I have made the decision to enter the dating world, or at least dip my toes in. For anyone who knows me, this is a complete about face for me. I’ve been adamant about not wanting or needing a man for the last 10 years, since my marriage ended. It is a scary decision, but one driven from a longing deep in my gut, an undeniable desire.
Why am I dating again?
I recently ran into a man I first met during my early college years while I was visiting my grandparents. Thanks to social media, we’ve stayed in touch off and on over the years. Now we live in the same town. As a result we’ve hung out a few times, played card games with the kids and gone out to eat. It’s been really nice.
Through this experience, something woke in me, and filled me with a longing that I thought long dead. I began to recognize it as a genuine desire for companionship, adult talk and hand holding. There’s just something unique in a relationship between a man and a woman, that can not be fulfilled by a relationship with the best of girlfriends.
While this particular man and I are not compatible as more than friends, I am grateful for what he brought back into my life.
The Rules have Changed
Yikes! I haven’t dated in almost 15 years. I was with my husband, married my husband and then divorced shutting down that side of my life completely. It hasn’t even been on my radar. As a member of several single mom groups, most of what I have seen are the horror stories. It is a scary thing to get back out there. Things have really changed.
I am older. The men I would consider dating are older.
I am a single mom with teenage children. This is a whole new world with lots of opinions and other people to consider.
How you meet people is different. What people expect is different.
The whole world of the initial meet and interaction is foreign to me. Meeting people online, those first impressions being text messages and picture exchanges.
Wow, I’m just overwhelmed and feeling a big like a fish out of water.
As a result, I have decided to blog this experience in my life. The good, the bad and everything in between. And I’m looking for any suggestions, tip or tricks…
The holidays have always been hard for me. I eat up the Christmas movies where a rich man always falls in love with the woman and turns her life upside down with joy and family. The reality is a very different picture, and I must admit to finding it hard to celebrate the joy of the season and the true reason for the season. Instead I get consumed at times with the things I don’t have, the things I long to have. This has been especially true since I became a single parent. The pressure is just overwhelming at times.
Getting the kids engaged in school the first month of this year was really challenging, what I had done for the last 4 years with my younger two just wasn’t’ working…with any of them really. And then through watching what they engaged in during their free time I decided to start using art to teach everything. Earlier I wrote about our first trial project with this…you can find that post 
But we are slowly backing away from the nailed down, scheduled craziness, and seeing that spark of interest, that light of passion that when full blown just drives them to learn, to research, to expand their horizons…ART. So I am now focusing on learning through art…seriously learning through art, letting it be the stigma for the learning, the catalyst for the research and the prompt for expression in acceptable boundaries.
