General Articles
Coping With Divorce - Part 6
By Judy Churchill - Judy also featured in the Anna Fill Interviews.
Part 6 of 7
Being 'Back on the market'.
This brings us to the next step which is about assuming and coping with your new status as a reborn single, catapulted back into the dating game, without the instruction book. It is frightening, exciting, confusing and bewildering, all at the same time. It certainly won’t be the same as when you set about it the first time! You are going to need some practice and some ground rules. You are now in a world full of singles, divorcees, married men, in fact a real minestrone soup of possibilities at both ends of the age spectrum (something you didn’t have to deal with first time round). The golden rule is: TAKE IT SLOWLY. It may be hard to motivate yourself to get out there and the last thing you feel like is ‘having fun’. Get out there! Don’t wallow in your misery. You need the practice. So accept all and any (within reason) of those invitations and refuse to go any further than you feel like going. It’s like learning to ski, you need to stay in ‘snow plough’ for a while until you feel like taking up the sticks and negotiating parallel turns. Going out in groups or joining a club will boost your morale. I always used to have an acid test for a good evening out. If I could arrive back home, walk in the door, smile at myself in the mirror and say ‘that was good evening out’ (something I couldn’t always do when I was married) then that was good enough!
Getting seriously involved with someone new at this stage is probably the last thing that you need. You will be vulnerable. You need to allow yourself the time to get back into ‘neutral’ before you go on to third of fourth gear. Just take the time to enjoy yourself and keep things lighthearted at this stage.
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Judy can be contacted by email on judy.churchill@orange.fr or via her website www.Judychurchill.com