8 hours ago
3
I’m 36 and a mother to two beautiful hyperactive boys, six and two. I feel like the most boring fool on earth. I have no friends who I can talk to. Social interaction is limited to small talk day to day – at work, with neighbours etc. I am unable to hold any meaningful conversation unless it revolves around kids, their shenanigans and how tired parents always are.
My husband goes out with colleagues every week but I am rarely invited anywhere and I don’t think I want to be. I get terrified whenever I am. I’m sure that I add no value to any moment. I feel dejected and sad almost all the time. I can’t even read a book fully any more; I feel I don’t have any headspace left after attending to the boys all day. My husband holds an upper management position therefore he makes more money than me and spends longer hours at work, so I do about 90% of the parenting.
I wasn’t always like this. There was a time when I used to be well read, funny, popular and overall great company. I don’t know if that girl exists any more but I wish she did and I wish I could touch that part of me again.
Eleanor says: You say you’re sure you add no value, you feel dejected and sad all the time, you feel terrified when you get invited to things. That sounds horrible, and it sounds a great deal like depression and anxiety, which sounds as though it needs professional help. Please don’t think, “Sure, but what can I do without help?” Depression is one of the worst things that can happen to a person. If you feel this bad this often, something is badly wrong: feeling better matters more than a lot else on your to-do list, and the people around you should agree.
Trying to resolve this level of consistent distress yourself is like driving around with the brakes cut, going “I don’t have time to see a mechanic”. Obviously, different people can afford different levels of care (in time and money), but whatever “highest priority for fixing” looks like in your family’s economic situation, that’s where “feeling better” should be. It really matters that you feel this bad.
Let’s take stock of what you’re dealing with. You’ve given birth twice. You parent two boys that take a lot of work. You work. You don’t have friends who make you feel like yourself again, you feel like people only relate to you as a parent or an acquaintance. Your husband doesn’t share the same saturation in the amount of parenting you do. In a way it would be shocking if you did feel like yourself, with your focus and identity and mood intact. Your body and time have been shared with other people, all day, for more than six years!
You say you wish you could find that interesting “you” again. It’s such a tragedy of the expectation of cheerful parenting that so many mums feel this way, each one feeling alone. I hope there are some around you who can say, “Been there, Mama.”
It’s going to be really hard to rediscover that part of you by mental exertion alone. Sometimes things have to change outside us for things to change inside us.
In thinking about what might change, it’s worth paying attention to what we treat as fixed – and whether they reflect our deep priorities. You say you have to do 90% of the parenting because your husband works an upper management position and earns more money. OK, so that’s the fixed point: he stays in that job. Do you endorse treating that as fixed? The answer might well be “yes”, but it’s worth making sure that it is.
Sometimes we forget to keep track. We think “I can’t do X because then Y would have to change”, over and over again. Then later in life we look at the list of things we treated as unchangeable – other people’s schedules, a particular job, an amount of money – and the list of what we sacrificed in exchange reads “happiness”, “what I wanted life to look like”. Whoops! Bad trade!
Don’t treat things as too much to change unless they really are the priority. Especially if you’re sacrificing your own wellbeing in their name.
You’re allowed to want to feel like yourself again. You’re especially allowed to ask for changes to help achieve that.
The reader’s letter has been edited for length
