If you told me 5 years ago that today I’d be a single Mum in France and going through a divorce, I would have said “Yeah right!”.

3 years ago, I moved back to France from Australia after living and working there in media. While I was there all I cared about were my friends, having a drink, planning for my next holiday and pretty much LIVING THE LIFE!

Having already spent thirteen years down under I made the decision that it would be best to move back to France and be close to my family. I had to do things differently in order to get a different outcome. I was petrified of the unknown and what was going to happen next but I was certain about one thing: I had to take charge.

So at the end of the Summer of 2014, I quit my very well-paid job in radio, gave notice to my apartment in Bondi Beach and packed all my belongings into storage.

In June, I flew to France and spent 3 months there living at my Dad’s. I realized soon enough that I definitely had to move back permanently and start a new life there close to my loved ones.

So I flew back to Australia in September to sell my car and all my belongings. It was hard to say goodbye to all my friends, mostly my best friends that I shared all my favorite memories with from my twenties and thirties but here I was now forty and needing to start something new. I was frightened of what was to come but at the same time excited and ready.

I still remember that first day arriving back home in France with my suitcase, it was cold and raining, a typical winter’s day. “Fuck! What was I thinking?!”.

Regardless, I was motivated and I knew I would be able to start over. I immediately started to send out my resume and look for apartments in the city. By January 2015, I had moved into my new flat and things started to get easier. I decided to check out Tinder to see what kind of men there were around here.

I quickly began to make a few connections, and with this one guy in particular, let’s call him Samuel! 😉 He was kind and persistent. I waited 2 months and turned him down 3 times before agreeing to our first date on the 25th of February 2015.

When we met, it was love (or lust) at first sight. We had dinner and drank all night, and from that point on we started seeing each other every day. He was very romantic, wrote me little notes, sent me flowers, took me to London, Paris, Spain. He spoiled me with gifts and told me everyday I was the most beautiful girl in the world. He was extremely nice to my family and we had a lot of common interests. The romance was there, I was hooked!

On the 31st of July 2015, he proposed with an amazing diamond ring and by August I was pregnant with our child! I was very lucky to fall pregnant quickly, being forty years old. We were happy and were looking forward to the future.

We quickly moved in together and started planning our wedding (well now that I look back, I planned our wedding, hahaha!).

In March 2016, we bought a 3 bedroom apartment, in April I gave birth to our son, whom I named Sydney after the beautiful Australian city I lived in and in August, we said “I do”.

Everything happened so fast, I didn’t have time to realize what was going on. That’s when things started to change.

After the wedding, our lives slowed down and I had huge postpartum depression. This shit is real and those hormones hit you hard (even harder when you’re forty I reckon). I adored my son more than anything but couldn’t fight the sadness and stress of the sleepless nights and the scare of anything happening to him. Yep, depression is real!

Instead of supporting me and helping me through this phase, my husband was blaming me for being depressed and scared all the time. I decided to ignore his attitude and keep moving forward. I started a new job and focused on my son’s happiness and wellbeing.

My husband was working too and we lived together like this for a few months but we soon became strangers to each other; that’s when we started sleeping in separate beds and the communication was non-existent. We only discussed matters about our son and his needs. Within a few months after getting married, we were like roommates. We stopped going out on dates but mostly stopped making plans for the future. It was dull, boring and suffocating.

A week before our first wedding anniversary, my sister had a terrible accident and was in intensive care for 2 months and that’s when things really started to go downhill. My husband was not supportive and couldn’t care less about what I was going through. We decided it was best to go our separate ways. Making that decision was a hard pill to swallow for me but seemed easy for him as he was married twice before (should have listened to my gut more and noticed the red flags, but hey).

I’m now going through a divorce but thankfully I am able to keep full custody of our son. My only goal in life now is to ensure I provide the best life for my little man (who’s now 2 years old). Its not easy, I miss Australia and my friends every day. Raising a 2 year old can be challenging at times, but I wouldn’t change my situation for the world. Even though my ex was not the right person for me, he gave me the most precious gift in the world: my son – and for that I am forever grateful.

Lessons learned:

• Don’t do online dating

• Take time to know someone before you commit

• Be independent no matter what

• Be positive and keep moving forward

• YOU’RE NOT STUCK; you’re just committed to certain patterns of behavior because they helped you in the past. Now those patterns have become more harmful than helpful. The reason why you can’t move forward is because you keep applying an old formula to a new level in your life. CHANGE THE FORMULA to get different results!

Laetitia is a senior sales executive in media. Being a single mum, she is also currently enrolling in real estate courses to be able to work from home and look after her little boy. She lives in the south of France and enjoys a nice work-life balance surrounded by her family and beautiful beaches.

@laetitiaelfassy