living alone...

[meemee]

i have been a single mom for over 6 years now and i have gone through many different living situations.

i discovered i absolutely hate living alone. i need people in the house. friends are busy so they cant come over regularly.

but i find when i am alone i get depressed quite easily. i hate cooking just for dd and me. and yet i loooooooooooooooooove cooking. its v. relaxing for me.

i just love communal living. where you have a bedroom to yourself but share living room and kitchen. right now i am in a mil cottage away from the house with shared kitchen and living room.

last time i had a roommate. she pretty much stayed by herself. we had absolutely no interaction. in the begining we did and i quite enjoyed that.

but later on that kinda stopped. things ended up not working out and we went our different ways.

so i moved and am in a perfect rm situation. single dad recovering from his marriage breaking down with two teenage sons.

thankfully we have been able to talk and really put up our boundaries so he knows i am not looking for a date or a friend with benefits. i have also known him a while even though we didnt really hang out socially.

but finally i feel i have a great living situation. its the kinda interaction i have been wanting for so long. we have a great understanding. we are not one happy family.

but we are an interacting family. i cook and one of the boys comes over and helps me here and there. the other son told me he is not interested in helping in the kitchen or cooking or veggies. its great to have that honesty.

there is a great give and take happening.

and yet its for a year or a little over. next year i transfer to a school next town over and will move. and dont know how things will work out.

can any of you relate to this? or do you need your own space?

its one of the reasons why i dont really want to buy a house. it doesnt make me want to get married or have a partner. i am not sure how helpful that would be. its so nice not to have the sexual tension and yet have someone there to talk to and someone to share the chores. or hibernate.

i remember when our marriage was going really well my then dh telling me he made sure he was home before i came home from work because he knew how much i hated coming home to an empty home. it was then i realised consciously how much i dont really like living by myself. been there done it.

and yet i love, love, love having my own space. i love spending my time there. however if dd is not there and no one is in the house i tend to hang around and not really do anything. and then by evening i feel shitty and i feel tired from doing nothing.

once i move to the next town over i will be looking into cohousing. maybe i can afford it, to have seperate rooms for dd and me.

[SamiPolizzi]

I totally know what you mean.

On one hand, when I used to have roommates I felt like I was constantly cleaning up after other people (but they were college aged guys, so that's sort of a given.) But now that's I'm on my own with my DS, I'm SO LONELY. Ideally, I'd love to live with another single mom. Bonus if she's also a doula and we can provide childcare for eachother. I just don't know any single moms.

[samy23]

I feel the total opposite really. I absolutely LOVE having my own home, my own space, privacy, independance in that way I can walk around in my pjs all day if I choose or underwear (when it's hot), let the laundry pile build up and get it done when I want, leave the dinner dishes until the next day, order pizza at 1am or have snacks late at night, come and go as I please without being asked where Im going or what I'm doing etc....FREEDOM!

I wouldn't be able to relax the same if I had to share a place with someone else, even if we got on great or she was a single mom herself, I think I'd feel constantly uncomfortable in my own home. Plus Im sure things would start to irritate me, like what if she's really messy? or a neat freak when I want to be messy myself? she might be noisy at night or ...well the list goes on. Home to me is a sanctuary for just us (dd and me) where we can be ourselves completely relaxed and free.

I wonder if children can feel fully relaxed in a cohousing situation compared to living with just their own family who they are totally comfortable around etc...

I do know where you're coming from on the lonely aspect though. There have been many times where I've felt lonely home alone or in the evenings when I stay up and dd is sleeping, but then I just go spend some time with family/friends the next day, then I'm glad to have my own space and home to return to at the end of the day.

[simplemama32]

I have always loved alone time, and I get cranky if I don't get it on a regular basis. When I was growing up (as an only child), I was usually 100% happy being on my own unless forced to interact with others. My parents and I used to joke about how I'd be happiest living in a cabin in the middle of 500 acres of wilderness.

As I've gotten older, I crave being around other people more...the conversation and laughter and support. For me, I think a good balance would be for DS and I to have our own place, but surround ourselves with a support system we can interact with on a regular basis. Right now, we're living with my parents, and it's a little too close for comfort. Across the yard or down the street, rather than upstairs in the same house, would be much better.

[meemee]

Originally Posted by samy23

I wonder if children can feel fully relaxed in a cohousing situation compared to living with just their own family who they are totally comfortable around etc...

i am not sure if i can tell the difference, but my dd has been begging me to live with someone since she was 3. i didnt take the plunge till she was 6. all i know is she prefers the present situation more than anything else because she has company. she didnt like it when it was just the two of us at home.

Originally Posted by simplemama32

I have always loved alone time, and I get cranky if I don't get it on a regular basis.

As I've gotten older, I crave being around other people more...the conversation and laughter and support.

yup yup!!! i think i am realising that this is life. and yes this need for community has grown as i get older (wonder if its a survival instinct). yes yes i would totally love love love it if we had friendly neighbours - even one. but in all my experience as a parent i have never ever had that opportunity. friends yes. but not that kind of 'sisterhood' (could be with males too) connection that i seek.

i keep having this vision of a bunch of us of varying ages gardening together in a community spot with our children playing around us and the women just hanging out. my home is open to my friends who feel free to open the fridge and eat without asking me because they know automatically that its ok for them to do that.

finally i got tired of not getting that level of connection and so i had to seek in roommate situations. and so far its been great. we do get our own space - being away from the house tho without kitchen adn bathroom - though i have jimmy rigged those too... but its nice to get a phone call or even a knock on my door when i dont show up to the main house by my roommate to make sure things are ok. when i was younger that would be an intrusion. not now.

[SamiPolizzi]

Originally Posted by samy23

I feel the total opposite really. I absolutely LOVE having my own home, my own space, privacy, independance in that way I can walk around in my pjs all day if I choose or underwear (when it's hot), let the laundry pile build up and get it done when I want, leave the dinner dishes until the next day, order pizza at 1am or have snacks late at night, come and go as I please without being asked where Im going or what I'm doing etc....FREEDOM!

I wouldn't be able to relax the same if I had to share a place with someone else, even if we got on great or she was a single mom herself, I think I'd feel constantly uncomfortable in my own home. Plus Im sure things would start to irritate me, like what if she's really messy? or a neat freak when I want to be messy myself? she might be noisy at night or ...well the list goes on. Home to me is a sanctuary for just us (dd and me) where we can be ourselves completely relaxed and free.

I wonder if children can feel fully relaxed in a cohousing situation compared to living with just their own family who they are totally comfortable around etc...

I do know where you're coming from on the lonely aspect though. There have been many times where I've felt lonely home alone or in the evenings when I stay up and dd is sleeping, but then I just go spend some time with family/friends the next day, then I'm glad to have my own space and home to return to at the end of the day.

I know exactly what you mean. I think I just get so lonely I start to think I'd like a roommate. But in reality, I'm a control freak and I have trouble living with people. Guys are slobs, girls are too much drama. And I just like things my way.

My best living situation ever was when I was pregnant and a close friend of mine came to live with me. He was very clean (and in fact cleaned up after me most of the time.) And on top of his job he had a very active social life, so I still got plenty of alone time. Who knows? Maybe there's another perfect roommate out there for me somewhere. Not too likely though. And until then DS and I are much better off on our own.

[Zoesmama]

I always thought I wouldn't be able to live alone but that was my happiest time, I think. I really liked it and my house was cleaner than ever but we won't talk about dd's room. It was nice only have the 2 of us to clean up after. I ate what I wanted, watched what I wanted and was not even fearful of living alone. Of course I lived in a 2nd story apartment with one above and below in a fairly quite area that was a decent neighborhood.

I surprised myself a lot there. I think I may not mind the other living situations I've been in(mom/brother and now just one brother) in the past few years if it wasn't for my inability to fully support myself in a place. I do not like living with people without means to completely support myself and put in my fair share.

[Devaya]

meemee, I really relate to your post, I'm struggling to figure out what is really the right living situation for us. I know DS was happier in some ways when we lived with others with kids - and he was way less demanding of my attention and time - so I was also in some ways happier. But it's a balancing act, because living with others also creates stress for me - I worry about pissing the other people off, and have had some difficult conflicts with people I've lived with. I feel like I can't really relax when sharing a place, unless the person is my partner and then there are issues with that too I lived with a single father and his daughter too, a few months ago, so it's interesting to hear that your situation, Meemee, with a single dad, has worked out so well - sorry though that it's only temporary. Mine didn't work out b/c the single dad had a lot of problems including addiction which I hadn't been aware of before we moved in.

I think I'm going to look into living in my own dwelling with DS, within a community where people can share meals and time together and there are other kids for him to run around with. I visited a place like that when going to a yoga festival recently - it was a retreat centre in the country with beautiful grounds - and met a mom and her son who lived there. I envied her but then there were no children her son's age for him to play with and he told me he was lonely...I think her needs were met but not necessarily his, bc it was quite isolated. So I remain open to the options. I'm enjoying the experience of living alone as I've never done it before, but I really like that feeling of coming home to someone - not necessarily a partner. I think that's why I spend so much time on the internet - it's connection I'm looking for. Sad but true.