And so we divorced. I was not happy about it. And though I swear I'm moving on, I don't guess I will ever fully be OVER it. I mean, what am I doing tonight? Seeing if a date is going to materialize through the texts and emails I'm exchanging with someone from Match.com. And I'd rather be hanging with my kids: chatting about their day, their projects, their hopes and dreams. Much like the past five days of this dad-weekend.
What I can do, is fight a bit for what I think is right. I can let the AG's office thrash at me a bit longer. I can begin paying my monthly obligations like clockwork to keep their enforcement tools from dropping all my bank accounts to zero. Today, I can begin fighting back for future fathers. And, today, I can work towards a tiny balance of power surrounding the child support debt I owe.
You need to get your communications strategy in place. And then if the other person has a different pace or different style you can figure out how to adjust.
I didn't need a horrible family life to get my act together. That's what happened in my childhood, and this is who I am as a result, but it might have been different. Let me take a run at having a relationship that starts out with a healthy bias rather than one of recovery and repressed emotions.
I know myself "in a relationship" as a man who is satisfied and settled. I am no longer driven by the energetic part of the sex-brain that is hunting for attractive and available women. When I have a relationship to lean into I can settle down into my life's work that is about more important things.
I can still have those lusty feelings, recognize them for what they are, appreciate the woman who triggered them, and the move on with my life as I am rebuilding it.
At the moment I am in a perfect relationship. I wake up , go to sleep, nap, walk, play tennis, write... all that, I do all those things without considering another soul. I am in love with myself.
You've gotta get out there to get over yourself. It's in the relating to a real woman in a real setting that things might become interesting.