"Here I go again on my own... going down the only road I've ever know.... like a drifter I was born to walk alone...and I've made up my mind.... I ain't wastin no more time".
Ahh yes from the 80's band Whitesnake.
I think I need to pull that song up and listen to it about 10 times.
I've noticed good music really seems to lift me up and point me in the right direction.
The guy I met online 4 months ago, I just found on another dating site. Though nothing was said and set in stone that we were exclusive and we havent met in person yet, I was a little suprised to see him there and what he wrote on his profile. Some things are quite a bit different on his new profile than from the site I met him on. He took his profile down from the site we met on about a month after we started emailing. I took mine down for a while too, then put it back up. I asked him why he took his down and he said too many weird people were emaling him and he thought it was better to just take his profile down and avoid them. He was aware mine was still up.
Ok lesson #1 in online dating or pen pals. Just because you bare your soul and share your deepest thoughts and it even seems reciprocated does not mean your exclusive, and that the other party is more than likely chatting it up with other people.
Oh my.... I don't know a thing about dating. At all.
How on earth do people do this after being out of the game for so long?
Kimmerz, I am echoing what I thnk Snodderly said to you - you are probably not yest ready for a relationship. Also, although I know people who have met through on line dating, you have to meet up with a lot of people, some of them not at all what they seem, in order to find someone.
Most of us are extremely lonely at first after our spouses leave, and we feel trashed. However, I know very few people here who have hooked up into a successful new relationship in the early stages of post divorce. if you think about it as if you were thinking about someone else, how likely is that? You are raw, hurting and alone. not really in a good place to find the man of your dreams.
Whatever the guys here say, I do believe it is harder for women to find a new partner - not impossible, just more difficult. We have a far more restricted age range for one thing - it is fine for a guy to be dating someone young enough to be his daughter, but not really with a woman!! And so on. But the important thing is to learn to be alone and like it. You can do it. Otherwise you will remain dependent on men for validation. Do you really want that? Self validate, and you will be happier, and dare I say it, more likely to have a successful relationship, because you need it less.
I hope I do not seem unfeeling, but I have walked this road, and know how hard it is to be alone after a long and loving marriage.
KImmerz - Online dating is for initial introductions ONLY. You should move on to a coffee date meeting as soon as possible if you think it's someone you might be interested in. It's too easy to develop a pseudo-relationship online - or to be the victim of a scammer - so I don't recommend long online conversations. If it seems like you might have something in common, go directly to coffee date stage where you can suss out the guy in the light of day.
I have no idea how long you were together, married, etc. and if you were prepared in any way for the divorce or if it came as a shock?? Time, time, time to learn to be alone and whole again before even thinking about a relationship. Right now, the love must come from within and you must have the greatest love affair of all...with YOU! Then, and only then, will you be ready for another relationship.
I agree with kml; move to a coffee date quickly. Stay away from the 'fairy tale' online romance...
Me 55 H 49 Married 21 years No kids bomb 5/09 filed 7/09 divorced and moving forward 5/10
Don't be embarrassed...it happens. You know now, that's what counts.
At a job I had years ago, we had to fire the night guy, and discovered after running forensics on his workstation that he had 12 different VERY different profiles at different sites....not all of them as a male....
VERY interesting chat histories, to say the least.
Remember what you learned about trust with XH? I reckon it goes triple now, especially online...I am/was/want to be a trusting soul, but that bar is raised pretty high these days, and will never be the same as it was after this MLC experience...you know what I mean...
T^2
In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. - Albert Camus
Uncertainty is the very condition which impels people to unfold their powers.-Eric Fromm
That clarifies things for me a bit. I too am such a trusting soul, but when it comes to new personal relationships, I am on RED ALERT.
I think what's bothering me is that I thought he might be interested in me beyond frienship, but now it's clear he's not. He's too nice to tell me that. I don't mind having another friend I guess.
One thing that Im seeing within myself is how much higher I've raised the bar in regards to what type of person I need to have in my life for a healthy relationship. I swear a healthy relationship is all I want more than all the woo woo compatibility.
I wanted to add that as time goes on Im letting go alot easier and coming into a new place in my grief I guess...perhaps Im starting to float into acceptance and forgiveness.
I never do anything the easy way, I always have to multi task. Instead of one stage of grieving at a time, oh no I must do 3 at a time. I've been flip flopping in anger/resentment -acceptance-denial for a while now, more anger/resentment more than anything.
I am finally accepting who XH is NOW. I have finally accepted there was nothing I could do to change his mind or control his choices. I have accepted this is not my fault. I have accepted the things I do know I was responsible for that contributed to the demise of our marriage. Im also now aware that part of the marital breakdown was XH not being able to accept me for who I am and him trying to change me. I also tried to change him. This was the dance of anger we've been dancing for many years.
I've also come to accept that the person I've seen XH as the last year,and as more truth becomes evidence, is no one I'd ever want to have anything to do with in my everyday life. It saddens me because I realize the root cause of his behavior is serious issues with self esteem, lack of loving himself, therefore he must be in control. My XH is dishonest, and not trustworthy. It saddens me when I know the basis of someone acking like a complete jackA$$ is due to fear. Especially when it's someone you love. But I also accept that there is nothing I can do to help him, except let go. The only thing I can pray for is that letting go, keeping my firm boundaries, and keeping distance will eventually help XH help himself. I feel sad for him. Because I feel like he's lived his whole life superficially, and that's all he's doing now. Life never seemed to mean anything to him, just moving on to the next thing to make him high until that wore off. And the next, and the next. I feel so sad for him really.
XH is not capable of the relationship I need and want to have. Yes I still miss the times when I thought he and I were friends. But true friends don't do the things that he's done. You can't be friends with someone when you're constantly on egg shells. We seem to get along well in regards to the girls, managing our schedules for his time with them, etc. But that's where we keep it.
So I survived the first year on my own. I survived the divorce. I've learned to be more self sufficient and actually enjoy the freedom to do so. I value myself now. I've let go of the idea that I have to fix everything, and help everyone. I've accepted the fact that I must take care of me in order to be of value to anyone else. Im now looking at my journey with eagerness of all the good things that are ahead. I had to work myself through the darkest days to get to this point, but I made it. I have so much to be thankful for and grateful for, and actually am able to see this divorce as a gift of getting my life back, and starting out my life the way I want it to be this time.
It's funny because I've been in this weird frame of mind that's midlife transition, knowing what I wanted to do and the biggest thing I needed was the freedome to go out and explore and feel free to be me.I've felt this for about 3 years now. But now Im seeing that in order for me to be able to travel my path I wanted to take, it just wasn't meant for him to come along with me. That makes me sad, but obviously it wasn't meant for me to go on his journey either. But that's ok. He does things his way, I do them mine.
Ok Well Im back, but with some paretning questions.
Over the course of the last month the girls have gone from staying 1 night a week with their father and now have been staying 2 nights. The first few weeks were necessary because I was working till 10 p.m. XH got his schedule changed so he could be there to have the girls.
Well now he's got his schedule changed again so it looks like he can have them two nights every week for an indefinate amount of time.
The problem is, after 5 months of the girls staying with him they STILL aren't quite comfortable and don't like staying for more than 1 night. D9 had a meltdown last night when I told her that she would be spending 2 nights with her Dad this week. She started crying and said she didn't like the change because she misses me and doesn't get to see me for a long time.
The girls seem to have this " all for one and one for all" pact and that is neither one of them stay overnight without the other. OW still makes no serious attempts to connect with kids. Obviously she has no desire to really have anything to do with them and her time is DONE as far as the child rearing is concerned. If I had 5 children and 6 grandchildren by her age I might feel the same way.
Im concerned. It's 5 months now and I had expected the girls would be much more comfortable at their Dad's by now, but they still are seriously irriated by OW presence and feel bored all the time and miss me. I don't want to force them to stay longer than they want to and end up causing resentment over it later in life. Yet My attorney's office told me something very cut at dry. That is their father and the kids can't refuse to see him. If they come home crying, patch the kids up and turn around and send them back out to him. Though I agree the girls should have a relationship with him, I do not feel it's my job to jump up in the middle of this and try to fix anything. This is between their Dad and the girls. It's his responsibility to nurture them and work on bridging that gap that he made, not me.
I have no desire to alienate the kids from him or keep them from him. But at the same time when my kids are digging their heels in the ground, crying, and letting me know they're not wanting to spend any more time there than needed, shouldn't I pay attention to this? Could this be a sign of something going on I don't know about?
