Jaded

About a year ago, I was at a dinner party with some friends, and I was with a couple and the wife mentioned that she was so obsessed with her husband – she couldn’t get enough of him. They were all over each other. And they have a few kids and have been married for a long time! And I was thinking… ew this is not normal, and that they were so over the top. I may have even said EW out loud to her and we laughed and she rolled her eyes. In the following days I couldn’t stop thinking about why I was so fixated on this – was I jealous? But that wasn’t it – then it dawned on me that I was jaded when it came to love. Why? And I remembered! I don’t hate love! I love love! What had happened to me? I used to love the idea of love, it was all I ever wanted. From JTT to Leonardo DiCaprio and Heath Ledger, they covered my walls. I knew if I could just meet Leo we would fall in love and live happily ever after… But, somewhere along the way I no longer felt it was important.

Love had become a distant idea of something that must not exist – at least not in the way I’d always hoped it would. At least not for me. To be clear, I didn’t have a loveless marriage but it wasn’t the stuff of fairy tales or Titanic or anything even close. It was comfortable and no one was trying to woo anybody, it was just probably like how it is in many homes where life has gotten busy and mundane and the stress is swarming everywhere you look and all the fun has been sucked out and we brought out the worst in each other on a daily basis. This was no longer good enough for me.  Which, along with other reasons, is why we were getting divorced.

Well, now that I knew I had become jaded… this really got my wheels turning. 😬 I didn’t want to settle for even good enough anymore – I realized I want the kind of love that makes people say “EW y’all are over the top” or I don’t want it at all. My separation had already started and I knew I was getting divorced and at the time I was just looking forward to peace. I was looking forward to being on my own for real, and not just feeling like I was doing it all on my own.  *** note: these are MY feelings – there are 3 sides to a story as we all know, but this is based on mine obviously, so I’m going to say my side as tactfully as possible without dragging anyone through the mud, this is my blog after all – I’m sure if anyone wrote one on me it could be ruthless – although I’m pretty incredible so I don’t know what they could say 😂 (end note) *** – But now there was a glimmer of hope that maybe I wasn’t done with love. Maybe I wouldn’t think it was only in movies forever. Maybe I’d want to date again. Maybe I’d want to snuggle someone and watch a movie or hold hands 🤢. It was possible, I guess 🤷🏻‍♀️.

So fast forward and I’m divorced. It didn’t take long for me to get on the dating apps – I was curious what was out there and I had felt alone for a very long time. But, while they were absolutely insane the apps were actually quite FUN! Holy crap, it’s like a menu of men. It felt wrong and terrible and at first – I didn’t want to swipe left on the ones I didn’t find attractive or didn’t meet some superficial standard I had, because I’m way too nice and didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings if no one ever swiped on them, but I quickly got over myself and became and expert swipper, or so I thought 😂 I started going on dates. And at first it was crazy scary and nerve wracking – I hadn’t dated in 18 years! I don’t even know how to talk to a man, the last time I did this I was dating boys – not grown men – gross! But then the most amazing thing happened – I realized I was good at first dates! I think I could teach a class actually 😂 apparently I talk a lot and have plenty to say and about a zillion questions to ask, so awkward silence wasn’t a thing. My problem wasn’t the first dates. It was the seconds! I knew I’d bring some of my life crap into my new dating life, but I hadn’t realized these men would bring their crap too. Either I didn’t like them after the first date, or they didn’t know my name on the second date, or they were an ex-cult member turned polyamorous and still married or an addict or I ended up in a crazy scenario on a farm in the middle of nowhere – don’t worry, I learned my lesson… the list goes on and on. But what I became aware of quite quickly is that I have not always picked the best men 😬 I noticed there was a pattern of picking the “bad boys.” What was this? I realized one day when I was in deep self psychoanalysis that I would never tell my daughter to date the “bad boy” so why was this ok for me? I can think of many reasons, and at the top of the list is that they seem fun 😂 and more importantly I didn’t see a good example of a healthy relationship growing up – sorry mom and dad – I know you tried your best – but it wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies, it was scary and stressful lots of the time. Luckily, I realized at around the point when the guy didn’t know my name on the second date – and y’all, I swear we really had a good thing going up until that moment 😂 that I should do some therapy. So that’s what I did. And it has been fascinating! My brain is so complex (don’t laugh) and it turns out all these things that I thought were personality traits actually turned out to be trauma responses 😂 who’d have thought?! So… with the guidance of my therapist I sat down and I wrote a letter to “Little Emily” – I believe this is called shadow work – and I crushed it – if I do say so myself. Little Emily and I worked through so much in one little letter. And I started noticing in my day to day life all the kazillions of times when Little Emily would pop up to protect me. But I didn’t need her to do it anymore – just like she didn’t need to feel like she needed to do it when we were 5.

If I haven’t lost you yet, then I’m going to assume you’re invested now in my silly rambling blog stories so I’ll keep them coming. There is so much more I want to say, but I’m treading carefully so I don’t ruffle all the feathers of all the people. There maybe is even more to this dating/love thing. Maybe I can recover from my anti-love stance. Stay tuned… and I hope something I say gives you the glimmers of hope. Y’all blew me away with the response to my last blog and so I felt like I should do another one and see if anyone wants to read it 🫣 I feel so good on this side of all the hard life lessons I’ve gone through so far.  We’ll see how far I take this blog, please let me know if it’s boring or entertaining 😂