Living with a man you no longer love

By Sally Brampton from dailymail.co.uk

Yesterday evening, I met some friends in the local pub. When I left the lights and laughter to go home, I turned the key in my front door and stood in the dark hallway, listening to the silence.

There were no shouts of welcome, no blaring television or noise of clashing pans coming from the kitchen. I was well and truly on my own.

I am in the throes of getting divorced after a three-year marriage and my daughter, from a previous marriage, recently left home for university.

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Yet two months ago, after living in London for 35 years, I picked myself up and moved, not only to a new house, but to a new town.

Some people might think that sad or pity me as a result — ‘poor thing; recently divorced and facing an empty nest’.

They might even think of it as running away because I can’t bear the emptiness of what was once a lively family house or the dismal gloom that seems to linger in a home long after a marriage breaks down and people go their separate ways.

But believe it or not, they couldn’t be more wrong. I think of my suddenly solitary state as freedom. I can do exactly as I please, and what pleases me is to live by the sea.

My friends think I’m mad (or brave), because I have turned my back on everything that is familiar. I am resolutely urban; a city woman who wears only black and drives London cabbies mad because I know all the back streets and short cuts as well as they do and never fail to let them know it when they mistake me for a tourist or out-of-towner.

So, what am I doing living in a small, seaside town on the South Coast with seagulls for company?

‘You’ll be so lonely,’ my friends said. They call to ask if I have grown bored or come to my senses, but really I know they’re checking to see I’m OK on my own.

I am. In fact, I’m more than OK. I’m happy. As weird as it might seem to some people, there is nothing I love more than an empty house and the sound of silence.

Just because I live alone doesn’t mean I don’t cook good meals for myself (and lay a table with proper china and cutlery). I think one of the tricks of living alone is to believe you’re worthy of attention.

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Too many people feel lonely because they don’t think they’re worth bothering about when they’re not part of a couple.

There is, of course, a big difference between being alone and being lonely. In an age which celebrates confidence and success, admitting you’re lonely is about as sexy as walking around ringing a plague bell. That, of course, makes you feel even lonelier, because you are unable to tell anyone how you really feel.

According to research, feeling lonely is the number one complaint of our age, yet I’ve always thought of loneliness as not so much the actual physical state of being alone but more a sense of emotional dislocation from other people. As the saying goes, you can be lonely in a crowd.

Since I moved, the only time I feel truly lonely is when I face yet another letter from my divorce lawyer and I am reminded that I can be lonelier in a bad relationship than I ever could be on my own.

There is, for me, nothing worse than coming home to find somebody who cannot even be bothered to turn their head away from the television to ask how my day was.

It makes me feel that I’m invisible or don’t deserve the kindness of a simple ‘hello’. That’s loneliness.

So is two people sleeping back to back, or making conversation with somebody with whom you have nothing left in common. Loneliness for me is about a lack of connection, whether that’s to a person or to life itself, so if there’s anything lonelier than alienation from another human being whom you once loved — and were loved by — I have no idea what it might be.

WHO KNEW?

In a survey, 47 per cent of women, and 36 per cent of men, said they were depressed because they were alone

I feel far less lonely on my own than I did in a marriage filled with polite, frigid silence. But as much as I like living alone, I am not a hermit or, for that matter, completely insane. I know how much silence I can stand and how much company I need, which is why I chose to move to a town where I already knew a few people.

One of my greatest pleasures is sitting quietly in a café and people-watching. I even like going to the movies alone (nobody to interrupt or bore on endlessly about what the film really ‘meant’) and I am perfectly happy going to eat in a restaurant, with only a good book for company.

All around me, I sense pitying looks from fellow diners as I eat my solitary dinner. Poor soul; she’s got no friends.

I don’t mind. In fact, I couldn’t care less. The only thing I mind is the idea that, just because you’re on your own, you must be some kind of sad loser.

The older I get, the less capable I am of living with anybody. Some might say it is selfishness, refusing to give up habits (no, the coffee does not go in that cupboard, yes, I always go to bed after the ten o’clock news), but I think it’s more a question of understanding my limitations.

I love people and I adore my friends, but only for brief periods of time. I am always happy to go back to my solitary state.

The one thing I’ve always done is look after my friendships. I’ve never retreated into coupledom or let old friends slip though my fingers just because I’m in a relationship, so I know that if I need company, all I have to do is pick up the phone.

Even so, as a freelance writer, I work on my own and live on my own, so days can go by when I don’t speak to a soul.

I know it wouldn’t suit some people, like a friend of mine who cannot stand being on her own.

Even though she goes out every evening, has masses of good friends and fills every spare moment of her day, she still complains of feeling lonely because she’s not part of a couple.

On the other hand, there’s another of my friends who has stayed in a bad relationship for years because she’s so frightened of being on her own, even though she never stops complaining that she’s desperately unhappy and terribly lonely.

That’s why I believe that loneliness is not a state of being, but a state of feeling.

Admittedly, you have to make more of an effort when you’re on your own and conquer your fear of approaching people in case you get rejected.

The truth is that everybody feels the same way, which is perhaps why I’m now in the habit of assaulting perfect strangers with conversation.

I rarely get turned down, just as I find that people are rarely unfriendly. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. In my local pub, it’s as rude not to strike up a conversation with a stranger at the bar as it is rude in London to speak to somebody you don’t know on the Tube.

And I know which one I prefer.

Vocabulary:

to blare – вопить (о радио и т.п.)

to clash – стукаться, сталкиваться

in the throes – в муках

pick oneself up - оправляться (после болезни, удара и т. п.); подняться после падения

dismal - гнетущий; давящий; зловещий; мрачный; тёмный; унылый; печальный

gloom – темнота, уныние

to linger – задерживаться

to please – желать, хотеть, изволить

resolutely – безбоязненно

a cabby = a taxi driver (a cab = a taxi)

a back street – глухая улочка

china – фарфоровая посуда

cutlery – столовые приборы

Plague bell - An iron bell, with wooden handle, from the great plague of 1665. You can see it here http://www.museumoflondonprints.com/image.php?id=139659

As the saying goes – как говорится

Yet another – очередной

Frigid – холодный, безразличный

Alienation - охлаждение (чувств)

for that matter - что касается этого; в этом отношении; если на то пошло

limitations – недостатки, ограничения

coupledom - the state of living as a couple, especially when regarded as being interested in each other to the exclusion of the outside world

admittedly – надо признаться, что

strike up a conversation - завязать разговор

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