Being Lonely is Being Strong

Ever notice that if you try to avoid something long enough, it all comes home to roost? Well, that’s me and men. I’ve been on my own for four years without any relationship of consequence. I’m surrounded by other divorcees who have also gone through a long period of time before they are able to get back out on the playing field. Usually, they are women.

I often wonder if guys take a relationship hiatus after big breakups. Most of the guys in my circles seem to leap-frog from one relationship to another, while the women take extended breaks. Many older women who divorce tell me that they will never remarry.  It’s just something I noticed in this latest phase of my life.

I was sharing with a friend that it’s much easier to connect with Joe Shmoe who could care less about me, than it is to sit at home being strong and lonely while waiting to meet Mr. Right. If I threw a stone I could hit dozens of single girlfriends looking for a “decent” guy. I know, I know…there are various debates about this exact issue. I had to dispel the myth that I was looking for Mr. Perfect the other day.

I don’t believe in Mr. Perfect. I do believe in Mr. Perfect for Me! I also believe that sometimes I just need to sit home and be lonely, even if that means my night ends in tears. It’s not a fun place to be, but it allows me to see the rarely viewed borders of my soul. Sometimes having the wrong man in your life can prevent you from seeing who you are and realizing your dreams. I think of it as hitting relationship bottom.

We all hear about the people who are afraid to be alone. They are always in a relationship, because being in one (even an unhealthy one) is more comfortable that being single. Being single definitely has its advantages, just like being in a relationship.  The trick for me, much like other areas of my life, is realizing that I am where I am supposed to be. I wasn’t supposed to be in a relationship over the last four years. I was healing my heart and finding my soul.

Now, I’m in a place where I can look at myself, my flaws, my needs and what I have to offer in a healthy way. I know what I’ll stand for and what is unacceptable. I’m still a total goofball when it comes to men, but I’m learning.  Being lonely isn’t the end of the world. It doesn’t feel very good, but I suppose it will help me be really grateful for the companionship when the right man comes along.

I recently realized that it’s actually harder to stay at home being lonely, than it is to go out and meet a man who won’t value my worth. I’m proud of myself for taking a stand for me, for accepting that I am a beautiful, intelligent, powerful and loving woman who deserves an amazing partner. I might slip up here and there, but for now I am cool with being alone. That is not to say that I want to be alone, it’s just that until Mr. Perfect for Me materializes I’ll find fun and exciting ways to invest in my growth.

Dropping Off My Heart

It’s D-Day. For me that’s drop off day. The day I drive my daughter to the airport so she can go spend five weeks with her father. FIVE WEEKS! It seems to be an impossible length of time. She’s spent the last year with me and now she’ll be away for five weeks. Some people think this must be the coolest thing that could ever happen to a single parent. All the sudden you get weeks of free time to do whatever you want! Score! Right?

Not quite so. There are benefits to some time off. I will get a chance to recharge my batteries and I’ll be able to do things I might not try if she were here. The double edged sword of it all, is that dropping her off is like dropping off my heart. When she leaves the world dims. Things just don’t seem right anymore. It’s takes an extra effort just to get out of bed, or to even care about the things that previously excited me.

Do I go through a mini state of depression? Absolutely. Do I cry? Hell yes! I do my best to send her off happily because she deserves this time with her dad. It’s been hard enough for her not to have him around. She needs to know that he loves her and to be the center of someone else’s world for a change. I know that I can’t be her everything, nor should I be. I do the best that I can to fill in for all of her needs in his day to day absence. It’s NEVER enough.

My kid is like any other child. She wants us to get back together and live as one happy family. It’s not going to happen. The best I can offer her is to be supportive of  her getting the love she needs from her dad. When she goes away I practice getting the love I need for myself. That means taking good care of me – exercising, eating right, resting, meditating and playing. It’s an effort, because right now all I want to do is curl up in the corner and cry.

This is my third year dropping off my heart. It hasn’t gotten any easier. Each year I’ve wished there would be someone to catch me after she happily skips away with her father, and I begin my fall. Instead I drive alone on the airport roads to my exit, hoping the tears don’t get so bad that I need to pull over.

I drive home or wherever I’m going and do my best to craft the appropriate responses to people’s inquiries. I don’t think they want to hear how deeply my heart is broken.  They definitely don’t want to see the raw wound that’s ravaging my heart. I don’t even want to see it! I start to pick up the pieces. I know and I’m grateful that this is temporary heartbreak, that my little girl will come home. The fatalistic side of me wonders what could happen while she’s gone, but I quickly replace that with the image of her running back into my arms five weeks from today!

I realize I’m not in control. I can’t control anything that happens to her while she’s away. I can only control how I respond to it. It’s the lesson I work to teach her every day, but it’s much harder to apply now. Who’s going to kiss her boo boos, is her dad going to pick up on her emotional nuances, what will he do to manage her homesickness, how will he reassure her when she thinks that she’s not enough and how will I cope when she calls crying – as she always does.

I don’t have all the answers. I have a lot of tears, some shed and some waiting in the wings. I’m going to breathe, get ready and take her to see her dad. I’ll be a grown up about it and I’ll handle all the questions that come up on the long ride to the airport. I’ve already handled most of the tough ones like, “What if I don’t know what daddy looks like?” There goes another crack in my heart. I guess when you’re just six and haven’t seen your dad for a year, that’s a legitimate concern. I promised her that I’d help her find her daddy and I promised myself that I wouldn’t cry until she’s out of sight.

Time to see what I’m really made of.

Putting Our Kids First

I work hard not to say anything negative about my ex-husband. I believe that if I even think negative thoughts about him a few things will happen:

1. My thoughts will turn into energy, which may turn into negative actions.
2. My daughter will somehow pick up on this energy and it will hurt her (My daughter deserves to believe that the sun shines out of both of her parents behinds.)
3. Putting any energy into negative thoughts about him (or anyone else), limits my ability to direct my energy into positive thoughts which may then turn into positive actions.

One of the saddest things I’ve seen is when parents engage in bashing each other.  It’s particularly tough when the children are exposed to it. Our kids want to feel safe and secure. They want to know that above everything else we love them and that we will always be there for them. They also love us and never want to hear anyone say bad things about us.  For that reason it pains me when I see parents who have difficulty putting their kids first.

I know I’m not the first to say it, nor will I be the last. When we bad mouth each other it is a lose/lose situation. My daughter deserves to have a life free from the drama of my failed marriage and subsequent divorce. Life is rough enough without adding a mess of pain, insecurity and fear into her heart. It doesn’t matter how I feel about my ex, it matters how she feels about him. As long as I have my way, I will support her in believing that she has the best father in the entire world.

Her happiness and security are what’s important and in that respect, it’s not about me.

Girlfriend’s Guide to Dating After Divorce – Movie Style! (Special Edition)

Contrary to this post title…I don’t have one (a guide to dating after divorce). I could use one. Hell, I could use several!!! A friend and I went to see the movie Bridesmaids. A number of times she jabbed me with her elbow to illustrate that similar to Kristin Wiig’s character (Annie), I was guilty of tolerating (sometimes even encouraging) undesirable behavior from men in the past.  I say the past because as I am writing this, I get to acknowledge it and hopefully take corrective action.

My life is a compilation of movie references, especially in this area of my life.  So as not to spoil these films, I will reference but not give away plot points. If you really wanna know, check out the movies – I think they’re all worth a Friday night watch.

I guess In order to make sense of this I’ve got to take you back, way back. In my formative hormonal teenage years there was only one guy I was head over everything in love with. I never told him and always wondered. It’s like the scene in Something Borrowed where Rachel, played by Ginnifer Goodwin, flashes back to a moment between her and Dex, played by Colin Egglesfield. The moment illuminates the truth behind their connection, relationship and Rachel’s part in determining her future.

In my life it looked like one of our regular late night phone calls, where my friend said, “If I asked you out, what would you say?” My answer was the one that has echoed in my ears for over two decades. My answer, a blatant lie told by a terrified and heartsick teenager, “I would say no because I wouldn’t want to ruin our friendship.” OOOhhhhh! The lie came out so quickly and easily. I couldn’t imagine he’d want to date me and I was too scared to say, “Of course I’d say yes. I’ve loved you forever!!!!”

Life happens as it is supposed to. There are innumerable benefits in the fact that we never got together, but he was the one my heart wanted. My refusal to welcome love and happiness has played a large role in my dating life since those formative days. I went through several years of He’s Just Not That Into You where I was the girl who couldn’t figure out that basic truth. Then I got to face the harsh truth of My Best Friend’s Wedding. The days and years when I got to see the fruits of my biggest love lie. Watching Julia Roberts and Dermot Mulroney on the ferry as they hang in the moment of opportunity, and then let it slip by – brought it all back.

As I got older and more single, I went through a Bridget Jones’s Diary phase. I’d like to say that I wasn’t that neurotic, but man could I relate to the struggle of finding a quality guy with whom I could share my heart. Bridget has a particularly brilliant quote (resolution #1 should you want to google it on imdb.com) which I will not recount here – so I don’t spoil or offend. It includes particularly colorful language and it spoke to my resistance to forming emotional attachments to…let’s just call him, Mr. Wrong.

I can clearly see why it is easy to fall in lust with the movie stars who bring our favorite characters to life. In Bridget Jones Diary it was Colin Firth as Mark Darcy. Well played, Mr. Firth! I wonder if we should be falling in love with the writers who dream up these characters and the words that bring us to our emotional knees. Other characters that conjured up fantasies of happily ever after were Dermot Mulroney as Michael in My Best Friend’s Wedding, Lamman Rucker as Sheriff Troy in Why Did I Get Married and my new favorite Chris O’Dowd as Rhodes in Bridesmaids. There are so many more!

Unfortunately, my life is not a movie. There was no Sheriff Troy riding in to pick up the pieces of my broken heart. Somewhere along the line I got married…and divorced. I guess this would be the period of my life illustrated by the struggles in Why Did I Get Married. I remember seeing the 2006 version of Dreamgirls. As I sat watching and hearing the words to the song, Listen, I felt like the writers were writing my story. I also remember thinking that this song was going to be the catalyst to end of a lot of relationships. We can call the time around the breakup of my marriage my Eat Pray Love (minus the global exploration and finding my Brazilian love interest) phase.

That brings us to the present and my Bridesmaids phase. That friend who delighted in elbowing me about the jerk Annie spends time with, wasted no time letting me know that I should be looking for a man like the Rhodes character. I knew Bridesmaids would be the female version of The Hangover, chock full of bad behavior and gross humor. I didn’t expect it to be a reflection of my dating life. It’s hard to ignore your reflection when you have a kind and loving friend holding the mirror right up in front of your face!

So now we all get my fatal flaws in the romance department. I guess most importantly, I get my fatal flaws. I’ve done a lot of introspection over the last few years. Dating after divorce is scary and it sucks! I’d much rather stand up in front of a room of strangers and explain the ins and outs of disaster response or recite a monologue in a packed theater than go out on a date.  My dating advisor (yeah, I’ve got one of those too) tells me that dating is supposed to be fun. Fun…like hanging out with my girlfriends, salsa dancing to great music or exploring a charming waterfront town? Yeah, well. That just hasn’t been my experience.

For me dating is anxiety provoking. I’m a people pleaser who often puts my needs last. I find it difficult to focus on what I want and even harder to be “normal” when talking to men I’m attracted to. I just shut it down. It’s easier to focus on work and being a mom than to explore finding love again. Is it lonelier? Of course. Some how, some way I need to go back to that scared teenager and let her know that the world won’t end if I open my heart to love. Will there be some scrapes, bumps and bruises along the way? Yup! That can be assured. It’s the bumps and bruises that concern me.

In Eat Pray Love Ketut, played by Hadi Subiyanto, has very wise words for Felipe, played by Javier Bardem, about loving again. I am working on understanding that wisdom and choosing a partner who is good to me, and good for me. As my friend so lovingly pointed out, I need to find a Rhodes. I will say that Bridesmaids did a brilliant job of illustrating how a scared and hurt woman can really mess things up with Mr. Right. I guess this is where I have a chance to stop messing things up with potential Mr. Right.

Am I willing to kiss the toads along the way?

I’ll let you know.

A Beautiful Night for Love

As a divorcee, I find that weddings can be a mixed bag. You are usually attending because you know that bride or groom and hopefully have some fondness for them. It’s been about four years since my marriage ended. I remember the first few weddings I attended after the break up being pretty difficult to handle. I was happy for the couple, but all I could think about was the failure of my marriage.

It can be hard to celebrate someone’s happiness when you are in the midst of despair. One constant in life is that people will keep falling in love and some are going to get married (thankfully). Tonight I didn’t notice any of the sadness or negative reflections about my previous life. I was so squarely focused on my happiness for my friend. She’s a beautiful woman who deserves a tremendous love story. That’s my wish for her and her new husband.

For me? I was happy that I wasn’t going into it in man searching mode.  You know, where you think…maybe I’ll meet someone nice here. Tonight I wanted to have a good time, and I did. I connected with old friends, danced a bunch and faced down an obscene amount of delicious food. The love story was a beautiful one. What more could you ask for?

As I type this I think of the ending scene in the movie My Best Friend’s Wedding where George tells Jules, “…Life goes on.’ Maybe there won’t be marriage. Maybe there won’t be sex. But by God, there will be dancing!”

…and so there was.