Suzanne Harrington: Multiple sex partners sounds exhausting and I might put my back out
Happy New Year! You’re probably on the phone to your divorce lawyer as we speak, because part of new-year-new-you schtick annually foisted upon us involves not just trimming physical inches off your whatever, but breaking free from dead relationships. It’s traditional to do this in January, having spent the whole of Christmas cooped up together in forced jollity. In January, you get to fling open the windows, and fling your flagging partnership through it. Partnership. Not partner. Otherwise, you’d need a criminal lawyer as well.
Unless of course you are perfectly happy and loved up. But given how we are prone to pathologising all aspects of relationships, from being single to being long term partnered to being polyamorous – because that’s a thing now, my kids tell me – we will always find a way of questioning whatever we’re doing and wondering if we’re doing it right. And I don’t mean polyamory.
Because when you are older, you’re less focused on multiple sex partners – it sounds exhausting, plus you might put your back out - and more concerned that while your own kids have jobs, cars, bank accounts, long term relationships, and a dog, your partner’s kids have Paw Patrol lunchboxes and play football for the local Under 6s. How did that happen?
It’s not like you’re involved with a 30-year-old. Nope. You’re the same age. That is, you’re both old. But unlike ovaries, sperm doesn’t retire. Hence the age disparity between your adult kids and his primary school kids. Why don’t people write dating articles about THAT? I’ll tell you why. It’s because it's not sexy. It’s not polyamory. It’s not even uni-amory . It’s more like some kind of unexpected bootcamp for future grandparenthood. A kind of training course that you never have envisioned when you swiped right in the first place.
Obviously, I am exaggerating. Well, a bit. The Paw Patrol posse are very sweet, and only live with the man I swiped right on for half of the time – so it’s easy to avoid them. God, I hope he isn’t reading this. Sorry, darling. They’re lovely children. They really are. It’s just that they’re children, and my ovaries left the building some time ago, along with my oestrogen, which I have come to realise is an anagram of ‘patience and tolerance’. I have none left of any, no matter how many patches I slap on.
But the great thing about dating someone with younger children is this: they are not yet arsey teens, but still funny and cute and good value. As a veteran parent yourself, you can probably still speak fluent child. Plus they are infinitely bribable.
The very best thing about dating someone with small kids is, however, that every other week, they live with their other parent somewhere else. During that week, the only sound in the house is that of old bones creaking in relief as we sit, with cups of tea, in childless silence. And exhale.
