Contents
How long will it take you to heal emotional wounds after a divorce? And if not only you, but also your partner have recently gone through a breakup, won’t this become an obstacle to the emerging feeling? Our reader Alina K. shares her story, and gestalt therapist Natalya Artsybasheva comments on her situation.
If you’ve just recently divorced and haven’t let go of the past yet, a new relationship can be dangerous territory. Parting is often associated with a loss of self-confidence and its attractiveness to the opposite sex. And, let’s be honest, our emotionally insecure state sometimes seriously distorts reality, and the desire to quickly forget, immersed in new feelings, can lead to an alliance with the most inappropriate partner.
I can say from my experience that you need more time before starting a new relationship if you expect a new partner:
- protect you from the hard feelings associated with a recent breakup,
- compensates for the shortcomings of the previous partner that you could not come to terms with, and will return you to a sense of trust and intimacy.
If a new relationship develops too quickly and you make commitments that can affect your future life, this is also a wake-up call.
It is said that if your new partner has recently divorced himself, this is the worst possible situation, but I find a lot of advantages in it. You and such a person can support each other.
Relationships can have a future if you don’t artificially rush them.
My dating experience after my divorce wasn’t easy. I fell in love with a man who repeated the worst features of my ex-husband. However, I did not want to see this and was too emotionally dependent on this relationship. Looking back, I understand that our breakup was inevitable: that man only had a pleasant time with me until he met another woman.
Now I am grateful to him for the lessons that I received. In the end, I met someone who became my close friend, and I am happy. He also divorced, but this did not prevent our movement towards each other. I no longer made the previous mistakes – our rapprochement and recognition of each other went gradually. We did not try to drown bitter feelings in a new love and honestly experienced and comprehended everything that was connected with our divorces.
This topic was not taboo for us – we talked a lot about our experiences, and this helped us. I think if you met a person with a similar story, this is by no means a sentence. On the contrary, he will be able to understand you like no one else. Relationships can have a future if you do not artificially rush them.
“Relationships with a new partner who has recently gone through a divorce can develop ambivalently”
Natalia Artsybasheva, gestalt therapist
The more painful your divorce is, the longer it will take to mature for a new relationship. The heroine correctly evaluates the signals that indicate unpreparedness for a new union. I would add the rollicking “wedge kicked out” characteristic of us when they start dating someone in spite of the former. The motives of revenge and demonstrations of the fact that “I’m doing well” work here.
To start a new relationship under the influence of anger is to cause additional harm to yourself. It’s like under the influence of acute hunger to eat items that are not intended for food.
It is worth understanding what experiences prevent us from providing support primarily to ourselves.
The trend of our time, researchers call consistent monogamy, when marriages and partners succeed each other in a person’s life. On the one hand, many have experienced divorce in the past, and it is easier for such people to understand each other’s experiences. On the other hand, we often choose a partner who himself has recently divorced as an object of care and sympathy. This turns out to be a way of avoiding self-care – the so-called displaced activity. It is worth understanding what experiences prevent us from providing support, first of all, to ourselves.
Divorce changes us, and we need a “mirror” – a person in a relationship with whom we can re-examine ourselves through trial and error. However, the divorced partner goes through the same process. You may find yourself in a situation where there is a lot of bilateral tension and little peace and stability.
It is good that in the case of the heroine, divorce was not the only topic that connected her with a new partner. Otherwise, after a period of post-divorce rehabilitation, it could turn out that people have no other common interests.
About expert
Natalya Artsybasheva – Gestalt therapist. Her .