I Discovered One Thing About Myself While Dating Post-Divorce

I have some emotional baggage I need to deal with.

Last night I got quiet. It doesn’t happen very often. But I discovered something I didn’t know. I still have some emotional baggage I need to deal with.

I’m sure I confused the guy I’ve been seeing.

Because my silence was more about me and less about him.

Moments before I had gotten emotional. I said things that didn’t sound like me. I could hear the words exit my mouth but it was as if someone else was speaking them.

I knew something was wrong.

I don’t live an emotionally charged life.

I pour my emotion into my writing, not my day-to-day. I express it, I don’t take it out on other people. The only time I lived an emotionally charged life was during the years I attempted to free myself from a man.

Only the volatility of my husband’s bullying reduced me to that extreme.

Other than that, I’m affable.

“Colleen,” my mom used to say. “Was born with Joie de Vivre.”

I was never the mother who got upset over spilled milk, dishes in the sink, laundry on the floor, or a bad grade. It took my children being disrespectful or going against our value system to annoy me.

I was The Mom Who Sang on Rainy Days.

I was never the wife who told my husband what he could or couldn’t do. I didn’t make him build shelves on the weekend, paint a room, or mulch the lawn. If something needed to be done I usually figured it out myself.

In that respect, it wasn’t so great to be easygoing.

“Colleen,” said our marriage counselor. “What were you thinking? You asked nothing of your husband.”

“I was grateful we had a good life,” I said. “I watched my single mom do it all, and I thought I was being kind.”

Of course, I would learn that I was an extreme.

I should have had more expectations of him.

My husband’s aunt who I loved like a mother could see what our marriage counselor identified years later. She used to say, “I wish he was married to another woman for just two weeks.”

I wasn’t emotional. I wasn’t impatient. I wasn’t demanding. I wasn’t a nag.

We didn’t have typical relationship conflicts either.

My husband and I were well-matched that way. We didn’t argue over household chores or finances. We didn’t argue over social commitments. We were overly social and unthreatened.

I used to joke, “My husband and I could throw our bodies in front of another man or woman and we would walk right over them.” We weren’t jealous people.

We were independent of one another in many ways.

Our day-to-day life was calm.

It was the cruel cyclical pattern of a covert narcissist that disturbed it.

But on this night I am emotional with a guy I barely know.

It’s happened a few times. I convinced myself it was having unexpected feelings for a man. I told myself it was the fast and furious pace of a relationship that would be over in weeks when he moved.

I insisted it was the nervous emotion from deciding It Was a Big Mistake to Wait This Long to Date After Divorce.

Or maybe it was the wine talking.

But I knew better.

Alcohol doesn’t change my mood. I’m the same person sober as I am drinking. Unless you offer me some vodka. Then I’m going to tell you I’m the funniest person you’ve ever met.

As the silence overwhelmed me, I knew my truth.

I’m a marketer. I have to go into a business and figure out why they are losing $10K a month. I have to connect the dots. I have to understand the operational side and the human behavior that compels employees and customers.

I’m a relationship columnist. I’ve spent more than a decade in the counseling and research of love, marriage, divorce, and relationships. I connect the temperamental dots.

I solve emotional riddles.

In the hopes of helping others to love better.

My work makes it fairly impossible for me to lie to myself.

My heightened emotion had nothing to do with the guy who re-opened my broken heart. He is good, he is funny, he is fun, he is handsome, he is sexy, and he’s brave. And yes, I will miss him. He is on my mind every day all day.

The butterflies in my stomach will fly away with him.

It won’t be easy.

But there’s a reason I didn’t recognize the words exiting my mouth.

They weren’t me. They weren’t Colleen. They were the remnants of a word my ex-husband introduced me to. Fear. And yet another word he stole from me…trust.

I want to believe in someone again.

I want to trust a man.

I want to believe the words he speaks. I want to believe his actions. I want to believe his intentions. I want to believe his heart.

But I am suspect.

The girl who once saw the best in everyone…

Now doesn’t trust her own judgment.

You would have to escape the illusionary narcissist to understand this. You would have to be subjected to two very different personalities living within one to get the confusion of leaving the charming but equally cruel narcissist.

I knew in the quiet of the night…

That albatross still haunts me.

I have trust issues.

Evidently, much bigger than I already knew I had. The type of emotional baggage that can self-sabotage because the risk is too great. I’m too confident to get that emotional. It didn’t make sense.

Until I realized it wasn’t stemming from self-esteem.

It was rooted in fear.

Down deep I was saying, “Please be the guy I think you are. Please don’t be someone else. Please tell me I’m right about you. Please tell me I can trust you and I can trust myself.”

That’s kind of a big burden to pass along to a man.

Any man, let alone one I will end up spending five weeks with.

He seems to be past any things that may have happened in his relationship. I am just now confronting what has happened in mine. At least, in the dating world.

It takes more bravery than I thought to date.

I thought it was just about nerves and anticipation.

I thought it was about meeting a guy who caught me off guard. A guy who made me nervous. One who made me want to think about him and spend time with him.

But there’s a high and low in my life that never existed before.

The girl who wants to trust and feel safe.

And the one who finds it terrifying.

No matter how much she wants it. Whether it’s for five weeks or five years. The short-term or the long-term. A part of me feels it’s possible and another part of me doesn’t.

That internal war is causing emotional peaks and valleys.

But it’s my battle to fight. It’s not fair to subject a fun-loving guy to unwanted and unneeded confusion. No one should be on the other end of someone else’s pain.

I still don’t want to see him leave.

But I think I’m the wrong girl at the wrong time.

I would say I’m the right girl at the wrong time.

But a good guy doesn’t deserve to pay for the sins of a bad guy.