choices

In which I ponder….Lemonade

/ howtobemeagain / Leave a comment

 

So…it’s finally properly and completely over.

Although we’ve been separated over 5 years and divorced for almost exactly 1 year, I have only just today received our court stamped financial settlement.

I’m neither happy nor sad about it really. It’s good to know that I will no longer be lining the pockets of lawyers, and that I at last know what the future is likely to look like financially. I’m never going to be rich but I’m not going to be poor either, and that’s fine. I won’t have the sort of life I would have had if I had remained in the marriage, but for every material thing I’ll no longer have, I’ll have a ton of happiness to which I previously would not have had access.

There was no fighting about the settlement – I took what I was offered, and I didn’t ask for more. But I was careful to seek legal advice throughout the process so my decisions – although often against the advice of my lawyers – were well informed. The most important thing for me was to maintain my integrity and find a path through what was equitable and fair, and what was enough. In the end I went for enough, because what I was offered was enough. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life feeling that I was lucky that my ex husband was so successful. I want to spend the rest of my life knowing that I’ve worked hard and that with hard work comes rewards.

It would have been easy in some respects to fight – and certainly that was what my lawyers were hoping for, since it would have lined their pockets. But if you should ever find yourself in a similar position, make sure you consider whether the psychological and emotional toll of the process would be worth the potential financial gains. I was constantly aware of the incongruency of feeling envious about the fact that my ex appears to live in such comparative splendor given that I have spent my entire career working to improve the lives of the disadvantaged. Why should I be entitled to anything better than the actually very nice life I already have?

But envy is an insidious thing. It creeps up on you as you scroll through your social media feeds, watching your friends living the life you expected to have post childrearing – exotic travel, holiday property purchases, renovations, rediscovering romance with your loved one. It mixes up with anger and takes you back to a place you thought you had left. Then I realized that my envy was really just a disguise for the grief I was experiencing for the life I had lost, both present and future, that I thought was going to be mine and ended up being one of the casualties of divorce. And I was reminded, again, that nothing is guaranteed, nothing can be promised, and that you have to make your own luck.

Even without fighting though, I found the process draining and demeaning. In addition to my inner turmoil about the above, the system seems to consider that the material assets built up over the course of a 21 year relationship belong to your husband, who may, out of the goodness of his heart, decide to give you some. Then you are supposed to be grateful and consider yourself lucky.

I refuse to be grateful.

I am grateful for my beautiful children, and I am grateful that I have the means to support myself going forwards – but everything I have taken from my marriage is part of what I helped to build up and as such I have taken my share. I am not lucky that my ex husband is successful – we (he and I) are lucky that over the course of our relationship we jointly built up a life and careers from which we will both continue to benefit.

Now I can start the work of really planning how I will protect my financial interest going forwards – something that I should have been doing all along.

I already know that leaving my husband is the best thing I ever did for myself. I’ve never regretted it, although I’ve found it hard to process. But I will no longer torture myself over what was done, or not done, or could have been done. I will not wish for the life I would have had, or mourn the one I’d left. I will race forwards in life, reaching out for all the opportunities I would have missed, all the adventures I would not have had, all the lovers I would not have kissed.

And should I ever find myself in a similar position again – God forbid – I will simply channel Beyoncé…

“This is your final warning…

  You know I give you life

  If you try this shit again

  Gonna lose your wife”

 

 

In which I ponder…sex and thenearly fifties

/ howtobemeagain / Leave a comment

zac-efron-spray-down-baywatch-set-01

It is a sad fact, universally acknowledged, that my next significant birthday will launch me into a half century.

I can’t say that I am thrilled about that.

I approached my 40th birthday with some excitement. Life was going pretty well thank you very much, and I felt like reaching this milestone would finally allow me to join the ranks of the proper grown ups.

In the event, things worked out rather differently to how I had imagined. At the time I was writing a different blog, and I wrote about my fortieth birthday here. You can read it if you like…

Anyway, I’m feeling rather less positive about being 50. It’s as if in the decade between turning 40 and turning 50, I’ve rushed along developmentally, succeeded in becoming a grown up and then peaked too soon and joined the geriatrics. All in one very fast decade. When I went to renew my drivers license I was not allowed a 10 year one – because I am too old. Perhaps they think I will not make it through the next 10 years so there is no point in me wasting time and money on my drivers license. Or perhaps they think I will lose my marbles. Who knows. All I know is that it made me feel very, very old.

But the other thing that makes me feel very old – and very tired – is the idea that when I turn 50 I might (probably) still be single. Not that being single in itself is so bad, but because there is something – in my mind anyway – so deeply tragic about dating at that age that I’ve decided that when that time comes I shall retire gracefully and invest in some cats. And perhaps some knitting needles.

In the meantime though*, I continue to be a woman in her late 40s who often finds herself on dates with men who are around 50, many of whom are very interesting. I really don’t have anything against dating men in this age group except for one thing – they seem to have little or no understanding of female sexuality.

Take, for example, a recent unhappy experience, which sadly has not been unique – either to me, or to other single girlfriends.

I met a man on an online dating site. He was funny and we had some shared interests, so based on that I agreed to meet him on a Sunday afternoon in a café. We met and the conversation flowed freely over a pot of Earl Grey Tea. And then, after we’d finished our tea – just the one pot – he asked me whether I’d like to go round to his place – with an unmistakeable glint in his eye which sadly I’ve seen way too often.

Now, had George Clooney or Zac Efron** turned up that café, there is chance that I might have viewed an invitation to join one or other of them (or maybe both of them!) at their place with some excitement. I might even have suggested we give the Earl Grey a miss and get right to it.

As it was, the man sitting across the table from me looked like a fairly average 50 year old. Balding, a bit of a paunch and slightly suspect dress sense. None of this stopped him, of course, from being interesting, even potentially attractive, given the chance to get to know him. But the thing is this. When you are a balding, slightly overweight man who has reached his half century and is wearing a shirt that screams ‘I don’t have a partner and haven’t had for a while’, you are going to need to do more than provide me with a pot of Earl Grey Tea to facilitate the removal of my underwear.

The reality is that at our ages we can’t just rely on our physical presence and a cuppa to provide enough of a frisson to persuade someone to join us in the bedroom. Or at least men who meet me can’t, and I suspect I am not alone.

It’s not that men who are 50 are not attractive. It’s more that actually they have so much more to offer than they allow me to discover if they move straight from cups of tea to bedroom gymnastics. It’s going to be rare that you meet a man in my age group who – by virtue purely of their physicality – makes you stop in your tracks and try to drag them off to the nearest boudoir. But I’m sure that – or at least I hope that – there are men who are willing to let me get to know them, and are interested in getting to know me, so that we can both discover what else we have to offer beyond our now less than perfect bodies that might make us want to find out what’s beneath our clothes.

But that takes a bit of time, gentlemen, a bit more effort, and more than a pot of tea.

*because I’m not actually 50 until 2018, but I’m preparing myself psychologically

**my fantasy man. Inappropriately young, but such a fine specimen of a man I’m pretty certain no one is really immune to his charms. Not that I’m seeking someone who looks like that – chance would be a fine thing! That’s a picture of him up there, in case you don’t know who he is. You’re welcome.

In which I ponder…being present and finding what you’re looking for

/ howtobemeagain / 1 Comment

search

 

Anyone who is dating will know that the question we are asked most often is

“So…what are you looking for?”

In my naivety,  at the beginning of this journey, I thought people were asking me what sort of a man I was looking for – and frankly I had no idea. I’d chosen badly once, but I didn’t want to see all future men through that lens, because it seemed so negative. I found you frequently met people – men and women – who had a long list of things they knew they weren’t looking for, and they were nearly always all the things they had ended up hating about their previous partner.

I say ‘ended up’, as it’s a sad irony that often the very things that we once thought were appealing and attractive about people often end up being the things that in the end we can’t stand. For my own part, for example, I originally loved my ex husband’s lack of emotion, as I came from a family which could fairly be described as being emotionally labile. But after 21 years, I realized that this lack of emotion was not actually a cool, calm and stable disposition, but literally the absence of any sort of emotional landscape – and it’s very hard to have a meaningful and connected relationship with someone like that. Or at least it is for me.

Anyway – I digress.

Later, I came to realize that the ‘what are you looking for?’ enquiry was, in fact, code for ‘are you up for one night stands?’. I suppose it’s helpful to at least ask – and this often happens well before you’ve met I person – and it does mean that no one is wasting their time. But the last couple of times I’ve been asked it, it’s got me thinking.

Once upon a time – long, long ago (i.e the last time I was dating, over 20 years ago), this was not a question people asked. When you were dating, everyone knew what that was – you go out on dates with someone and you see how it goes. If it doesn’t go well, you stop dating and you find someone else to date. Repeat. Simples.

These days it all seems to have all become a bit unnecessarily complicated.

It seems to me that there are now two answers to ‘what are you looking for?’ and they both sit at extremes of the relationship spectrum. On the one end there is just looking for someone for tonight, thanks very much. And at the other end there is the search for ‘the one’ with whom I spend the rest of my life.

Now, it can’t just be me who is thinking that actually there is a lot of space between those two choices.

But more importantly, it occurs to me that whether we decide we are looking for something fleeting or something long term, every time we discard someone because they say they are looking for something different, we miss the opportunity to just let something grow. In the old days, occasionally one night stands led to long and happy marriages – probably because people weren’t obsessing about where this was all going. People didn’t go into relationships with an agenda – or at least I don’t think they did. And sometimes they would be taken by surprise and find themselves falling in love with someone at a time when it hadn’t occurred to them to be thinking about the long term. Certainly that happened to me – I was at University and couldn’t have been less interested in finding a husband, but I met a man and 3 years later we were married. And although it didn’t work out terribly well, we had 21 years and 2 beautiful children to show for it at the end.

But more importantly, while we are fixated on where the relationship might go, right from the beginning, we cannot claim to be being present. And by not being present, we risk enjoying the moments, which might be incremental and which, in fact, we do not know to where they might lead.

I’d like to advocate a dating movement. We could call it ‘Present Dating’. We just forget about our agenda, about finding what we’re looking for. How about we just enjoy the moments? We stop asking about what people are looking for, and we just go on dates and see how it goes. If it’s fun and you enjoy one another’s company, you carry on dating until you don’t feel like that anymore. And that could be tomorrow, next week, next year or never.

Just like the old days.

 

In which I ponder…choices, walking and Moet

/ howtobemeagain / 2 Comments

13000295_10154746698998989_6642164667326024784_n

 

Despite being on holiday in beautiful Noosa, today has been a tough day.

The reality is that sorting out your financial settlement post divorce, and extricating yourself from joint international tax difficulties* is hard work – intellectually and emotionally.

I’ve had to sit through a teleconference involving both my family lawyers and my tax lawyers, and I just can’t help thinking that there must be an easier, quicker and more efficient way to do all of this.

And of course, there is. I can forgo my right to legal representation, and just sign all the documents that I’ve been sent by my ex husband.

There isn’t a day that I don’t wish that’s what I had done. This process has been way more complicated, and has taken a much greater psychological toll than I had ever anticipated. But the reality is that I spent most of my marriage with my eyes shut, or open just enough to only see the things that didn’t make my stomach twist and my heart ache, and I promised myself that I would come out of it with my eyes wide open, and having ensured that I was aware of all the facts. For the first time in my adult life I wanted to make an important life decision in possession of all the relevant facts.

Right from the moment that I made the discovery that led to asking my husband to leave, there has been a part of me that wishes I could have allowed myself to continue my life in blissful ignorance. But I know that the path to real happiness – to joy perhaps – to go through your life journey properly present, aware of all its pains and its pleasures. And I made a choice, in the moment that I said ‘you will have to leave’, to do that.

And lately I’ve also started to really understand that how I deal with these issues is also a choice, that there is not much point in choosing presence if my default position is always to allow myself to fall into distress when I experience an upset or a reminder. It’s unrealistic to expect it not to hurt, to not feel sad, angry, frustrated. But that I need to acknowledge these feelings and then work to move on from them.

The best way I’ve found of doing this is to walk determinedly, a little too fast, for as long as it takes to make it all feel a little better. It’s unrealistic not to feel these things, but I’ve discovered that walking, outdoors, preferably somewhere beautiful, does the trick about 98% of the time. And if you can do this with someone you love, and who loves you back, all the better.

And for the other 2% of the time there is Moet.

*Yep. I totally get that this is a bit of a first world sort of problem. It’s not as international as say, a Mossack Fonseca style problem, but for me, it’s still been a big headache…

In which I ponder…being normal

/ howtobemeagain / 1 Comment

being-normal

I was recently having a conversation with my ex-husband in which he suggested that the ‘normal’ thing to do in my situation would have been to partner up with someone again by now.

This took place in the context of a discussion about our (as yet undecided) financial settlement, and as a contribution to that discourse especially I think it has little merit. The answer to my concerns about my financial security going forwards is never going to lie in becoming dependent, or even partially dependent, on the income of someone else. I’ve done that once, and to be honest it hasn’t worked out terribly well. If I had one piece of advice for any women embarking on a new romantic partnership, it would be to behave from a financial point of view always as though your loved one might be gone at any time, in the blink of an eye – along with his income, his pension and his superior economic power. No matter how confident you are that it will last, or that even if it didn’t, he would look after your interests financially. I hope that the generation my daughter is growing up in will learn this lesson from their mothers, who are nearly always left financially disadvantaged by having prioritized parenthood over earning and career.

However, I digress…

This talk of ‘normal’ got me thinking. And anyone who knows me, knows that thinking is something I do rather a lot of.

What is ‘normal’ anyway? Being single is becoming more and more common. Does that make it normal? The Australian Bureau of Statistics predicts that the number of single person households in Australia will increase by 4.3m in the next 25 years – an increase of 65% – and that 54% of those households will be single women. Not that abnormal then am I, statistically speaking?

But more than that, I don’t subscribe to the idea that my normality is based upon my relationships with other people, particularly since that can create a veneer of said ‘normality’ which, when you scratch just beneath the surface, reveals something not quite so normal at all. My own marriage was a good example of that.

The thing is that I suspect my ex husband – along with many other people – takes some of his personal validation from the fact that he looks so normal, with an apparently healthy relationship, good job, nice home. Other-esteeming, they call that. Some people are unbalanced by people who refuse to conform to these social norms, or won’t let them define them. To be fair, men haven’t exactly been beating down my door offering to relieve me of my financial burdens, but I’ve not been in any rush to settle down, and these days I wonder if I will. I have a level of freedom that I’ve previously never experienced, and I am defined by no one except myself. I like that. Anyone who joins my life is going to have to deal with that.

My sister once said to me

“The thing about you is that you’ve never needed anyone”

I think I’ve mentioned this before here – but I was quite offended at the time. Now I think I understand better what she meant and I realize that to a certain extent it’s true, and not necessarily a bad thing (although I’m pretty certain her intention was not to flatter).

I don’t need anyone. It’s true. But not needing people means that those I have in my life have been chosen – for themselves and not just because they are able to meet a need in me. In doing so, I give them the freedom to choose me, or not. I think that’s healthy. My people are there because I have an authentic, real connection with them, they know who I am without the veneer of ‘normality’ and we chose one another. And we continue to choose one another every day.

If that’s being abnormal, then so be it. Seriously – who cares?

 

 

In which I ponder…adaptation

/ howtobemeagain / Leave a comment

Adaptations_001

I haven’t much felt like blogging lately.

I’ve felt that the sort of things I usually blog about have been too trite and too unimportant, and I don’t know how to write about what has actually been going on. Or whether I’ve wanted to.

But as always I’ve been out there learning stuff. Whether I’ve wanted to or not – which is the way of the world. Someone once said to me that you win or you learn. I’ve never forgotten it. The same person told me that if you fail to prepare, prepare to fail, which I’ve also found useful but less easy to live by. Although it’s been proven to be true on a number of occasions.

What I’ve learnt – not for the first time in recent years – is that I am stronger and more resilient than I think. But what I’m also gradually learning is that this has drawbacks.

Imagine this. What if the thing you had been looking for all these years turned out to be right under your nose all the time?

But then imagine that you then start questioning whether the thing you thought you were looking for was actually the thing you want. Or perhaps you got so caught up in the search that you didn’t notice that you didn’t really need that thing anymore.

The thing about being alone, and being good at adapting to new situations, is that you can adapt too well. Much to my surprise I find myself wondering whether my life is really missing the elements I thought it was.

When you draw an object through water, the line you create immediately fills up behind you. Over the last few weeks I’ve wondered whether in fact life is like that – and whether without even realizing it, the gaps I thought were there have been quietly filling up in my wake.

And then I had a bit of an epiphany.

I am beyond the point of need.

Which means I am at the point of choice. Needs versus wants.

That’s got to be healthier right?

*someone was concerned that they might become blog fodder. Looks like they have…

 

In which I ponder…being me

/ howtobemeagain / 3 Comments

 

new-day

I am in a counselling room with a new therapist. We’re doing that getting to know you thing – the part before you start telling them about your fucked up life.

‘So…tell me a bit about yourself’, he says.

I tell him all about me. I tell him about my job with the NHS, my children, my involvement with the local parent/teacher association. I tell him I am a wife, a mother, a daughter. I feel a little bit proud. I’m not bad really.

When I’m done, he sits in silence for a moment or two, his hands folded in his lap. Then he looks at me and says:

“Ok. You’ve told me quite a lot about what you do. Now tell me about who you are.”

And I realised I did not know. I had become the things I did, the roles I played in relation to everyone else. I didn’t know where I had gone.

*********************************************************************************************

A couple of days ago, a private message from a friend in the UK popped up on Facebook. She told me she had been thinking about the title of my blog and how it resonated with her.

My friend met her husband when she was 16. Like so many women, particularly of my generation, she was a daughter, segued seamlessly into being a wife then a mother and soon will be a grandmother.

‘It’s got me thinking’, she typed. ‘What would I be like if I ever got to be me?’

Good question.

And one I could well have been asking myself, if I hadn’t found myself compelled to be me in all its questionable glory.

The thing is though, that being on your own doesn’t necessarily mean you get to find out. You don’t just suddenly start being you – you have to learn how. And it turns out it’s hard. Much to my dismay, the real me wasn’t just hiding beneath the person I had become – the person who was too much of a reflection of other people, and not enough of a reflection of me.

The real me was properly lost, and in order to get to her, I first needed to circumnavigate the temporary version of me that developed post separation.

Unfortunately, this person wasn’t much fun.

This person fluctuated between being angry and determined and being helpless and hopeless. She was difficult to be around some of the time, but for all anyone who had to endure her wished I would just snap out of it, they could not have wished it more than me. I felt out of control and I wanted it to be over. Not life. Just the bit where I was sad and angry and hurt and….well – a bit boring.

When you start boring yourself, you know you are in trouble.

These days, I would say I’m closer to being me than I’ve ever been. And I am grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to find out who that is on my own, even if it hasn’t always been a comfortable journey for me – or the people around me.

So who am I?

Well – I’ve realised that who I am is mainly an issue for me. I need to know who I am, at my core, but I don’t need to describe it for others – so I’m not going to do that here. Other people decide for themselves who you are, because they see you and interpret you through the lens of their own experiences. People take you as they find you. What’s important is that I know who I am and am steadfast in that.

Besides I’m in my writing – you can find me there. And some people will judge me and others won’t.

As a wise man once said:

What other people think of you is none of your business…

 

 

 

In which I ponder…inconvenient truths

/ howtobemeagain / Leave a comment

lt-60-60P0365-1614043637-rsd

So I moved again. Anyone who has known me for a while knows I move often. I am starting to think I may be some sort of weird nomadic vagrant, since this is the 10th house since 2007, and the 25th home overall. I doubt I’m done just yet either, although I love where we are right now. That’s it there – in the picture. What’s not to love?

The more you do something, the less stressful it is – and this is certainly true of my moving habit. It’s hard to relate to the idea that moving is the 3rd most stressful thing you’ll ever do, when you’ve done it so many times. I find the constant presence of wet towels on the floor in the bathroom significantly more stressful to be honest.

But something I’ve learnt from moving is that it sorts the men out from the boys – figuratively speaking – when it comes to friendships. They say that some friends are for a reason and others for a season, and if you equate season in this context with the period during which I might inhabit a particular house, then you will understand when I say that some friends disappear when you are no longer conveniently around the corner.

I’ve had friends for whom a 20 minute drive has proven too far for them, and others who can identify certain geographical points as being the limit to their friendship – the cattle grids, the Spit Bridge, the ‘other side’ (of the harbour). And I have now done the unthinkable, and not just gone to the Dark Side (so not the same side of the harbour as the Northern Beaches) but actually moved away from the Eastern Suburbs, into an area and a suburb that generally none of my friends have heard of.

Personally, I’ve never minded travelling to see people. Even as a child, moving from place to place with my parents (it’s genetic thing you see), I maintained friendships into adulthood with people I’d moved away from geographically – but not emotionally – decades beforehand. My mum would put me on a train at weekends and school holidays to travel back to wherever we had lived before so I could stay with my friends, before returning in the same manner in time for school on Monday. And this was many years before mobile phones and social media kept us connected. The thing is that if someone is important enough to you, the distance won’t matter. And most of the time, you are not talking about enormous distances, but more about convenience.

So when you move, you get to discover which of your friendships were those of convenience. It can be disappointing to discover that for some people you’ve fallen into the ‘too hard’ basket, but it does mean that you get your real, quality friendships reaffirmed.

My closest friends in the UK stood by me when my marriage ended, and continue to provide me with love and support across the water. Some of them visit, and I’m a welcome guest in their homes whenever I’m home. My closest childhood friend and I maintained our friendship from opposite ends of the country until her death when we were both in our mid thirties – with children the ages we had been when we first met. And her husband and I have remained very close friends ever since, speaking at least weekly – latterly from different hemispheres – and this year we will celebrate Christmas together in the sun, overlooking my rather lovely jetty.

And with this move, I’ve been really touched by the enthusiasm with which my closest friends have greeted my latest venture into the unknown, some of them even inspired to purchase boats to make good use of my waterfront from time to time.

I know that for me, the people I love and care about are always within reach, no matter where I go. And seriously – it’s 26 mins from Central on the train, and I’m happy to pick you up from the station.

In which I ponder dating…

/ howtobemeagain / 1 Comment

best-funny-advice-about-dating

Over the last few years of singledom, I have learnt a few things about dating. And the lesson that stands out most clearly is this:

There is no group of people less qualified and more willing to give advice on dating than those who have been partnered up for 20+ years. 

There. I said it.

Dating is very different to being in a long term relationship – which is of course a skill and an art in which they have considerable expertise.

Having said that though, I am no slouch when it comes to long term relationships. I might be single now, but I was with someone for 21 years. At one point I was even winning the sibling rivalry contest in my family for who could be married the longest. I still am actually, although I very much hope I am overtaken.

It’s been surprising to me how many people – particularly women – tell me that if something happened to their marriage, they wouldn’t ever bother partnering up again. They believe that my life is full of forbidden pleasures, fun and a level of self determination that they envy. I can almost see the grimaces on the faces of my single friends from here.

Well, the grass is always greener eh? Conversely though, the majority of single people I meet – male and female – would very much like to find that special someone. Personally, I would hope that in any future partnership I would have pleasures, fun and self determination anyway.

This yearning for someone was driven home a couple of weeks ago when I attended a Marianne Williamson workshop. I was surprised by how many audience member questions related to issues around finding the right partner for life. And it was no small workshop – a full house at a large auditorium. People just really want to be with someone – after all, no (wo)man is an island.

But married and partnered people give out such conflicting information and advice – largely because they are not single, have not been single for many, many years and have no idea how dating and being single has changed in the interim*.

Sometimes they tell you that you should not do anything – that someone will come along when you are least expecting it. Ok. Perhaps. But on the other hand they also tell you that you need to get out there and meet people.

But not in bars.

And not on the internet because there are only weirdos there**

Right. So perhaps I will bump into someone at the supermarket, or at work (in an organisation which overwhelmingly employs women. Yay for that, but not a good place to find a man – even if finding a man at work was something that I would ever, EVER do). I must get out there looking for someone, but trying not to look for them. Or something.

What most married/partnered people imagine is that one of your nice friends – and for that you could substitute ‘married/partnered’ friends, as they tend to view your other single friends with a little bit of suspicion – I mean what sort of things do single people get up to together for goodness sake?! – will introduce you to someone. But married/partnered people tend to know other married and partnered people. They know you – who is single. And often that is it.

Additionally you apparently shouldn’t want to find someone – because that could be needy and desperate. At the same time though, you should be clear about what you want – even perhaps make a list (seriously?!). And you shouldn’t compromise, whilst also being careful not to overestimate your worth in the dating market. As one friend said to me – ‘stop going for the attractive men. Just find someone kind’. Hmmm.

Well – ideally I’d like to find someone I was both attracted to and who is kind. And loads of other stuff, but I’m reluctant to make a list. I’m very conscious when dating that there is really no point in continuing if you know that you are never going to want to see that man naked. A lovely single friend sent me a text recently which said ‘is it wrong to date someone I know I’m never going to sleep with?’. My reply – ‘you know the answer to this question…’.

One thing I know is that being in the wrong relationship is way more painful than not being in one at all. It’s why I’m a bit picky. By the same token, being in the right relationship would win hands down over being alone.

For myself, I appreciate all the advice – which is well meant and full of love. But at the same time, I’m just doing my own thing, and I know it’s difficult to accept but I know more about it than they do. I’m mixing it up with the odd foray into internet dating, along with not dating at all, and going out and about with my usual business and leaving it all up to fate.

If no one comes along, that’s fine. I can do this life on my own and it can be wonderful and joyful and exciting. But maybe I’ll meet the perfect man for me and it will be all those things and more. Maybe I already have. You never know…

*To give you an indication, dear Reader, of the extent to which dating changed between 1990 – which was the last time I had been single – and 2011, let me tell you a story…I ventured onto RSVP for the first time and chatted with a lovely man for several days. He was a journalist, interesting, my age and seemed very normal. I eventually felt confident enough to give him my mobile number. And by return he sent me a photograph of his erect penis. Now to be fair, this has never happened again, and I’ve given my number to plenty of people since. But I’m pretty sure this would not have happened in 1990. Partially because smart phones were still just things in sci fi movies. But you know what I’m saying…

**My dad, on discovering that I was using an internet dating site, said incredulously – ‘What sort of weirdos are looking for someone on the internet?! Erm, this sort of weirdo Dad. This sort.

In which I ponder how to let it go…

/ howtobemeagain / 2 Comments

balloongirl1-e1340132014629

In the last few weeks, a 21 year relationship which began with love, hope and excitement, produced two beautiful children, and at its ending had spanned half my life, was reduced to a reference number and a one line entry in the Commonwealth Courts Portal.

Divorce, particularly when a marriage has produced children, is never anything to celebrate – even when the end of that marriage was both necessary and desirable. I felt sad, a few tears were shed, and a check in with a friend was required.

It sometimes feels as though some wounds are so big and so wide and so deep that they will never heal. I feel frustrated that when so much in my life is good, and positive and amazing, there is a corner of me that seems to have so successfully imprinted the pain of the experience of my marriage that I am easily plunged back into the moment of it.

I’ve recently felt as if I have unintentionally created a circuit where if any, even minor incident, raises uncomfortable feelings for me, my thought processes are immediately diverted and I am back in the pain, humiliation and devastation that marred my marriage. It’s as if opening the door to sadness and anger for any reason lets these feelings also tumble out, like Pandora’s Box.

However, I realise that those feelings can flood out only if I allow them. My life is not happening to me – I’m creating it every minute of every day. Alfred Adler said that all behaviour is purposeful. So what am I getting out of allowing myself to feel like this?

I was listening to a workshop by Carolyn Myss in the car recently and I think I might have found a clue. She talks about people living through their wounds (she calls this ‘woundology’) in order to protect themselves. And this rang a bell with me. I often feel that I am impervious to further hurt, because I am so hurt already. I’ve told myself that nothing is going to hurt me as much again, so I’ll be ok. But maybe this is only working because I’m holding onto the hurt. Have you ever had a terrible headache, for example, and directed yourself away from it by pinching yourself elsewhere? We find it hard to experience pain in more than one place at once. And if your head already really hurts, then banging it doesn’t really make it much worse – in fact it can serve to distract you a little.

So whilst I still hurt, nothing else can hurt me. If I let go of that hurt, I open myself up to the possibility of being hurt again.

But it occurs to me that pain, upset, wounds and challenges are part of the rich fabric of life. They are a mechanism through which we learn and develop. No one escapes. Everyone has a wound or two. And it might be possible that by holding onto mine I am preventing myself from further personal development. Even more importantly, it’s probably true that by creating mechanisms to prevent the bad stuff coming in, I am also denying myself the opportunity for joy – as they are one side and the other of each other.

So now all I have to do is work out how to let it go…

Postscript – to any previous readers, I seem to have inadvertently deleted my last post on the courage required to be authentic. Sorry about that! Entirely accidental (and a bit annoying to be honest!)

Additional postscript – I worked out how to reinstate posts I’d deleted, so it’s back. Yay!