Finding Love After Divorce: How Vulnerability Can Lead to Happiness
Five years after my divorce and nearing my 50th birthday, I am happy to report being somewhere I never thought I would be. Finding love after divorce seemed impossible, yet here I am—happy in a loving, committed relationship, having just celebrated Christmas with my boyfriend’s family.
Finding love after divorce is possible, and I can tell you—it’s worth it. If you’re contemplating it, doubting it, or already started doubting it, good for you because it’s not easy. So, let’s look at what the potential journey may be like.
Allow Space to Heal
The journey of finding love after divorce doesn’t start with meeting a new partner, but before.
It starts with taking sufficient time to digest what happened in your divorce and heal. Sometimes, we are encouraged to start dating very soon as a cure for loneliness or low self-esteem. At SAS for Women, we advise not rushing into new relationships but truly recovering. This means several things, but paramount is finding your self that is separate from the old marriage and separating those feelings of hurt and betrayal, or fill in the blank … guilt. If you don’t do the work, the new partner won’t have a chance of being seen for themselves but rather a continuation of your old story. And lurking behind that is the Ex with all the drama and your reactions still reverberating from it.
It took me 3.5 years to even start noticing men … or accepting the idea that men exist and can be both nice and single.
Courage and a New Skill Set
I would argue that building a relationship and finding love after divorce is much harder than building one when we are young. It requires a new skill set and courage.
It requires us not so much to learn new things about relationship-building but to unlearn what we went through during the breakup. As we were divorcing, we were learning to look for signs of bad faith behavior, we were detaching, building our own lives independently financially and emotionally. We needed to create boundaries to nurture ourselves and protect ourselves. When I look back at that stage of recovery, I remember saying to myself — more than once, “Bring up the drawbridge!”
Now, We Need to Learn to Let a New Person
When we are ready to go all in… and I am not referring to casual dating—I am talking about the fear many of us have that we will never be able to trust again, that we will never be pie-eyed again in love because we’ve seen too much and are battle-weary.
When we are ready to go all in, we think about these fears, and doing so can impact our behavior with the new person if we don’t do the healing work first. Otherwise, we risk staying the same old person who was hurt and who vowed never to be fooled again. Or maybe forever brooding on “I wanted the divorce, why am I so sad?”
(This is to say nothing of the legions of women who have no interest in dating after divorce. I see you and can’t believe you’ve made it this far. You do what feels right for you, don’t listen to anyone else. Be your own partner. Not everyone wants to date, and many of SAS’ divorced women are among them. These women are pursuing other must-do’s for life after divorce, and often, changing the world around them.)
Other emotions sometimes accompany us on the bridge as we consider forging a new partnership. Grief? Disappointment? Doubt? When we’ve worked so hard in recovery and rebuilding ourselves, there can be a part within that feels like we are betraying ourselves and all the work we’ve done by partnering up … again.
That’s why it’s so important to heal first, to understand what one wants and why, and then to have the courage to practice new skills and be open when exploring love after divorce.
Accept the New Partner and Face Their Shortcomings
One of the important new skills in finding love is learning to see and accept the new partner as they are, not as a continuation of your Ex. Past traumas can make us hyper-vigilant expecting the new partner to demonstrate damaging behavior the way the Ex did. If the Ex was a cheater, the new partner may be distrusted. For some people, accepting the new partner’s past can be an issue.
Equally challenging can be seeing ourselves from a new angle of a new relationship and suddenly realizing that we also contributed to past trauma with our own damaging patterns. (Again, I bring you back to your divorce recovery work.) Admitting own faults can be painful but taking some blame for the Ex can help build trust and benefit the new relationship.
Being Vulnerable
Learning to trust the new partner without withdrawal or hypervigilance, accepting them and their past, and facing and admitting our own damaging behaviors are all part of opening up, being vulnerable, and ultimately building intimacy. It is scary, hard, and even counterintuitive, but we won’t find love after divorce with heavily guarded hearts.
While we learn that vulnerability leads to deeper connection and happier life, let’s see what vulnerability isn’t and which type of behavior avoids connection, leading to more loneliness and hurt.
Vulnerability is not:
- Using the new partner as a shoulder to cry on and the responsible party for our healing
- Dating a married person
- Casual relationships
- Long-distance relationships without a plan to be together
Consider reading “Reinventing After Divorce: How Not to Date a Married Man.”
Why Bother?
Allowing time to heal, learning new skills, facing our shortcomings, and being vulnerable sounds like a tough journey. So “Why bother?” is a valid question. Some stay single because getting over trauma and accepting another person seems too hard. However, many of us also want to be close to someone, care and be cared for. We want closeness, intimacy, and happiness.
A Conscious Adult Thing
One of the benefits of finding love after divorce is that we are likely to be more conscious and better understand ourselves and our needs.
Creating a couple at a later age means it won’t be based on the social pressure of having kids, which is liberating. You can focus on common interests and quality time. Finding love after divorce may result in a partner who is better than ever because we now value more and can tell real deeds from talk.
As a Jewish saying goes “The light that comes after darkness is brighter than ordinary light.”
Cherish the Rare Blessing
Finding love after going through something as difficult as a divorce is possible, but it’s not a given. It’s a rare blessing that demands consciousness and effort and needs to be cherished.
When I met my partner, I saw a fridge magnet saying “By making a brave decision, you risk being happy for the rest of your life.”
I didn’t buy it, but I remembered the advice.
NOTES
Anna Ivanova-Galitsina is a PR consultant and writer crafting a new life and career in Dubai, UAE. She is a mother to two teenage boys. She holds a certificate in coaching, and is passionate about helping other women going through tough times.
Schedule your FREE, 15-minute consultation with SAS.
Whether you are coping with a divorce or already navigating your life afterward, choose to acknowledge your vulnerability and learn from others. Choose to not go it alone.
*SAS continues to support same-sex and nonbinary marriage. In this article, however, we refer to your spouse as husband/he/him.
