Thank you Cherie Nixon for this interesting question. You were wondering if you are “ready for that” and whether you could handle it.
Having feelings – and getting those feelings returned – has to be one of the most exciting of experiences. It really puts anyone on a high.
In fact, that’s not just a metaphor. The brain chemicals in romantic love – such as dopamine – have a suspiciously similar chemical structure and action in the brain as cocaine!
If you asked anyone on the street whether they would like to be addicted to cocaine, they will tell you “absolutely not.” But when someone is addicted, they cannot help themselves and all they do is crave that drug.
They’ve lost their freedom of choice.
Well, romantic love is about the same.
You can take two lonely people with a few superficial things in common and put them together for a brief time and if the circumstances support it, they can start having those “feelings.”
Why is that?
Because when a person has been hungry for validation, starving for company, needing a listening ear, and another person comes around who does that, then our imaginations fill in the gaps on who this person really is.
In other words, all romantic love acts that way: We make up the missing pieces – the things we don’t really know about the person – and we ignore the things that do stand out which we don’t like, just so we can get our drug.
We don’t want the hassle of looking deeply at who this other person is because that would take the shine off of the romance.
And just like cocaine, we crave our drug. Our drug is those good feelings of being heard and seen, maybe for the first time in a very long time.
So I get it.
But the statistics are against most people. After a divorce, second marriages don’t do well unless we learned from our mistakes.
It is best, when meeting a new person to be sure of the following in ourselves:
1. We are no longer triggered the way we used to be; that’s because we’ve worked on ourselves and tested ourselves by experiencing triggering situations and not reacting the way we did before.
2. We are internally healed, which means that we have understood the source of our early childhood pain that led us to the first painful marriage. You see, one prepares us for the other.
And not only “understood” it, but healed it in therapy. To me, the definition of “healed” is “We have listened to and validated our inner children; we’ve actually seen them and comforted them.
We’ve reassured them that they were good children and not who they got labeled to be. And they accepted that and were, indeed, comforted.
3. We are able to feel our Self energy and we know, clearly, when a protective part takes us over. We are able to get back into Self energy.
To me, these are the only measures needed of healing and readiness for a new relationship.
Now, on the other side, the person we’re interested in also has to have these 3 measures of health. And very frankly, just being with them is not enough because, as I said, we want to overlook the pieces of the puzzle that don’t quite fit.
And we want to fill in with our hopes and dreams what we don’t really know.
That is normal, but not helpful.
So the only way to find out about a person is to investigate. I hear people groaning. I know, I know. It’s not very romantic. But….
You don’t have to engage a private detective, but you can do some lookups online, you can talk to friends, neighbors, colleagues at work, the person’s sister or brother-in-law, and so on.
You can talk to their own ex, if you’re serious. Yes, the ex could be a troubled person who twists the truth, that’s a possibility. But getting some information will tell you a lot.
Really.
You can definitely date and discover how this person talks to the waitress, waiter, and the cab driver. Ask them what charities they give to and how hard they work at the office.
There are dozens of non-romantic questions you can ask which will fill in the gaps with real information instead of imagination.
And of course, if you truly want to discover whether you, at least, are ready for a new relationship, my coaching program just might do it. It puts people through a lot of self-examination. And then, if you’re serious, you also can have them go through it. (It is ridiculously cheap at $50/hr and that will not last.)
Next, I’d like to address the fact that you are separated rather than divorced.
I totally believe that if two people are not yet divorced, it is possible to give the marriage a chance. That is because if the marriage went off the rails, it is likely that the two of you never actually got to know one another.
Yes! I mean it. People can be married for 30 years and only see each other’s Protectors and Defenders and not the true Self of the other underneath. I think most people don’t even know who they are, let alone the other person.
If you need a refresher in IFS (Internal Family Systems) it says that we have defenders or coping skills or Parts that come out to protect us because, as children, we needed them. And they’ve stuck with us ever since.
Those parts can be aggressive or they shut down or they’re angry, or whatever. But none of them is the real person.
The true Self of all of us – yes, everyone – is kind, compassionate and loving. These wonderful qualities have been hidden by the protectors for years or decades.
The art of coaching and therapy as I do it is to gently help you discover your true Self while appreciating the attempts at helping that your parts have given you all these years. Comment below for more information on that.
So it may be necessary to separate out those wonderful, delicious feelings from a hard look at who the other person is – and who you are – before getting involved with someone new.
And it may be the right time to give yourself and your almost-former partner a new chance, too.
You are the smartest human I know. Thank you.
Thank you so kindly! Valerie, I emailed you a week or so ago. I’m having trouble w my email. Can you check, pls?