At 34 I am single and childless and I would love to let myself go

I am 34 years old and I am angry.

I grew up in a family where money was often lacking. We were 4 children and quickly we had to learn how to become independent. Very soon, I started working, a lot, and all the time. To get a salary and save money for my studies, to get good grades and a diploma, to keep me safe.

I have kept a certainty: in life I can only count on myself and you must not depend on others. Especially not from a man.

Relationships in the media and liberating breaks

I had a lonely childhood and adolescence and I think I was almost always antisocial. I didn’t know how to reach out to others and for a long time I thought I had a problem so much that I missed it to flourish in society.

Also, I’ve never had faith in myself. Suffice it to say that in terms of love life, he has complicated things. So much so that when I started wanting to meet men and have a relationship, I was convinced I was not up to the ones I liked. I told myself that they had no reason to care about me, that they would necessarily find something better elsewhere.

This trend led me to enter into a relationship with men just because I found them nice and showed their attraction to me. I told myself that I could not please anyone else, I took a bit with them by default … and I did not dare to leave them, for fear of hurting them.

So I lived two long relationships with men who didn’t suit me. The first was immature and irresponsible. He had no idea how to manage daily life, he didn’t know how to do anything and I had to teach him everything. I, who can’t stand other people’s mothers, realized very early on that it didn’t suit me, but it took me a long time to leave him.

Some time later, I met the second. He was very spendthrift, to the point where I found myself sharing astronomical loads with him, couldn’t bear the slightest frustration and refused to address his problems with alcohol. I left after a phone call to a friend who told me, like an electric shock: “ Now you have to get out. “

Each of these breakups ended quite badly for me: after the first one my ex owed me money and after the second I had to go back to live with my parents. Suffice it to say that at 32 you feel like you’ve hit rock bottom.

However, at each breakI felt reborn for having regained a freedom that I thought I had lost as a couple. Being single was a time for me to make plans, and for me: at 27, after separating from my first spouse, I bought my first apartment by myself. At 32, after the second breakup, I had a revelation and I have decided to completely change my daily life.

The freedom to live by your own rules

I realized that the life I had created for myself was not suitable for me, and that it was time to try to enjoy some lightness, I who had always been so concerned for my safety.

I have decided that I will never live with a man again, even in pairs. The routine is too heavy for me and I don’t have the patience to mother a partner or to wonder what to do with her dirty socks. If I’ve always had to look after myself, I don’t see why I should teach someone else to do it … And it doesn’t seem to ask too much! In my opinion, you don’t need to live under the same roof to love each other.

Then I took on projects for myself. I quit my old job, sold my apartment, bought a house by myself. I will soon be starting my own micro-enterprise, something I never imagined possible three or four years ago! It is as if I no longer have barriers, that I can foresee everything, and it is exhilarating.

However, despite all these projects that work, the gaze of others and especially those around me makes me constantly feel that something is wrong with me.

“I’m always told to get back in the saddle”

I don’t want to have children and I don’t want to live with a man. For the people around me, it’s an unconventional lifestyle.

Around me I saw my friends getting married, having children, becoming less and less willing to spend time together. My way of life was very complicated for my family to feel, and they didn’t understand my choices (for my brothers and sisters, the couple-marriage-children pattern was obvious).

So, the more time passes, the more reflections are felt. First of all, there are injunctions on my celibacy, as if they were forcing me to pay for not having a relationship. I am constantly asked about the last time I was in a relationship, the last time I spent the night with a man and when I answer, I get scolded.

“You have to get back in the saddle!” ”

– “If I had reacted like you, I would never have met X or Y”

– “You have to meet someone, you are young!” “

But here, I, the at your place and dating apps bore me. When I talk about the fact that I don’t want to live with a man, I am told that “ I will not build anything », That my relationships will be meaningless … For me you can build something beautiful and solid, without having to follow dogmas! But you still have to find someone who understands it.

Because one thing is certain: I will no longer submit to my relationships. I want to be with someone I’m in love with, someone I want to be with!

Being childless, single and subject to the gaze of others

I often think of the image of the famous “biological clock”, the “You are over 30 and you are single, tic tac tic tac”also “You have no children, so you wasted your life.”

I know these people don’t necessarily think before they speak, but this makes me angry. Angry because they made me believe I missed something because I don’t have children, when I know very well what I want, angry because they made me feel like I didn’t have enough.

After all that I’ve overcome and accomplished, I always have the feeling that I am missing something. That my loved ones will only be happy the day I have a child, even if I don’t want and refuse to do so on principle, or because that’s what society expects of me. My projects, I will do them to build myself, and because they will make me happy!

I feel that even though I can be proud of myself and my life, “ if I had children and my life was more orderly, it would be better. ” It seems like everyone around me goes on I hope to return to the norm, and this pressure is constant. It is upsetting and irritating.

I am always angry

Annoying also because these thoughts reach me, and I end up telling myself that even if my projects are advanced, Stagnation on a sentimental level.

I constantly feel frustrated at not being seen as the strong, independent woman I am: as a teenager, then in my twenties, overcoming years of hardship made me feel like I could move mountains and overcome every obstacle that presented itself. path. Today I come to ask myself what is the point of making all these efforts.

I am angry with those who make these observations to me, who push me to reproduce their model which I do not want, and that at the same time make me think that something is wrong with me.

I’m crazy even against men, whom I believe I can no longer trust. I feel like I let him into my life, somehow he’ll come to take everything I’ve built.

I am angry with everyone and sometimes I begin to hate myself. Wondering if I shouldn’t check my love life because my vision of the couple and of life is different from that of the majority, when I too would like a relationship full of complicity like this is the case with some friends.

And this anger still lurking inside me that resurfaces every moment, I hate it more than anything else but at the same time I take refuge in it when everything goes wrong. This growing anger, how do I get rid of it?

Front page photo credit: Luz Fuertes / Unsplash