Life After Divorce

In the months following my divorce, I began to feel a sense of awkwardness. It was unreal to me that I was now a divorced woman. I faced the next phase and entered into life after divorce. I remember thinking back and wondering where it all went wrong. I asked myself if there was something that I could have done differently to save the marriage and prevent the divorce from ever occurring. That question took me back even further. It took me back to the months that he and I were just dating. That brought on more questions that I never really got the answers to.

I did take time to focus on myself. I wanted to be able to resolve any interior insecurity that I had before re-entering the dating world. I wanted to make sure that my head was on straight and that my life was headed down a more direct route. That’s just what I did too. I dealt with my issues and gave myself a good path to follow.

I attempted to date someone after I believed I was ready to date again. I was wrong. I constantly analyzed every situation that occurred and constantly compared it with a situation that I had with my ex-husband. I even spit out that the guy was acting just like my ex-husband. No sooner than the words came out of my mouth, I wanted to hit the rewind button. Why did I say that? What was the purpose of directly comparing him to my ex-husband, and verbally at that? Of course I apologized for it, but the damage was already done.

I quickly realized that I needed to step away from the dating world again and work on getting myself out of that horrible loop. I sat and pondered what it was that I needed to do to stop thinking about my ex and look forward to a brighter future. At first, I couldn’t think of anything. But I quickly realized that I needed to do two things.

I needed to continue to reinstate the relationship I had with myself. In doing so, I began to do activities that I enjoyed doing solo. I rode my bike more, took walks around the neighborhood and took random drives around town with no particular destination. This allowed me to wrap myself up in internal thought and gave me the opportunity to relearn myself as an individual.

The other thing I decided I needed to do was to reinstate my relationships with my friends. Granted, the relationships were never lost, but being divorced, they were slightly different. I needed to relearn how to spend time with them as a soloist and they needed to readjust to me as being a single lady. This helped me make the transition from being married to divorced and single because I was able to throw my thoughts off of them and receive any support that was necessary. I trusted them to give me adequate advice and to tell me the honest truth, no matter how painful.

This took time, and I am happy that I went ahead and faced my fears early on. It set me up for a better future and allowed me to see that I was my first priority. Divorce in Virginia changed me, and it made me a stronger person.