For anyone who has been married a long time, getting back into dating mode once the divorce is legally over can be extremely confusing. Dating when you’re young and relatively “unscarred” by life’s little disasters is much easier than dating when you’re healing from the destruction of divorce.
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Author: Pat Gaudette
Making The Call
One of the things about being married for a number of years and then finding ourselves once again in the dating world is that it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish between the rules that have changed while we’ve been away from the game and the rules that remain the same.
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Divorced And Ready To Date?
Dating is difficult. It can be fun, it can be exciting, it can make you feel good about yourself. Dating can also be confusing and even deadly. It’s particularly intimidating when you’re the left behind spouse, the discarded husband or wife.
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“Almost Divorced” And Dating
Learning to date again, and taking time to make the right choices, is all part of surviving divorce. Dating while you’re separated and waiting for the legalities to be over is not the time to seek commitment with someone else.
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Rebound Relationships
Taking any relationship slow and easy is the best approach. It’s not always easy as each person may be in a different stage of emotional growth or turmoil and their needs are different. One may be ready for a more intensive relationship or commitment, while the other person may only need someone to give them a hug and a kind word.
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Dating Too Soon After Divorce
For the person who did not want their marriage to end, or who did everything in their power to keep the marriage together but ultimately ended up divorced, there are a mountain of emotions that must be worked through.
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Post Divorce Ex Contact
She asked for advice regarding a situation that surfaced between her and the man she was dating. She is divorced and on civil terms with her ex. An upcoming trip with her children that also included her ex was causing jealousy with the new man in her life.
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Divorced With Baggage
Are you angry about the way your marriage ended? Does that anger show up in the conversations you have with people you meet, conversations that eventually turn to your divorce and a rehashing of the whys and what-went-wrongs? Do you even realize how much time you spend talking about the bad deal you got, or how much you wish your husband or wife would come back to you?
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Comfort Dating
Newly divorced, you are raw and bleeding. You don’t understand what’s happening to you. You don’t have total control over your emotions. You aren’t ready to enter into a healthy, fulfilling, committed, relationship. You don’t know this because your judgement is cloudy and you are extremely needy.
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Transition Love?
For the person who is newly divorced, meeting a “soul mate” and falling in love quickly is not unusual. It is best to stay out of serious relationships until we’ve healed from the divorce, but it’s not always easy to do.
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The Divorced Dating Game
One of the scariest parts of being divorced is getting back into the dating scene. How the heck do you meet people? People who are decent? People you can trust? People who won’t think you’re a loser because you’ve had a marriage fail? Or two?
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The Significance Of Rings
From one of my articles on dating: “Looking single helps. I was speaking to a group of business people and asked them to hold up their hands if they were single and available. The number of raised hands surprised everyone in the room. I then told them to remove every ring off their left hand if they were serious about being identified as a single. Most people look immediately at the ring finger and if a ring looks even remotely like a wedding set or a band, they assume the person is married. If you don’t want to miss a dating opportunity, dump the rings!”
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Moving On After 19 Years
She wanted to know how she could move on after her 19-year marriage ended when her husband left to be with someone from his past. The marriage hadn’t been a good one for quite a few years but it took her a long time to decide that she’d rather be out of it than deal with all of its dysfunction. What she was having trouble with was moving past the memories.
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How Quickly Time Goes By
What was happening in your life a year ago? Were you happily married? Were you contemplating divorce? Were you separated but not yet divorced?
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Better To Have Loved And Lost?
Has someone ever said to you “Oh, but it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” expecting that to put a positive spin on your divorce? In other words, maybe you’ve lost love but that’s not as bad as never having been loved. No doubt they mean well, but it’s a fairly clueless comment to make to someone whose marriage is ending.
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It’s Okay To Feel Blue
Logically, I know that the holidays are no different than the rest of the year and if you’re having a bad year it probably won’t get any better just because everything you see and hear suggests this time of year is just naturally full of warm and fuzzy feelings. Emotionally, though, I really want to believe that something magical will take place at this time of year to make those warm and fuzzy feelings a reality.
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A Moment In Time
When I remarried, I moved into my husband’s home. My home, on the scruffy side and in need of much repair, sat vacant after our marriage. My husband and I thought it might make a nifty place for visiting friends and relatives to stay but it didn’t work out that way.
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The Right Friends At Divorce
When divorce ends your marriage, you may believe your situation is unique and unprecedented. For you it is, but millions of people are dealing with and surviving divorce every day and you can, too.
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When Our Little Worlds Fall Apart
A little over 20 years ago I was feeling sorry for myself. I was divorced and my new relationship was having a few problems, my job wasn’t going as well as it could, and minor irritations were getting blown out of proportion. I remember thinking that things couldn’t get any worse.
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The Fear Factor
If you are facing divorce you are probably also facing the “fear factor.” Fear of the unknown. Fear of failure. Fear of being alone.
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Learning To Love Yourself
It’s a wonderful thing to be in love with another person. Before your marriage fell apart you knew what it was to be in love and loved by someone else, didn’t you?
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Dump The Desperation
Can’t convince them to change their ways? Desperation definitely won’t help your cause. When your marriage splits into thousands of fragments, none of which you can put back together, desperation becomes a way of life.
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You WILL Survive!
Which stage of divorce are you presently in? Considering divorce but not sure if it’s the right decision? An unwilling participant, your spouse having made the decision? Mired in the midst of legalities? Embroiled in child support and custody issues? Trying to recreate a life for yourself?
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You’re Divorced… Now What?
Do you remember how you dreaded coming home because you had to face her? Listen to the gripes, the complaints, the accusations? Remember when he’d walk in the door and all you could think of doing was trying to hide? Remember the bad times?
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Fear From A Woman’s Perspective
There’s no doubt that fear plays a major role in whether we leave a relationship or whether we stay when we should go. I’ll try to touch on some of the fears women might face when tryng to make the proper decision regarding divorce. Being a woman, I cannot remotely try to explain how a man feels when faced with divorce, and I’m not going to attempt to present the male side of divorce.
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More Holiday Blues
At the holidays more than any other time of the year we are supposed to feel particularly warm and fuzzy toward our family and friends. It’s a nice goal but the holidays are dreadful for people involved in unhappy relationships. I just put a lot of different reasons for dreading the holidays into the phrase “unhappy relationships.” Being alone because of divorce isn’t the only reason you might dread the holidays.
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Validating Your Worth
Divorce can make us feel as though we are missing a major part of ourselves… the part that validates our worth… the part that gives us a reason for being. If this person — the center of our entire universe — feels we aren’t worth “keeping,” if this person to whom we have devoted our life is dumping us by the roadside like a bag of garbage, why would anyone else believe we would have value? Most of all, how can we possibly believe ourselves to have value? How can we feel good about ourself?
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Holiday Blues
For anyone who is going through a divorce, the holiday season ranks right up there with root canals as a fun time. And why shouldn’t it? It’s a time when families get together and share all the warmth and love they’ve stored up all year long for each other.
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Count Your Blessings
When things are going badly in our lives it’s easy to develop tunnel vision with a focus on the negative aspects of the life we have. I’ve found that adversity can be a powerful stimulant for positive change, even if I wasn’t looking for changes at the time.
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People Will Talk. So What?
As much as I hate to join with the rest of the world in discussion about Princess Diana and her life, there is no divorce in recent times that was in the spotlight than hers. Every step, every turn, every breath came under minute scrutiny and then was put into the media for public consumption.
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Everlasting Love (and Other Fiction)
It was the grandest wedding of all! And so it has been through the years, the two of you, side-by-side, the perfect couple, sharing all of life’s good times — and bad — as only two people in love can do! Not!
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Healing And Moving On
He wrote requesting information about alienation of affection lawsuits. That’s not what he called it but that’s what he was looking for because he wanted to take his wife’s lover to court for breaking up his marriage.
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Divorce Is Not Easy
I’ve been divorced twice. The first time, after quite a lengthy marriage, my personal midlife crisis began and I decided there had to be more in this life than my marriage and my husband were capable of providing. My husband was not happy I was leaving. Not because he loved me, but because I disrupted a routine he had grown comfortable with.
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The Power That Comes From Being Alone
Some people are so afraid of being alone that they would rather stay in a bad marriage or they will rush into a new relationship to avoid being alone. And yet, you can be more alone in a bad marriage than you’ll ever be by yourself.
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Emotional Baggage
Picture this: You’re watching a suspenseful movie… the nice (but painfully naive) young man hears a sound at the door, gets up, and against his better judgment, and certainly with no encouragement from us, goes over to the door and asks “Who’s there?”
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Why Married Friends Don’t Call
Divorce intimidates people. You learn just how much when you’re dealing with your own divorce and some of your friends stop calling “just to talk” and they are always too busy to get together.
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At This Moment, You Are HERE
Most major shopping malls have locator maps at various spots, a red “X” with an arrow pointing to it and the words “You Are Here” so that you can see how close or how far you are to the place you really want to be. Similar maps can be found at highway rest stops to show travelers where they’ve been and the distance and roads to their destinations.
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No Need For Revenge
When I ran into a husband and wife who knew my ex and I during the last year of our marriage, during the time when it was coming apart, she asked if my recent successes gave me a sense of revenge for that marriage ending the way it did.
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Life’s Difficult Lessons
One of the most difficult lessons to learn and to thoroughly understand is that we cannot make another adult do anything they don’t want to do.
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Friends Get Hurt, Too
Separation and divorce doesn’t just cause stress and trauma to the immediate parties — the husband, the wife, and the children. It can be devastating to other family members and it can cut a wide path through the emotions of those people who are close friends with the couple.
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Are You Nobody Without Love?
It’s a wonderful thing to be in love with another person and to have them return that love. It’s a comfortable place to be, knowing that no matter how badly things go wrong, there is one other person who will be there to offer words of comfort, who will walk by your side for support.
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Dumb Ideas
“It wasn’t much of a honeymoon for Rick Rockwell and Darva Conger: TV’s multimillionaire groom says they didn’t consummate their marriage and it’s not likely to last.”—Associated Press
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Divorce Lessons
Divorce changes your life forever. It teaches you things about yourself that you would never have known otherwise.
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Selective Memories
What is your attitude (or mood) when you talk about your marriage? Are you negative, angry, resentful? Do you blame your ex or almost ex-spouse for the marriage failing? Do you get angry if friends or family show signs of forgiveness toward your ex?
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S.A.D. For The Holidays
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that divorce and holidays are a painful combination, but perhaps there’s more involved in what you’re feeling than just the impact of an unhappy marriage or a divorce in progress.
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You’re Divorced. Now What?
The effects of being married and subsequently divorced last a lifetime. What can you expect as a result of being divorced?
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Facing Your Fear
Happily for all of us the world did not end when the 20th century ended and the 21st century began. I admit I breathed a heavy sigh of relief because I was one of those people who thought “something” would happen at least to the technology sector but I didn’t know to what severity or for how long. Besides which I’m a natural born worrier.
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Compromises In Marriage
Life is about compromises. In a successful marriage each person will be required at various times to compromise on issues that are important to them as well as numerous others that are fairly insignificant.
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Don’t Take It Personally
When Beth’s husband started working late and spending way too much time with a female co-worker Beth joined a health club and stepped up her attempts to lose ten pounds.
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When You Should Take It Personally
When your spouse wants a divorce it can be devastating. It’s very easy to wonder what you could have done or should have done to keep him or her from leaving. It’s all too easy to take their actions personally thinking that the reason they’re leaving is because of something you’ve done. And, in some cases, that’s exactly why they’re giving up on the marriage.
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