Dating a Divorcing Man Tutorial

| March 24, 2009 | 7 comments

divorce.jpg

I would say I wish I had known what I was getting into before I met Manly Man but then if I had known better I may have run away screaming. Still, I think it’s good that women know what they are getting themselves into before making the leap.

  1. An average non-contested divorce can be pretty quick. A contested divorce can take months if not years. A contested divorce with a custody battle on top of that, it will be a long ride. I honestly thought it would be about six months, I was off by 2 1/2 years.
  2. Don’t get involved and stay quiet, if you are online do not mention anything online. If you need support go to friends or find a support group. You will have opinions, lots of them, but this is not your battle it’s his.
  3. Expect that anything can happen and it probably will.
  4. Trust him. If you can’t trust him then the relationship won’t ever work anyway.
  5. You and your boyfriend should be a team, if you feel like you are on opposite sides it won’t work.
  6. Stay informed, ask questions and do research. Make sure you know where things stand. This may not be your fight but it will become a big part of your life whether you like it or not.
  7. Get off the subject, the divorce can easily take over your lives, don’t let it. Make sure to laugh and love and spend as much time as possible in your relationship otherwise it will consume it.
  8. Get therapy for you and/or your relationship if necessary, sometimes you just need help to deal with everything.
  9. Learn to accept that in some ways he will always be tied to his ex, especially if they have a child together but there should also be boundaries, make sure you both discuss what these should be and stick with them.
  10. Protect yourself because in a situation like this, nobody is going to keep your best interests in check like you will.

I’ve had people say to me a lot I don’t know how you did it I could never have done it and if I were looking in from the outside I would say the same thing. Hell, looking back I don’t know how I ever made it through. I don’t remember quite how I got through it on a day to day basis but I guess he was always worth whatever we were going through. I think for us just about everything went wrong that could possibly go wrong but it also brought us closer in the end.

In April he’ll have officially been divorced 4 years, it’s hard to believe since during it I never thought it would end.

If anyone who has been through this has others to add please speak up, I know this isn’t quite the humor I like to go with most days but it’s something I felt I needed to post.

[tags]divorce, tutorial[/tags]

Dating a Divorcing Man Tutorial was posted on March 24, 2009 at 8:58 am in Listen Up and tagged as , . It was last modified on August 12, 2009 at 8:17 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.

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  • http://azjade.com Jade

    Awesome advice. I am currently with a man who (hopefully) will be going through a divorce here soon. *le sigh*

    I don’t know how it’s going to go. He seems to think its’ going to be smooth sailing because he’s spending a great deal of time kissing her ass and coddling her. Me? I don’t think so at all, as a matter of fact, we are already starting to see her spitefulness and the papers haven’t even been filed yet.

    Would I find another man? Never. Just going to grit my teeth and bitch to mah friends (like you!) lol

    :avi:

  • http://dreaminginthedark.org B

    What a great post and great advice!

  • http://www.brightestblue.wordpress.com Hannah

    Great advice for women who are involved with men going through a divorce. Definitely sounds challenging, but if you can make it through that difficulty, then your relationship should be able to survive anything!

  • http://www.greystreetgirl.com Grey Street Girl

    This is all so true. I’ve been divorced twice myself and then I dated two guys going through divorces. No fun all the way around.

  • http://whall.org/blog whall

    The pic gets in the way of the top portion of the post but I think I get the gist. You want to divorce me or something.

  • edmcbride

    *hugs*

  • http://naivemelody.blogsome.com Maureen

    I would add…

    Get inside his head & try to see the whole thing from his point of view, especially the custody issues, but also the heartbreak of the divorce, the breakup of the relationship that both of them once believed in.

    In my case, anyway, I had to get past how things looked & felt on the surface, past the immediate battles that were going on between ‘that woman’ who was trying to hurt ‘my man’, and let myself see the entire history that lead up to it all. I had to let myself remember that they used to love each other and that my husband, anyway, could still see that woman that he used to love in there, inside of that new vindictive, bitter crazy woman who she had become. And that was sad for him.

    And, even now, years later, we still remind each other of that from time to time, when we’re feeling especially mad at her. We remind ourselves of her humanity.

    You are correct – that person, whether there are children or not, and your partner’s experiences with them, will always be a part of your lives, either just as a building block to who they are now & how they will react to things that happen in their lives -or- and this is especially when there are children involved, as daily/weekly/monthly presences in your days.