My children disapprove of my remarrying at 50

With Agatha Edo, Email: womaneditor@independentngonline.com,gataedo@yahoo.com or agatha.edo@gmail.com Dear Agatha, I will be 50 this year. I have been divorced for over 20 years and I have four children. I had three for my ex- husband while my last child came from an affair I had with someone else. The father of my last child was very much interested in marrying me but I didn’t love him enough to be his second wife. Besides, I didn’t want to be involved with the hassles of struggling for a man with another woman. I had enough marital problems from my previous marriage. The decision to remain single was also taken to give me time to invest in my children’s welfare. I didn’t want to lose them too which in my views would happen if I had married at that time. My first and second children are married. The third one is in her third year in the higher institution while my baby is about to write her Senior Secondary School examinations. Without knowing it, I am almost alone. In the last four years, I have been in a relationship with a widower who is interested in marrying me. With all of them almost out of the house, I decided to give matrimony a trial once again. I cannot stand the idea of staying alone. Rather than my children to be happy for me, they are all angry with me. My two married daughters are dismissing my reason for wanting to get married saying being a grandmother is enough work on its own; that I can always rotate visiting them. They further argued that they indeed need me more than before to look after their children and that at my age, I am too old to marry. Even though my two younger children are not so vocal but they have to stand with their elder sisters in solidarity. My younger sisters all support my move and have told my children to allow me be. How selfish can children be? Can you imagine my second daughter asking me what I need a man for at my age? Am I too old to have feelings anymore simply because I have reached menopause? After devoting my life to them, they are not ready to allow me be. I love them; they are all I have and live for but I also need to move on. At my age, I need companionship; what do they expect me to do when I need the comfort of a man? Is it wrong to crave for happiness again? Their father, since leaving us, has remarried. His only contribution to their lives was coming on the day of their native and white wedding ceremonies to play his role as father of the brides. I have shouldered single-handedly all their responsibilities. All I am asking from them is their understanding. I want to be a woman all over again. Is it too much to ask? What do these children want from me? I am very hurt, Agatha. Help me deal with this challenge because I am saddened by their attitude and meanness towards me. Theresa. Dear Theresa, At 50, you are more than ripe to make your decisions. You don’t need their permission to be happy in life. Children, by nature, are very selfish especially when their parents are separated. They usually cling to the parent they are with, refusing to grant the parent any freedom to chart a life of his or her own. They see any attempt by the parent to have a life with another person as shutting them out permanently. It is usually a very difficult and emotional time for the parent whose emotional needs also must be satisfied. That is why some parents rush into other relationships or marriages once they obtain freedom from a previous marriage. The reason is to prevent a battle of monopoly in later years. Mostly, they are reacting to the fear of complete abandonment by their two parents. Irritating and absurd as this may sound, your children are afraid that allowing another man into your life means they will become irrelevant in your life and their movement in and out of your life will be restricted because they now have to knock on doors, they never had reason to knock on before entering. It is obvious that you still need to make them understand some basic facts about life, especially the two of them that are married. They are the ones that you have to work on the most. Like you said, the younger ones may not think anything of you remarrying as long as it doesn’t affect their access to you or pocket money, the only ones on the other hand want you entirely for the sake of their own children.If you remain single, it will be a lot easier for them to dump their children on you anytime; the only kind of company they reason you would need at your age. Without your undivided attention focused on them only, they are afraid you may come up with excuses as to why you cannot have the grandchildren at a particular time. This is why the older ones are more infuriated at the idea of you remarrying. Normally as women, they should be the ones campaigning for you to remarry considering how lonely it would be for you now that they are all almost out of the house. Like my mother once said, if a mother isn’t careful or wise, she would end up being her children’s unpaid as well as unofficial house-help. They are being both malicious and mischievous if they say they don’t need a man at your age or that you are too old. The third semester of a person’s life could be the loneliest particularly if that person is single. It is the time of an adult’s life when companionship is most desired because the children are all leaving to start their own families. What do they expect you to do? Call them for a private meeting with you. The meeting is not to plead with them about your decision but to ask them what you have done wrong to them to deserve their opposition to your decision to be happy. Perhaps the time has come for you to tell them how you managed all these years to stay sane emotionally. Let them know what it cost you to stay alone for their sakes. Tell them if you had intended to abandon them, it would have been in your younger years. Make it clear to them that you may have attained the wisdom age but you are not without feelings as a woman. And to brand you old and worthless as a woman is unpardonable. This is no time to massage whatever ego or right they think they have over your life. As a mother and parent, you haven’t given them any reason to be ashamed but now that they are passing out of your home, the time has come for you to drag the woman in you out of the cupboard of time where you have kept her. Demand to know from them if they would have tried to stop you if you were a man.End it by asking how they would feel if each time they come for visits with their children, they meet a different man in your bedroom? Let them chew on that possibility for a while. They don’t have to apologise now but eventually when they see you are determined to go ahead with your decision; they will eventually come around to your way of thinking. But, you must ensure the man you are marrying is the kind of father figure they need. Their resentment is a clear indication that deep down they haven’t really gotten over the issue of their father and you. They are really scared that they would lose you too as they did their father once he got himself another woman. Ensure the man is the kind that can bring all of them together, has the maturity to overlook their initial response to him. His interest in them would make it easy for you to function in your roles as grandmother and mother to both your children and his. By doing the very things they fear you may not be able to do for them once married, will make them thaw towards you and your husband faster than anything else. Encourage him to stop by in their houses to greet them without you. If he understands all the issues involved, he will know the politics of ensuring harmony in all your lives. Involving his children too in this integration plan will indeed help smoothen things better. The young have a way of communicating to each other better than when older people try to talk to them. Above all, just give yourself up to the will of God. Good luck.