Tag: relationships

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.

“my” night

Sunday night was always “my” night, the one night a week that I claimed for myself, the one night that, when married, I was not the one to tuck the children in to bed, the night I controlled the remote. A typical Sunday-evening routine might include a few self-pampering activities, such as a clay mask, foot soak and pedicure.

Some very cheesy, melodramatic television selections were often a part of the evening, too. Nearly always, some contrived, yet touching moment would bring me to tears. And that was the idea. I needed to cry. I had to dissipate the stress of Monday in advance of its arrival.

I find I no longer need this routine. I still prefer a quiet Sunday evening at home to the alternatives and, now that The Good Wife has moved to Sunday time slot, I still enjoy watching a little (good) television, as well. But I no longer need the tears, the release. Sure, Monday mornings can be stressful. When you’re a single parent, every morning can be stressful. Revise that, when you’re a parent — even if there are two of you and you’re loving and supportive of each other — mornings can be stressful.

So after I put away this laptop, I’ll get out my official work laptop, take a look at what’s coming at me tomorrow, and do my best to prepare…without the tears. I might even squeeze in a pedicure.

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…

end game

I know I’ve touched on this theme before:  How does a woman know that the guy who’s doing it for her now is the guy who’s going to do it for her in forty years?

There’s a part of me that goes:  Duh. She can’t. She can’t possibly know. None of us know. We can’t know the future!

And then there’s another part of me that goes:  This whole expectation that one person is going to meet our needs now and also forty years from now is ridiculous and arcane.

Finally, there’s the part of me who wants that…to love a man now and love him forty years hence, and for him to do the same.

If it sounds like there are a lot of voices in my head…well, so be it.

But like most stubborn broads, I want what I want what I want. And I’ve seen guys who are attractive and good fathers and good providers and are smart and healthy and good conversationalists. (Of course they are not perfect. No one is.) And I’ve seen elderly couples holding hands while walking on the beach. Maybe I’ve only seen that in television commercials, but so what? It’s okay if some marketing is effective — that gives me hope on both a personal and professional level.

As I’ve also mentioned before, I’m totally digging my man. I’m enjoying every minute.

I can’t see the future. I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know whether he will be a good husband or co-homeowner or parent, much less whether he’d be a good husband at eighty. I know he’s a good and loving man. And, for now, that’s enough.

 

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!

best girlfriend ever

I am the self-proclaimed Best. Girlfriend. Ever.

I mean that.

Here’s why:  My guy can give me his lovin’ on the weekends and focus on his work during the week. I’m not some needy girl who needs constant attention. I gots plenty to keep me busy. I’ve told him as much.

For those of you who’ve been following, I work full-time and parent nearly full-time. So it’s no joke that it’s tough to find time to connect during the week. But I daresay some guys would see this as a bonus.

Not yet sure whether my guy appreciates where I’m coming from on this one. Give him time. He’ll come around to seeing things from my perspective.

Best. Girlfriend. Ever.