The Single Spark with Chantelle the Coach (previously The Single Girl's Guide to Life)

Keeping Your Own Life While Building One With Someone Else | Ep 122

• Chantelle the Coach

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One of the biggest fears I had about getting into a relationship was losing my independence. I’ve spent years building a life I love - my own space, my own routine, my own decisions.

And yet, society makes it seem like true commitment means merging your entire life with someone else. Moving in together, sharing everything, and eventually ticking off the next milestones like marriage and kids.

But what if you don’t want to rush that?

What if you love your independence but still want a strong, committed relationship?

In this episode, I’m sharing my own experience of navigating this balance - being in a happy, long-term relationship while still keeping my autonomy and independence. 

I’ve lived on my own for five years, and despite being in a serious relationship for the more recent years, I’ve chosen to keep it that way! 

I’ll be diving into how I’ve made that work, the conversations I’ve had to have, and the boundaries I’ve set to make sure I don’t lose myself along the way.

Here’s what I’ll be unpacking:
🏡 Why I still live alone (and how it’s strengthened my relationship)
⏳ The pressure to move in, get married, and have kids - and why I’m ignoring it
💬 How I communicate my need for space without making my partner feel rejected
🚧 Why setting boundaries actually brings you closer, not further apart
👶 Dating someone with kids - how I navigate that while keeping my own life intact
💡 How to hold onto your identity in a relationship (because you don’t have to lose yourself in love!)

If you’ve ever felt the pressure to “prove” your commitment by giving up your independence, this episode is for you. You can have love and freedom - on your terms.

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RESOURCES:

- Download my FREE Dating Non-Negotiables Guide

- Visit my website: www.chantellethecoach.com

- Follow me on Instagram: @ChantelleTheCoach

- Follow me on TikTok: @ChantelleTheCoach

And if you loved this episode, HIT SUBSCRIBE to stay up to date for your weekly dose of The Single Spark.

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Music from Ep 110 onwards by Kadien Music. Get your own podcast music here!
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life coaching for singles, how to be okay on you're own, overcoming loneliness, how to stop feeling lonely, single women, divorced in your 20s

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DISCLAIMER: The podcast and content posted by Chantelle The Coach is presented solely for general informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user’s own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to another episode of the Single Spark. Now, today we are going to be heading into the world of maintaining your independence, even when you're in a relationship. Now, this might be something that you have been thinking about when you've been dating. This is something that keeps coming up for you as a bit of a worry. When things are actually going a little bit OK, where someone's starting to like you and they're starting to want to spend time with you, and there is a little bit of you that is going, I don't know if I really want that, I don't know if I'm OK with that. Like, what happens if they want to eventually live together and I still want to maintain my home? What happens with all this freedom, that I've got, all of this autonomy where I can do what I want to do, and then they don't want to do the same things and it becomes difficult and I feel trapped and I feel constrained. And it's so interesting because in other situations in dating, you might even have found that you push people away with that little anxious attachment coming in. You're actually the one fretting over their relationship and wanting them to like you. Yet when it is easier for you, when someone is showing you good signs and, in truth, be told they would be a good match. It's freaking you out and it could be that we are just not ready. Okay, we want to accept that we can have someone, but there's actually a potential part where we just really aren't ready. These are a major bunch of flags. This is your instinct, kicking off and responding and saying, hey look, this ain't really what you want right now.

Speaker 1:

But there comes a time when you then end up in this up down phase of, well, I want a relationship, so I look for a relationship. But then the minute someone's serious and wants that too, I'm like run away, scared. What happens if I don't know if I want this, and you go back out. You come back out of dating, but then you get to the point where you're thinking, no, but I do want a relationship, just the right relationship. I don't want to be on my own forever. I enjoy this experience, but really I'd like to find someone.

Speaker 1:

So you go out and find someone, go through all the difficult stuff again, find someone that could work, and then it all happens again and you're stuck in this constant cycle of I do want, I don't want, I don't want because, I do want, because and you end up not knowing really what you want in the end and being confused and people being confused, and it comes back to a lot of these comments where people say you're too independent for your own good, you know, um, and that plays on you in your mind. You're thinking what am I, or is it just? I don't want a relationship where, like, I'm completely absorbed by the relationship, because the thing that you really want is a relationship. Probably, if you're, if you've got through everything, it's just that you don't want to go at the pace that everybody tells you you should go. You want a relationship that goes at a suitable pace for you and that doesn't meet everybody's societal standards, because some people get into relationships very quickly, they merge their homes incredibly quickly, end up married with babies before you know it, and the idea of that, if you're anything like me, where you've been through an experience of I've actually done it quite slowly, as it were. We didn't get married for seven years, we got engaged. We were engaged for longer than we were married, but even so, you don't want to make a repeat of anything like that and you. Just you don't want to make a repeat of anything like that, and you just you don't want to lose everything that you've got now.

Speaker 1:

And I went through this. I went through this concept in dating. I had settled here and I I was always dabbling with dating. In part, it was to always test did I really want to be dating? But in the other part of things it was the constant oscillation, great word of between. I think I want this, but I don't want something so serious. What I do want it was slightly interesting. I didn't want it to be casual, though the opposite to serious is casual. I was like, well, I don't want that either. I just don't want hurtling at marriage and babies a million miles an hour. Is that okay? And that's very difficult, actually, because a lot of people really do want that.

Speaker 1:

And it was so funny when I went on a date I don't know their name, but I can picture them and I've seen them since at a few things that I go to, and I remember we must have only gone on one day and we were walking around a country park, I think. I recall I don't believe there was any other date Talking in between, maybe, but not any other date and just at the end of the day I had sort of explained this concept of like. Well, I'm good for like, taking it easy, letting it grow naturally, and that can sound avoidant. I know that some of you will be thinking, well, yeah, if a guy said that to me, that they weren't serious and they weren't all in, that would maybe give me alarm bells ringing and in my scenario, you could have looked at it like that Think of summer, in 500 Days of Summer, when she says I'm not looking for anything serious, like you had to listen to her and the reason there was so much issues is because Tom didn't listen to her.

Speaker 1:

So, in fairness, right, true, I wasn't saying I wasn't looking for something serious, though I certainly wasn't looking for anything casual In my mind at that point in time. I wanted to explore things with people and you can only find out exactly what you're looking for by being put in those scenarios, which is why we can't out exactly what you're looking for by being put in those scenarios, which is why we can't. As much as I know, you feel this absolute anger in your chest, your stomach, your throat, wherever it comes up for you when people change their minds about what they say they thought they wanted, for whatever reason. But part of dating is actually for both parties to test what they really want and so long as they communicate and don't string along for too long inverted commas, because people are just working it out for themselves. We actually can't hold that against people.

Speaker 1:

So in my eyes, I was being upfront. I was saying, look, I'm not gonna promise you marriage and future children and living together. Like, I'm exploring dating, I'm exploring what that means to me. I am looking for someone to work towards stuff with, what that work towards stuff with depends. Does it mean that we would live together? I don't know. Like I'm just establishing myself in this little place of my own. I'm not convinced that I want anyone in this space permanently with me, nor do I want to be in a space with someone else permanently. Like they are things that you're allowed to do and this is what this episode is about. It's about allowing that version to be there, because I am in a relationship that isn't moving quickly. It was a very conscious decision and it remains a conscious decision.

Speaker 1:

I absolutely adore the man to pieces. It doesn't mean anything that we are not married, we are not living together, etc. I speak to this man every single day. I think there's one day where we have not conversed in some way. That was from a while ago. Other than that, from the beginning of our relationship we have been talking, but our relationship does not move at the same rate of any other, and there's many a reason for that.

Speaker 1:

But it's really important when you are that strong independent character, to be able to have the opportunity to keep that going when you're in a relationship, because there would be nothing worse than for someone like yourself to think I'm all encompassed by this relationship. This relationship is my identity. I feel like nothing else is there. I don't know who I am, what I am, and I can't just go out and do what I want. And I don't mean that in a he won't let me way. I mean that in a I I just well, maybe it. Maybe it's not that they won't let you, it's that you feel obliged, it's that you feel like well, they're, they're there, like I live with them now, like I've got to do everything with them.

Speaker 1:

And it's very interesting when I've got the additional dynamic of there being children as well in a scenario where I don't have children. So it's not like two step families, where there are children on both sides and then that very much like part of it, like I have a life where children don't exist. I am child free and I would always declare I'm child free. I do not have children. And if one day in many, many moons time, jason and I were married, even if they were my stepchildren, in my head I'm still child free. Like by definition, they are not mine. They're not mine Legally, on paper, they're not mine Even as a step parent. They're not, they're not yours. So my life and my identity in part is wrapped up in being child free. Now I completely roll into the step mom mode when it comes to it. You've never seen plans and organisations and things like that, because dad is running their life like in terms of they're doing the daily life. He does the food, he does the school runs, briefly helped with that. But I do the fun stuff, I am the equivalent of the fun auntie.

Speaker 1:

But it's having those kind of boundaries and seeing yourself in that way, whatever your scenario in a relationship. So I just wanted to bring it back to a few things that you might not have realised that you could do, because maybe all of your friends are in relationships where they've moved in by now, and whether they did that in six months or six years, like that. Look to you. It looks like when you're in a relationship you must live together. You're getting it from your family too. They talk about the pressure of marriage, but actually this just takes you knowing what you really want and feeling confident to go out there and do that and execute that. Your relationship does not ever mean that you need to live together if you don't want to, and it certainly doesn't mean you need to live together in the first year or two years.

Speaker 1:

If we're really honest with ourselves, look at what a relationship is right. We get to know a person and, yes, it is in usually quite an intensified way. You go from not knowing who this person is and through maybe a few days or weeks, suddenly you're talking to them quite regularly. But for all intents and purposes, this person is a stranger, let's be honest. And so the idea that you would possibly walk onto the street, meet someone and let them live in your house within six months would be wild to me. And sure I've let Jason into this home. He's not been allowed, not allowed in. But the concept you would like suddenly put everything together can work for people. But for you, for you who is independent, for you who enjoys having that freedom, that's going to possibly cause you some resistance, some a bit like no, no, no, no, no, not yet, not right now, and that's okay.

Speaker 1:

I've lived in this house. Can you believe that I've nearly lived in this house for five years? I can't believe that. I can't even believe that, because in my head the timing of moving here is really the chapter of when I then had the operation and started this podcast. So the fact that we're five years in and I know I haven't run the podcast solidly for five years, for two and a half we did take some breaks, had a season and we're in that extra season now. We'll see how things go I'm like, wow. So for five years, officially I have lived on my own and, yes, I've been with Jason. For two and a half of those now, but it's just over four I've been in here. In my head my mortgage deal is up, but it's not, it's November, but mentally I've done five years here, four and a bit. You know, all of that time I have lived on my own.

Speaker 1:

This space is mine. No one can tell me what to do with it, not do with it. I can come and go as I please, and that, to me, is the level of independence that I want. If I was going to move in with anybody, then I'd need space to be my own. I'd need a space that was mine. I mean the whole house. If you were buying a house with someone would be yours. But I mean I've got a compromise on what some of the rooms look like. Uh, no, I need a space where I've gotten to choose what it looks like and no one got to say, well, we have to make it as pink as that, or oh, it's very girly in here, yeah, it is, yeah it is. You know, like that was, was. That's what I want, but you, you have to. I'd be kicking and screaming as if anyone tried to buy this at this point in time. This is my home and it is my sanctuary, and so that that comes with that. When you're dating, like this is my space, like you're welcome to come around, but this is me, this is my life, and this can extend further into how much you spend time together.

Speaker 1:

Some of you, hearing that Jason and I have always spoken every single day might alarm you. You'd be like that's too much. You're talking like when you first started talking you were then talking every single day. Yeah, yeah, that is, and that is a communication pattern that I really like. I like to talk to someone on the regular and that naturally it naturally feeds into the anxious attachment style, right? That person likes closeness, they like they're being in contact, because it gives them confirmation that everything is okay. Of course I do For some of you and I've done a poll on my stories of this before. For some of you, this I've done a poll on my stories of this before for some of these will absolutely freak you out and you're like, uh, once a week, I'll talk to you once a week when we're first dating and that might become more, but I don't need to speak to you every day. I have for the rest of my life. Now I am an online communicator. I have I can type very quickly without looking at the keyboard, and that's not through any any means of study, it's through the hours wrapped up on msn.

Speaker 1:

When I used to be 13 years old, used to go home to the house in great lees, which at the time, is essentially a remote place. It's a little bit better now the bus runs more often. But even when I didn't live at that home or we were in basildon, we were in a home where I didn't really know the kids around we we did know who lived next door and stuff. But we went to a private school and they went to a grammar school and the grammar school is attracting people from everywhere. They're as far as this way chance of impossible. There's probably some Braintree kids.

Speaker 1:

I have no idea, probably didn't know what that kind of zone looked like, but people coming in from Ilford, romford, that's a big spread up and down the A12, that is, and A130s I don't even know what the roads are called down here big spread. So compared to people that went to a school, I imagine that was like around the corner that everyone went to and that you were getting on the bus with your neighbours and the people that lived on your street or two, three streets away. It's very different. When I went home no one I knew lived around by me and I certainly didn't have any friends that were around by me either, because we moved there in year nine, so it's not like I'd even grown up in the area had people to you know called upon that were from nursery or from primary, whatever, I don't. I don't.

Speaker 1:

I don't know how that really works in practice. I don't know and I could be wrong. I could be a bit um, looking at it through rose tinted glasses, like, oh, the people that got to like nursery and school with all their friends and they moved up through it have loads of friends. I know that that's not true. I'm aware that some of you, some of you, have managed to keep that going, keep that friendship together, but the reality is is you've just held on to a couple of people, and some of you so happen to have had that from nursery, some from primary, some from secondary school and others some from secondary school and others, much like myself, hadn't.

Speaker 1:

But at 13, where socialing, socialing, socializing is prime, the only way that I could socialize with people, the only way that seemed obvious because I even did look at the youth bus that came around but never had the courage to go. But the way, only other way for socializing was online, so I can type and I can talk to people and I think I can do quite well in terms of interpreting messages, conveying messages on there. I don't know if that goes for the whole generation of millennial. But I'm a quick responder on messages. To me it's like talking to someone. I can't remember where I was going with that. Yes, I do so.

Speaker 1:

That to me then continues in a relationship, especially one where you don't see each other in person. Of course I don't message jason whilst he's with me, lol. Um, we only message on the days where we're not together, and so that still maintains that we still message a fair bit, because there are days where he's at his home on his own entirely. There are days we've intentionally put in that he has with the children, and that's another area. Especially when you've got children involved in some way, you get to decide how much you're involved in their lives or not.

Speaker 1:

We had early discussions about well, what if I don't want this? What if I don't want that step-parent life? I don't think I want kids. I think it's hard work. I think you have to do a lot of sacrifice as a parent, and I don't think that sacrifice often gets explained before. People have babies, like I see it and I go. What do I have to give up to have a child? And I have made that decision for myself. That that's not something I want, that's okay.

Speaker 1:

And so when it came to then knowing Jason had children and and looking at our relationship, taking that little bit more of integration it took took us just under a year, I think, for me to meet the children. But we had the discussions very early on and it it was always met with like what? What if it doesn't work? Like what if I can't do that? What if it's not right? And I don't. That might have scared other people. If you don't think you can, why are we doing this?

Speaker 1:

But Jason understood that wasn't what I was saying. He was aware that I was aware of my own concerns, my own feelings, and I was sharing them. I wasn't hiding them. I was saying look them. I wasn't hiding them. I was saying look, I don't, I don't know, I don't know them. I don't have kids of my own. I have this very peaceful life. Do what I don't know? Like, what is having a? I think they were three. Yeah, what is having a three and seven year old? Really like, like, I'm going from zero, it's not, like you've had them as a baby and their difficulty has grown with them. Yeah, it's, it's a shock, and we obviously did very slowly in that sense and continue to like I don't do anything like.

Speaker 1:

My stepdad lived with us and it was then very different when you have a living step parent, but it's always been to maintain some level of boundary. The children are coming to terms with the divorce, jason's coming to terms with the divorce, and then there's the new scenarios coming in and I'm getting used to the concept of children and it's been points of contentions before of if this, then what? That you know, it was really important to me, really important that if I ever stayed round, that there was no risk of the children coming into the bed whilst I was there, like safeguarding alarm bells going off like 100 million times. I went to each other like that's built in. The safeguarding alarm bell is super high when it comes to any interaction with a child.

Speaker 1:

We've been trained that way and I was like I know they're your children, but we have, we have to come up with something for this, because it can't. I just it just like um, in teaching, you wouldn't put yourself in a room, certainly not, so you wouldn't. You shouldn't really close the door when you're in a classroom with one child on your own. Bull stop, especially. I mean the door should have a window but even so, no, no, no, no. Keep the door open, get another child inside, get somewhere where there's another adult anywhere. You know things like that, and that's not because we think that people will do it, but it's because it could. It's like the whole like 1% situation and so the same thing happened there with.

Speaker 1:

Well, we eliminate that, we take that away by never having that and that's not necessarily part of the independence bit, but it is establishing what you're okay with and it goes for everything in your life. If you don't want to talk every day, if you don't want to be a significant part of that setup to begin with, obviously if you do want to eventually trajectory onto a life where you live together. But it's just not yet, that's okay and things can evolve and take time. You're not saying never, ever, but you have a life where you are a single, independent, strong woman and you don't want all of those elements of you to be taken away. You want those elements to develop, to turn up in the right ways, to not be thrust upon you all of a sudden as if you had no choice in the matter, but for it to converge and merge together so that you get this strong independence, whilst adopting these new sides of being the girlfriend in the relationship and living with someone eventually, maybe, and having your own children or not, or being involved with stepchildren, you can still live that independent life. You can still have those elements, and it's something that you would build over time to bring it in, bit by bit, a level that you're comfortable at and whoever you're with is comfortable at.

Speaker 1:

To me, it seems like the world is obsessed with rushing, obsessed with getting to those milestones, and I'm guilty of it, having done it once before, and I'm always very wary and maybe I should continue to be. I'm very wary of doing it again. It comes up because it just all of a sudden you feel like you should be or you want to be. But what does it really mean all of those things? And, in fact, what is it that you really want? How much independence do you want to maintain as you continue a relationship, as you start to dip that toe in? What does that look like to you and how do you keep maintaining it for yourself? I'd love to know what you think about this. So drop me a DM or head to the Facebook group to discuss how you want to keep independent. What would really encroach on your boundaries or be way too quick for you to be doing in dating if it's come up, whether you've lived that experience or have just heard those horror stories. Until next time, keep sparkling.

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Chantelle Dyson

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