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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\nThe search for validation of our self-worth, of our attractiveness, can lead us to believe that we’re in love long before we’re ready to be in love again. No matter how much we think we understand our own needs, we probably don’t. At least not until we’ve made mistakes and hopefully learned from them.<\/p>\n
Along the way, as we fumble through the unfamiliar world of singles, we’re going to hurt ourselves and people who happen to be in our path. It can’t be helped.<\/p>\n
When we’re dating, we gravitate to our comfort zones. We are all the most comfortable with situations we best understand, even if they aren’t the happiest situations.<\/p>\n
A person who grows up with an alcoholic home has a tendency to be most comfortable living with an alcoholic. A person raised in a home with little or no expressions of love shown, won’t feel comfortable around people who are expressive about their emotions. A person abused as a child may continue the cycle and become the abuser as an adult.<\/p>\n
It’s easy to say “don’t date an alcoholic” but someone who has grown up with an alcoholic parent, or who has had an alcoholic spouse, is in their “comfort zone” around an alcoholic. To move from one comfort zone to another requires recognizing the harmful habit or emotional need and then changing it.<\/p>\n
We may not be able to see what’s holding us back and professional counseling may help get us on the right course toward positive change.<\/p>\n
Why does a person we’ve just met seem so “right”? Have we met our “soul mate” or are we responding to an emotion that will eventually put us back into divorce court, or another co-dependent relationship?<\/p>\n
We can all use a little “me work” after divorce to repair the emotional damage done and to redefine what makes us truly happy. Meeting new people and dating is fine when you’re ready but getting involved in a serious relationship before the “me work” is complete is not a good idea.<\/p>\n
If you’re newly divorced and you haven’t finished the “me work,” it’s probably not so much “true love” as it is Transition Love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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.<\/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\/896"}],"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=896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3016,"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions\/3016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}