0:05

Hello, my darlings. It's me, your

0:07

favourite podcast mother, Clementine Ford,

0:09

back with another episode of Dear Clementine, with the

0:11

advice you may not want to hear, but that

0:14

you definitely need to hear. I'm

0:16

recording today on the land of the Wurundjeri

0:18

people. Remember, wherever you are, know whose land

0:21

you are on. Dear

0:24

Clementine, I have been with my male

0:26

partner for 10 years, since we were 15 years old.

0:29

I am alone overseas for the first time, and

0:31

I have realised I feel trapped in the relationship.

0:34

He expects me to quit my job and move

0:36

cities to be with him in a year, and

0:39

to organise my career and life around his, which

0:41

involves constant relocation and travel due to the nature

0:43

of his work. I can't

0:45

contemplate this, as my parents divorced after a

0:47

similar situation, in which my mother suffered a

0:49

complete loss of her own identity. I still

0:53

feel love for him, but even when we

0:55

are together, I feel I am forced into a parenting

0:57

role due to a lack of maturity on his part.

1:00

I know it sounds like a no-brainer, but

1:02

I am terrified because I am so close

1:04

with his family and friends, and we are

1:07

the quote-unquote golden couple. There

1:09

are so many aspects of my sexual and personal

1:11

identity I want to explore, but I feel like

1:13

I am walking towards a marital cliff. Help

1:16

me. Well, you're

1:18

right, it does sound like a complete

1:20

no-brainer, and in fact it is a

1:22

complete no-brainer, but I

1:24

also do appreciate that you are in a

1:27

situation where everyone

1:29

around you,

1:33

it's not like you're 35 and you've been with this person since

1:35

you were 25, right? Everyone

1:37

around you has not only projected

1:40

their own expectations and aspirations

1:42

and desires onto the success

1:44

of your relationship, which puts

1:46

an enormous amount of pressure

1:48

on you, but they've

1:50

also been doing it since you were 15 years

1:53

old. So you've transitioned into adulthood,

1:56

not just in this relationship, which

1:58

is a very specific relationship, but kind of experience

2:00

that not everyone has that makes

2:03

it a lot harder to extricate

2:05

yourself from because essentially you've become

2:07

adults together. Your adult identity

2:10

is wrapped up in this relationship even though

2:12

you want to extricate yourself from it now

2:14

and figure out who you are, which is great by the

2:17

way. Amazing. So

2:19

many women in your situation don't

2:21

listen to that little voice inside where

2:24

they feel like, well what else is out there?

2:26

They're like, I'm just so lucky because we fell in

2:29

love so young. And then they

2:31

don't anticipate that not

2:33

only will their life change and their

2:35

desires will change and what they

2:37

want will change and

2:39

that this is all completely

2:41

normal and also completely desirable.

2:45

Like you should want to change

2:47

throughout your life. You should want to have

2:49

different experiences. Very few people

2:51

who meet their husband

2:53

at 15 and are

2:55

with them for the next seven years or whatever very

2:58

few of those couples are probably like, we are

3:00

literally love's young dream. We

3:02

have always just been completely in love with

3:04

each other. I would

3:06

venture that so many of them,

3:08

maybe even the majority, are actually

3:11

just used to each other and

3:13

they might love each other but I

3:16

mean at what point does it, at what

3:18

point do you kind of go what else, what

3:21

else could there have been for me and just

3:23

have to kind of be okay with the fact that

3:26

there wasn't anything else because you just stayed in this

3:28

relationship. It wasn't like the relationship even was

3:30

necessarily amazing. You just never broke up. So

3:33

you are in this amazing position where you

3:35

have figured out that you want something different but

3:38

not only have you transitioned into adulthood in

3:40

this relationship but everyone around you as you've

3:42

said not only projects their own views

3:45

and aspirations onto your relationship but they've

3:47

also transitioned with you. So

3:50

you've got maybe siblings each of you or

3:52

friends who've transitioned with you and seen you and

3:54

they you are feeling

3:56

basically the burden of

3:58

everybody else's heart. hopes. And

4:01

on some level, you haven't

4:03

explicitly stated this, but I feel confident to

4:05

kind of spell it out. On some level, you feel

4:07

like if you break up, you

4:10

might risk losing friendships because

4:13

you've let people down. We

4:15

thought that you guys were, you

4:18

know, you were life is you've let us down. Now,

4:21

I've got friends from school who

4:24

were also loves young dream, you know, the

4:26

golden couples who had it

4:28

really like it's weird, because when you're in high school, all you

4:30

need to do to be the golden couple is to be together

4:33

for at least a year. And then

4:35

if you're together for two years, you are definitely getting

4:37

married. And that is crazy.

4:39

That's crazy that no one intervenes and says,

4:41

Hey, um, that's

4:44

nuts. Maybe you could go out and

4:46

try something else. Maybe you should date other people. You

4:50

know, like get

4:52

some life experience. But instead, everyone

4:54

wraps up these romantic ideals into

4:57

these children. Because that's what teenagers are. Their children

4:59

still ultimately at the end of the day, I'm

5:01

not saying that to be condescending, it's just true.

5:03

And they're saying your relationship

5:05

needs to work out so that we

5:08

believe in love. That is

5:10

a massive burden and expectation

5:12

to place on someone. So

5:14

I think that

5:16

the most important thing that you've done here is identified

5:18

that voice inside that says that you're not happy. And

5:21

it's not even like you're also in a great relationship,

5:23

but you're just curious about what else is out there.

5:26

Like you, you've said he's

5:28

not mature. You are

5:31

obviously having to like pick up the slack of

5:33

the emotional burden here too. But

5:36

you're also being expected even at this

5:38

point, to sacrifice your

5:40

future self, your future career

5:42

ambitions and your future happiness in order

5:44

to just follow him around. No,

5:47

the benefit of you having come

5:49

of age in the last 10 years.

5:52

Yes, you've been in this relationship and become adults

5:54

together. And that's a tricky thing to extricate yourself

5:56

from. But it's happened during

5:58

a period of time. socially and

6:01

culturally, where you very

6:03

clearly understand that that is not A,

6:05

the life that you want to have, but also that that's, there's

6:08

no aspiration broadly now to be the kind of

6:11

woman who's like, well, I just follow my husband

6:13

around. Like, no one wants that. It's

6:15

great that you're having this experience in 2023 and not in 1953 or 1963 or even 1993, even

6:23

2003. You're having this experience now,

6:25

so there are options available to you. There

6:31

are two primary things that you need to

6:33

think of here, and both will guide you

6:36

to the inevitable extrication

6:38

of yourself from this relationship. The first

6:40

is, and it's the most important one,

6:43

is your happiness, your future,

6:45

what you want for your life.

6:48

You absolutely do not, and you

6:50

recognize this, you do not need to,

6:53

and you have no obligation to, live

6:55

your life in service to someone else's needs

6:57

and happiness. Physically,

7:00

part of that is that you do not need to

7:02

fucking follow this guy around while he works and achieves

7:04

all of his ambitions and dreams. You're

7:06

not his luggage. You're not

7:08

his attache. You're not

7:10

his assistant. You have a

7:13

life and aspirations of your own, and

7:15

you need to heed the call of those. So

7:17

your happiness is the first and foremost

7:20

thing at stake here, and

7:22

it doesn't really matter outside of that what other people feel

7:24

about it. It doesn't matter if they've been let down. It

7:28

doesn't even matter in the

7:30

long term, although I'm not dismissing

7:32

the fact that they may be hurt for

7:34

you in the short term. It

7:36

doesn't matter if they want to cut

7:39

you out of their life, because if

7:41

your space, if

7:44

the space they make in their life for you, and if

7:46

how they love you is contingent on you

7:48

sacrificing so much of your own happiness in

7:51

order to keep them satisfied that everything's

7:53

right in the world of romance, then they don't actually

7:56

know you and love you, and they don't actually

7:58

want the best for you. So prioritise

8:01

and keep in mind your happiness at

8:03

all points. And the

8:05

second thing to think of is in

8:09

managing the emotional fallout of

8:11

the people around you, which you care

8:13

about, you care about the emotional fallout,

8:15

and you also care about these people,

8:19

you need to keep reminding them of your happiness.

8:22

You need to make it clear that

8:24

this is not being done to hurt anybody. It's

8:27

just the natural conclusion of a relationship that

8:29

has run its course. And

8:31

if anyone pushes back against you on that, well, how could

8:33

you be doing this to him? Why

8:37

are you hurting him in this way? I don't

8:39

understand what's wrong, what's wrong with you. You'll

8:41

never find someone as good as him again. You're walking

8:43

away from your future. All

8:45

you can just do is keep pointing them back to your own

8:48

happiness. I've thought about this. This

8:51

is what will make me happy. You

8:54

can say to them as well, ultimately at the end of the day,

8:56

if I regret

8:59

my choice, that's

9:01

my choice to regret. That's

9:04

my life to have those feelings

9:06

in. I don't need to live my life for

9:09

anyone else. And I don't need to avoid doing

9:11

things in order to

9:13

avoid regretting them later. Regret

9:15

is a part of life. It's how we navigate

9:17

these things. And what I know that I

9:19

want for my life is something

9:21

different to where my life

9:24

is currently leading. And I'm allowed

9:26

to want that. And you can

9:28

just ultimately keep coming back to that. I

9:30

am allowed to want to be happy. I

9:33

am allowed to have dreams. I'm allowed

9:35

to leave a relationship. Now

9:38

you may be met with, well, what about him? Isn't

9:40

he allowed to be happy? And it's like, yes, but

9:42

his happiness can't be bought at

9:45

the expense of mine. It can't be

9:47

had despite my

9:49

unhappiness. And this is the thing. We're

9:52

both adults. We're moving apart from each other. And what

9:55

you need to accept in

9:58

going down this path is that there is

10:00

no amount of closeness and

10:02

love built up with his family that

10:05

will require them to choose you over

10:08

him or even alongside him. That's

10:10

a risk that you're facing. With any

10:12

luck, they may want to maintain

10:14

some kind of relationship with you because they will be

10:17

grieving the loss of you in their life, but

10:19

they don't have to. And

10:21

it's entirely reasonable for them to

10:24

say, well, we are siding with

10:26

our son, our brother, our

10:30

family member here, and that's a loss that we'll

10:32

grieve, but this is the way that things are.

10:34

And that is just the inevitable risk of breaking

10:36

up from a relationship. You do

10:39

lose people and it

10:41

hurts, but even that pain

10:43

is surmountable. What you

10:45

potentially lose from leaving

10:47

this relationship, all of those familial

10:50

ties, you will

10:52

gain in being given

10:55

the freedom and the opportunity to figure

10:57

out who you are and you

10:59

will make new friends and new connections

11:02

and meet new families

11:04

from new partners and fall

11:07

in love with them and then grieve their loss when

11:10

they're out of your life too. That's just the great

11:12

cycle of life and you'll get

11:14

better at it each time it happens and you'll learn

11:16

something new from it each time it happens. But

11:19

the longer you wait to do this, the

11:21

harder it will be to pull

11:23

yourself out of this situation

11:26

and the more risk you run of

11:28

just falling into the pattern of

11:31

staying in the relationship. It's like

11:33

there's a saying when you have a baby, the

11:35

days are long but the years are short.

11:38

And I think we can extrapolate that out to

11:40

relationships when we're trying to end them. A

11:43

day is a short. We

11:47

can flip that on its head when we're thinking about

11:49

relationships that are unhappy that

11:52

we may want to end but that we can't figure out

11:54

how to do it. And that is that the days are

11:56

short but the years are long.

12:00

And what I mean by that is that it's

12:02

so easy to say, well, I'll decide tomorrow.

12:05

I can just make it through one more day. It's just

12:07

one more day. I'll decide tomorrow. And

12:09

then tomorrow becomes the next

12:11

day, becomes a week, becomes a month, becomes a

12:13

year. And a year can become 10

12:16

years very quickly, but

12:19

you feel the length of them. I

12:21

have lost so much. So

12:25

you need to allow this feeling to

12:27

take root inside you because

12:30

you are being taught something very clear here about what

12:33

you want. And it would be so easy

12:35

to keep stamping it down and say, well, just decide tomorrow. I'll

12:37

decide tomorrow. It's gonna be a really hard decision. Just

12:40

decide tomorrow. I don't wanna deal with the fallout of

12:42

it. And then you

12:45

become your mother who you

12:47

are afraid of losing your identity. You've said

12:49

that this happened with your parents. It

12:52

would be so easy to just let that happen

12:55

through indecision. And

12:57

it might just be time for you to rip the

12:59

band-aid off. And speaking

13:01

of mothers, I'll offer you some advice that my mother

13:03

gave us when we were younger. And

13:06

that is that when you break up with someone, try

13:08

to do it in a way so that

13:10

if you were to see them on the street, you could

13:12

both look at each other and smile

13:14

and think that was a parting well-made. It's

13:17

not always possible, but have

13:20

integrity and love

13:22

and kindness in leaving a

13:25

relationship because you

13:27

did have so many good experiences from it and it taught

13:29

you so much. And you can't

13:31

control how someone responds to

13:33

the ending of a relationship and you can't control

13:36

their response to you leaving them. You

13:38

can absolutely control how

13:40

you leave them. And doing

13:44

that with care and kindness is

13:46

the bare minimum, but

13:48

you must do it because that's

13:50

what your soul is telling you. And

13:54

that goes for everyone out there who is hearing

13:56

that whisper, that little flutter inside

13:59

that may be. there is something more for them

14:01

out there. If you're hearing it,

14:03

if you're feeling it, it means it's

14:05

true. There is something more. You want

14:07

to go out and figure out what it

14:09

is. You want to heed the call of

14:12

adventure and you are allowed to

14:14

do that. You're allowed to walk away from

14:16

things that no longer fulfill you. You

14:19

don't have to sacrifice your life so that

14:21

someone else isn't unhappy. There's

14:24

no prize at the end for who suffered

14:26

the most. We'll be going on

14:28

break soon for some holidays, much

14:30

needed rest and relaxation. But

14:32

we will be back next year with a brand new season,

14:35

season 3, post our million

14:38

downloads. Let's get another

14:40

million next year. Amazing, what an aspiration. Set

14:42

goals for yourself. Why not you? Why not

14:44

you? You deserve it as much as anyone

14:47

else. If you have

14:49

a question that you'd like us

14:51

to feature in season 3, you

14:53

can email us on dearclementone at

14:55

novopodcast.com.au. Everything is anonymous. We

14:57

protect you. We

14:59

love you. Until next time, I hope

15:02

this podcast has helped you well. Yours

15:04

sincerely, Clementine.