Dear Suddenly Single,
Three years ago, my husband of twenty-two years left me for a woman young enough to be our babysitter. Yea, gross, right?
Thankfully she wasn’t actually our babysitter because our children were grown, but it was bad. He insisted that he met her after he had decided to leave our marriage and “she had nothing to do with the marriage ending” but to be honest, I called bullshit and never quite believed it.
The divorce nearly broke me. I was fifty-four, terrified about money, embarrassed to tell people what had happened, and convinced I’d spend the rest of my life explaining why I was alone.
It took all of these past three years, but I eventually found my footing. I bought a little townhouse, made friends outside of my old married circle, and even started travelling with a women’s hiking group.
Well, last Tuesday, my ex-husband arrived at my door teary, slightly hysterical, and desperate to “talk”. It turns out his marriage ended a few months ago – yes, she left him.
After what he claims has been weeks of soul-searching, he says leaving me was the biggest mistake of his life and that no woman could ever live up to what we had built together. (Yes, he laid it on quite thick). He cried, we hugged, and when he left, he asked me to consider a possible new future together.
I’ve spent the last week spiralling, swinging between absolute fury and ridiculous nostalgia.
One minute I think he’s got a lot of nerve showing up now that he’s been discarded himself.
The next, I remember the man I fell in love with forty years ago.
My sister (who always had a soft spot for him) thinks life is too short not to give him another chance. But my closest friend, who stood by me when he utterly destroyed me, told me she’d chain herself to my front porch just to make sure he never steps foot in my house again. I’m somewhere in the middle.
What would you do?
— Second Chance Sarah
Dear Sarah,
There is something almost unbearably seductive about being chosen a second time.
It whispers to us that perhaps the story wasn’t really over. That perhaps the years of loneliness, rebuilding and quiet grief were merely the long first act before the hero came to his senses. Hollywood has made a fortune selling that fantasy, and I confess that even at fifty-nine, I still find myself falling into that trap.
Unfortunately, it is exactly that — a trap.
Your former husband may be genuinely remorseful and I don’t dismiss that possibility. I’ve lived long enough to know that pride eventually catches up with most people. The older we get, the harder it becomes to outrun the consequences of our choices. I’ve seen men who were dreadful husbands become devoted grandfathers, and selfish women become generous friends.
It doesn’t trouble me that he came back. It’s when he came back.
He did not appear after a year of soul-searching or three years of regret. He returned only after the partner he chose, instead of you, left. That doesn’t prove his feelings are insincere, but it does mean you should examine them closely.
My first question to you is, what if this man was not once your husband and instead was just a guy you met at your hiking club. You find out that he left his wife for another woman, married her, stayed until she left him, and is now hoping to rekindle the relationship with Wife Number One. Would you be thinking, “How romantic” or would you be thinking she would be nuts to take him back? I suspect it is the latter.
One more important question I want you to ask yourself: Do you miss him? Or do you miss the life you thought the two of you were going to have? Because those are two entirely different losses.
From what you’ve written, you’ve built a lovely life on your own. It isn’t the life you expected, but very few of us end up where we thought we would. You have a home, loyal friends and a fun social life. And most of all, you have peace. Don’t underestimate the value of that peace.
If your former husband wants to try and establish a new friendship with you, that is your decision to make.
But if he thinks he is going to just slide back into what he left three years ago, you need to make it absolutely clear that this is not going to happen.
If what he said is true, about you being the only woman for him, he won’t pressure you, and he’ll simply demonstrate this, patiently and consistently, over time.
This is no time to be hasty, and you have every right to take your sweet time.
-Suddenly Single
