Tag: divorce

date ready?

My marriage had failed. While still in the midst of slogging through the legal stuff of divorce*, I’m sure it seems strange for me to express a desire to be married again. So many of the folks I know who’ve survived divorce assure me they are perfectly content to never marry again. Some even swear they won’t. Perhaps having yet to experience true partnership, a companionship that I have to believe and hope is possible, it remains my deepest yearning.

Of course, this dream is likely to be in the somewhat distant future. First, my ex has to move out. And then we will both, I hope, focus on the well-being of our children and ensuring that they feel as safe and stable as possible, despite everything.

Still, thinking ahead, it struck me that I will have to learn to date again. More immediately, I must learn to pick men up. And that activities such as these are going to require a level of grooming I must confess to having allowed to taper off some time ago. I am not entirely without vanity; my ex simply never cared.

The fabulous au natural me of more than a decade ago was fit, taut, sexy. The current reality is that I’ve birthed two children, I’m carrying around a bit of extra weight, hair grows in places that it once did not, and I’m going to need to exert a bit more effort than simply shaving my legs and painting my toenails to achieve a condition one single girlfriend refers to as “date ready.”

Is it normal to feel overwhelmed by what I suppose ought to be simple maintenance and upkeep? Add it to the list along with yard work, gardening, housekeeping, earning, parenting — it’s just one more chore. And I’m already exhausted!

*all the final paperwork was sent in by the first week in January, 2011!

the truth: I failed

I ended my marriage. I failed at the single most important relationship in my life. And I failed at the most important thing in my children’s lives:  giving them a stable and loving nuclear family.

That’s no small thing.

And even though I know I tried very hard to make it work, and that I’m not solely responsible, that I had to draw the line somewhere as non-negotiables went unmet year after year, and that there were / are truly good and valid reasons it had to end, it was a decision over which I agonized for some months.

So I broke it. It’s done. Finished. And I plan to recall, muse, document the relationship experiences and observations I’ve had through this period of upheaval, transition and adjustment in this blog. It will get much funnier from here — I promise!