Adventures in GALing

[AntoniaB]

"I really want to challenge the idea that relationships other than a one on one significant other are second best. Sometimes these are the best thing for us at certain stages of our lives, teaching us to have wider concerns, and grow parts of ourselves that actually get neglected in an intense one on one. To be fully present for people other than our significant other is a great gift to be given and to receive."

Absolutely!!

When I first went to my psychiatrist she told me that the biggest thing I had to overcome was my belief--VERY deeply embedded in me, heart and soul--that my connection to XH was more "important" than any other relationship I'd ever had. You can see the difficulty with forming that belief, that it makes one devalue other types of relationships or see them as "second-best", and to also then lament that one's life is effectively "over" if or when one loses that spouse. "One mate for life" is a really lovely ideal, and for couples who pull that off, more power to them, but it takes two equally motivated people, and if one bails out, there isn't much the other one can do about it.

So that's a major thing I've learned through all this, not to devalue the non-romantic relationships and to see the concept of "soul-mate" as something in flux, in that I will have several soul-mates in a lifetime and they will be male and female, younger and older, related or not, and I will also be a soul-mate to numerous other people. I'm thankful that my doctor had this view of things--she told me from the beginning that this was her PERSONAL view (and she also told me she'd gone through a very tough divorce after about 20 years, then spent several years alone before remarrying and that this was part of her recovery too), because she was the one who gave me the goal to shoot for in terms of simultaneously getting past the betrayal and opening up to many other people in my life.