Practice Makes Progress, not Perfect.

In my last post, The Bachelorette Pad Part 2: How To Stop Feeling Lonely When You Start Living Alone, I said that if you've been out with your friends during the day, when you come home again to an empty house, you can feel lonelier than ever. It can be jarring, the contrast between being with other people, talking, sharing in their energy and being alone in your own space afterwards. And if you’re dating again after a break-up, multiply this by a million.

Early dates when you’re getting to know someone are fine, but once you start entering new relationship territory and feelings are caught, yeesh. I was not prepared for how difficult I would find it going from being cosied up in bed watching Saturday Kitchen in the morning, to being home alone again a few hours later. It came to a head for me during one date with Watson when, after a day out, instead of coming in for a cup of tea like I thought he would, he said he would go straight home so as not to disturb the dogs.

A perfectly reasonable and even considerate action but unbeknownst to him, the post-date loneliness had been getting steadily worse the stronger my feelings for him grew and all of a sudden this date was over and I wasn’t prepared for it.

Before I carry on and risk sounding emotionally unstable and clingy, I would like to reiterate that I had gone from living with my ex between the ages of 19 and 28, to moving in with a friend for 6 months, to living alone for the first time in my life. I simply was not used to it and it was taking a concerted effort since I was also working on overcoming the deeply ingrained belief that if I wasn't doing some constructive, I was doing something wrong. This meant that spending an evening watching TV had to be "earned" and was a no-go if there was anything else that "needed" to be done. As a result, I was actively working on how to relax without feeling guilty so that I could stop burning the candle at both ends and stop working myself into the ground. There will be a whole post on how I have finally achieved that at a later date. Now back to the story...

Now, if I knew when the date was going to end, then I could and had been mentally preparing myself for being alone again and it wasn’t so bad. I would make plans for what I would do in the time after our date to keep myself busy and stop myself from feeling lonely. The best remedy I found was to call my mum and tell her all about my day, especially if Watson and I had gone somewhere interesting. But on this particular day, Watson was suddenly leaving earlier than I'd anticipated and I was faced with an empty afternoon stretching ahead of me. I floundered.

In the New Year, I had made the Resolution to be a better communicator and to stop bottling things up when something was bothering me. I also learned that if you want to attract an emotionally available man into your life, you have to start being emotionally available yourself, and that means communicating (more on this in my Intentions post).

I had been practising saying what was on my mind and asking for what I want/need and I knew that this was one of those times where I needed to say something. I could have waited until he had already left and brought it up later, but that wasn't going to make me feel any better in the present moment so I blurted out “It’s the contrast that I don’t like!”

I explained that when we were together, everything was very coupley and I loved his company, but when he wasn't around it took me a while to get used to being alone again. I didn’t want to spend all my free time with him but the contrast between us being together and us not was difficult for me because after living with my ex for nearly 10 years, I just wasn’t used to it. I said that if I knew when a date would end then it was easier for me because I knew it was coming, but him suddenly leaving was a shock to my system. One minute I was luxuriating in a sea of oxytocin, the next I was on my own again and the loneliness felt heavier than ever. This was exacerbated by the fact that, at the time, we were only seeing each other every other weekend. I felt like I was in a relationship for two days out of every 14 and single again the rest of the time; I was getting emotional whiplash.

Now, some guys might run a mile at this, but not Watson. When I explained what was going on for me the son of a gun came back inside for a cup of tea and an episode of whatever it was we were watching at the time. (I’m acting like I can’t remember what it was. It was Taskmaster.) Now I had a whole 45 minute episode to mentally prepare myself for him leaving. What’s more, Watson said “How about from now on, when we plan our dates we also plan an end time so that you know when it will be over?” Who does that?! Amazing guys, that’s who.

We went on from there to address the contrast between our very coupley weekends to our single-life weekdays too. It hadn't always been this way; when we first started dating, our dates were a mixture of weekday evening and weekend dates, especially when we were having our Bake Off themed dates (where we'd watch the show with a snack that one of us had baked based on the theme of the week). But after the season had ended and the new year had begun, our dates shifted from watching TV together, to days out visiting National Trust sites. Since that's a weekend activity, we naturally planned our dates around the times when we could go and do those things and started seeing each other less on weekdays. Weekday evenings had always been harder to plan than weekends, because Watson works a mixture of 12 hour day and night shifts and I have various other commitments on weekday evenings (Zumba on Mondays, biz club on Wednesdays, game night on Thursdays). As we were seeing each less frequently, we started spending more time together on the weekends that we were together, by which I mean, sleepovers. These weekends began by starting around midday on a Saturday and finishing late on a Sunday morning, but steadily started stretching into Sunday afternoons and eventually the evening too. This was where those weekends started to feel really coupley and where the contrast between being alone again afterwards became more apparent.

We acknowledged what was going on and set about incorporating more weekday evenings back into our dating schedule. Since Watson had weekdays off after working a weekend, we planned shorter dates on those days. He would come over to mine, we would cook together and play a board game. He didn't stay over on those evenings and because I knew that he would be going home again once we finished our game, I knew exactly when the date would end and began finding it easier to say goodbye to him.

Watson was so considerate of my feelings around the end of those dates. He would always ask if I was ok and made sure that we had our next date planned so that I knew when I would see him next. When I told him on that day how I felt after our dates, I wasn't expecting him to do anything to assuage those feelings. It wasn't his problem to solve and it was the act of telling him that I knew would help me in that moment. By admitting it and saying it out loud, I was reducing it's power over me by acknowledging it and letting it be. If I had not said anything, I would have continued to feel increasingly worse after our dates and would have felt especially bad on that particular day. Instead, he met me where I was at and worked with me in helping me overcome the loneliness I felt after our dates had ended, true teammate style.

At some point into this journey, I don't know exactly when, it occurred to me that I could choose how I was feeling in the moments leading up to the end of a date. Happiness is a choice right? I decided that instead of dwelling on the thought of the date ending and dragging out our goodbyes, I would let Watson leave as quickly and with as little fuss as possible. It was very much a fake it 'til you make it approach but the surprising thing was that it didn't take long at all for me to go from faking it to making it. I reckon that by the third of these dates, the impact of him leaving had lessened significantly and while it was still a conscious decision to "be ok" with him leaving, it quickly became less of an effort and more of a habit. The other thing that helped during this time was seeing him more regularly and knowing when I would see him next. When I knew when our next date was and when it wasn't two weeks away, I no longer wasted any time or energy during the days that followed on missing him.

At this point I'd like to add that, at it's worst, it was only taking me a couple of days to self-regulate before I felt happy and secure in my own company again. Typically, I would spend the first couple of days after a weekend together really missing Watson and wishing that we could spend more time together, coupled with the conflict of not wanting to feel that way. I wanted to be happy on my own and would give myself quite a hard time about missing him. But once I was back into the swing of going to work and catching up with my friends, those feelings would pass and I felt like I could focus on myself again. Then ten days later I'd be back on that oxytocin train, getting high on all those fun brain chemicals that are so prevalent during the honeymoon phase of any relationship, only to have to come back down on the Sunday and start the process all over again. The peaks and troughs of my hormones during that time were intense, let me tell you.

Seven months since that initial conversation and I no longer give a second thought to a date ending. There's no build up, no unease, just a "thank you for another lovely weekend" and a "see you next time" and I get back to my own life. I am especially proud to report that last weekend, I actually sent Watson home early from our day out together because he was so tired and I could see clearly that it was the best thing for him. In that moment I weighed up whether I would prefer to spend the rest of the day with him growing increasingly quiet and drawing more inward, or would I prefer to do something nice for me? Past Aislinn would have chosen his company, no matter the quality over being alone, but Present Aislinn thought an afternoon in her pyjamas, journaling in bed with a cup of tea and her new scented candle sounded better than that. Now that my friends, is progress.