Dating During Divorce

Today would be my 22nd wedding anniversary. That’s so confusing to me. Do I count this year or nah? That’s one of the thousands of confusing things about this life experience I’m having.....Divorce.

When I said, "I do" I knew that I had a fifty/fifty chance at it. I knew I’d never seen a version of marriage that I would consider successful, at least not to the degree that I’d want to emulate. There was just something about the voids that created the gaps in the unfulfilled stories of the wives around me that didn’t sit right with me. But... I did it anyway.

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I can hear Luda in my ears now singing,

I believed I had the power to mold my own version of wife. So I took the leap; jumped the broom.

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With all that said, I never imagined my life experience would include divorce. It’s not that I didn’t think my marriage would end though; widow just seemed like the most likely ending honestly.

"I seriously imagined myself celebrating 60 years of wedded bliss."

But the reality is that my marriage was cast with a template forged of a bygone era. My intent to reframe what marriage could be meant we both had to be willing to release one version of the story first.

"I feel like I got really good at reimagining, rewriting…starting over."

And then, at some point, I realized that there was a pattern of destruction/construction that was forming. I think I’d seen the patterns pretty early but it didn’t really sit with me until I was forced to sit with me....

DAMN YOU 2020.

This is where I started to become aware of historic patterns in society overall. As the pandemic destruction was happening all around me I, and literally everyone else, was scrambling to attempt a reconstruction. I was forced to become conscious of how my life was entangled with the lives of those around me. For anyone who has some awareness of the pandemic impact on change, particularly structural and evolutionary changes, you may have also understood the assignment.

For me, I understood it to be a time for great change. A time to write an entirely new story. My superpower was bucking the system; of course, I could restructure what my life looked like.

I don’t have to play a Steve Harvey or Tyler Perry character.

I could think like a man butttt...I’ve NEVER been alone in my entire life and men don't typically fare well in that same space. Was this the assignment? Was this the change that was being asked of me, learning to be alone?

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It’s been a year now. In that time I consciously detached from every possible source that was draining my life force and plugged into myself. I cleansed. And, then when I thought I’d done what needed to be done, Black Jesus said, “hold my beer” and commenced to removing others that I’d determined I “needed” in my life.

Oh, you meant alone alone…got it.

I spent many of the nine months between September 2020 and June 2021 in complete isolation from others; no social media, no girls trips, no group chats, no guests. I spent that time going through the front, back, side, inner and hidden pockets of all of the baggage I’d brought along with me. I examined every element of every bag, purging what I’d once thought I’d needed until I could feel a change in the weight of all the baggage I’d been carrying; a lightened load.

While many others were celebrating what colonizers in these here Americas call Independence Day, I was beginning to feel a renewed independence as well. I was different. I had a new capacity for holding and sharing space. Nine months had passed, an entire gestation period, and it was time for a rebirth. It was time to give myself permission to love anew. It was time... yet again... to change. This time, I took another HUGE leap and did something I absolutely NEVER thought I’d do…I entered the online dating world.

Although I was going through a divorce in 2021, I was still holding out hope that I would literally run into someone on my morning run or evening walk. I’d been “off the market” for over 20 years; I had no idea how to navigate the online dating space nor did I have any desire to. But I felt like I was being asked to do that very thing…get back out there. I was confident that I’d done the work of healing and clearing my field but I was still feeling a stuckness in particular areas of my life; like things just were not flowing completely or correctly. I realized the blocks were in the areas of my life that were governed by my heart, a heart that I was unconsciously protecting; hiding high up in a castle, behind a fortress, surrounded by a moat with a repellant force field.

I understood that if I was to have the life of my desires, the life I’d let go of everything I thought was mine in order grab hold of, a life that I’d dreamed, designed, and attempted to create, I would need to change, yet again. And so I did.

I joined a dating app the first week of July 2021. Let me just say this, it was a…Grand Opening/ Grand Closing; two weeks later I said, Oh no Black Jesus. I was traumatized…I still am to be honest! My experience was nothing like the horror stories I'd long been listening to and preparing to experience.

Wanna know how it went…I’ll share that in another post I’m sure…stay tuned. For now, I want to share with you what I learned while Dating During Divorce.

Click the link to find your Perfect 10!! And don't forget to wish me a Happy Endiversary!