Switches · the south east, London
My daughter is with me half the week and that half is hers
Pinned as half_a_week
- Wants
- somebody with their own full life who wants a steady half a week
- Rope so far
- Fourteen years, one long marriage, three years on my own.
- Around
- the south east, London
Sunday evening to Wednesday evening my daughter is with me and I am unavailable, completely, and I do not take calls after seven. Wednesday to Sunday I am a different person in an empty flat. That split is the shape of my whole life and it will be for years yet, so it goes at the top rather than being discovered.
Thirty nine, south east, fourteen years in this and three years out of a marriage that ended without anybody behaving badly. What I have found since is that the half week is not the obstacle people assume. The obstacle is that it is not negotiable, and a surprising number of otherwise reasonable adults hear a fixed boundary as a challenge to be gradually softened.
What works is somebody whose own life is full. Somebody with their own Tuesday, who is relieved rather than wounded that I disappear for half of every week. What does not work is a person who wants to be the main event, because for three days out of seven I am not available to be anybody's anything.
I am both ends of the rope and always have been. With the right person that is one of the best things about me and with the wrong one it is a source of low grade confusion for about a year.
Not looking for anyone who wants to meet my daughter, at any point in the foreseeable future. Not looking for something that needs constant contact. And not looking to explain the divorce, which was dull and sad and is over.