Accept It’s the End

Some people take a break and get back together. Some couples need a break, yet most part ways for a good reason and it stays that way. To start, accept that it’s the end. Sure, it may be the end now so another beginning can start, but that’s in the future. It’s much more positive to move forward and accept the fact that the relationship, as you knew it, is now over. It’s a bitter pill to swallow but take your medicine; it’s good for you. Move on and explore your future.

Take Time to Heal

Breaking up is hard whether you were dumped or the dumper. Regardless who ended it and why, you need time to re-center, refocus, and re-engage in the single life. That doesn’t mean you have to start dating right away. It means you have to get familiar with yourself and your independence. It’s suggested that you don’t jump into another relationship before you’re fully over the prior relationship. Taking time does not mean that you need to sit at home, sulk, or analyze the end of the relationship. Start doing the things you love such as exercising, seeing plays, hanging with friends, etc.

Don’t Be Negative

It’s easier for some to be positive, but staying away from a negative state of mind is especially useful after a breakup. Don’t hold onto harsh feelings about your ex. Even if they did something to hurt you, let it go. It’s their duty to focus on their journey toward a better self just as it’s your duty to focus on you. Dwelling on the past and being negative will only make it harder to get over the relationship, which could mean missed opportunities in work, new relationships, etc. If you have trouble ‘getting over’ the relationship and getting happy, consider seeking the help of a good counselor.

Stay Busy

A busy mind is a happier mind. Be sure that your schedule is filled with things to do whether it’s spending time with friends, seeing new places or adopting a new hobby. It’s much easier to move on from a relationship when you’re busy. If you have too much time on your hands, your mind will start to wander and that could mean dwelling on the past. Do yourself a favor; each Sunday, schedule your entire week, making sure you have little downtime.

Stay Away from the Ex

Some couples can break apart and have no problems being friends. However, that is a unique situation and is uncommon. Most times, it’s best to distance yourself from the other person. That means avoiding them in person, abstaining from sending texts, and being mindful of going places at certain times. Sure, you’ll want to be courteous, so know some perfect responses to send if your ex texts you. In some cases, you may have to see them (you are in the same class or you have a child together), so it’s best to keep things short and positive. Don’t get caught in an argument or be the therapist for the other person if they are having trouble getting over the breakup. You have to focus on you and not let the other person drain you of energy.

Love Yourself

Regardless of the trajectory of your former relationship and how it ended, be sure that you love yourself. Rather than focus on the past, focus on the person you want to be today and tomorrow. Try to improve each day, taking small steps toward ‘perfection.’ Of course, no one is perfect but we all can strive toward being our ‘perfect selves.’ Life’s a journey and reaching goals requires love, especially love of oneself.

Stay Positive

Some people have no problems being positive. Others need a bit of help. Focus on staying surrounded by positivity. That may mean spending more time with an upbeat friend or family member, listening to particular songs and artists, and making time for the things that keep you especially happy. Think of positivity as a prescribed medicine. After a breakup, the heart is ‘sick’ and positivity is the way to make you get better quicker. Remember that being positive is not the same as not being negative. The former activity is proactive while the latter is reactive.

Photo Credit

Photo is pixabay public domain

Guest Author Bio
David Taylor

David Taylor is a relationship therapist with a psychology degree. He writes articles for a range of print magazines as well as blogs and websites sharing his insights into our hearts.

Nowadays there are many different ways to meet new people and maximise your chances of meeting your ideal partner. Online dating sites can now match you with dates based on what you believe is important, so you’ll be more likely to want the same things from the relationship.

How do you know you’re in a toxic relationship?

Long-term relationships tend to go through peaks and troughs and no two are the same. If you met on a site such as eHarmony, who base their matches on shared beliefs and values, then you should feel confident that you have similar ideas of what makes a successful relationship. However, how do you know when your relationship is normal or one you should leave behind? There are many ways in which a toxic relationship shows itself. Here are a few things to consider:

• Do you feel supported by your partner or is everything always about them?
• Do they help you to feel good about yourself or make you feel ashamed?
• Do you rarely, if ever, enjoy good moments together?
• Do you constantly feel tense, anxious or miserable around your partner?
• Do you feel you can be yourself around your partner or do you feel under pressure to change?

What kind of behaviours cause a relationship to be toxic?

A toxic relationship is often borne out of insecurity. When one partner feels insecure, it’s easier for them to feel jealous and project their worries and anxieties onto their partner. They may make unreasonable demands that their partner behave in certain ways to soothe their fears, and become agitated or aggressive if this does not happen. Some examples of controlling behaviour include:

• Sulking or becoming angry with little provocation
• Demanding that the other partner dress, act or speak in a certain way
• Overriding the other partner’s thoughts or feelings
• Being unable to tolerate differences between themselves and the other partner
• Driving a wedge between the other partner and their friends or family

What can you do to recover from a toxic relationship?

If you’ve identified that you need to leave your current relationship, it may feel much more complicated than simply walking away. It may even take some time for you to truly feel that it’s the right thing to do.

Identifying some of the reasons you need to leave may help make that step a little easier. Whether it’s having more time to spend with old friends, recovering self-esteem or simply being your own person again, having a list at hand will provide a bit of back-up for the break-up.

Once you’ve made the decision, have a plan for what you’ll say before you talk to your partner. Keep it short and simple and decide what your next steps will be. After the break-up, it’ll help for you to have support from friends and/or family straight away. Try and keep busy as much as possible and don’t be tempted to contact your ex as it will only make things more complicated.

When you’re free of your toxic relationship, you’ll have much more time to look after yourself, regain your confidence and eventually get out there and start meeting people again.

Photo Credits

Portrait Of A Lonely Girl – Some rights reserved by robertvitulano on flickr

As She Walks Away – Some rights reserved by TheTynk on flickr

Guest Author Bio

Hannah Jackson
Hannah Jackson is a freelance writer and mum of two based in the UK. She enjoys understanding relationships and exploring themes of commitment and love.

I was showered with the blessings of a real man from conception.
This man gave me his time, his money and most of all his love, that when I grow older, I would want nothing from any man.
This man taught me to walk, to read, to speak and to respect.
He taught me not to fear but conquer,
He taught me to discuss and not to argue,
He taught me to think before speaking.
This man was my first love.
After many years of thorough teachings, the training wheels were removed and I was thrown into the wild to put my teachings to practice. With every daring challenge, I rose after every fall much stronger than before. As I placed one foot after the other, I found myself walking into uncharted waters and discovering unspoken realities.
With every challenge, my father’s principles applied until the day I fell…
I fell so deep and so hard, I had to search so hard and so deep in hopes to find even the barest glimpse of a past lesson from my old man.
After looking through the archives of my mind, I searched within the repository of my heart, but there was nothing on the topic, “falling in love”.
This was new, this was strange.
This was real, in fact surreal.
I had met with an unrecognized, undiagnosed feeling. This feeling was like no other. It was not a crush!
I had a series of those before.
It was more real, intensely intoxicating, unparalleled to even the most euphoric memories. This feeling sent me back to my knowledge archive, where I placed this emotion and titled it ‘unlabeled’.
I became sad.
It seemed that I had been caught off guard.
I, Independence.
I, who had it all under control. I had been caught off guard. After deliberating over this emotion and thinking up solutions to what I considered a problem, it hit me. Dad never discussed the possibilities of this happening to me, not because he forgot, but because he wanted to remain my love. In realizing the depth of love and fear of losing me to another man, I called him up to discuss ‘unlabeled’.
He was shy. My dad was shy.
As I carried through the conversation, he stopped me half way and for the first time in twenty years, he said, “ask your mum”.
Off to my mum, I buggered off. Seeking solutions, in hopes of an easy manual. To my surprise, ‘all things love’ had multiple facets, with in-depth analysis. Love was nothing like success, power, wealth, knowledge, respect or anything I had studied in the past. Upon completion of her teachings, the summary was “Love IS love”.
Was she kidding me? There was no solution? But simply to love?
To overcome, I learnt to let myself go, pants up, heart open.
I opened up to what could have been the better years of my life.
I allowed him in.
He was a new man. A different man.
I opened up to a complete stranger, simply because he took me off balance.
I invested time in knowing him. I was eager to learn of him.
He made me weak.
I wanted to give him everything but I remembered mum’s teachings on saving the best till the papers were signed, so I gave him my heart…60% of it, whatever that meant.
Mum had said not to give him my whole heart so if he were to break it, it wouldn’t hurt as much. At the time she got to that chapter of her lesson, I had given up 80% of my heart so I kept going and counted that chapter as a lesson lost.
It felt good to be in love. So I thought…
What I didn’t know was that this man felt nothing. He was not in love. He was not crazed. I, Independent had called kindness, “love”.
Realizing my emotions were misplaced, I went back into my knowledge archive, retrieved my file, ‘unlabeled’ and accurately titled it, “kryptonite”.

Unlike other lessons, “Kryptonite” was the toughest to learn.

Photo Credit:

via Flickr Creative Commons

Guest Author Bio

Dami Ajilore
Dami is the Creative Director of the website, dudunorth.com. She began writing at a young age but did not discover her passion for writing until she started her blog on ‘love’ in 2010. In 2011, she exposed herself to writing on other topics, which is when her blog, Dudunorth was born. Dudunorth is centered around encouraging Africans in the Diaspora to achieve more and become better. Learn more about Dami and her blog posts by visiting her website.

Blog / Website: http://dudunorth.com/

Some times people leave early on. When it looks like it’s going to be some trouble, some work, to continue. When the honeymoon phase is over, and you begin to see all the warts and wrinkles, and they become irritating. There’s a problem with this method, though. It can end up in an unending cycle of hello-goodbye, because everyone, every group, has its imperfections. So the early leaver can end up playing the opening bars of the dance with a different set of partners every night, unable to make the connection of cause and effect. Yet they usually don’t really say goodbye, because they pick up the next dancer too quickly as a way to avoid dealing with the pain of the last. It is an attractive trap in some ways, because it leaves the dancer free to roam, free not to commit, free to be alone at the end of the evening.

So what’s the answer? Step out later in the dance – somewhere closer to the middle, leave when the passion fires are at a peak? When the action has hit the trumpet blast of creative intimacy, closeness, congruence, or however it may be defined? The last memory will be of a dynamo experience, certainly. But when are you sure that it was absolutely the top? What if this really wasn’t the peak of it, if there was just beyond view one even more substantial interaction which could have led to an even higher plateau? My God, what regrets that could bring. No, there’s real resistance to leaving when things are in full bloom.

So what if we can feel definitely that things have hit the pinnacle because events are certainly on the downside, the slide has begun toward the end of the dance? Isn’t there something in us that beckons “we can get it back, it can be that way again, like it once was?” Maybe it can, and the temptation is strong – it must be, for many try. But if we play the percentages, how realistic is it to expect successful rekindling? How many times has anyone seen it, or experienced it? Does it really work that often?

After all, what would cause it to wane? Something went wrong somewhere. It would be very unusual if whatever went wrong didn’t leave hurts, scars, wounds – to one side or the other – usually to both. So at least one side is going to be leery of moving close again. They might want to, even be compelled to, yet sometimes the hurts are so deep that you can’t forget, can’t go back, can’t recapture the spark as much as you might want to because you keep looking over your shoulder for the boom to lower, and you have to finally admit, when all attempts have failed, that there is nothing for it but to let go and cut the cord.

Yet sometimes we wait and resist even then – we continue to dance after the partner has left and the lights are out. Then when we happen to meet them, the other party has the slight cloud over their eyes – the distant look as if they are emotionally standing far across the room – when they give us the “Oh, hello,” that sounds like what you would say to a Sunday School teacher you had just met. The time when head, heart and gut begin to correlate that it is really, truly and definitely over – the energy that once passed between the two of you has closed off, shut down, and is gone.

At that point, hanging on is holding fantasies. If you are still in that relationship, you are the only one who is. The other has moved on, no forwarding address. The conclusive evidence comes if you tell them the most all consuming, deeply significant item of your life today, and they act politely but mildly interested, say “Oh, how nice,” and turn to other matters. Then it sinks in you really have hung on too long.

So we try different styles, methods, patterns of leaving – or not leaving – experimenting with different times of quitting the dance. We begin to learn that love hurts less the one who cares less. We grow cautious and learn – or we repeat patterns. We hold on or we let go. Yet if we grow there still comes that inevitable moment – it might happen – when we know, we just know, it’s over. And then we look once more at them, with that quiet calm of acceptance, mentally wish them well, and say –

Goodbye.

Photo Credits:
“Couple holding hands while walking on the beach” Microsoft Office Clipart Collection

“Walk Away” by Rocpoc @ flickr.com Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.

Previously published in Thoughts Along the Road to Healing

When I was in the eighth grade, back in 1962, one of the top songs on the radio was Neil Sedaka’s “Breaking up is Hard to Do.”  The song hit a resonant emotional chord among 12-15 year olds even though most of the relationships into which young people were entering were presumed to be superficial and short-term, and physical intimacy beyond “necking” wasn’t common. Despite all the rhetoric about being “too young to be in love” and fifties-era restrictions on what was acceptable behavior for young teenagers, strong bonds were being formed, and breaking those bonds created a lot of unhappiness. The number one reason young people gave for being profoundly depressed was the loss of a boyfriend or girlfriend.

A lot of things have changed since 1962. Many of my classmates were already married, or partnered with the person they eventually married, before the sexual revolution hit in earnest. A decade later, the presumption in American society was that a young person (religious fundamentalists excepted) would have multiple short-term sexual relationships during his or her formative years, guaranteeing that breaking up was a normal and expected part not only of a young teenager’s life but of life into the mid-twenties or beyond. Still, despite all the changes, breaking up is hard to do.

I have not found personally, nor have I observed it to be the case among a wide circle of acquaintances, that breaking off an intimate relationship becomes any less painful either through repetition or with the advancing age of the parties. If anything, the opposite is true. Repeated trauma has a way of reinforcing itself until it produces a more or less constant state of depression, and for women who see themselves losing out to younger competitors, the age factor introduces a sense of urgency.

Could the model of the ancestral village provide some insights? I will use my Nottinghamshire circa 1500 metaphor here, but the particulars aren’t important, because almost without exception, in the village environment, great pains are taken to ensure that young people don’t form close relationships with the opposite sex until they are ready to make a lifetime commitment to each other. The mechanisms are very different in different cultures. The degree of intimacy that is allowed in the absence of commitment varies a great deal, but almost always stops short of actual sexual relations.

There are good biological reasons for women to avoid intercourse with uncommitted men, and for committed men to expect their wives to be monogamous. Evolutionary fitness, whether for a mouse or a man, boils down to propagating one’s genes into the next generation. A woman who has given birth has already invested considerable time, energy and risk into that child, investment she would likely have lost in the village environment if she lacked a partner – generally the father of the child – to support the family. A man whose labor goes to support another man’s child loses out in the evolutionary sense. This is an oversimplification, of course, but basic human biology favors long-term commitment. Darwin and the Pope are agreed on that point.

Throughout most of history, across a wide spectrum of cultures, a woman who was abandoned by a partner with whom she had sexual relations was in serious trouble, even if she was not pregnant and the society was comparatively permissive. It would be surprising indeed if there were not hard-wired inherited instincts among women to be cautious about entering into such relationships in the first place, to hang on to them tenaciously despite evidence that the male partner is contributing nothing positive to the relationship, and to feel hopeless once the it has ended definitively.

Using chemical birth control greatly reduces the risk of pregnancy but does nothing to change the way the overall situation looks to the subconscious mind. If anything it complicates things, because hormonal birth control acts by mimicking the environment of early pregnancy, including psychological effects, and pregnancy notoriously makes women more “clingy,” for obvious reasons.

I can think of two common situations where weighing conventional morality, with its biological and evolutionary underpinnings, against what is considered normative in contemporary America could be helpful in promoting better emotional health. A young woman who feels she is being pressured into having sexual relations with a man to whom she is strongly attracted, who however shows no signs of being interested in a long term-commitment, can use the biology to back up her reticence, when an appeal to the Pope may be met with ridicule. The strong instinct for remaining in relationships that are less than optimal is perhaps too often discounted, and the pain of breaking up not given sufficient weight in deciding whether to end a long-term intimate partnership.

Read Part 1: Healing In A Virtual Village – 1

Photo Credit

Village Scene – Hub Pages

Lyrics of Breaking up is Hard to Do

He glances at her, looks quickly down, stares blankly at the coffee cup in front of him. He picks it up, sips, sets it down carefully, slowly. The waitress stops at their booth and freshens their coffee, customers pass by, but they are all alone. Outside the plate glass window the day is grey and lifeless and cloudy.

“I’ve got to,” he says. “We’ve gone as far as we can go and I have nothing left to give.”

A tear rolls down her cheek. “You know, sometimes fear makes us do the opposite of what we want to do.”

He looks confused, shakes his head as if to clear it, hesitates. “Maybe I’m running, I can’t tell, but I know this is what’s right for me. You seem to want to have Bill and me both, and I can’t live that way.”

She looks down, puts her hand across her forehead. “I’ll leave him, I told you, there’s nothing between us,” she says, not looking up.

“We’ve been through all that before. You won’t see me any time he comes to town, he doesn’t even know about you and I. I feel like . . . like a secondhand doll that entertains you while you’re not with him.”

He stares vacantly into his coffee cup, sighing deeply as his shoulders slump. His face wrinkles into a grimace as if feeling what he has just said.

“I’ve caused you pain,” she says.

“No, it wasn’t your fault. I chose to stay.”

“But what I did hurt you. I’m sorry.” Inside, she subconsciously feels glad.

They sit in silence for long minutes, each lost in their own thoughts. She reaches out, tentatively touches his hand, withdraws. “I have a feeling there’s something more you’re not telling me.”

He studies her face, searching into her eyes, peering intently. She looks genuinely puzzled. He glances down, back at her, shakes his head again, stares outside. The clouds are growing darker.

“I don’t know how else to try to say it, to make you understand. We’ve been through it so many times. Like Julie told me, you don’t have to fight to have a good relationship.” He pauses. “Something’s just not right. I need some space, but I have to work it out for me.”

She brightens, “So there’s still hope for us?”

“No, I didn’t say that.”

“I’ll change, I’ll be who you want.”

He bristles, “You’ve said that before.”

She leans back, “You don’t have to get angry.”

“I can if I want to. I have a right.”

Nothing is said for a long moment. His shoulders straighten, he picks up the check, scoots out of the booth and stands, looks at her briefly, then looks away.

“Goodbye,” he says.

“I’ll see you soon,” she replies.

He hesitates, drops several coins on the table, steps away, as she remains sitting quietly, looking outside. It has started to drizzle as storm clouds darken the sky.

He pays the check, his heart aching, yet also with a sense of relief. As he walks to the door, he knows he hasn’t said all he felt – the sense of betrayal at finally seeing the truth about the other man, the missing her that’s already started. The anger, the sadness, all of it. But it’s all been said before, many times.

At the door he stops, looks back, then turns and steps out into the bleak and chilling rain.

Sometimes . . . sometimes there comes a point where there’s just not a whole lot left to say.

Photo Credits:

“before you walk away” by  brains the head @ flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.

“brenden ii” by Bombadier @ flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.

Previously published in Thoughts Along the Road to Healing

With each breath I’m missing you, breathing in a rasping dry breath.
It seems to burn down to the hollow of my soul.
Memories they flood, now mixing up. I thought I missed one,
but I miss many.
I find that many are a part of me now. There is no ONE,
there is only the many.
Each having a part to play, each having a part in me,
each deserving of my attention.
So then, what shall I do with this feeling. Its not for,
to long after the one.
It is for, to enjoy the many that have become
a part in my life.
How can I miss one and perhaps leave out another
that has a part to play?
I must move on, pay my respects, but in the end,
you know your only a part.
There yet remains a whole to be built from my life,
a whole song, a whole book,
not just a verse, or a chapter.
So then, I will breath this painful breathe that it may give me
a lesson from missing you.

Photo Credit:

“Missing You”  Flickr Creative Commons.  Some rights reserved by michael hilton

First Posted At Opinions Of Eye

Guest Author Bio

Drew Sager
I think and think and 99 times I’m wrong. But on the 100th time, I’m right. – Einstein

I blog, play music, body surf, hang out with bikers, and occasionally go to church.

Blog / Website: Opinions Of Eye

Can a break up relieve stress? In some cases, yes. For example, a friend of mine was unhappy in her relationship. She complained about it being difficult for her to experience the emotional and sexual intimacy she once had.  She had only been married five years and she and her husband had demanding careers. She was feeling stressed both at home and at work. She felt the strain of her obligations as the role of ‘wife’ became difficult for her to fulfill.  She sought counseling to address her deteriorating marriage.

What she found was that a committed intimate relationship is marked by the investment of resources such as self-disclosures, mutual friends, and shared possessions. And by virtue of the passage of time, longer relationships tend to include more investments. As time passes, an emotional investment is made, more memories are made, intimate knowledge is exchanged, activities and friends are shared; lives become more intertwined. We know that there are psychological and physiological benefits to an intimate relationship, especially marriage.

It is no different when you are in a cohabiting relationship as it is a greater investment than a dating relationship. For example, cohabiting couples often pool resources, such as money for rent, utilities, and groceries. And, because couples who live together invest more in their relationships than they do dating couples, they are often more impacted by a break-up. After all, they often have made plans to marry and this can possibly lead to a decline in their mental health and well-being.

As in any relationship, after a break-up, individuals who have invested more time can be more distressed than those who dated their partners for less time. But put another way, having been rejected seems to be associated with more distress after a break-up. When there is the termination of a relationship it may provide some relief, particularly for the person who initiated the break-up.

So how do you bounce back from a break Up? The old saying that time heals all wounds applies to break ups, too. Your first priority should be to take care of yourself. Surround yourself with family and friends, seek professional counseling, or do things you like doing. Stay busy and remember these words by Herman Hesse, “Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.”

Photo Credit

“Broken Relationship” Photographer unknown

To start over after a break up, you need to be patient, open-minded, understanding and confident. Here are a few tips to weather the most common aftershocks of a break up:

Dividing Mutual Friends

Many couples share friends whom they used to hang out with as a couple. These friends can become points of major contention following a split. We often hear of friends choosing sides, showing fidelity and support to either the dumper or the dumpee. This can be an extremely stressful and frustrating process, especially if a friend does not side with you. If you let this get under your skin and you allow yourself to be irritated by a friend’s choice to side with your ex, you will waste emotional energy in a purely negative way.

Instead of wasting time bemoaning the fact that you were not chosen, lean on your friends who have chosen you. It is more important to seek support for yourself than it is to worry about things outside of your control. In time, your true friends will show themselves and the people who really care about you will reach out. It may take some time, but being patient with your friends will allow them to deal with your breakup just like you are dealing with it.

Getting Back into the Dating Scene

Especially for those who are coming out of a long-term relationship, getting back into the dating scene can be daunting. But, despite how intimidating it might seem, going on dates quickly after a break up can be a way to distract you from the break up. First and foremost, dating will remind you that there are other people out there looking for the same things you are. Even if you want to take a break from relationships, you will certainly find like-minded people if you put yourself out there. But, if you are having trouble getting over your ex, then the distraction of going on dates can help you realize that there are other fish in the sea.

What to Do With All of That Stuff?
A common problem that occurs as a fallout of break ups is the divvying up of the couple’s shared property. What belongs to who can be a point of real contention, and every couple is different. With this in mind, there is no hard and fast rule about who should get what, so each case should be approached with a good amount of patience and understanding.

Dividing up belongings is a very physical — and this visual representation of the break-up process can be more powerful than the actual breakup itself. Seeing and touching the break up can make people extremely volatile and emotional. If you come into the process intending to be patient, then you will limit the confrontations and difficulties many couples face at this stage of a break up. All this being said, being patient and understanding does not mean being acquiescent and over-accommodating. When deciding who should take what, you should be firm about what you truly believe you should have. A willingness to compromise on the things that are less clearly owned will make the process of keeping the things you truly want much easier.

Finding A New Hobby

Following a break up, many people have trouble doing the things they always do because these activities tend to remind them of their former partner. Let’s say you and your boyfriend used to spend your Sundays at the golf course. After your break up, you may find it hard to go out golfing or you may become wistful and sad watching the PGA tour on TV. A good way to avoid this kind of residual breakup pain is to actively pursue new hobbies. Do something you’ve never done before, something you’ve never even considered doing. If you aren’t particularly artistic, take a painting class. If you don’t remember the last time you went for a swim, go to the pool on Sundays instead of to the golf course. Diving head-first into a new hobby is a great way to distract you from the nostalgic pangs of a breakup.

Asking for Help
There is no shame in asking for help — from your friends, from your family or even from a professional. There are people out there who care about you and want you to be happy. You may need to be proactive and seek out the advice, but help is definitely out there.

Guest Author Bio

Jenn Pedde
This post is written by Jenn Pedde who is the community manager for the Masters in Social Work program at the University of Southern California, which has one of the nation’s leading military social work concentrations. She’s an avid traveler and loves photography.

Blog / Website: http://msw.usc.edu

Photo Credit

“Brokenhearted” jozef racekar passenger @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

Some time ago I wrote an article for my blog entitled “The Charism of Celibacy: A Personal Reflection.” In this article I reflected on my unsuccessful lifelong pursuit of a partner and the ultimate realization that before even considering taking a partner, I had to first build a beautiful life for myself based on my passion, my talents, and my existing relationships with family and friends. This insight came to me from my work as editor on the book Frog or Prince? The Smart Girl’s Guide to Boyfriends and on many conversations with the author, Kaycee Jane.

I have spent the past few years building that beautiful life — a life of study, reflection, and writing about religion — and I have found the process and the result to be more completely satisfying than any of my previous “lives.”

Just after I started working on Frog or Prince, I ended a relationship that was going nowhere. In “The Charism of Celibacy” I wrote:

“As with most people, I decided after my relationship ended that I did not want to again go through what I had experienced for the previous four years. Of course, many of us sooner or later forget that we made this decision and start searching again, usually getting ourselves into the same kind of relationship we just got out of. After a while, however, and once I found myself firmly on a new path, I recognized that I was no longer feeling the need of a partner. My work and my journey were now my joy; I had, over the period of a few years, gradually created a kind of semi-cloistered monastic existence for myself, which I find satisfying in every way. I have built an office in the garage at the back of our house; this is my ‘cell’, where I work and sleep.”

Two recent “events” have stirred some romantic longings that I thought I had left behind as unnecessary baggage on my journey. The first occurred suddenly and unexpectedly as an emotional and even a physical reaction. When I ended my last relationship with a long letter sent by e-mail (the relationship was long distance), I waited a few days for a reaction or response; receiving none, I blocked him from my MSN Messenger account and removed him from my contact list. Nevertheless, I did miss him terribly for quite some time afterward. A couple of weeks ago, I went on to my Facebook home page and guess whose photo appeared under the rubric “People you may know”? I was floored and have still not recovered. It has taken all of my resolve not to try to contact him.

The second event is much closer to home and has unfolded more gradually. Someone I met in the late summer of last year seems recently to be giving me romantic signals. I say “seems” because I have never spent much time around other gay people, so my “gaydar” is nearly non-functional. This person is much younger than I am, far cuter, and from a different culture, so I am reluctant to respond too directly for fear that I will appear completely ridiculous if I have read the situation incorrectly. Moreover, I do not wish to put him in an uncomfortable position by forcing him to reject any advances I may make.

My reaction to these happenings has caused me to wonder if I have actually been repressing my desire for a partner and if I am not as centered as I thought I was. The test for determining the truth would be, it seems to me, how distracting the events have been and how disappointed I would be if nothing came of them.

There is no question that I have been distracted. I truly loved my last partner and thought that we would be together for life. Perhaps his sudden reappearance on Facebook is a sign that I have not truly transcended that experience. The closer-to-home guy is very attractive both physically and in terms of his personality; he is someone I could easily fall in love with.

And I would be disappointed if neither “event” delivered a man to my bed (on the other hand, my current bed partner, a 60-pound dog named Isabella who does not like to share, would be quite fine with this result).

Despite the distraction and potential disappointment, however, I am greatly comforted to discover — or to reaffirm — that my work is still my first love. No matter how clear a person’s path is there are obstacles that regularly appear and can cause him or her to question the validity of that path. Over the past several years I have had occasion to pose this question; on each occasion the answer has been an unhesitating and unequivocal “Yes!” I thank God that this time is no different.

In “The Charism of Celibacy” I stated:

“Without a partner in it, my life — at this moment — is complete. I do not feel the urge to seek out a relationship. Nevertheless, I am aware that at any time I may meet someone with whom I could make a life. Thanks to Kaycee and Frog or Prince? I will be able to determine without a great deal of difficulty if that man is indeed my Prince. If he is, I would not only be foolish but also sinful to turn him away because he would have been sent to me by God.

We cannot say ‘No’ to God.”

In the meantime, my life is indeed beautiful.