A boyfriend and a puppy — I had it all. Then I didn’t

Ooof. Pride comes before a fall. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece for a magazine about my road trip across Europe last month with my boyfriend and my new dog, Dennis, which ended like this:On our last evening, as I lay on the grass with my book, Paul emerged from the hotel with Dennis and they ran towards me. “A year ago, I didn’t have either of you,” I thought, “and now I have both.” I don’t mean to sound smug because I know how quickly life can change — for good or bad. But right then, listening to the crickets, it was pretty magical.And then, last week, life did change quickly and I found myself single again.I’ve ummed and aahed over whether to write about this today. Right now I’m so sad, and trying to make sense of something that I can’t make sense of, and maybe I shouldn’t even try.I’d forgotten the questioning that comes with a break-up. What did I do? When did it start changing? Why didn’t I see it? Could I have done something differently on that day? Or that day? Should I have done more? Or less? Is he OK? When did he decide? Was it Dennis? Did Dennis throw us off-kilter? I’m paranoid that it was because of the timing, and I know puppies are hard work. But I can’t bear it if it was Dennis. Why wasn’t I enough? I know the answers to most of these are irrelevant now, and some of the questions aren’t valid in the first place, but still, my brain is a hamster wheel.AdvertisementSophia with her dog, DennisSOPHIA MONEY-COUTTSI’ve blindsided someone before in the same way. It’s such a sudden, brutal thing to do. But of course there isn’t really any good time to break up with someone, and it’s not the law (sadly) that feelings have to stay the same. And as someone wise said to me a few days ago, you’ve had a happy year, so take that — that’s a win. And this is true. It has been a happy year of love and hidden notes in my bathroom, and whispered things on the sofa, and laughing, and discovering, and going away, and lying in bed next to one another reading, and walking and talking and planning a life together and knowing that he was my person. I started thinking maybe I could have a baby with someone I loved so much. It has been really, madly, wildly happy.And now it’s not. Now it’s pretty grim. I spent all of Thursday—literally all of it—crying at home. I cried on the phone to every single member of my family. I cried to multiple friends. When the plumber came to check my shower, I cried over him. (“Everything happens for a reason,” Drew said.) When Daniela the cleaner arrived (please, no class-war snark about having a cleaner today), I cried over her and apologised, and then she went downstairs while I retreated into my room.• I’ve been dating for 20 years. Why am I still single?“Sophia!” she called a few moments later from the kitchen, so I stuck my head around the corner. “Sophia, I think it is best if you …” And I paused crying for a moment and thought, “Great! Some Brazilian wisdom from a wise elder about break-ups and how to move forward in life!”“I think it is best if you get a new vacuum,” Daniela shouted, which at least stopped the tears for a while, because we then debated which. (Henry is the best, Daniela says, but what I’m thinking is: do I really want one with a bag on top of a break-up?)AdvertisementI promised myself I wouldn’t smoke, and then marched to the closest newsagent and bought a packet. This will only last a few weeks, I know. It’s just for this bit. On the upside, I’ve stopped drinking because that was making me even lower. One wonderful friend instructed me to get some melatonin; another one procured some for me. Yet another bought me a bag of magnesium salts for my bath (“Stress depletes magnesium, so you need at least two baths with this a week.”), plus a book, Ghost Stories by MR James, because her theory is that you cannot be heartbroken and terrified at the same time. I know this is going to sound extremely trite, but people are amazing.I tell you what’s helped most of all. Oh my God, this has been extraordinary. On Saturday morning, as I walked around a field near my sister’s house in Kent, I posted a story on Instagram saying I was broken-hearted and struggling. It felt quite self-indulgent. I’m not fighting a war; I’m just going through a break-up. But I did it anyway.• What happened on my £10,000 date — and am I still single?And then I spent the weekend being unbelievably touched and comforted by the number of responses and kindness. Really, I was overwhelmed. Hundreds and hundreds of replies. If you were one of the people who sent something and I haven’t replied, it’s not because I’m ungrateful or I don’t want to. It was simply that so many people have sent so many very, very generous and kind messages that I’m still going through them. Social media can be put to good use! I also keep going back to two messages particular, from two different people, which I’m including here in case you’re going through something similar.I wrote the final paragraph of John Steinbeck’s letter to his son on a Post-it and stuck it to my mirror after a terrible break-up and, to this day, I believe it is 100% true: “If it is right, it happens. The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.” Stay hopeful, even in the darkest times, that the best is yet to come XAdvertisement***I think you get to a certain point in life and the knowledge that “this too shall pass” is actually fully understood but it feels SO shit still. One thing a friend said to me that helped me sit outside of myself a bit was “now, how are you going to keep yourself open like you were this time, for the next time?” And it took a while but I’m defo getting there, largely because I kind of noticed how small and mean the disappointment made my spirit, and every time I noticed, I made an effort to go into whatever it was (like, writing an interview or reviewing a show) without that mean smallness. And the more you do that, the quicker it dissipates. It’s been an interesting process to observe. (Still shit though.)Dennis has been my saviour, writes SophiaSOPHIA MONEY-COUTTSSo thank you to everyone who’s messaged me because it truly has made the world of difference. It’s made the first few days bearable. As have my have my family and pals. And also Dennis, who has been (and I know this will sound MAD to those without dogs) my saviour. On Thursday, as I smoked and sobbed in the garden, he kept bounding over and dropping tennis balls on my feet, as if they were little presents.• Dear Julia: how do I deal with single shaming?I also keep thinking about another piece I wrote, towards the end of last year, for The Times Magazine. It was about dating, or at least about a high-end dating agency, which I was writing about at the same time I met Paul. These were the last two paragraphs:AdvertisementMy theory remains that everyone gets their turn on the merry-go-round. You can do the apps or pay big money for matchmaking agencies. You can ask friends to set you up or hang around in bars, looking for hands without wedding rings. As a wise friend once told me, “The thing about dating is that it’s hell, until one day it isn’t.” I’ve believed that for many years, reiterating to myself that my turn will come, as I go to wedding after wedding. It might not be tomorrow, or next year, or even in the next five years, but at some point I’ll fall in love again, I’ve thought many times, while mumbling through another country church rendition of I Vow to Thee My Country. “I am paranoid that it was the timing, and I know puppies are hard work”SOPHIA MONEY-COUTTSThe irony, of course, is that now I have. A few weeks after going to the Bond agency headquarters in the rain, I went for a walk along a north London towpath with the first man I’d messaged for some time on Hinge. And a week after our walk, we had dinner. And a few days after our dinner, he came to stay with me. The following morning, he put up my new coat rack (not a euphemism), where he now slings his coat every time he comes over. It’s taken me by surprise in the way that falling in love often does, because life suddenly feels shinier despite the gloom elsewhere, and I feel vulnerable in a way I haven’t for years. But also very lucky. Everyone gets their turn eventually. It’s just a question of when.I’ve cried thinking about this piece over the past few days, and I just cried (again, Jesus Christ) reading it back. But it still remains my theory: everyone gets their turn, and this was mine, or ours, for a spell. And the good thing about turns is that they come back round again. It’s just a question of time. Meanwhile, any advice on vacuum cleaners?‘Why haven’t I learnt from my mistakes?’Lucy Cavendish on the challenges of dating in middle ageAdvertisementWhen I was in my late forties I met someone and fell in love. It was magical and I thought we would last for ever — although “for ever’’ in your forties is a mutable term. Fast forward a few years, and I was 54 when it all crashed and burnt. We broke up and it was devastating.When you are in your twenties you are young, fresh and gorgeous, and even though it’s hard, you can go out and meet someone else. In your fifties you don’t know if you are ever going to meet anyone again. But it’s more than that. It’s humiliating and you end up asking yourself all sorts of difficult questions. Why, yet again, has something not worked out? Why haven’t I learnt from my mistakes?In this relationship I felt that we were deeply connected. I had hoped that I was mature enough this time to see red flags and not ignore them, which was something I had willingly done in the past. Also, I so desperately wanted to be loved and I so desperately wanted to love. Maybe, in some ways, I hadn’t really thought about what my life entailed when we got together, which was four children and work and an extended family, and all those other things many of us in our fifties have in our lives that need attention.Nevertheless, for much of our time together I was so wonderfully in love that I felt that I was floating above the earth. I thought he was the funniest, craziest, wittiest, most emotionally sensitive and handsome man I’d ever met.Consequently I was utterly devastated when we broke up. Life just got in the way and I couldn’t seem to do anything about that. The phrase “what if?’’ came up many a time. “What if I’d …’’, “what if he’d …’’ Then there are the “if onlys’’. This went on for about a year while I went over the break-up again and again.I think your heart breaks more when you’re in your fifties because you know that time is running out a bit. There is a sadness and a nostalgia to that. Now anyone new you meet won’t know your children when they were little or your parents because possibly they’re no longer here.There will be lots of cues that you just won’t be able to get about each other because you don’t have the time. When that relationship broke up, it felt like the last chance saloon for me to share such access to my life. I’m not sure how I feel about doing that again. There’s a weariness, a sense of “Oh my God, will I really have to tell a new partner about my life all over again?’’There’s also the way that friends treat you. When I told people about my break-up, some were very empathetic, but others said things like, “Ah another break-up.” When you’re in your twenties and you are heartbroken your friends rally around, even if your relationship has been merely three months long.I see my twentysomething children supporting friends who have been in relationships for what feels like a nanosecond. This happens less when we are older because everyone is dealing with their big life things. Relationship drama isn’t really common ground any more. You begin to sound a bit like a stuck record.‘I switched off the engine and wept. Not this. Again’Simon Mills on the heartbreak of modern datingI was on the M40, 50 years old, just getting over a divorce and blissfully overoptimistic about a woman I’d just met. Three dates in, first base achieved, second-time-around love looking like a genuine possibility. Then, just as the silver Saab convertible and I were approaching Beaconsfield Services, my phone buzzed on the seat next to me. Glimpsing her name on the caller ID and the beginnings of a doomy SMS on my screen, I stopped in a lay-by and skim-read the Dear John message. She’d had a “long think” and decided that she “wasn’t sure” I was “right” for her. Which roughly translated as “you’re dumped”. Then this sad 50-year-old man switched off the engine and wept. Not this. Again.Getting canned when you are 15 really sucks. All your friends know about it, your parents get involved, you listen to the Cure and Joy Division and Japan and stay in your room for days. Then you get over it and life begins again.Getting dumped as a divorcee, in middle age? That’s different. Resilient, tentative, cynical but open to opportunity when you first start dating again, you enter a new relationship with the belief that a loving and romantic second life might be around the corner. You do silly teenage stuff with your new love: walks in the park, exotic cocktails, cinema dates and French movies, long phone calls (no, you hang up!). Hopeful that you can exchange residual pain for lasting and meaningful companionship, you don’t want to stray into infatuation territory … but maybe we can get a dog together? Shall I ask the kids to meet her? Then she chucks you. By text. Just like that. You’re blindsided, battered and body-blowed, and the heartache, pain and longing are straight back. The feelings of loneliness and desperation, the life math x love metric whirring in the darkest recesses of your head again. Precious time and emotional effort, already at a premium, have been wasted. Like Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, you are getting too old for this crap. Then the questions. The nagging doubts. The big match punditry playing out on your pillow. Where did I go wrong? Did I love-bomb her too early? Was I too open and honest too fast? Did I rush things? Did I come across as uncool and needy? Or was she … just not into me? “Was I really in love,” Nora Ephron once wrote about a failed midlife love affair, “or was I just desperate?”As a later-life dater (and dumpee) you keep all this stuff to yourself. With your parents dead and your children correctly uninterested, no one knows about your break-up, mainly because they never knew you were “seeing someone” anyway. Too ashamed to admit chuckage, humiliation and defeat to your friends, you are very much on your own with all this. And alone again. What did I do? I reverted to my teenage self. I shut my front door, opened a bottle of wine and put on a record. Instead of the Cure, I wallowed, drowned, in Beck’s break-up album Sea Change. “It’s only lies that I’m living. It’s only tears that I’m crying. It’s only you that I’m losing. Guess I’m doing fine …” And after a while, I was. Maybe, like Sophia, I’d also read Steinbeck’s wise words about relationships: “If it is right, it happens —the main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.” I didn’t go psycho and bombard her with messages and flowers, or beg her for a second chance and another date. I stayed in, played it cool and just left it. Eventually, after a few painful and heartbroken weeks, after more malbec and Beck, she came back.

Ooof. Pride comes before a fall. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece for a magazine about my road trip across Europe last month with my boyfriend and my new dog, Dennis, which ended like this:

On our last evening, as I lay on the grass with my book, Paul emerged from the hotel with Dennis and they ran towards me. “A year ago, I didn’t have either of you,” I thought, “and now I have both.” I don’t mean to sound smug because I know how quickly life can change — for good or bad. But right then, listening to the crickets, it was pretty magical.

And then, last week, life did change quickly and I found myself single again.

I’ve ummed and aahed over whether to write about this today. Right now I’m so sad, and trying to make sense of something that I can’t make sense of, and maybe I shouldn’t even try.

I’d forgotten the questioning that comes with a break-up. What did I do? When did it start changing? Why didn’t I see it? Could I have done something differently on that day? Or that day? Should I have done more? Or less? Is he OK? When did he decide? Was it Dennis? Did Dennis throw us off-kilter? I’m paranoid that it was because of the timing, and I know puppies are hard work. But I can’t bear it if it was Dennis. Why wasn’t I enough? I know the answers to most of these are irrelevant now, and some of the questions aren’t valid in the first place, but still, my brain is a hamster wheel.

Sophia with her dog, Dennis

SOPHIA MONEY-COUTTS

I’ve blindsided someone before in the same way. It’s such a sudden, brutal thing to do. But of course there isn’t really any good time to break up with someone, and it’s not the law (sadly) that feelings have to stay the same. And as someone wise said to me a few days ago, you’ve had a happy year, so take that — that’s a win. And this is true. It has been a happy year of love and hidden notes in my bathroom, and whispered things on the sofa, and laughing, and discovering, and going away, and lying in bed next to one another reading, and walking and talking and planning a life together and knowing that he was my person. I started thinking maybe I could have a baby with someone I loved so much. It has been really, madly, wildly happy.

And now it’s not. Now it’s pretty grim. I spent all of Thursday—literally all of it—crying at home. I cried on the phone to every single member of my family. I cried to multiple friends. When the plumber came to check my shower, I cried over him. (“Everything happens for a reason,” Drew said.) When Daniela the cleaner arrived (please, no class-war snark about having a cleaner today), I cried over her and apologised, and then she went downstairs while I retreated into my room.

• I’ve been dating for 20 years. Why am I still single?

“Sophia!” she called a few moments later from the kitchen, so I stuck my head around the corner. “Sophia, I think it is best if you …” And I paused crying for a moment and thought, “Great! Some Brazilian wisdom from a wise elder about break-ups and how to move forward in life!”

“I think it is best if you get a new vacuum,” Daniela shouted, which at least stopped the tears for a while, because we then debated which. (Henry is the best, Daniela says, but what I’m thinking is: do I really want one with a bag on top of a break-up?)

I promised myself I wouldn’t smoke, and then marched to the closest newsagent and bought a packet. This will only last a few weeks, I know. It’s just for this bit. On the upside, I’ve stopped drinking because that was making me even lower. One wonderful friend instructed me to get some melatonin; another one procured some for me. Yet another bought me a bag of magnesium salts for my bath (“Stress depletes magnesium, so you need at least two baths with this a week.”), plus a book, Ghost Stories by MR James, because her theory is that you cannot be heartbroken and terrified at the same time. I know this is going to sound extremely trite, but people are amazing.

I tell you what’s helped most of all. Oh my God, this has been extraordinary. On Saturday morning, as I walked around a field near my sister’s house in Kent, I posted a story on Instagram saying I was broken-hearted and struggling. It felt quite self-indulgent. I’m not fighting a war; I’m just going through a break-up. But I did it anyway.

• What happened on my £10,000 date — and am I still single?

And then I spent the weekend being unbelievably touched and comforted by the number of responses and kindness. Really, I was overwhelmed. Hundreds and hundreds of replies. If you were one of the people who sent something and I haven’t replied, it’s not because I’m ungrateful or I don’t want to. It was simply that so many people have sent so many very, very generous and kind messages that I’m still going through them. Social media can be put to good use! I also keep going back to two messages particular, from two different people, which I’m including here in case you’re going through something similar.

I wrote the final paragraph of John Steinbeck’s letter to his son on a Post-it and stuck it to my mirror after a terrible break-up and, to this day, I believe it is 100% true: “If it is right, it happens. The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.” Stay hopeful, even in the darkest times, that the best is yet to come X

***

I think you get to a certain point in life and the knowledge that “this too shall pass” is actually fully understood but it feels SO shit still. One thing a friend said to me that helped me sit outside of myself a bit was “now, how are you going to keep yourself open like you were this time, for the next time?” And it took a while but I’m defo getting there, largely because I kind of noticed how small and mean the disappointment made my spirit, and every time I noticed, I made an effort to go into whatever it was (like, writing an interview or reviewing a show) without that mean smallness. And the more you do that, the quicker it dissipates. It’s been an interesting process to observe. (Still shit though.)

Dennis has been my saviour, writes Sophia

SOPHIA MONEY-COUTTS

So thank you to everyone who’s messaged me because it truly has made the world of difference. It’s made the first few days bearable. As have my have my family and pals. And also Dennis, who has been (and I know this will sound MAD to those without dogs) my saviour. On Thursday, as I smoked and sobbed in the garden, he kept bounding over and dropping tennis balls on my feet, as if they were little presents.

• Dear Julia: how do I deal with single shaming?

I also keep thinking about another piece I wrote, towards the end of last year, for The Times Magazine. It was about dating, or at least about a high-end dating agency, which I was writing about at the same time I met Paul. These were the last two paragraphs:

My theory remains that everyone gets their turn on the merry-go-round. You can do the apps or pay big money for matchmaking agencies. You can ask friends to set you up or hang around in bars, looking for hands without wedding rings. As a wise friend once told me, “The thing about dating is that it’s hell, until one day it isn’t.” I’ve believed that for many years, reiterating to myself that my turn will come, as I go to wedding after wedding. It might not be tomorrow, or next year, or even in the next five years, but at some point I’ll fall in love again, I’ve thought many times, while mumbling through another country church rendition of I Vow to Thee My Country.

“I am paranoid that it was the timing, and I know puppies are hard work”

SOPHIA MONEY-COUTTS

The irony, of course, is that now I have. A few weeks after going to the Bond agency headquarters in the rain, I went for a walk along a north London towpath with the first man I’d messaged for some time on Hinge. And a week after our walk, we had dinner. And a few days after our dinner, he came to stay with me. The following morning, he put up my new coat rack (not a euphemism), where he now slings his coat every time he comes over. It’s taken me by surprise in the way that falling in love often does, because life suddenly feels shinier despite the gloom elsewhere, and I feel vulnerable in a way I haven’t for years. But also very lucky. Everyone gets their turn eventually. It’s just a question of when.

I’ve cried thinking about this piece over the past few days, and I just cried (again, Jesus Christ) reading it back. But it still remains my theory: everyone gets their turn, and this was mine, or ours, for a spell. And the good thing about turns is that they come back round again. It’s just a question of time.

Meanwhile, any advice on vacuum cleaners?

‘Why haven’t I learnt from my mistakes?’

Lucy Cavendish on the challenges of dating in middle age

When I was in my late forties I met someone and fell in love. It was magical and I thought we would last for ever — although “for ever’’ in your forties is a mutable term. Fast forward a few years, and I was 54 when it all crashed and burnt. We broke up and it was devastating.

When you are in your twenties you are young, fresh and gorgeous, and even though it’s hard, you can go out and meet someone else. In your fifties you don’t know if you are ever going to meet anyone again. But it’s more than that. It’s humiliating and you end up asking yourself all sorts of difficult questions. Why, yet again, has something not worked out? Why haven’t I learnt from my mistakes?

In this relationship I felt that we were deeply connected. I had hoped that I was mature enough this time to see red flags and not ignore them, which was something I had willingly done in the past. Also, I so desperately wanted to be loved and I so desperately wanted to love. Maybe, in some ways, I hadn’t really thought about what my life entailed when we got together, which was four children and work and an extended family, and all those other things many of us in our fifties have in our lives that need attention.

Nevertheless, for much of our time together I was so wonderfully in love that I felt that I was floating above the earth. I thought he was the funniest, craziest, wittiest, most emotionally sensitive and handsome man I’d ever met.

Consequently I was utterly devastated when we broke up. Life just got in the way and I couldn’t seem to do anything about that. The phrase “what if?’’ came up many a time. “What if I’d …’’, “what if he’d …’’ Then there are the “if onlys’’. This went on for about a year while I went over the break-up again and again.

I think your heart breaks more when you’re in your fifties because you know that time is running out a bit. There is a sadness and a nostalgia to that. Now anyone new you meet won’t know your children when they were little or your parents because possibly they’re no longer here.

There will be lots of cues that you just won’t be able to get about each other because you don’t have the time. When that relationship broke up, it felt like the last chance saloon for me to share such access to my life. I’m not sure how I feel about doing that again. There’s a weariness, a sense of “Oh my God, will I really have to tell a new partner about my life all over again?’’

There’s also the way that friends treat you. When I told people about my break-up, some were very empathetic, but others said things like, “Ah another break-up.” When you’re in your twenties and you are heartbroken your friends rally around, even if your relationship has been merely three months long.

I see my twentysomething children supporting friends who have been in relationships for what feels like a nanosecond. This happens less when we are older because everyone is dealing with their big life things. Relationship drama isn’t really common ground any more. You begin to sound a bit like a stuck record.

‘I switched off the engine and wept. Not this. Again’

Simon Mills on the heartbreak of modern dating

I was on the M40, 50 years old, just getting over a divorce and blissfully overoptimistic about a woman I’d just met. Three dates in, first base achieved, second-time-around love looking like a genuine possibility. Then, just as the silver Saab convertible and I were approaching Beaconsfield Services, my phone buzzed on the seat next to me. Glimpsing her name on the caller ID and the beginnings of a doomy SMS on my screen, I stopped in a lay-by and skim-read the Dear John message.

She’d had a “long think” and decided that she “wasn’t sure” I was “right” for her. Which roughly translated as “you’re dumped”. Then this sad 50-year-old man switched off the engine and wept. Not this. Again.

Getting canned when you are 15 really sucks. All your friends know about it, your parents get involved, you listen to the Cure and Joy Division and Japan and stay in your room for days. Then you get over it and life begins again.

Getting dumped as a divorcee, in middle age? That’s different.

Resilient, tentative, cynical but open to opportunity when you first start dating again, you enter a new relationship with the belief that a loving and romantic second life might be around the corner. You do silly teenage stuff with your new love: walks in the park, exotic cocktails, cinema dates and French movies, long phone calls (no, you hang up!). Hopeful that you can exchange residual pain for lasting and meaningful companionship, you don’t want to stray into infatuation territory … but maybe we can get a dog together? Shall I ask the kids to meet her?

Then she chucks you. By text. Just like that.

You’re blindsided, battered and body-blowed, and the heartache, pain and longing are straight back. The feelings of loneliness and desperation, the life math x love metric whirring in the darkest recesses of your head again. Precious time and emotional effort, already at a premium, have been wasted. Like Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, you are getting too old for this crap.

Then the questions. The nagging doubts. The big match punditry playing out on your pillow. Where did I go wrong? Did I love-bomb her too early? Was I too open and honest too fast? Did I rush things? Did I come across as uncool and needy? Or was she … just not into me? “Was I really in love,” Nora Ephron once wrote about a failed midlife love affair, “or was I just desperate?”

As a later-life dater (and dumpee) you keep all this stuff to yourself. With your parents dead and your children correctly uninterested, no one knows about your break-up, mainly because they never knew you were “seeing someone” anyway. Too ashamed to admit chuckage, humiliation and defeat to your friends, you are very much on your own with all this. And alone again.

What did I do? I reverted to my teenage self. I shut my front door, opened a bottle of wine and put on a record. Instead of the Cure, I wallowed, drowned, in Beck’s break-up album Sea Change. “It’s only lies that I’m living. It’s only tears that I’m crying. It’s only you that I’m losing. Guess I’m doing fine …”

And after a while, I was.

Maybe, like Sophia, I’d also read Steinbeck’s wise words about relationships: “If it is right, it happens —the main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.”

I didn’t go psycho and bombard her with messages and flowers, or beg her for a second chance and another date. I stayed in, played it cool and just left it.

Eventually, after a few painful and heartbroken weeks, after more malbec and Beck, she came back.