{"id":888,"date":"2006-10-24T17:01:47","date_gmt":"2006-10-24T21:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patg.com\/Divorce\/comfort-dating.htm"},"modified":"2016-05-02T09:08:10","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T13:08:10","slug":"comfort-dating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/comfort-dating.htm","title":{"rendered":"Comfort Dating"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Newly divorced, you are raw and bleeding. You don&#8217;t understand what&#8217;s happening to you. You don&#8217;t have total control over your emotions. You aren&#8217;t ready to enter into a healthy, fulfilling, committed, relationship. You don&#8217;t know this because your judgement is cloudy and you are extremely needy.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nYou need someone to validate your worthiness as a lover, as a friend, as a companion. In the beginning, that need is so great that anyone (almost) can do the job. Common sense takes a back seat to soothing the pain by any means available. A kind word becomes a liferaft in a sea of turbulent emotions. You cling too tightly to any person who shows compassion.<\/p>\n<p>Or, you push away those people who would come closer because you never plan to go through that pain again. You&#8217;re building a wall around your heart that no one dares to scale. It&#8217;s a time of confusion, and that&#8217;s to be expected. It&#8217;s not the time to think about long term commitment.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what Barb said: <i>&#8220;Looking back now I wonder what ever attracted me to Steve. He was the opposite of every man I&#8217;d ever dated, we had no common interests, no friends we shared, nothing. Yet for the first six months after my divorce, I was virtually obsessed with him. Thank heavens he wasn&#8217;t as obsessed with me! Once I got my head on straight, I was able to see that we were a couple without a future and got out without causing too much pain to either of us. I guess I just needed someone to hold me and Steve was there. The most amazing part is that I think I would have married him had he asked! Disaster!&#8221; <\/i><\/p>\n<p>Barb was lucky. She used her relationship with Steve for short term comfort when she needed it the most. She didn&#8217;t let the relationship continue once she understood the attraction was based on her short term emotional needs and shouldn&#8217;t be the basis for a long term commitment.<\/p>\n<p>Some people aren&#8217;t so fortunate. They &#8220;fall in love&#8221; with the first person who gives them validation and comfort, and rush into a second or third marriage. It&#8217;s no surprise when the marriage ends after a few years or even months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Newly divorced, you are raw and bleeding. You don&#8217;t understand what&#8217;s happening to you. You don&#8217;t have total control over your emotions. You aren&#8217;t ready to enter into a healthy, fulfilling, committed, relationship. You don&#8217;t know this because your judgement is cloudy and you are extremely needy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=888"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3008,"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888\/revisions\/3008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}