I think those of you who follow here can tell that I’m fairly real and genuine. One moment I think I’ve forgiven and moved on; the next I’m behaving badly out of lingering blame and resentment.
These are realities for the divorced, and these are the things I choose to share here. I don’t dwell in them. It’s not my whole life. But it’s the sliver of me you get to see for visiting here.
I started writing this post well over a month ago:
Every so often, I still catch myself in that contracted state of responding from a place of fear or lack, as though I’m in a full-on life flinch, constantly anticipating another of life’s right hooks. And then, moments later, when I realize what I’m doing, that the proverbial perceived threat was only imagined, I relax and wonder at this baffling behavior…
Often this realization hits me while doing the most mundane of all activities, such as grocery shopping. I’ll neglect to buy ingredients for some fabulous meal I’d love to make because my children wouldn’t appreciate it, or it’s too much work for just one, or for some other reason that ends up sounding much more like an excuse. Banal example though it may be, it’s symptomatic of the recent phase in my life spent focused so much on making others happy that I’d forgotten to take care of myself.
Sometimes this divorce-recovery stuff seems like a slow climb out of the bomb shelter. Imagine me stepping up and out cautiously, feeling a bit leery, eyes squinting against the brightness of daylight.
Today, I can happily report that I bought old favorites like Brussels sprouts and Swiss chard and more while grocery shopping. I intend to make the foods I like and, if my children won’t eat them, I’ll take the leftovers to work. I also enlisted some help and cleaned a bunch of junk out of the garage. For the first time in nearly a decade, I can actually park my car in it!
In other words, I’ve successfully taken another leap or two in relaxing into this new position of President and CEO of my own life.
I don’t know whether I’ve met Mister Right or not yet, but I think there’s one way I’ll know for sure if I do…he’ll ring me up and say, “How about I come over this afternoon and help you around the house and, after that, we can clean up and get some dinner.”
I know it sounds so ridiculously silly, but hear me out: As a single, stressed-out, working mother, my mind is nearly constantly occupied with a running list of to-dos, feeling completely overwhelmed at the sheer impossibility of accomplishing them all, and trying not to break down in tears of frustration or failure. And when I’m dating, I’m thinking that I can either spend time with my beau on the weekend or accomplish long-overdue tasks around the house. It would be nice to do both, but I can’t help but feel I’m sacrificing or giving less effort and attention than I ought to on both fronts.
I can’t imagine any guy thinking this dreamy scenario sounds appealing. In fact, it’s been suggested to me that I need to “let go.” But household maintenance is a reality — “letting go” adds up in ways that, over time, can lead to decline in property value. And, while I’m not abnormally anal about my housekeeping (any longer), I believe that keeping a warm, comfortable and somewhat clean home is one of the important ways I take care of my family. (I do — now that I’ve got a reasonable salary — intend to hire some help in this regard, so that it takes less of my time and psychic energy.)
Just hearing a willingness to partner, to work side-by-side, would demonstrate that a man has listened to me, knows what causes me stress and wants to help ease that stress (because I can’t very well allow him to make such valiant efforts to ease the stress I might feel at my job).
But mostly, a simple demonstration of willingness to pitch in around the house is likely to say — loudly — that this is the sort of fella that might make a good husband.
I feel friggin’ awesome! I love life! Yet it would be a total crock if I were to try and convince anyone that I weren’t still healing from my failed relationship. For example, I occasionally catch myself behaving in ways that suggest I’m reacting — seeking qualities that are opposite those of my ex or placing inordinate emphasis on things that might otherwise not draw my focus.
By this age, I’d say the same about the men I’ve met. Most are in some stage of healing or another…which got me thinking: I’ve vowed that I won’t treat a man nor relationship as a project. I’ve vowed to be firm, direct and absolutely myself. I’ve vowed to be clear about my high expectations. And I’m not going to treat any man with kid gloves. So how do I maintain the balance between treating another with care vs. being careful?
And that’s when I realized that it’s all in the delivery. I can be conscious and kind, and still communicate what I want and need. Because there’s a difference between acknowledging that we may still be healing and treating each other as fragile, inferior beings.
There are three things I adore about the guy I’m seeing:
Yet we are not immune to relationship hiccups. As two people get to know one another, there are always going to be moments when feelings are hurt or boundaries challenged.
We had our first such issue several days ago: I cried; he cried. Later he apologized via voicemail (I didn’t answer his calls) and text.
I texted back: “I hope you know a good florist.”
Sure enough, I arrived home to fresh flowers within 48 hours.
A few days later, we’d talked it over, snuggled a bit, made up and were ready to laugh about things. I teased, “It all goes downhill from here, you know. A couple of years down the road, it’s ‘I hope you know a good jeweler.'”
“Damn! And then a few years after that, I suppose it’s ‘I hope you know a good Audi dealer,'” he played along.
“I like the way you think!” I said. And we giggled together.
There will undoubtedly be more difficult discussions and challenging times ahead, but the way we handled this hiccup gives me hope that we can navigate even the bigger ones.
A few weeks ago…
One of the common relationship aphorisms that sticks in my mind is “water seeks its own level.” The counselor my ex and I went to years ago, in fact, said this to us. And, for reasons I shall soon share, it has come to mind again…
I’ve been seeing the gentleman once accused of aggravated assault (sounds kind of badass, doesn’t it?!). Very early in our getting to know each other, he confessed to me just about everything you can imagine a person unloading: a troubled childhood, severed ties with family, medical history and more. He still sees a therapist to work through the whole arrest ordeal. As I wrote earlier, he doesn’t look so good on paper.
And yet there’s something about him… I know, you’re groaning. And you should be. The last thing I need is a project.
We were chatting the one night (just before he told me everything) and I recall teasing, “You don’t scare me at all! …but I’m pretty sure I scare the living hell out of you!”
Now I think it’s fair to say that I’m a little scared.
So I’m wondering if the roots of my attraction are reflected in shared experience: I’ve written about how the failing of my most significant relationship shattered my self-esteem. What I’ve yet to share is a story that I guess it never dawned on me that I’d need to write about here. But now I do.
More than three years ago, I went through a crisis in my family — the very family I helped to create. I was emotionally traumatized. When I think about it, the image I see of myself during that time is me in bed, nearly catatonic and drooling, unable to get up, unclean and unable to go to work.
Memory is a liar. In fact, in the midst of the worst of it, I rose each day, showered, dressed and went to work. I obliquely mentioned to co-workers that I was going through a stressful time with a family crisis, my head was cloudy and I apologized for any areas in which my incapacity caused them to overcompensate during this couple of weeks. (I suppose it needn’t be said that this was a precursor to the split, another manifestation of the symptoms and issues of all that was wrong in my marriage.)
As I slowly “recovered,” I didn’t realize the entirety of the damage to my psyche. I may have believed that I was functioning at full capacity just weeks later, yet external feedback (processed and accepted more deeply after the fact) suggests otherwise. Thus, nearly six months later, I found myself being treated for depression. Within 48 hours of taking a serotonin enhancer, I was a completely different person — a person more like the self I knew.
Still, something in my brain seemed to have changed. My ability to concentrate or focus never really seemed to return to 100%. In other words, the emotional trauma had done sustained damage. For awhile, I thought it was the depression, allergies, hormones or any number of things that can cloud one’s thinking. I’ve since read up on it and, with no formal training or diagnosis, believe that I experienced some amount of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
I worked with my usual tools to alleviate the symptoms — applied kinesiology (AK), yoga, meditation, organic diet,cognitive therapy, and Holosynch, a meditation soundtrack that puts the brain into a deeply relaxed state. I quit a stressful job. I’ve been selective about the energy in my environment (people, places and media).
Still, having done this work, I find myself drawn to someone still very much in the midst of healing himself.
So I wonder what this attraction says about me:
Over the past two years or more, I cannot tell you how many times I heard, “Sounds like we were married to the same man!” I found women at work, women at the salon, and friends I’ve known for years who all expressed the same sentiment.
I guess what it comes down to is that there are a finite number of reasons that relationships don’t work out. And, as it happens, I’ve found several women who share a story not entirely unlike mine. Several, it seemed, had some sort of midlife crisis and then…
In one particular example, a high-end builder with an exclusive clientele just decided he didn’t want to do that sort of thing anymore. After bumbling about for a few years, taking some classes and trying to figure out what he wanted to do when he grew up, he ended up in retail. Because he was more mature than the high-schoolers reporting to him and had a bit of know-how, he was quickly promoted to supervisor. Cheers to the family dental plan…and a couple of hundred dollars a week in income! Sure, it was a contribution, but nothing like supporting a family with the income to which they’d become accustomed.
His wife was a trooper throughout this transition, but finally opened herself to the possibility that she didn’t have to be responsible for him financially or emotionally or otherwise. He had become another child to a woman weary of parenting.
Another woman’s husband spent much of his time lying about on the sofa watching the television when he was meant to be looking for a job. He racked up credit card debt and lied about money issues.
Here’s where the relationship rubber hits the road. We’re here to love and support one another in ways, as long as we agree to what those ways are. (Most, but not all of us, know what we’re getting into before we marry.) We’re not here to parent our spouses or support behaviors that don’t nurture us or our commitments. We’re not on this Earth for another lesson in co-dependence.
Long (years) after I’d asked my wasband to go back to work, he was still protesting that “we’d agreed that he would stay home with the children.” In truth, we’d “agreed” because he’d lost his job and it seemed like our best option at the time. Like a toddler on the verge of a decade-long tantrum, he’d dug in his heels and was not about to budge from his position. He changed his internal script to, “I gave up my career to be home with my children.” And he seemed to believe it!
Relationships must change and evolve. They require communication. Agreements made must often be renegotiated. And it takes two committed adults to embark on that sort of work.
First dates sometimes feel an awful lot like interviews. I’ve recounted the inevitable sharing of divorce stories amongst those of us who find ourselves back on the market, and even single girlfriends in their twenties talk about the pressure to have a good answer to, “why is a great woman like you still available?” (For the record, I have not had to answer that one…yet.) One begins to wonder if the answers to such questions and other details offered are catalogued by our dates as some sort of dating résumé.
The dating résumé is about far more than the length and / or quality of past romantic relationships; it’s also likely to include (in no particular order):
I like to think that my dating résumé looks fairly respectable: I was in a long-term stable relationship, during which I birthed two amazing children (who no longer require such intolerably high maintenance as might scare a decent fellow away); I earn all right; I own a home (except for the bit the bank owns, which is most of it); I’m usually fiscally responsible (I mean, aside from these past several months)… But, in truth, all this is because I am generally unwilling to casually disclose the real dirt, the skeletons hiding in my closet, that might make me look less than glowing. Best foot forward, as they say…right?
So…I’ve been out with aggravated assault a few times (a moniker that belies his maturity and gentle nature and could, in fact, be described as ironic). He’s forthrightly poured out probably every fault, failing and foible. Even some of his selling points — never married, no children, successful in a job that kept him moving every few years — are of dubious distinction. While I won’t dish about the ungodly long list of damning details, I finally remarked a few days ago, “You don’t look so good on paper.”
To his credit (or perhaps the credit is due his meds), he laughed and agreed. Then, in a move of cunning emotional jujitsu, he came up with even more reasons why I might find him un-datable. And all I can say is “Man, that reverse psychology shit works!” My brain immediately went to, “Oh, well if that’s all, it can’t be so bad, can it?”
Not knowing the details, you might be thinking, “Lord, woman, how desperate are you?!”
Or, like my mother, you may advise, “Well, don’t rule him out…yet.”
What does your dating résumé say?
I’m happier now than I was while in a doomed relationship.
Yet I often ponder this question of my standard of living. Is it better? No, though I suppose I thought it would be. I thought there would be some savings associated with not having to support another adult — perhaps some groceries, gas, insurance or utilities. And I thought I’d be getting a bit more in the way of support for our children.
My resources are tight. My time is full, from the time I wake until I crash each night. I entertain less often. I enjoy cooking less now that it’s a scramble to put dinner on the table each evening. I find less time to be active and exercise, and to connect with friends and family. All things that are important to me.
And, yet, with two precious children sharing discoveries each day and a deep sense of purpose, I find this moment in my life rich and full and hopeful.
Those other things that matter? Well…they’ll be resurrected in time.
If you look back to when I first began writing this blog, there was a lot of purging and a lot of stuff about the failure of my relationship. It must have been cathartic, because it’s rare that the anger, resentment or blame flares up anymore. In fact, while I’ll confess to anyone that I still care for my ex (he is, after all, the father of my children), I’m detached about it. I would never go back to our relationship or him. When I dropped off the children the other day, he hugged me and told me that he loves me very, very much…and the only thought that came to mind was “have you been drinking?”
Amidst the un-flings and failed attempts to get laid or find romance these past months, I’ve largely healed my heart and re-set my standards. Perhaps it sounds odd that I even needed to re-set my standards…and, yet, I clearly once accepted so little for myself that they were due a bit of re-calibration. And to do so, my self-esteem needed an overhaul. Leaving a stressful job, spending lots of quality time with family and friends, yoga, meditation and a healthy diet have worked wonders. In many ways, I’m restored with a much more solid sense of self. And, while I’m feeling great, I plan to keep up positive momentum on that front.
I’m also getting better at catching myself when I fall into old patterns of behavior. I’ve noticed and curbed impulses to use behaviors associated with masculine energy in relationships with men — if he’s not providing it, I’m not interested. And I’ve dialed back my need to mother people who are (technically) no longer children. I’m grateful to have been able to take the time to glean the lessons of my failed relationship and grow from them. While dysfunctional behaviors that I’m not yet aware of are likely to reveal themselves as I explore new relationships, I’m going to be gentle with myself and my “other,” and I’m going to be a lot better at forgiving myself when I make mistakes. These are joyful discoveries for me — they bring me closer to realization of the woman I want to be.
Perhaps best of all are the great qualities I feel expanding — courage, patience, deservingness, trust, allowance and good humor seem to be blossoming within me. My “vibe” is more consistently positive than ever before.
These are good days. I am enjoying among the best times ever with my children (our recent vacation was amazing — they’ve just reached an entirely new level of fun, interest and expression), and I’m putting into practice so many of the relationship tools I’ve learned in the past several months — even some of those tips that involve relating with men. While I’m not about to report anything, I couldn’t be more thrilled with the way things are going!
the life and loves of Alisa B 