I am divorced and it was a mutual decision
Even if your divorce was a mutual decision, your divorce can be both a relief and among the most painful life experiences you have ever had. The sense of relief is related to absence of conflict, the absence of indifference, not having to tell or hear lies, feeling empty and barren feelings, or some major problem. The pain has many faces. You may feel at peace and believe that you have done the right thing and only feel lonesome. You may be very hurt and angry. You may be concerned about your former partner or angry about what he or she has done. You may feel resentful that your marriage, which you invested time and effort in, didn't work out and now you are alone. You may be disillusioned about your faith and other people's credibility. The adjustment to single life may be difficult and the feelings you have are so deep and huge you do not understand them very well at all.
It is amazing in light of all this that people would ever adjust and then go on to prepare themselves to find and unite with another person. But they do, and you can if you wish to. 70% of all people who divorce, remarry. Maybe it is because hope springs eternal or maybe there is a powerful human need for intimacy, companionship, and love. We propose one additional reason. Think about the idea of how well you loved or didn't love in the previous relationship. Then as you move forward to try again, think about the need to make certain that you get better at loving and receiving love from another person. Whatever is your desire, however, you are here because you are at least willing to try and see what possibilities exist.
Take Plenty of Time But Move Forward With Your Adjustment
When you meet someone new you may feel like your divorce is a heavy burden that must be explained somehow and you might feel defensive or vulnerable because the fact is you are a divorced person. Starting a new relationship makes it necessary to explain your history but would you please consider that quite often other people are more accepting than you may think and the person you need to explain things to is you. You can decide if you are damaged goods or if you are a failure. If you think of yourself in either of these ways you might carry these feelings into a new relationship placing an inappropriate burden on the other person. It doesn't seem likely that two people who feel like they are failures are going to make a good relationship. If one can help the other, if both can help each other that might be a good thing. But, most people who like you or whom you want to like you will have difficulty thinking you are either damaged or a failure.
But, if you need to make explanations we suggest that you speed up your adjustment from your divorce and get ready for a new relationship by doing the following things. (1) Be patient. It takes some time to adjust from a divorce. You will know you are ready if you have forgiven yourself and the other person. If you have not, get your personal life in order emotionally, socially, and financially (this may be tough to do we know, but work at it.) (2) Spend time with honest people who care for you but will not let you excessively blame your divorce on yourself or the other person. Most of the time marriages and divorces are jointly caused. (3) Give yourself an honest appraisal and see what you did that you would like to improve on. Take responsibility for your actions and instead of berating yourself, learn to accept that you did the best you knew how to do in light of your circumstances. Tell someone that both of you are involved and as it turns out, the divorce might be a good thing. (4) Go over a check list of personality traits to see which ones are still healthy and strong. Find them and talk about how you have grown stronger. Make a bad experience teach you something good. (5) Spend a little time each day imagining a better situation and what you need to do to achieve what you want. (6) Start meeting new people as soon as you are ready. (7) See if your experience has taught you to be more compassionate and accepting of other people. (8) Evaluate whether you understand what love is and how to be good at communicating it. When you explain your divorce, communicate that you have learned how being good at love is more important than you thought.
Being Better At Love Creates Faith in Yourself
Think about love as something broader and more expansive than romantic love or love as linked to sex. Love includes attention, acceptance, interest, sharing, listening, complimenting, expressing gratitude, warmth, touch, affection, sensitivity, disclosing feelings, having fun, and many other attributes. When you start a new relationship it will be helpful if you begin with the idea that what you are attempting to do is to find someone with whom you can be more expressive or better at communicating these forms of behavior. Here is the reason. Bad things happen to people and relationships partly because couples are not proactively creating good things in their relationship. When you start again, make certain that the good things are going to take place. You will be better at relationships and you will develop more confidence in yourself.
Practice Improves Us
Sometimes people who have experienced a divorce think of themselves as failures or they protect themselves from thinking this by an exaggerated rigidity that they did nothing wrong and therefore do not need to learn anything new. We suggest that neither is a good position to take if you wish to be successful with a new person. Rather, we propose that you accept the need to improve and get better just because doing so will help you be more successful. People need to improve to make their marriages better and to improve to find and date someone successfully.
We therefore propose that you identify certain qualities you would like to develop and begin a program of practicing them with people you know or feel comfortable with. You might, for instance, begin to ask better questions, listen better, pay attention better, show appreciation better, and etc. By practicing you will be involved in creating more confidence that you can succeed. By actually developing better skills you will be doing something to ensure that you do."