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Topics: Community, Life, Money, Sex and Relationships, Parenting
Niamh Shackleton
Topics: Community, Life, Money, Sex and Relationships, Parenting
A woman has been left understandably jaded after her 10-year relationship came to an end.
Break-ups are never easy. Whether you're 19, 25, or 68, the end of a relationship is a difficult time for all involved — and this woman feels particularly shafted after wasting her prime 'childbearing years' on a man who would ultimately leave her.
Now 34, the anonymous and heartbroken woman says she is now 'ready for the marriage and parenthood stage of life but unexpectedly single and emotionally devastated'.
Writing in to The Telegraph's Moral Money column for advice, the newly single woman said: "I have been in a relationship for just over 10 years with a guy I had hoped to marry. He called it off a few months ago.
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"I am moving from heartbroken and incapable of functioning to trying to work out how to put my life back together."
Discussing her ex's situation, she went on to divulge: "He tells me he feels, at 38, as though he still has a decade of enjoying his lifestyle and powering through with his career and is not ready for marriage and children, but he knows it has become a priority for me – so he is off!"
She continued to say that she feels like her ex 'owes her big time' and that she wants him to pay.
Fresh from the break-up, the woman said she's not ready to date yet, but she's still desperate to become a mother. Feeling that 'time is running out' for her, she's now wanting to do IVF to increase her chances of starting a family.
Such treatment can be costly, and she wants her ex to pay for it, but he doesn't feel like he should be made to foot the bill.
"He does not agree that he has any obligation to help with the financial burden of extending my childbearing capabilities even though he has always known how important it is to me to have children," she wrote.
"He even cited the fact that he knows time is running out as the reason he ended the relationship."
The woman concluded her letter: "I feel like he stole my childbearing years. Surely he should have some responsibility for helping me mitigate the damage to our plans caused by his change of heart and broken promises?"
The Telegraph's columnist, Sam Secomb, replied to the letter with the bad news that, because they weren't married, she has 'no rights to financial redress for the years of emotional or practical support you gave in service of your shared plans'.
"That does not mean you are powerless," Secomb insisted as she urged the reader to 'make sure the financial disentanglement of the flat is managed carefully'.
"Do not rush into signing anything or agreeing to a buyout without legal advice," she added. "This is the one tangible asset where your rights are clear and it could be a critical foundation for your future."