Category: Single Again

withdrawal

I suppose it was inevitable that my body would begin to go through withdrawal symptoms.

I mean, this has been my weekend:  I felt sick, I pulled myself together for a single family outing (presumably for the sole purpose of listening to two hours of bickering), I overdosed on hot Tang and Netflix and, finally, today I’ve awoken with swollen lymph nodes, an even sorer sore throat and a seemingly incurable case of 40-year-old divorcee libido.

In fact, the dream from which I awoke was distinguished in my personal history by the vast number of naked bodies and penises that graced it. Room after white room of naked bodies languidly sprawled on white-dressed beds, like multiple Calvin Klein underwear ads occurring simultaneously, but without the underwear. Yes, there were naked women, too, but the naked men and their generously sized semi-erect members (member — who ever thought of that euphemism, anyway?!) were the dominant feature of my dream. The bodies appeared artfully arranged and were seemingly both post coital and ready to serve. I wandered from room to room, greeted by the occasional unashamed acquaintance…and then I awoke. Horny.

Here we have a situation 80s hair band Cinderella so eloquently sang about in their ballad, “Don’t Know What You Got (Until It’s Gone).” In other words, over the past several months, I’ve had the luxury of forgetting entirely what it’s like to be sexually unfulfilled. It was a luxury (along with so many others, like feeling loved and appreciated, for example) that I appreciated. Yet that doesn’t ease the urgency or pain of what I’m missing now.

Of course this is just one of many things I do and will miss about being in a relationship and the gentleman with whom I was involved, specifically. But that doesn’t make it any easier to manage these unfulfilled desires, at least not in the short term…at least while I’m out of the habit of replenishing my battery supply.

another first single weekend

This is my first weekend off (meaning without my children) since the break-up.

While we have exchanged a few texts and talked on the phone once since deciding to no longer see one another, we’ve mostly stuck to our agreement to not contact one another. My suspicion is that, if we were to do otherwise, it would be too easy to commiserate, to find ourselves back in each other’s arms… all of which, as lovely as it sounds, would derail us both from our long-term desires.

And yet, having awakened at 3am with watery eyes, a sore throat and clogged sinuses, called in sick and spent the day working from home in my pajamas, it’s tempting to play the sympathy card. After all, what could be the harm in asking someone to come and apply some balm to my wounds? It was bound to be a lonely weekend at any rate, I’m hoping to get better, stay strong and get some work done.

Will I resist temptation? Stay tuned…

the aftermath

Perhaps it seems flippant to observe that breakups don’t seem so traumatic once one’s been through a divorce. After all, I’ve seen the worst that it’s possible for a relationship to get. And I’ve survived.

This time, I invested just six months (rather than more that a decade). No house, no children, no shared accounts. But that doesn’t mean the past week has been easy…

  • The loneliness that I’m sure I’ve felt over the past couple of years but had forgotten has come back, and I feel it acutely in walking by a romantic cafe or driving by the coffee shop where we first met.
  • I see an ad for a romantic getaway in a quaint destination and feel regret that we didn’t get to enjoy it together. There were so many things I’d been looking forward to sharing.
  • Finally, I have been surprisingly lax in the grooming of my bikini area. Yes, I know…TMI.

Somehow, today, amidst the chaos of children at home and relatives visiting, he dropped off some belongings that had been at his place and managed to go completely unseen. I found myself sad that I didn’t get at least a glimpse, a reassuring smile, a warm hug…

Still, I have no regrets. It’s been nice to miss someone, to remember our times together fondly…

bittersweet valentine

Today is a particularly bittersweet Valentine’s Day for me, as my guy and I recently decided to split. As I mentioned in my last post, I just wasn’t feeling those intense, urgent feelings that we associate with being in love (or infatuation, if you will).

I was happy, content to spend time with this man I enjoyed getting to know, actually pleased to be able to see him for the man he was — without the clouded judgment and crazy-making obsession — and like, love and care for him, warts and all. The status quo was enough. There were so many more things I looked forward to sharing with him. I could wait to see whether it would grow. But in my heart of hearts, I didn’t know that it would. And of course he wanted more than that…more than I could give right now.

Even after we talked about it, we went on with our plans for the evening, smooching at the deli counter, holding hands in the car, holding one another until the wee hours. It was tender, compassionate, honest, respectful…much as our relationship had been.

So while I’ve reflected on it all these past few days, the overwhelming feeling I’ve had is that I’m so incredibly blessed! Blessed and honored for the privilege of knowing such a wonderful man intimately, for the tender moments we shared and for the way we conducted ourselves throughout. I was proud of standing up for myself, drawing boundaries, expressing my feelings, needs and desires, for arguing without saying something that might cause un-doable harm and, in the end, for being honest with myself and with him about how I wasn’t feeling.

I’m sure I could list at least a hundred things I’ll miss about him, including his gentle touch, generosity and soft lips. I’ll miss hearing all the kind, life-affirming things he said to me — and I can only hope I said some kind things back to him that he will carry with him, too.

It was a wonderful relationship with the best possible break-up, one that leaves me feeling bittersweet and so, so blessed.

am I in love?

A while ago, I wrote about getting my guy one of those couples conversation starter kits, thereby bringing me up in his BCS standings. We took this acrylic cube filled with questions to lunch with us one lazy weekend day, pulling out cards and sharing our thoughts while waiting for our food.

I was a bit taken aback at a question that read, “When did you know you were in love with me?” And then, I took the lead in side-stepping it. My answer told him when I thought I’d begun to feel love for him because, frankly, after a few short months of dating, I wasn’t sure I was in love. But it was more than that…

I’m not sure I know any more what it means to be in love, much less what it feels like. Those feelings that I’d had what now seems aeons ago were of intense longing, ferocious protection and probably a desperately unhealthy co-dependence. In other words, I can clearly recall what it was like to feel infatuation. And I know what it feels like to have crushes — I’ve had many before and since my marriage.

So I know what crushes and infatuation feel like. I know what it means to love and to commit. Yet…while I always looked forward to the weekends that I’d see my boyfriend, I didn’t have longing or passion or butterflies-in-the-stomach anticipation about it. I kept waiting for those feelings to kick in, wondering if they would, hoping they might. And for a brief moment, they seemed to. Then the moment passed.

I have to wonder whether it’s just the timing — that I’m not ready to be in love, that I’m not capable of feeling that just now — or if it was something between us that was just not there. Or if it will come slowly, blossoming like a beautiful flower.

My heart is open. I’m going to have to trust that I’ll know when I’m feeling it.

run screaming

It’s been awhile since I last posted and, for that, I apologize. For a while, I was in the midst of a crisis, which overlapped with a several-day internet outage that may have, in part, triggered said crisis.

When I say “crisis,” I mean I was completely stressed out, exhausted and wanted only to turn around and run screaming from each and every commitment in my life:  my job, my home, my boyfriend. Not my children, of course…well, maybe for a couple of weeks.

Suddenly, the pressure seemed overwhelming at just about the same time as my body began under-performing (which is to say that my elimination system can’t keep up with my hormones and I was terrifically exhausted) and I began panicking about whether I want to be in a relationship or am ready to be in a relationship or if I want to be in one with him, all of which was minor compared to my work-related pyscho-drama. Goodness! I’m finally earning pretty well, feeling as though I’m managing, and a few hours of work not achieved on my connected-less weekend threw me into a fit of panic.

What I witnessed in my own mind during those several hours was not pretty. It was if a box deeply hidden in my psyche had released all my secret irrational fears and out-moded mental scripts at once:

  • “You’re not worth it.”
  • “You’re a fraud.”
  • “You’re not doing this very well — everyone else is better.”
  • And more.

I recently read a quote by Demi Moore (or was it some other recently-single celebrity) and I will do my best to re-create it here (without actually trying to look it up):  She basically said that our (her?) greatest fear was to get to the end of her life (or the day?) and feel alone and unloved and unworthy and find out that she is fundamentally flawed. And it was nice to read that someone who’s made movies and lived glamorously and been married to Ashton Kutcher felt that way, because I sure have at times.

Through all of these recent extreme feelings, I knew that they weren’t the truth. I knew that I wasn’t the only one who felt those very same things. And I sensed somehow that, by facing this fog and moving through it, these old scripts, old beliefs and feelings of fear were being released on some deeper level and that, if I could just get past them, they would never again have such power as they did in those few intense hours. Or — it must be said — maybe I’m just getting my period.

At any rate, my eyes are no longer bugging out, I’m hanging in there just fine, thank you, and I haven’t run screaming from any of it. Perhaps I’ll get further if I slink quietly…

marital efficiencies

I haven’t been getting any rest on the weekends lately. That’s because when my children are home, they’re running me ragged. And when they’re not, a certain special guy has been keeping me up at night.

We sat on a park bench one day a while back, both of us stifling yawns as we proposed big, wild ideas for the evening, of which none stood any real chance of actual implementation, because we were both far too tired. I teased him about keeping me up all night and translated that into what could be a future state, whether with me or another, in the wonderful, blissful drudgery of married life and parenting:  “All that caressing and foreplay and loving gets squeezed into the daily routine of life, with children in the next room and narrow windows of opportunity, and what we now do until all hours of the morning gets condensed into a very functional 13 minutes.”

I think that’s a pretty real example of something that happens in many marriages with children. And I don’t think it’s really such a bad thing when it does. Work lives, logistics, spit up, diapers, play dates, hobbies, the gym, sports, other activities, chauffeur duties and more enter back into a humdrum stream of days. The romance and excitement make way for everyday life. Love, which was once demonstrated with flowers and kisses, takes on new meaning, like cleaning up the toddler’s vomit.

I mean, you still have to take time for one another, keep the magic alive…but, as I’ve written before, I was totally cool with married sex…it was efficient in a very satisfying way. There are other opportunities for intimacy and loving acts and I guess my point is that sex can’t really take center stage forever in a relationship. A certain equilibrium or balance or something takes over… Life can be beautifully, exquisitely, satisfyingly routinized — almost boring — without ever getting remotely dull.

How did my guy respond to this whole train of thought? He laughed and gave me a big ol’ “Hell no!”

And does that mean I want to trade sleep for being kept up late loving and caressing? Nah, I kinda dig this stuff, too.

2011…the year in review

I’ve been writing this blog for a little more than a year now, with varying levels of dedication. I began in December, 2010 with the notion that I’d write about the crush that helped cement my motivation to end my failing marriage, and that kept me afloat through a good share of the process.

By that time, I’d also had a few other dalliances — and complete misses (as in the case of Chi-guy) that struck me as hysterical. From the dating horror stories I’d heard from girlfriends, I was sure I’d have many tales to tell about my re-entry into the dating pool.

Even as I began dating, and then dating someone exclusively, I’m surprised at how much I’ve found to write about relationships, marriage, commitment and more. It’s been a cathartic experience, one from which I’ve grown. For example, I’ve been a little overwhelmed lately with the challenges of owning a fixer-upper home, but consider that a couple of years ago I was overwhelmed at the notion of bikini line grooming.

Sharing here has also produced a few surprises:

  • My blog was most visited on the day that I wrote a post called Spiritual Soul Mates.
  • The two most popular searches that bring readers here are “failed at forty” and “toe cleavage.” I’m guessing that those looking for the latter are not particularly inclined to come back.
  • Men seem to be intimidated by the fact that I write this blog.

In the past few months, I am delighted to say that I have a boyfriend. I wanted a boyfriend. And it’s so much fun to be in a relationship and to discover another and also myself and to support and be supported as I continue to heal. I also have a demanding full-time job and two children, which leaves me with very little time to write. I promise to stop in when I can…I seem to have plenty more to say.

Cheers to a New Year — may it be even better than the last for all of us!

overwhelmed, again

I have had a horrible day. I have never once believed that such a thing as Murphy’s Law existed but, for the first time, it seems to today. It seems to be one calamity after another around here and, if it’s more than I can manage to simply keep things somewhat picked up, then how on earth am I to manage the upkeep, maintenance and repairs of things, as well.

A few days ago I entered one of those silly internet games, a Dead Pool, in which people place bets on which celebrities will die in the coming year. We may as well place bets on which part of my property will go next…recent months have taken a clothes dryer, car, garbage disposal, garage door opener and refrigerator. Count the air conditioner and furnace in recent years and, of course, the roof…and then ceiling. Lord, how I somedays wish to dump this place onto a younger, more willing couple, fresh with energy and just starting out. Because it all seems to much to deal with anymore.

Yes, I am overwhelmed.

Many times I have thought about selling. Yet it will take tens of thousands to get in selling condition. And my children would declare mutiny, I’m sure. They are fond of this money pit in this charming and friendly neighborhood. It’s the only home they’ve known.

Well-meaning folks have said things like, “There’s a lesson in this somewhere.” Which is a good way to get my ire up. If there were truly one more goddamned lesson to be mined from the pain and heartache I’ve been through, I’d like to think I’d have durned well learned it by now!

Sometimes I become embittered and think, “If only things had been different…” By things, of course, we are discussing my wasband’s lack of income generation. We bought this home thinking of living here a few years and moving up to something better. But with a single income and two small children and a market which seemed to have peaked before we were ready to sell, there’s been no moving up…only a constant toiling. So I suppose if things had truly been different, we’d have sold and split our equity in a nicer home and I’d be back in something more modest. Something probably a lot like this!