All the time you’ve been reading this, you may have had the thought “This guy doesn’t understand. How can I spend time finding love and romance when I have children to take care of or have time consuming responsibilities at work?” Sometimes both. I’d like to address these issues in some detail since so many women fall into one or both of these categories.
Women With Children
I happened to see the Oprah Winfrey Show on a day when they were featuring a number of women, who were stressed out, stay at home moms. The stresses on working mothers with children vary slightly, but are just as problematic, if not more so. I’ll ultimately relate this to your dating situation.
While the program dealt with women who worked in the home, its principles are just as applicable to single moms who almost necessarily have to work outside the home. Being a single parent is very difficult. Not only because all the parental work falls on one person, but because there is rarely much time left for yourself. When there is a couple, one parent can escape to his/her room or just go out for a while. When you’re a single parent often there may be no escape, day in and day out. A further problem is that there is most often no other adult in the house to help you handle stress, to talk about things with, to assist with discipline or to take over when you need a break.
I am in great admiration of all single parents. I had enough trouble being a Dad of four children with an excellent and supportive wife, who was also a model mother.
But what about you? What do you do for fun? Where does love come from for you? Have you lost “yourself” because you are acting as a single parent? You can't continue to let this happen to you. Perhaps what is below may help.
The Oprah Winfrey Show featured a “life coach”, Martha Beck, author of “Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming The Life You Were Meant To Have”. One mother featured on the show, who I believe had at least three, and perhaps four children, compared herself to the woman in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds”, saying she felt like she was being “pecked to death” by children's needs: games, practices, lessons, religion classes, plays, recitals, basketball, karate, meals, lunches, problems, lack of time, rushing, etc., etc. Sound familiar? She said she found herself overscheduled and stressed and that she was snapping out, anxious and that it was “making her crazy”.
Ms. Beck mentioned a number of important things that I would like to pass on to you. She asked the mother,
“As a teenager, what were your dreams and goals, if nothing could stand in your way?”
Ask yourself that. Here is the essence of some of her ideas: (not exact quotes):
“Do not give up your own hopes and dreams to take care of everyone else’s… Never do to yourself what you wouldn’t do to your children."
(Would you want your children not to have hopes and dreams?) When you live day to day as a “doormat”, you are teaching your children to be doormats. Love your own life. And you will teach your children that. Do not just give up. Nurture yourself.
Your principal job is not to be a servant, but to be like a Mother Bear. She teaches her cubs to hunt, so they can hunt for themselves. Then the mother doesn’t have to do it anymore. Teach your children to do for themselves. It will help you, and it will make them stronger and more capable. (They showed a young daughter loading the dishwasher and folding clothes. Kids learn quickly and can do much more than we think. Mothers who are overstressed just have to let up a bit because children do not do the job “their way". Keep coaching. They’ll get better – and you’ll get freer.)
Clean up what’s inside of you before you clean up what’s around you, Ms. Beck says: simplify, organize and de-clutter. Do not lose your “self” in your kids. Make to do lists. Focus on what you really need to do. Let the rest of it go. Set your goals. What contributes to them keep? Let things that do not contribute to it go. Put each of your goals on a separate sticky note, post them and use them to guide your activities. Delegate to children. Spend money to get help you need, if you can. It will be the best money you ever spent. (Get yourself over the hump.) Plan a once a year adventure. Start working out to become more physically fit and better able to deal with the stress. (Go to a health club. Maybe you’ll meet somebody there.) Focus on what really matters to you. Do not feel guilty about what you didn’t do. (You’re doing the best that you can.)
Have you heard something you never heard before that just strikes you as being so true and sensible that it just blows you over? I heard something like that about parents and children. The best way to have happy children, is not to put them first, but to put your soulmate first. A happy relationship creates a better environment for children to grow up in, it sets a good model for them and it makes them more self-reliant and self- confident. It’s a good thing for one or both parents to think about, when they say “Our kids come first.” Put your relationship first, and everyone can come out the better for it. Similarly, if you have not found your love yet, put that first. Ultimately, you, your love and your children will all be the better for it.
Ms. Beck recommends using the time you save by delegating and cutting out unnecessary activities to do what you want. If you are someone who overcommits herself, learn to “just say no”. Tell whoever is asking, “I have other things I have to do.” Do not feel compelled to name them and do not make excuses. Your true friends will understand. And those who can’t, want what they want, rather than what you think is best for yourself. The problem with stress is that once you get to a certain point you can’t think straight and you lose your perspective. You’ve got to step back and take a hard look at the situation. Then take action. "Focus on what really matters to you."
Our Children
While we're on the subject, our children are the most important legacy that many of us leave. Raising children today, and protecting them, is not easy. I helped raise four. I encountered a site I want to call to your attention: Safechild.org
This site provides advice to protect children, teaches how to prevent bullying,helps prevent abuse and abduction, enhances child safety, develops life skills and community awareness and promotes interent safety for children:
Visit SafeChild.org
Work Pressures
Some women’s work responsibilities requires working more than one job, long hours, working evenings and weekends, and may involve stress and travel. A woman’s time may be so taken with work that she has little free time for much else. Working mothers with children frequently live with a time deficit. The same principles Ms. Beck espoused above, can apply equally as well to those who work.
Look for ways to simply what you do. Can anything you do be delegated? It can free up time for you and help develop a co-worker at the same time. Is their any more modern equipment you could get, or ask the company to consider purchasing, that would make you more efficient on the job. Can off the job duties such as food shopping, ferrying children around, taking things to the cleaners, getting gas in the car, etc. be delegated? Can you get some stuff done at lunch time. Always take lunch. It gives you time to do something different and to re-group. Can you save time by leaving for work earlier or leaving later, and use the saving in commuting time to get more done? Can you commute to work with someone else, or take the train or the bus and get some work done on the way in or back? Can you hire some help?
This quotation has been so overused that I almost hate to mention it, but it is probably overworked because it is so true. Medical people sometimes are said to report that they never heard anyone who said on their deathbed, “I wish I had spent more time at work.” Figure out what’s really important to you. If one of those things is finding a love to share your time with, then you have got to make time for doing the things that are going to lead to that love.
A book profiled in the New York Times “Learning To Fall: The Blessing of An Imperfect Life” by Philip Simmons relates the impact of the author’s having contracted the fatal degenerative disease ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). He was stricken in 1993 at the age of 35. He mentions a quote, good for all us to reflect on:
“A fuller consciousness of my own mortality has been my best guide to my being more fully alive”
Mr. Simmons readily admitted that he gained insights that he never would never had, had he not been stricken. Perhaps we can learn from what he has to share. Mr. Simmons died early in August of 2002 at the age of 45, but shared himself in a difficult time, for the benefit of others. We can all benefit from his wisdom.
A Time Magazine book review by Andrea Sachs reviewing the book "Married To The Job" by Ilene Philipson detailed how the author treated over 200 patients for overinvestment in work. The author says: "As Americans are working longer hours and investing emotionally in our jobs, we are simulateneously depleting our lives beyond work..." And then there are the hours spent on what she terms "electronic leashes": e-mail, laptops and cell phones. She believes overattachment to the workplace disproportionately affects women. 2/3rds of her clients were women, but they had 85% of the overinvestment in work problems. She says:
"A lot of women I've seen have traded the anticipation of having security emotionally and economically through marriage, to having security through work."
She suggests: "Imagine what it would feel like quitting your current job and experiencing what it would feel like. If you feel terrified and alone and without direction (without your job), it's time to consider stepping back."
What about her own work habits? She says she worked 55 hours per week in the '90's. She realized, by listening to her patients, that she wasn't much better off than they were. She reduced her work to 26 hours per week. The review asked "Is she happier now?" She said "I'm getting married soon -- to a man, rather than my job." There is a balance between conscientiousness, productivity and feeling good about yourself and having love filled existence. Review your situation. Make changes if you need to, to have the love you want. Do not postpone your happiness. You may have postponed it too long already. Think about it. Lives need balance.
Envision yourself looking back over the years when you are seventy five or eighty. Did you live it the way you wanted to live it? Will you wish you had taken the effort, and made the time, to reorganize matters enough so you could have followed your heart until it led you to the love you really wanted? What is past is past, but no matter how old you are, it isn’t too late to change things. If your will is strong enough to do it, you will find a way to focus on yourself first and do what is necessary to find your love. What do you really want your life to count for?
People have many bills and obligations to meet, “necessitating” their need to work where they do, and as much as they do, but what about living the way you would really like to live? Would that be more possible in a smaller home, with a less expensive car, living in a different area or getting a different job? Ask yourself similar questions. Only you know what is right for you and what you can do. Things aren’t going to change and get better unless you make some changes. Focus on what really matters to you.
Sometimes changing employers to find one that might be more women and working mother friendly could help. Working Mother magazine and Fortune magazine's list of best companies for working mothers may be helpful in providing useful information in this regard.
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