Reentering the Dating Arena After a Divorce Takes Self-Awareness
When Bobby Anderson’s divorce was final 5 1/2 years ago, he decided not to look for love right away. First, he wanted to deal with the painful wounds of a marriage gone bad.
“I did a lot of work on myself,” said Anderson, 36, an Irvine medical equipment salesman. “I turned inward, worked on my career and worked on getting through all the emotional stuff so I could get to where I was happy with myself.”
With the help of a therapist, he came to understand the good and bad of his marriage, how it fell apart, and what he wanted in a new relationship. Eventually, Anderson cautiously ventured back into the weird world of dating.
“I didn’t really enjoy dating,” Anderson said. “The expectations are really superficial. It was, ‘How deep and wide is your wallet?’ You are kind of starting over. The failure factor of divorce makes you kind of embarrassed and ashamed. But that feeling fades.”
Dating after divorce can be an awkward, uncertain and emotionally charged event. The non-initiator of the divorce may have suffered colossal ego blows, raising the emotional stakes of every encounter with the opposite sex. Years, even decades, may have passed since one has been on a date. The whole courtship dance may suddenly be so foreign, unsettling and plain scary that a dating re-education camp seems like a good idea.
But how does one know when to return to the primal boy-girl stuff of dating? The answer depends largely on where one is on the healing curve, whether or not the emotional divorce is truly complete and what one’s gut feeling is about being ready to date.
“A person has to have a really good understanding as to why the first relationship didn’t work or they are almost scripted to have a recurrence of similar issues in new relationships,” said Elaine Rodino, a clinical psychologist in practice in Santa Monica. “You are the same person, so you need to understand what you brought into that bad marriage. Even if it was the choice of a wrong spouse with whom you stayed.”
Divorce conjures deep feelings of loneliness, rejection and sadness. Such feelings make one vulnerable to rushing into a relationship out of desperation . . . and such vulnerability often leads to bad judgments.
“You have to look at what your needs are,” said Lilly Friedland, a clinical psychologist and former president of the American Psychological Assn. “Are you trying to feel sexually attractive or desirable? Are you lonely? You have to make sure your need is not overriding your perception of the person. Are you glossing over all the red flags?”
Often, a hasty leap into dating following divorce is an attempt to make up for time lost in an unhappy marriage, a denial of the painful feelings of divorce or an attempt to find succor.
“I did get involved with another woman after I moved out of my house,” said Stan Charnofsky, a Granada Hills clinical psychologist who was divorced 20 years ago. “She was getting a divorce. We were like two wounded people on a stormy sea looking for some solace. We thought we were being intimate. But we were not intimate. It took me two or three years before I had a serious relationship.”
Taking the slow, steady road to recovery paid off for Bobby Anderson. On dates, he was careful not to talk too much about his divorce (a common faux pas and instant date repellent) and followed his instincts. When he met Tisha about 18 months after his divorce, he knew she was what he was looking for. They dated for four years before marrying last April.
“I certainly wasn’t a perfect husband the first time, but Tisha is the benefactor of the work,” Anderson said. “Now I am in the most passionate, mutually loving relationship. She is a lover, a friend, and I respect her for who she is. We promised to renew our vows every year.”
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Kathleen Kelleher writes weekly on human sexuality. She is at birdsandbees30@hotmail.com.