Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Love After Divorce, Is it real?

Recently, I started looking through some old blogs of mine, and a particular passage from one of my entries caught my eye. This blog entry, found on my Emotions Untangled blog, just happened to be talking about my ex-husband, although brief, and went on to talk about love. The passage reads as follows:

"Love is an emotional bond that no one wants to let go of easily. It makes you do things that you never would have imagined doing otherwise. It carries no boundaries and will do whatever is in it's power to keep that love alive until, ultimately, there is nothing more you can do"

This passage made me realize what I want out of life romantically. I wanted someone that would fight for me, and I am not talking about physically. I want to know, is love really out there for me, and if it is, where is it? Although, I don't dwell on where my life may lead in that department, or how long it may be for something like this to happen, I still like to ponder the idea of love after divorce.

This brings me to think of a quote that I read recently on Facebook by Dr. Seuss. It reads, "We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love." As silly as that sounds, it has some truth in it. Since no one of us has a true definition of what normal really is, weird is actually among each and every one of us, no matter how small or large.

I do believe in love after divorce. No matter how weird it may be, my weird match is out there. No matter the boundaries, the power of love is out there. Love is out there for all of us. It only asks for one thing, and that is patience. Patience is something that I held close, and will always hold close.

Before I let you go, I wanted to make a comment about something my friend did recently. She threw a Divorce Party. I thought this was a great idea. Basically, she invited everyone she knew that was either divorced or separated. This is great because it gives you an opportunity to talk to others, share stories, and basically celebrate your new found life!


Thursday, October 6, 2011

Reflections

When I went through my reflection stage upon being a divorced woman, I realized that I had gone a little crazy while I was married. I decided to go through a reflection period because I felt that I needed to do something to allow myself to see where I went wrong during the marriage as well as the months that followed the divorce. I needed to be able to allow my emotional health the liberty of getting better. I figured if I was going to get anything out of the marriage, I would rather it be something that I learned about myself and take that information with me throughout the rest of my life. I needed to look at the situation as an experience and a lesson. I wanted to be able to see a positive light and be thankful for the experience instead of being negative and spiteful.

Trust me; I wanted to be angry at him for the rest of my life. I wanted to be spiteful towards him forever. But I realized that life is worth more than living out your days being upset with someone or mad about a situation that did not go the way that you wanted. I simply had to say goodbye to anger and move on.

As I progressed through the reflection stage, I noticed a few things that I needed to work on within myself. I felt this way because if I ever wanted to be successful in a relationship, than I needed to be able to be define my faults and fix them. I also needed to define my strengths when involved with someone.

I quickly learned that I moved too fast when entering a relationship in the past. People had told me this before, but I never wanted to admit it to myself. I remember asking myself why I had done that sort of thing to begin with. I wanted to change the bad habit. I wanted to be able to get to know someone fully and to be comfortable with telling him my full intentions and exactly what I was looking for in a relationship. I even went as far as making a rule list for myself to follow. Granted, I thought it was just for giggles, but in the end, it allowed me to successfully sort through the weeds.

I also fell into the habit of being to forgiving of actions that shouldn’t have been forgiven. Once, I had dated a guy that had emotional troubles. For this reason, I felt somewhat sorry for him. We broke up because he felt I deserved better, but in the break up process, he put me down constantly and was being extremely rude about the situation. He even went as far as threatening to call the cops on me because I wasn’t leaving quick enough. To further explain that, I was simply gathering things that belonged to me so that I would not have to return for them later. A few months go by, and he calls me, begging me to come back. This same scenario happened repeatedly, and for some reason, I kept falling for his lies. I realized that that aspect of my life had to change. I had to get myself under the grasp of when it’s done it’s done, the first time.

So, my reflections on my dating life took me a while to sort through. All in all, it helped me realize where I was going wrong and gave me a better sense of what I needed and wanted in a man. I swore to myself that I would never allow a man to fool me into something that my gut and instinct was telling me to stay away from again. It was a journey to get to this point, but it was worth it in the end.