I moved home after a breakup at 39. I’ll never forget my dad’s response

I was almost 40 when my father took over as CEO of my life. His love language is logistics.

“What is cuffing season?” he asked as he continued sifting. “It’s when people want to cuddle during the cold months,” I said, laughing.

When I looked over, he was diligently writing down the names from his favorite profiles in a small notebook. Naturally, most were golfers and one loved antiques, my dad’s two favorite hobbies.

“If you find any profiles you like,” he said generously, “we can look at them together.” I thought of the matchmaker from Fiddler on the Roof.

Operation Whitney Recovery had commenced.

Two months before, the future I thought I was building—a shared home, maybe a child—had suddenly disappeared after my boyfriend announced he wanted to “take a break,” the last day we could withdraw from the contract of a house we planned to buy together.

It was early November, and my parents suggested I stay with them for the remainder of the year. I moved out of my boyfriend’s house in South Carolina and flew to my parents’ home in Florida. Even though I was grateful, it felt regressive at this point in my life to be stuffing myself into the guest room. I felt humiliated by the ending. I was mourning the relationship, yes, but also the places I’d grown to love and the people with whom I’d bonded. I reasoned that I would stay with my parents through Thanksgiving, then get an Airbnb nearby between Thanksgiving and Christmas. My dad had other plans.

We had been close since I was a little girl. Starting when I was three, he would take me to Krispy Kreme for doughnuts, just him and me. We would discuss the problems of our respective worlds—at first my little-kid problems, then his layoff, and later my divorce at age 34.

During one of these early visits, helping me drink chocolate milk, he spilled it onto my favorite OshKosh overalls.

“She spilled it all over herself,” he would later tell my mom, with his trademark mischievous laugh. Knowing his ways, she didn’t believe him.

Now, he was taking me there to discuss the heartbreak of my life.

“I thought he would do anything for you,” Dad said of my ex-boyfriend. “And instead, he did nothing.”

But our lamenting this fact could not change the ending.

So my dad got to work. Most mornings, I would go into his home office—Mission Control. He, my parents’ two dogs—a Wheaten terrier and standard poodle—and I would then map our recovery plan for the day. I had decided I would find a new place near my parents so that I could support them as they aged and we could spend more time together.

Together, we looked for my new home. When I almost signed the lease for an apartment above a Pilates studio, my dad insisted that we visit first during class to check the noise levels. Sure enough, the instructor’s commands and blaring music penetrated the floor above: I would have slowly lost my mind.

When we visited another apartment and my face lit up, my father looked at me expectantly. I felt confident in saying, “This is the one”—the first plan that originated in my own desire rather than in the life that I had constructed around my ex-boyfriend.

My dad also took me to multiple meetings with a financial advisor to make sure I felt financially secure regardless of what may come in my personal life.

Through this destabilizing time, I had not truly lost my home—it was still there with my parents, with Krispy Kreme rituals, with Mission Control.

And with Dad’s insights. “These dating apps are awful, Whitney,” he said, laughing.

“No kidding… At least I have you,” I replied. And I meant it.

Mission Control had succeeded when I no longer needed it. My father’s care had helped move my life forward while I recovered my confidence.

In early February, I moved nearby. I hung pictures on the walls and discovered my favorite coffee shops.

Of course, I missed the dogs waiting outside my bedroom to make our trip over to the home office. But I felt excited for the future, not alone, and grateful for my parents’ support. We had not been as close in recent years due to geographical distance, and this void that had opened in my life allowed their love to rush in again.

I still sometimes call Dad in the mornings to tell him what is going on and occasionally to ask for guidance.

And on Valentine’s Day, I met someone new—a man whose profile I had selected myself on Hinge.

He has a tattoo.

Whitney Hinds Coble is a lawyer, trauma-informed coach and memoir writer based in St. Petersburg, Florida. She is completing Stanford University’s Memoir Writing Certificate and writing Held, a memoir about trauma, relationships and the people who help us find our way home.

All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

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