I Am Divorced and My Partner Left Me
Our objective is to help you find and succeed in a new relationship. In order to achieve that goal it will be important for you to see if you carry around or feel the emotional aftermath of a divorce where your partner left you. This means that you loved someone who may have betrayed you by being unfaithful. You may have loved and been duped by someone you innocently trusted but whom you discovered has lied to you. You may have loved someone who loved you less. It actually does not matter much what the specific reason is. If you are divorced when you didn't want to be, you have loved someone who found other pursuits or people more interesting than you. Regardless of their own reasons, which seem foolish to you, they did not wish to be married to you.
The fact is that for most people this situation is one of the most painful relationship conditions they will ever experience. The feelings of rejection can be substantial. The mixture of anger and hurt is often so excruciating you may think you cannot bare them and those feelings are so intense and consistent you may think they will never end. You may have cried more than you imagined you ever could and you may have thought you will never trust or love another person again. You may have even found yourself unreasonably angry and mistrustful of every member of the opposite sex. In some cases you may wish to hurt them as much as you have been hurt. Or, you may have decided that you will avoid the issue altogether. But, if you are reading this, you have at least decided to try. We congratulate you for getting this far.
The Healing Process
Most people cannot endure a terrible trauma without an intense reaction and actually being emotionally injured. Since your divorce was not expected you might not have prepared for it or known how to rebound and adjust yourself to it. So as a first step in getting ready for a new and more successful relationship we propose that you go about healing the hurt which has been brought into your life. Professional counseling may be useful to you. If you have done that, are doing that, or do not think it to be useful, then we suggest the following. (1) Survive. Draw upon any source of strength and comfort you possess. This may include friends, Heavenly Father, your Bishop and your faith. Organize your days and work at getting through them. (2) Fight the disillusionment. When someone's life situation is dramatically changed and accompanied by a sense of betrayal it is easy to become disillusioned about many things. Betrayal can cause a person to lose faith or the ability to believe and hope. That is a major problem. Do not let it happen. Find what you believe in, people you have confidence in, and think about it and them often. (3) Recognize your ability to love. Appreciate the fact that the reason why betrayal hurts so much is that you loved so deeply. This may seem too obvious, but it is an important step in your recovery. The fact that you loved, that you cared, that you were invested demonstrates that you have that ability and possess that attribute. While it seems like loving well has made you unsuspecting and vulnerable, you would not have done it differently. Do not let another person's bad behavior make you lose what is good about you. Recognizing you have the ability to love will help you in the next steps. (4) Go about the business of reordering your life. The first part of this is to adjust to the fact that you are a divorced person. While you do want to shout that fact out, it is still a fact. So, learn to tell people at the right time and the right way which is to be casual about it. If someone asks about it suggest you are adjusting to it. Then, to help the pain go away and promote the healing process, take stock of your talents and abilities and then think about how you are going to use them. In most cases, money is an issue but so is how you spend your time. (5) Forgive. Forgiveness lets you disentangle yourself from the past and is the bridge you can use to begin to hope again, live again, and love again. This will require that you give up anger and hope for the other person's success.
How You Present Yourself
If you are willing to meet someone, it will be useful for you to start by reminding yourself that, though painful, your divorce did not ruin your ability to love another person. With the passing of time and the diminishing of the numbing pain, you may have rediscovered a bit of interest in meeting other people. When you do, in order to make the best of your opportunities, we have a few suggestions. (1) Meeting someone will, at first, bring up the old hurts. You must prepare yourself for that and you may need to communicate that to the other person. Otherwise that person may think your emotional response is related to him or her. Assume responsibility for the emotions you feel and display. (2) When it comes to talking about your divorce, we suggest that at first, you reveal you are divorced without much explanation. If asked, it is usually best to first suggest that yes, you are divorced and you are doing well in regard to that. If the person persists explain your experience in gradual amounts as opposed to one full load. Then, if you wish, you can tell that you are grateful you emerged from this experience with your faith intact, a new life, and have learned to forgive. Further, you can tell that you have learned more about how much you value love and trust between people. Presenting yourself as resilient and recovered will remove the first obstacles a divorce presents for a new relationship. (3) Go slow and gradually learn about the other person. Bodies have memories. If you have been sexually active your body remembers that. If you get into too much sexual activity too early, it will exploit you. (4) Focus on the positive aspects of your life and the life of the other person. You are too experienced to be blinded to your limitations or the other person's weaknesses. But, if you focus on what is positive you can at least form a friendship based on those. (4) Don't hurry love. It will come along as a function of your association. (5) When you do love again test it a little to see if your feelings are real and see if you can trust it. Don't hide the fact you need to test whether you love. If you explain what you are doing the other person will understand and be happy to participate in it. (6) Be happy. You can. Many people have."