by Stefani Seek, Author/Coach/Speaker
Ladies, know anyone who got a divorce and jumped right into dating, only to find herself in another bad or unfulfilling relationship? Or worse yet, remarried and then divorced again several years later?
I am one of those women. Divorced after 6 years into my first marriage, dating again within a year, engaged within two years, and divorced again 10 years later. The heartache is real. It caused me to ask myself…how could I have “messed up” with my second marriage? My second husband was so different from my first husband and seemed like my ideal match. I thought I knew myself and what I wanted. What did I do wrong?
According to Dr. Judith Wallerstein, author of Surviving the Breakup: How Children and Parents Cope with Divorce, an estimated 31% of men and 42% of women “had not yet achieved psychological or social stability” 5 years after the divorce…five years! What is a woman to do? Should it really take you five years to stabilize enough so that you can begin dating again in a healthy way?
I know that after my first divorce, I was so eager to find love again. I still wanted to have more children and to find the man who was truly “the one” for me. I didn’t wait five years. I didn’t even wait a year. The divorce was finalized in September and I was dating again in October…I was ready for love and a new husband.
Looking back, I want to slap myself silly and tell myself to wake up and get in my own face and gently but firmly yell: WHY do you need to get married again so quickly? What is the RUSH?
I think the person I was at the time would have responded, tears in her eyes, with this: I just want someone who will love me and I want to love them back. Thinking of that young woman now brings me to tears all over again. I just wanted to feel loved. I wanted to be in love. I wanted to express that love by growing a family.
Are any of you who are coming out of a long-term relationship or marriage feeling the same way? Do you also “just want someone” to love you? Maybe you aren’t looking to have more children or maybe you are. Maybe you didn’t get to have children in the relationship you just departed. Or maybe, children aren’t even in the equation for you. Kids aside, our number one motivator in seeking a new relationship is to re-create those feelings of falling in love again. It’s an incredible feeling—to fall in love with someone and have them fall in love with you. The search for love motivates most of humanity.
It has taken me nearly three decades (I’m talking a baseline of age 18…add 3 decades onto that, yikes) to figure out that the love you want so badly is already within you. As woo-woo as that sounds, it’s true. Unless you figure out how to show up for yourself and love yourself first, you are asking someone to try to complete an empty piece of you. And that is a formula for relationship failure.
Here are the Top 3 Things that you, as a recently separated or divorced woman, should strongly consider doing before diving back into the dating waters:
1. Take an Inventory of your Feelings right now…what are they?
Our egos have ways of masking our feelings, because feelings can be tough to process, especially the painful ones. Our ego likes to do everything it can to protect us. And there are a lot of painful feelings coming out of a divorce or break-up, right? It is easy to blame our partner for the things they did wrong, how they didn’t love us, and how they didn’t honor our hearts. Sometimes, we go straight to anger or indignation. We latch onto this one feeling, and all of our next choices are rooted in that very negative emotion. So, I’d like you to do a deep dive into your emotional and physical feelings and discover what is really happening inside of you.
Hoffmaninstitute.org has a very comprehensive list of feelings that you can access here Print out the feelings list, and circle any and every feeling word that resonates with what you are experiencing, right now. You’ll find everything from Anguished to Trapped to Weary, and Appreciative to Fortunate to Vulnerable.
I made the mistake of feeling one primary feeling after my first divorce…lonely. I let that feeling drive my new dating habits, which included latching on to the first quality guy who erased that feeling of loneliness. But boy, did I miss getting in tune with many other feelings I wish I had realized were going on inside of my brain and heart. And ironically, lonely was exactly how I felt as our marriage was ending. I rooted the relationship in the primary feeling of “lonely”, and that was exactly what I got in the end.
Do the work to identify your feelings now so you can understand the root from which you are making your new relationship choices. If those roots no longer feel good or serve you, identify next the emotions you WANT to feel! Print out a second copy of the feelings list and create your current reality from the new feelings you wish to embody. Your roots from which you begin your new relationship will be much heathier!
2. Identify how you want to FEEL in your next relationship!
Those who have seen me speak or have read my book know of this recommendation very well. When seeking a new relationship, we often create a “wish list” that can look something like this: I want him to be tall, handsome, fit, funny, kind and have a 6-figure job while he treats me with respect, accepts my kids, and understands why my career is important to me.
Whew…do you notice anything about this “Future Man Wish List”? It’s all about him and what he has or doesn’t have, does or doesn’t do, ladies. It’s about his qualities and characteristics. It is not about you. You may think it is about you, but it is not. That is the mistake many women make in their manifesting efforts to attract the right guy or partner.
To set yourself up for success, you first need to identify how you want to feel in your next relationship. You attract what you feel. Even if you make a beautiful list like the one above that checks all of your “ideal mate” boxes, he might not match up to the way you need and want to feel. What good are his killer abs and 6-figure income and even his kindness to your kids if you are feeling like he doesn’t love you for you eight months into the relationship?
Get out a piece of paper, write out at the top “How I Want to Feel in a Relationship” and start capturing the feelings that resonate with your heart.
Here are some examples:
I want to feel cherished.
I want to feel respected and honored.
I want to feel heard.
I want to feel like I am a princess.
I want to feel like I am safe.
This is the list to focus on and read it night and day. Read it until you know those ideal feelings inside and out and you start to feel them even without a man in your life! When you begin dating again, any man who does not meet those feelings will be so obviously a wrong fit, you won’t waste your time and can end that relationship without fear or doubt. And when you meet a man who resonates with your feelings list, then you know you’re attracting what your heart’s truest desires are, and that will be a relationship worth investing in.
For example, if feeling safe is important to you, even if you disagree or argue with your new partner, if he still fosters a safe environment and you can argue without fearing for your physical or emotional safety, you are a relationship for which it is well worth working through that problem at hand. The reverse is also true—if, while disagreeing, your partner berates you and does things to shake your sense of safety, that likely is NOT the relationship for you.
Every relationship has its challenges and everyone makes mistakes. But if a seemingly one-time violation of your feelings list turns into multiple violations, you will have enough information to discern if it’s appropriate to stay or go because you laid a strong foundation of how you want to feel before you started dating again.
3. Forgive yourself…and consider forgiving your previous partner.
Oh, this is a tough one. I know. There’s a reason there are thousands of songs about broken hearts and forgiveness (or lack of it).
Let’s start with forgiving yourself. It might be harder to do than it sounds on paper. After my second divorce, I was very angry with myself. I blamed myself for not paying attention to red flags, for not trying harder to speak my true feelings, for not insisting we get help sooner, for…well…not loving myself like I should have. As much as we can blame our previous partner, honestly--in the deepest recesses of our minds and hearts--we are hardest on ourselves.
My therapist once told me to “Give yourself some grace and stop being so hard on yourself!” That advice alone was worth the thousands invested in therapy because it was the simplest, yet game-changing action anyone had ever instructed me to do. She was right. I was beating myself up on the regular for time lost, missed chances and opportunities, and my overall apparent failure at being able to make a marriage work. It was exhausting.
Had I tried to get into another serious relationship while carrying that anger at myself, I’d only be masking pain that would eventually emerge later in my new relationship. I made a decision to do the work. Every day, I woke up and said, “It’s okay, Stefani. You did the best you could at the time. You’ve learned and you’ve grown, and you are made from love and you ARE love.” Even on the days I didn’t quite believe it, I just kept reminding myself to give myself grace and stop beating myself up mentally.
Wouldn’t you know that week by week and month by month, I started to heal. I realized at some point that I was no longer mad at myself! That I could love my previous self who made those decisions at the time. And it was all okay.
You can do this work too. Day by day, week by week and month by month, you will begin to forgive yourself. In doing so, you’ll start to love and appreciate yourself again, and you will find that your confidence increases as well. I am happy I learned to forgive myself and am forever grateful to my therapist for the reminder that I could give myself grace at any time.
Shortly after I reached total forgiveness of myself, the love of my life unexpectedly walked in, and it has been lots of joy ever since. My joy first had to come from a clear mind and heart, not beaten down, and that would have been nearly impossible had I not forgiven myself over past decisions and relationships.
You can forgive yourself too. Give yourself grace and time. Remind yourself that during your previous relationship, you did the best you could. If you don’t think you did the best you could, that’s okay too. Forgive yourself for that. You will soon begin to lighten your mental and emotional load.
Shifting to the concept of forgiving your previous partner, well…that’s a journey. You may not reach total forgiveness for months, years or decades. But taking just one simple step is all you need to do to begin that journey. So don’t worry about how you will reach the “end” of that journey. Stay present. And start with the script below; even consider speaking it aloud in the privacy of your bedroom or bathroom:
“Dear Ex, I don’t like how you treated me. I think there were many things you did wrong. You hurt me. I also can honor the fact that you too, are human. As humans, we’ve all made mistakes. I’m not sure when I will be able to forgive you, but…I am going to start by acknowledging that you are a human, with a beating heart just like mine. I don’t know exactly what it is like to walk in your shoes, with the past pain and disappointments you may have encountered long before you met me. For now, I can acknowledge you for your humanity. And that is enough for now.”
After repeating these sentences or something similar over a period of time, I suspect, like I did, you’ll feel something shift inside of you. You’ll feel lighter. You will start to feel better. If that starts to happen, and you are ready for another step in your ex-partner forgiveness journey. You might even be able to say out loud in private,
“I remember something we did together that was good. Remember that road trip we took the year after we got married to Nashville? That was really a fun weekend. I can remember the good days we shared, and I can appreciate the solid couple we were at that time.”
Just an example. Consider it. No pressure. The forgiveness process will be ready when you are.
As you consider taking these three important steps before you begin dating again, know that you are always worthy of love because you ARE love. If you’ve already started dating again, don’t worry! You can take action on these three steps at any time. The sooner you get started, the better your chances are of attracting and aligning with a partner who will match with your soul’s needs and desires. Keep believing in love. It’s there, abundantly, for all of us to have. Thankfully, I didn’t take five years after my second divorce to heal and meet the love of my life. I did this work, and I found tremendous healing in just a few years. You can do this too. Invest in loving and caring for yourself; in doing so, you’ll be ready to meet the love of your life. He or she is out there, doing the work, just like you.
Did this article make sense for you? I hope it did. If you’d like to expand on any of these topics or ask questions, you can reach me on my website at www.stefaniseek.com or email me directly at stefaniseekauthor@gmail.com. I am a certified life coach and relationship expert, and I’d love to coach you on your self-love and seeking relationship journey.
