Grief-Cycles (Way Suckier Than Bi-Cycles).

“You’re going to go through them over and over, but with time they will get better,” speaks Aaron in my head.

I think back to that last counseling session after going through my 2nd divorce. “Will they ever go away?” I queried.

“Maybe not entirely, but you’re doing great, you make me proud!” he still encourages, although the day has long passed.

I’ve been trying to get back into the dating world after a long hiatus.  It’s really strange. The last time I was in this world, well, texting was not such a big thing.  Emailing was the new love-letter and phone calls were still in vogue.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s been entertaining. I’m learning lots of new terms, like “ghosting” and “catfishing” and one other that I won’t even mention because it’s pretty dirty, LOL (need definitions? urbandictionary.com). I even learned how to reverse photo search!

I’ve met a spectrum of individuals, from very blase’ to someone I could have easily fallen in love with (and maybe did a little, except he returned to Belgium. And, oh yeah. He was married. Thanks man.).

But even though I’ve had some good times, I still relapse into periods of grief or anger from the loss of the marriage–Aaron said the emotional roller-coaster would get better.  He’s right, it does–but it still sucks to swing back down through the valleys when it happens.

A mere comment from the ex in communication about our children set it off this time–I won’t go into great detail, but essentially I felt like he was judging my parenting skills. This feeling triggered an emotional response that led me to try to nip off the start of a potential new relationship–I felt like I would be better off alone than risking being in the miserable soup of life my last relationship had concocted.

I fortunately was able to stop myself and write down my feelings and explain why I was pushing this new friend away.

Author Julie JC Peters suggests coping with the grief by rearranging the furniture or getting a haircut along with other tips (https://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/09/the-relationship-funeral-rituals-for-a-breakup/), but the most important piece of advice I found in her article was to

“Give yourself great heaps of compassion, and reach out as much as you can to the people around you.”

She also suggests realizing that the future is in my hands is a tool of empowerment.

I don’t know where this or the next relationship will lead, but I do know this.  We do have the future in our own hands. We get to choose what we allow in our lives, and we can write about it. That, my friends, is truly empowering.

~Erin Glassman

 

 

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