.
I see now how my eagerness to “help” not only established a lopsided dynamic in our relationship that we could never quite shake, but it also deprived him of necessary personal growth. The man-child has evolved as a human subspecies in part because of an ongoing procession of overprotective mothers, sisters, and female partners. I’m by no means unilaterally blaming the women here, but we can play a role in bringing this vicious cycle to a grinding halt.
It’s not that I never want to help my romantic partner. But I will most definitely check myself when I feel the urge. Is this a simple act of kindness, care, and/or generosity? Or am I “helping” to cushion a potential fall? Because I lack faith in my partner’s ability to do this on his own? Out of a resigned sense of obligation?
And perhaps most crucially: Did he ask for my help? Does he even want it?
The beauty of romance outside the context of marriage, co-parenting, or cohabitation, and especially the beauty of long-distance romance, is that we’re each living our own lives and we’re each responsible for our own stuff. It’s much less easy, or tempting, to interfere because the consequences of one person’s actions have far fewer ramifications for the other. We can each learn our lessons the hard way, benefit from the attendant personal growth, and seek support from our own communities in addition to one another.
I’m not under any illusions that this giddy stage of romance will last “forever,” or that things will never get messy, or that no hearts will ever ache. Relationships of any kind are inherently complicated, and they inevitably evolve over time.
But in streamlining the roles we’re asking one another to play, I believe we’re better setting ourselves up for “success”, however we choose to define it. I am looking “only” for a friend and a lover, not for a roommate, co-parent, or financial partner. And I am most definitely not in the market for another child, man or otherwise.
Of course, there are plenty of other things I hope to never do again in a relationship with a man, like tolerate abuse, shrink myself, pester him about chores, or allow him to exploit my time and labor. But if I don’t get married, don’t co-parent while cohabitating, and focus on cleaning up my own messes, I am far less likely to revert to socialized roles, like martyr, nag, or mother hen.
Forget those roles. I’m done with them. They’re not fun, they’re not appealing, and they never fit me.
In my humble opinion, there is nothing more fun or more attractive than a fully embodied woman who wears what fits. How lucky I am, I keep telling myself, to have another shot at romance when I’m so much closer to knowing myself.
Kerala Goodkin is an award-winning writer and co-owner of a worker-owned marketing agency. Her weekly stories are dedicated to interrupting notions of what it means to be a mother, woman, worker, and wife. She writes on Medium and has recently launched a Substack publication, Mom, Interrupted.
