After his wife died, David Durow needed to adapt to a new way of life, alone in their home. Now, at 80, he has developed a fresh understanding of what it is to be a man.
Durow, a retired academic who specialised in psychology, and Christine, a former teacher, had been married for 50 years. When she died unexpectedly in 2019, Durow was hit not only by grief, but also a dawning sense of the part he had played in his marriage – and in society. “Suddenly, I had to think about cooking, cleaning, learning how to operate the washing machine,” he says.
Embracing “the practicalities of single life” in Kingham, Oxfordshire, made him realise that he had been “locked” in a male-dominated society. “So I started a quest to turn my life upside down and inside out … with a set of genuinely life-changing values. I’d mostly been a stereotyped male, leaving for the office at 7am and getting home to the family at 7pm, expecting a meal to have been prepared and the kids ready for bed.”
He and Christine had two sons. Christine had stopped work in the mid-70s to raise them, though she returned to full-time teaching in the 80s and in between took part-time roles. It was a shock to realise that, from Monday to Friday, he had “spent more time with my colleagues than I did with my wife and children”.
Durow has long pursued extracurricular activities, from setting up youth groups for children with disabilities, to jewellery making. With Christine, he also opened a residential care home. He has always been a thinker. When lockdown hit, his rethinking intensified.
“I spent a lot of time reading, thinking through what my attitudes had been and what I wanted them to be,” he says. He read Elizabeth Strout, Sarah Waters and Rebecca Solnit’s essay Men Explain Things to Me. Sometimes, he would wake at 3am, get up and write poems or play the guitar, with the words he had read churning in his head: “How I was guilty of mansplaining, assuming that women didn’t know and that it was my role to put them right.”
By then, he was approaching his 79th birthday. “I really wanted to start a new kind of life. I figured there would be at least 10 years left in my ageing body and mind, at most 20. So what to do?” He undertook online counselling. “I realised that if you want to change your life, you can’t just sit in the armchair and think. You’ve got to get out there and do something.”
When lockdown eased, Durow started online dating, eventually meeting his partner, Jean. He shared his new thinking with her. “I don’t think she would have ever considered becoming my partner without that kind of discussion. She’s very independent.” They both cook; Durow does the cleaning.
They have joined a book group, where Durow is the only man. He consciously trys to avoid “taking over”, a habit ingrained in him after years of lecturing.
For nearly 20 years, Durow has cycled with the same male-dominated group, but lately he has become cognisant of its “macho” culture. Sometimes, when a rider speaks disparagingly of a female motorist, Durow will hear himself say: “Don’t you make the same kind of errors?”
Durow grew up in St Austell, Cornwall, and his new approach reminds him of how Cornwall felt in the 50s – less cut and thrust than when he moved to London in the 60s, more cooperative.
He says the journey of re-evaluating himself and his role in relationships has been “intrusive and interrogative … I think what’s frightening is it’s only happening to me in the latter part of my life. Where have I been for the last 75 years?”
So, does he feel that he has learned to live like the man he wants to be? “Absolutely. I feel more balanced. I’m happier. I’m much more content with my role within society.”
• This article was amended on 28 April 2023 to amend some personal details.
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